The COVID-19 pandemic

[tomh009]

Thanks for the ongoing updates! I think it would be useful to have the + from 14 days ago to distinguish people who are fully protected vs who are fully dosed. That two-dose number is really increasing fast.

I don't think that Alberta teen was COVID, nor are there any known variants that are going to return false positives. Probably something else but the medical system will find out...

Ontario 14 days ago:
Total vaccinated: 9,410,285 (63.93%)
Fully vaccinated: 1,796,782 (12.21%)

Waterloo Region 14 days ago:
Total vaccinated: 392,965 (56.47%)
Fully vaccinated: 144,135(17.14%)

Alas, on double-checking this, I have to admit to a mistake here in transcribing data from my spreadsheet to the browser window.

This is what the Waterloo Region data actually looked like on the 12th:

Waterloo Region on 2021-06-12:
Total vaccinated: 392,965 (56.47%)
Fully vaccinated: 144,135 44,135 (17.14 7.14%)

Here is the extract from my post on the 14th, showing very similar data:

MONDAY 2021-06-14

(...)
An average of 7,360 doses of vaccine administered over the past three days, with a seven-day average at 7,121 (previous week was 6,448). 57.46% of total regional population vaccinated (+0.50% from yesterday, +3.95% from 7 days ago), 8.46% fully vaccinated (+0.66% from yesterday, +4.00% from 7 days ago).
(...)

My apologies for this mistake, I don't know how I managed to do that ... 

[taylortbb]

The region has 3 walk-in clinics again. And surprise, 2 are in Waterloo (Boardwalk and Regina St) and one a the Pharmacy School in Kitchener. Again, not accessible for 95% of the at risk population.  Talk about stubborn. As if doing things right would be equal to admitting fault.

Sorry, our PHU is complete garbage. Bottom of the barrel compared to the rest of Canada and the US.

https://twitter.com/ROWPublicHealth/stat...9817178112 Every single clinic is a first-dose walk-in starting tomorrow.


tomh009 is right though, your constant unsubstantiated hate for the region just makes the rest of your post ignorable. It's very clear you hate the region, and probably blame them for the weather. You keep making assertions, and totally fail to back it up with data. It really undermines your point when the data you linked, on percent vaccinated in Toronto, was clearly incorrect but you still didn't change your conclusions. Meanwhile you refuse to acknowledge that Waterloo being 90% delta while Toronto is 10% delta could in any way be a factor, it must be 100% the region's fault and nothing to do with the different variants.

[ac3r]

Fairly high spike in the wastewater analysis chart: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/healt...lance.aspx

[panamaniac]

Meaning case counts could go up in a week or so ...

[ac3r]

Horray...2 more weeks of Phase 1 lockdown? Nah...make it 4. Or 6. Then everyone travels to other regions for haircuts and house parties, spreads the Delta variant there and locks down the rest of the province again.

I joke, but we'll have to watch what happens with all of this.

[jeffster]

The region has 3 walk-in clinics again. And surprise, 2 are in Waterloo (Boardwalk and Regina St) and one a the Pharmacy School in Kitchener. Again, not accessible for 95% of the at risk population.  Talk about stubborn. As if doing things right would be equal to admitting fault.

Sorry, our PHU is complete garbage. Bottom of the barrel compared to the rest of Canada and the US.

https://twitter.com/ROWPublicHealth/stat...9817178112 Every single clinic is a first-dose walk-in starting tomorrow.


tomh009 is right though, your constant unsubstantiated hate for the region just makes the rest of your post ignorable. It's very clear you hate the region, and probably blame them for the weather. You keep making assertions, and totally fail to back it up with data. It really undermines your point when the data you linked, on percent vaccinated in Toronto, was clearly incorrect but you still didn't change your conclusions. Meanwhile you refuse to acknowledge that Waterloo being 90% delta while Toronto is 10% delta could in any way be a factor, it must be 100% the region's fault and nothing to do with the different variants.

Yeah, it's the weather. Stuff like that makes me realize how ignorant people are in this region. We have a problem and people like you don't want to acknowledge it, as you feel that the region is #1 at doing a great job. But....

Sorry, but if we continue to have shitty amount of cases and are #1 in Ontario day after day after day, we are doing a shitty job. What PROOF do you need? That's the data, published by Tom everyday, I run the cases per 100K per 7 days ever day, plus shit ton in the paper, TV, and elsewhere. Open you damned eyes. I can send you articles after article of our case count. It's posted every freaking day. And what do we do about it? The same thing, day after day! Yes, lets have walk in clinics in Waterloo that is NO WHERE CLOSE to any hard hit community. Yes, let's have a clinic a "drive-thru" clinic at freaking Bingeman's (oh, but "Pedestrians and cyclists are welcome!) -- WHAT? Who the hell is going to walk out there?

This region is stupid because they are not putting any permanent clinics in any area of the city that has elevated numbers of covid cases. They are not informing people on how they can get their vaccine (there has been nothing). How hard is it to ask Canada Post to send out flyers? Guess what, it's not hard. And it's cheap (and probably free in this case, because it's government). Out vaccine website it complete trash, with people not even able to get their booking. Hell, register successfully weeks ago and never heard back, never got a notice that I need to retry because they ditched all the old pre-regs.

We're NOT doing anything right here. No evidence. Show be evidence that people from Vanier know they can walk over to Bingeman's to get a shot. Has the region sent out notices to those in Vic Hills area that they can go to the Pharmacy tomorrow? Have they offered free rides, perhaps even a GRT shuttle? Anything? Or crickets? Do they advertised this to the local media? Or crickets? How is it we all knew about the City of Toronto having a mass vaccination at Scotia Centre but very few are getting any message in Region of Waterloo? Is there no reason why we can't do the same at The And? At least it's central, at least it has parking, it least it has transit, at least it's close to the highway. No...we don't. No creativity.

If you think we're doing a great job, post the evidence. I would love to be proved wrong. Show me what we're doing right.

Meanwhile, our businesses continues to suffer. The general public continues to suffer. We are, as I mentioned, the only place in Canada that is still on a hard lockdown -- yet our case count is not getting better (hint, lockdown don't work, just like they didn't work in Toronto, just like they didn't work in Peel).

Time to get your heads out the sand, folks. Don't accept what the region is doing is great. Expect better from them. Because if we don't, we'll never get out of this hole.

BTW: Where did you get 90% Delta for RoW and 10% Delta for Toronto? I can't find this anywhere, and I've looked -- talk about making up alternative facts. (and one fact of Delta, is that it doesn't appear to be special when it comes to making people ill)

[jeffster]

Sorry, our PHU is complete garbage. Bottom of the barrel compared to the rest of Canada and the US.

Sigh. I think you have trashed them more than a hundred times now, with no evidence as to what specific things they have done wrong.

At least for me, when I see the same ragging again, it means I won't bother reading the rest of the post, either.

I don't expect you or anyone to. I just want people though to give a good hard look at the region, and simply not accept that what they are doing is correct. I just feel that many at this particular site feel that the region can do no wrong (Waterloo proud, maybe) and don't want to shift any blame to the region. I'll leave it at that so you can read the entire post, peace.

[JoeKW]

I'm going to see my family in Montreal in August and if we're still locked down here I'm bringing my laptop and will probably stick it out there until this is over.

[Bjays93]

No offence guys but can we please just drop this conversation about how well our PHU is doing cuz people are clearly talking past eachother and it's both annoying and pointless. Nothing can change what's happened. 

I dont think anyone is saying Waterloo Region doesn't have a problem but I think it's also hard to say we're the worst PHU in North America with literally zero evidence to back it up. Pick some random ass community in south Florida and rag on their PHU why dont you. 

The conversation is stupid and pointless. People are getting their vaccines now and things appear to be going in the right direction (hopefully) so let's just leave it at that

[tomh009]

Fairly high spike in the wastewater analysis chart: https://www.regionofwaterloo.ca/en/healt...lance.aspx

I've been watching those, too. Unfortunately their data lags by a week or so (the spike is from 23 June) so I don't think it has much predictive ability.

There was another spike in Kitchener about two weeks earlier, and then one in Waterloo in between. These do correlate with the recent case numbers, but I don't think there is a tsunami of new cases coming in -- at least not based on this data.

[tomh009]

Since there is no provincial data published today, I'll post a couple of happy charts instead. 

   

   

[plam]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I will continue to say that there's a lot of randomness in this whole thing. Taking the right steps can help of course.

Like take Quebec for instance. They did really well in the third wave and terribly in the first wave. Why is that? Did they learn more from their experience?

[tomh009]

At the risk of beating a dead horse, I will continue to say that there's a lot of randomness in this whole thing. Taking the right steps can help of course.

Like take Quebec for instance. They did really well in the third wave and terribly in the first wave. Why is that? Did they learn more from their experience?

And the smaller the region, the more random it is (tracking individuals would be the ultimate in randomness). Ontario provincial data is pretty good, and the trends reasonably reliable. Waterloo Region is far harder to predict due to the small sample size.

[tomh009]

From the Record:
Region grinds its way closer to vaccine parity after terrible May
https://www.therecord.com/news/waterloo-...e-may.html

(If you don't find value in the Record articles but still want to read, you can either use Outline or the Record app to read the above)

Anyway, the article is about the vaccine gap, and the chart below shows how badly we fell behind in May when the supplies were constrained. Somehow the region did OK in April and in June, but it'll take some time to close the gap. First-shot numbers are now about on par with the province but we're about five percentage points behind the provincial levels on the second doses.

   

I do want to highlight this quote from a UW pharmacy professor (not regional staff) on the situation we had in May, to highlight what she saw as the root cause of the vaccination gap:

“It was really hard when our numbers dropped and we couldn’t vaccinate people because it also set us up to be the next hot spot,” said Kelly Grindrod, a pharmacist and University of Waterloo professor who has prepared thousands of vaccine doses to put into arms.

Grindrod recalls vaccine planners begging the province for more doses.

“Our capacity was so much bigger than our vaccines. That was hard,” she said.

[tomh009]

So ... Delta. It has definitely impacted our region, and most experts say it now accounts for a majority of our regional cases. And yet our regional case rates are slowly dropping as the vaccination numbers climb.

On the other hand, UK looks far worse. Their first-dose level is almost the same as for Canada, but the fully-vaccinated population is at 49% compared to Canada's 31% (although we are catching up). And yet, the new cases are strongly rising. Take a look at this chart:

   

Canada and US both have Delta though not as prevalent as the UK; Ireland also has a high percentage of Delta, but with lower vaccination levels to date than the UK (at 62% and 42% it's somewhat closer to Canadian numbers).

So, how are things getting out of control in the UK? What is the difference to our restrictions?

• Outdoor gatherings of up to 30 people
  
• Team sports are allowed
  
• Indoor gatherings of six unrelated people or two families
  
• Indoor (sit-down) service at bars, pubs and restaurants
  
• Schools, universities and colleges have in-person instruction
  
• Fitness facilities are open (though should stay in groups of no more than six)
  
• Theatres, movies and sports venues are open
  
• Religious services are open (though should stay in groups of no more than six)
  

However, masks still required in stores and on transit, and distancing is recommended.

It appears to me that their restrictions are now too loose to control Delta. But what is the right level? How much can we relax our restrictions without risking the UK scenario?