COVID-19 (Novel Coronavirus) Update

[MonctonRad]

Sounds like initial distribution of the vaccines will be done on a per capita basis, and the initial run due in January (if approved) will consist of enough doses for 3M Canadians, which means about 60,000 for NB (only about 7-8% of the population).

According to CBC, the province of NB has pretty much decided who will get the first doses:

1) - long term care home residents (4,800 beds in the province).
2) - health care workers and front line personnel:

• physicians - 1,875
• nurses - 6,400
• nursing home workers - 4,800
• paramedics - 950

That's 18,825 people there. They didn't explicitly say anything about other health care workers in the hospital environment, or personal care workers, but it would not be fair to leave them out of the equation, so I'm going out on a limb that if these people are included, that will bring the number of people at the front of the line up to 30,000.

3) - The government then said next in line would be senior citizens, so that would fill out the remaining 30,000 people elligible in the first wave of immunizations. The trouble is that there are 200,000 senior citizens in NB, so probably nobody under the age of 78-80 will be eligible to be immunized in the first wave.

The first wave of immunizations will take place from January-March. They don't expect herd immunity (more than 75% of the population immunized) before the fall.

For those of you who might grumble over the fact that health care workers are at the front of the line, just keep in mind that we are essential workers, and we do our best to try and keep everyone else alive. It's important to keep us on the job until this whole thing is over. For example, right now, there are more than 100 doctors, nurses and ER workers at the Saint John Regional Hospital here in NB home self isolating because of an exposure event earlier this week. The problem is serious enough that Horizon Health has put out a distress call for students and recently retired workers to come in to fill shifts and bail them out. A similar event happened at the Moncton Hospital several weeks ago, resulting in self isolation for about 40% of our ER nursing staff for two weeks. Immunization of health care workers is profoundly important to keep the system operating............

[manny_santos]

Originally Posted by memememe76

I really don't know any Canadians who that way, that something like anti-maskers don't ever exist in our country, only in the US. It's like people who say Canadians think racism only exists in the US, not in Canada. Who are these Canadians?

My comment wasn’t directed at anyone here, but rather at some people on Reddit. Every time there’s a post on Reddit about an anti-mask protest or incident there’s always Canadians that make comments like “I thought this only happened in the US” or “Those American anti-maskers must be sneaking across the border” or an actual comment today on r/Canada, “Oh look Canadians acting like Americans”.

[cabotp]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

One would think that if a region had a 14% positivity rate, the number of confirmed cases would increase substantially, with testing a greater number of the community.

That is why I said it was indirectly related.

You can hit 10% confirmed infected at 14% positivity. You can also hit it at 1% positivity.

[casper]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Sounds like initial distribution of the vaccines will be done on a per capita basis, and the initial run due in January (if approved) will consist of enough doses for 3M Canadians, which means about 60,000 for NB (only about 7-8% of the population).

According to CBC, the province of NB has pretty much decided who will get the first doses:

1) - long term care home residents (4,800 beds in the province).
2) - health care workers and front line personnel:

• physicians - 1,875
• nurses - 6,400
• nursing home workers - 4,800
• paramedics - 950

That's 18,825 people there. They didn't explicitly say anything about other health care workers in the hospital environment, or personal care workers, but it would not be fair to leave them out of the equation, so I'm going out on a limb that if these people are included, that will bring the number of people at the front of the line up to 30,000.

3) - The government then said next in line would be senior citizens, so that would fill out the remaining 30,000 people elligible in the first wave of immunizations. The trouble is that there are 200,000 senior citizens in NB, so probably nobody under the age of 78-80 will be eligible to be immunized in the first wave.

The first wave of immunizations will take place from January-March. They don't expect herd immunity (more than 75% of the population immunized) before the fall.

For those of you who might grumble over the fact that health care workers are at the front of the line, just keep in mind that we are essential workers, and we do our best to try and keep everyone else alive. It's important to keep us on the job until this whole thing is over. For example, right now, there are more than 100 doctors, nurses and ER workers at the Saint John Regional Hospital here in NB home self isolating because of an exposure event earlier this week. The problem is serious enough that Horizon Health has put out a distress call for students and recently retired workers to come in to fill shifts and bail them out. A similar event happened at the Moncton Hospital several weeks ago, resulting in self isolation for about 40% of our ER nursing staff for two weeks. Immunization of health care workers is profoundly important to keep the system operating............

I don't think anyone should grumble about health care (and especially hospital works) being first in line for the vaccine. They are the only people in society that are asked to have direct contact with infected individuals on a daily basis.

I would put seniors with home care somewhere up in that list. They have regular contact sometimes multiple times a day with home care workers.

[SignalHillHiker]

Yeah, I hope we do the same. I don’t mind being at the end of the line as long as healthcare workers, seniors, and essential/high-risk workers get it first. I think I’m even comfortable with that including athletes. I mean, it’s better than whoever can pay the most getting it first.

[cornholio]

Originally Posted by manny_santos

My comment wasn’t directed at anyone here, but rather at some people on Reddit. Every time there’s a post on Reddit about an anti-mask protest or incident there’s always Canadians that make comments like “I thought this only happened in the US” or “Those American anti-maskers must be sneaking across the border” or an actual comment today on r/Canada, “Oh look Canadians acting like Americans”.

I am sorry but reddit is heavily manipulated, filtered and censored.

Something like r Canada is completely filtered and manipulated and has nothing in common with reality. You don't see what is hidden from you, you don't see how the user base has been filtered, you don't see the bots and campaigns, you don't see the tools and methods applied to shape comments and and discussions.

Reddit is a tool and outside of a few specialized subs to do with some hobbies is completly useless. Its even worse then Facebook and filtered Google products.

[giallo]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Facebook still exists?

I know you're trying to make a joke, but it's akin to saying, "Coca Cola still exists?"

2.7b monthly users or.....like, 35% of the world's population use it every month. Yeah, it still exists, and it's a big reason why we have a rise in anti-scientific rhetoric in 2020.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by urbandreamer

Facebook still exists?

Zuckerberg is worth $101B US.

[WarrenC12]

Originally Posted by casper

I would put seniors with home care somewhere up in that list. They have regular contact sometimes multiple times a day with home care workers.

Definitely they should work their way down the age from oldest.

My sense is that seniors with home care and those in long term care are being infected by the workers, not anything the seniors themselves are doing.

Hitting the healthcare workers across the board will put at end to nursing home outbreaks, which are the most deadly.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by MonctonRad

Sounds like initial distribution of the vaccines will be done on a per capita basis, and the initial run due in January (if approved) will consist of enough doses for 3M Canadians, which means about 60,000 for NB (only about 7-8% of the population).

According to CBC, the province of NB has pretty much decided who will get the first doses:
...

For those of you who might grumble over the fact that health care workers are at the front of the line, just keep in mind that we are essential workers, and we do our best to try and keep everyone else alive. It's important to keep us on the job until this whole thing is over. For example, right now, there are more than 100 doctors, nurses and ER workers at the Saint John Regional Hospital here in NB home self isolating because of an exposure event earlier this week. The problem is serious enough that Horizon Health has put out a distress call for students and recently retired workers to come in to fill shifts and bail them out. A similar event happened at the Moncton Hospital several weeks ago, resulting in self isolation for about 40% of our ER nursing staff for two weeks. Immunization of health care workers is profoundly important to keep the system operating............

I have trouble imagining that there would be significant concerns about prioritizing the health care sector. All the measures we've been taking to try to control the pandemic have had the goal of keeping the health system afloat.

[BlackDog204]

I wonder what percentage of Canadians will refuse to take the vaccine, when available? My guess would be 30%

[SignalHillHiker]

Kinda looking forward to the next big budget zombie movie that shows people reacting much like they did to COVID lol

[jamincan]

An interesting article about how Covid-19 has hit the Mennonite community in Waterloo-Wellington quite hard:
COVID surges in old order Mennonite communities

It seems a wedding near Mount Forest spread the virus last month. The virus then infected two parochial schoolteachers who attended a meeting of teachers. It got into schools. More families got sick.

Now there are 96 COVID-19 cases across north Wellesley and north Woolwich caused by travel, close contact, or unknown transmission. A few people have been hospitalized.

The rural infection rate has swelled to more than twice the regional rate, turning the countryside into a pandemic hot spot.

...

Per 100,000 people, infections for non-outbreak cases reached a rate of 845 across north Wellesley and north Woolwich by Wednesday. This compares to a regional rate of 390 and a provincial rate of 546.

There are various factors that likely lead to them getting hit quite hard, but it seems at least in part there was a prevalent view that this was an urban problem and that their separation from larger society would provide them protection.

[Innsertnamehere]

My wonder is if the second round of vaccines in Q2 will be regionally focussed - I.e. will the GTA get larger volumes of vaccines than southern Ontario?

[JHikka]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

My wonder is if the second round of vaccines in Q2 will be regionally focussed - I.e. will the GTA get larger volumes of vaccines than southern Ontario?

It'll probably go healthcare workers -> those most at risk (LTC homes) -> other at-risk groups -> general public. Regionally i've no idea.

[kwoldtimer]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

I wonder what percentage of Canadians will refuse to take the vaccine, when available? My guess would be 30%

I would have said 20% to 30%. More if there are reports of significant negative side effects.

[manny_santos]

I was invited out for a beer by a friend of mine last night. I declined due to our current rules in BC, and it turned out my friend was completely unaware of these rules that Dr. Henry has had in place for the last three weeks. He doesn’t use social media and I don’t think he follows any local news. (Fortunately he doesn’t go out much and hadn’t been out in recent weeks due to long work hours working from home)

He can’t be the only one, and I don’t think a lot of millennials are being reached by Dr. Henry’s press conferences - so many of my friends my own age don’t pay attention to local news in whatever community they live in, some are more interested in BBC or CNN but miss out on Canadian news. And you can’t force anyone to consume news from a particular source.

My friend did bring up a good point though, if people are allowed to pack into malls (with masks) on Black Friday, what is wrong with two people having a physically distanced beer? I feel as though there’s a lot of mental gymnastics and politics going into defending this detail of the restrictions, particularly when bars and restaurants are taking strong precautions. After the church and theatre debacles in BC where nobody has been able to produce supporting data other than vague “we’ve seen cases there” statements, I’m feeling more and more like some restrictions (not just in BC) are being done for political optics to show “we’re doing something” about the rising case numbers. In the case of Ontario, I feel it’s being done reactively to make up for incompetence in fixing the contact tracing system and long term care homes, both of which could have been addressed over the summer. I don’t even want to get started on the disaster in Manitoba.

There’s a lot of inconsistency and lack of transparency in the rules and I believe this runs the risk of people throwing up their hands and ceasing taking some of the precautions - particularly if the current restrictions are extended past December 7.

My feeling on all this is that we could have avoided some of this had the province mandated masks back in July like other provinces and even some US states. I do feel a sense of anger that I’m being asked to pay for the government’s lack of action in the summer. (I can only imagine how some Americans are feeling in states that are only now implementing certain restrictions.)

[WarrenC12]

With respect to the current rules, you need to remember that the virus transmits most strongly under the following circumstance:

Prolonged indoor contact with other people.

That's why you're not allowed to "hang out" with people outside of your current household, and why walking by a stranger at a mall or in a store (while masked) is not a huge deal.

Sitting across the table from your friend for a few beers for an hour, no masks, can spread COVID. I wouldn't call it "risky" in the grand scheme of things, but the risk level is significantly higher than the mall example, and why we need this level of restriction when the virus is spreading in the community at current rates.

[travis3000]

Many people are not listening to the rules which is why the virus will continue to spread. Yes we are all wearing masks in Wal-Mart and Shoppers Drug Mart which is fantastic. But masks in public indoor places can only do so much if those same people are then going home, taking off their masks and having get togethers multiple times a week.

I see it all the time on my Instagram stories, many of my contacts (mostly in their late teens to early 30s) are having little parties, hang outs, drinking, inviting people over from other households, etc. Even some older contacts of mine in their 40s and 50s are taking the risks and doing what they want....get togethers, family events, etc.

If I see it happening on a daily basis, my only guess is that it's happening all over. When people sit and ask themselves "omg why aren't the cases going down when everyone is wearing masks!?". There's your answer.

[Antigonish]

Originally Posted by BlackDog204

I wonder what percentage of Canadians will refuse to take the vaccine, when available? My guess would be 30%

I'll refuse it. Not because I'm 'anti vax' (I received my flu shot last month) but because the long term effects of testing isn't known. I just refuse to be a guinea pig, that's all. Once it's all known then I'll take it.

A lot of people in my life who work in healthcare have the same attitude so I think the unwilling number is probably higher than 30%.