The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

The hospitalizations are available on the Ontario government site. I don't include them in my summaries any more since too often the hospitals' reporting is inconsistent.

The death rates will be lower now because we'll (hopefully) avoid the LTC outbreaks, the average patients are younger and the doctors have experience treating COVID-19. But they will not be zero, either, even for younger people (you can also see the deaths by age range on the Ontario government site.

And "not dead" doesn't mean "healthy". An extended family member spent over three months in ICU (including a long stint on a kidney dialysis machine) and was recently released from hospital. He's over 50 but not by much, and was healthy otherwise. But he faces a long rehab before he can get back to work, and he may never fully recover.

I think classifying infections as "mild" was a terrible PR move. Lots of "mild" cases aren't actually mild and way worse than a flu (which is already quite bad).

Apart from that, yes, hospitalizations are too late.

Yeah, that was a bit of a misnomer...I mean the progression more or less goes dead, ventilated, hospitalized, mild...so like, if you aren't in the hospital, it's "mild"...that being said, "mild" is a huge range, some people are not affected that strongly...so some are definitely not finding it as bad as the "flu" (although I'm sure there are flus that are also mild).