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Novel Coronavirus COVID-19 (nCoV-2019)

lenaitch said:
The contract tracing app only works on new phones.
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My phones are all ten years old and one is a Sony Ericsson with proprietary OS so I guess I'm out. I mean, wasn't going to download it anyway, but now I have a valid excuse not to bother trying. :D
 
SunriseChampion said:
It's fine as long as goods are allowed through. People can wait. Our tourism industry is perfectly capable of surviving on Canadians alone, for example.
We're already allowing labour through our "closed" border as well, so I don't see a problem with this. And I'm a liberal...you know, open borders and freedom of movement and all that.
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At least we can buy B.C. wine in Ontario, and vice-versa. To a point. From link.

...Ontario's system of liquor regulations "byzantine."
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Now, if only we can get Nunavut wine or vodka? 😄
 
W. K. Lis said:
At least we can buy B.C. wine in Ontario, and vice-versa. To a point. From link.



Now, if only we can get Nunavut wine or vodka? 😄
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Ontario still does not allow direct purchases from BC wineries.

It promised to, but has not followed through, last I heard.
 
I don't do bars so can live without but do appreciate the impact. If domestic things can open back up with some minor adjustments like masks, some extra cleaning, etc. then I think we can get back to close-to-normal. It takes some personal responsibility, which admittedly seems sorely lacking these days. If you have a vulnerable or potentially vulnerable family member, then think twice about going clubbing.

I do understand that many tourism areas depend on US customers. Much of N/W Ontario tourism is heavily dependent on US customers due primarily to the proximity of population (and they love to hunt and fish). We can try to re-focus on vacationing at home but I think that has limits for some areas. If you watch Atlantic Canada media, they are really pushing the 'stay home' year.

International travel remains a problem. Once they pass a port of entry, they are very difficult to track for compliance of any conditions that we would impose.
 
I'm not so sure I would sound the death knell on pro sports just yet. For baseball, there is an absolutely massive feeder network in the US all the way down to Little League. In Canada, possibly outside of major urban centres where costs are getting prohibitive, there is still hockey house and inter-league play in virtually every small town in the nation that will naturally want to feed somewhere. Pro sports may change, but I don't see it dying.
 
lenaitch said:
I'm not so sure I would sound the death knell on pro sports just yet. For baseball, there is an absolutely massive feeder network in the US all the way down to Little League. In Canada, possibly outside of major urban centres where costs are getting prohibitive, there is still hockey house and inter-league play in virtually every small town in the nation that will naturally want to feed somewhere. Pro sports may change, but I don't see it dying.
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A good commissioner will help.
 
I don't see how our society can handle a lockdown for a further 2-3 years. I understand sports events, concerts, and street festivals being put on hold for the time being, but life will otherwise need to go on.

Putting life on "pause" for 2-3 years doesn't and won't work for most people. Society will instead adjust to the new normal of a "cold, flu, and COVID-19 season", and ideally adapt best prevention practices at the work-place and other establishments.
 
Life is going on. We can go to restaurants, coffee shops and bars. Weddings and funerals are happening. Kids are going back to school and to daycare. Stores are open. You can go to a movie. You can go to the dentist. International travel is iffy, but we can explore most of Canada. Yes it’s different, and we wear a mask and we don’t hug when we say hello, but that’s not lockdown.
 
The 2-3 year timeframe I think is exaggerated. Medical intervention in the way of treatment and vaccination will come on stream in 2021 which is more like a 1-2 year timeframe. We may never get rid of covid-19 but that’s not the end-goal. The end goal is reaching an acceptable level of impact.

Longer-term, cultural changes like the acceptance of mask wearing in higher-risk settings would not be a bad thing.

I’m curious to see research looking at if covid-19 is a one-off or part of a greater trend like climate-change where human activity is accelerating the instance of introduction of potential pandemic causing pathogens. Are we both setting more fires and becoming more dried up and susceptible as a population?
 
TrickyRicky said:
The 2-3 year timeframe I think is exaggerated. Medical intervention in the way of treatment and vaccination will come on stream in 2021 which is more like a 1-2 year timeframe. We may never get rid of covid-19 but that’s not the end-goal. The end goal is reaching an acceptable level of impact.

Longer-term, cultural changes like the acceptance of mask wearing in higher-risk settings would not be a bad thing.

I’m curious to see research looking at if covid-19 is a one-off or part of a greater trend like climate-change where human activity is accelerating the instance of introduction of potential pandemic causing pathogens. Are we both setting more fires and becoming more dried up and susceptible as a population?
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The number of people getting a less severe case of COVID-19 and not knowing it may help.

Ontario’s true COVID-19 caseload is four times higher than official tally, antibody study suggests. Why that’s ‘fantastic’ news

From link.

A very small fraction of Ontarians — roughly one per cent — have been infected by the novel coronavirus, according to new antibody blood-testing data from the province’s public health agency.

The findings suggest that the true number of people sickened by COVID-19 in Ontario is closer to 160,000, more than four times the official tally. While that might sound high, it actually means the province is doing a “fantastic” job at catching infections, one epidemiologist says — and a much better job than other jurisdictions. Recent U.S. research has estimated the true caseload there at six to 24 times higher.

The presence of antibodies to the virus was higher in certain age groups and some parts of the province, including Toronto, according to the Public Health Ontario study. But the overall low numbers attest to Ontario’s success in stifling the initial wave of the pandemic, the scientists say.

“When you think about what the numbers mean, it really suggests that our social distancing and our public health measures have been really effective at preventing widespread infection in the population,” said Shelly Bolotin, a Public Health Ontario scientist and University of Toronto professor who led the study.

She noted, however, that this study could not compare antibody prevalence across different income or demographic groups; the blood specimens were stripped of identifying details before analysis. Data from multiple sources has shown the pandemic is exacting a disproportionately high toll on low-income and racialized Ontarians.

And the downside of low antibody prevalence is that nearly the entire population of Ontario carries no immunity to COVID-19. Even for those who do test positive for antibodies, researchers still don’t know how long or strong their protection will be.

“It also reminds us that we’re still vulnerable,” Bolotin said. “We’ve done well so far, but we need to really be vigilant about continuing to maintain these public health precautions.”

The estimates were obtained by gathering 8,902 blood samples sent to Public Health Ontario’s Toronto lab between March and June to be tested for other diseases. The specimens were then re-analyzed to detect antibodies to SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19.

The presence of antibodies, a product of the body’s immune system, suggests that a person has been infected to the virus. The relationship between severity of illness and the concentration of antibodies in a patient’s blood is still an evolving area of research, but Bolotin said the threshold the study used was likely to capture people who were infected but had no symptoms, one of COVID-19’s more dastardly features.

Because health-care services were so severely curtailed at the height of the pandemic, far fewer specimens were collected in the earlier months — 827 in the March-April and 1,061 in May. In June, however, the researchers were able to access 7,014. As a result, comparisons between the earlier and later time periods should be made with caution.

Nevertheless, the number of specimens with detectable antibodies was consistently low: just 97 total tested positive.

The researchers’ estimate for SARS-CoV-2 antibody prevalence across Ontario in June, the most reliable period because of the large number of specimens, was 1.1 per cent. It was 0.5 per cent in March-April and 1.5 per cent in May. (The estimates were adjusted to compensate for the test’s tendency to miss about one in 10 positives and to be representative of Ontario’s population.)

In the June samples, the researchers found that those over age 80 had the highest prevalence of antibodies, at 2.6 per cent, while the five to nine year olds had none. Bolotin noted that the researchers are less confident about their findings for children: because healthy children rarely get blood drawn, they had fewer samples to work with, and the samples they did have are probably not representative of the pediatric population.

Bolotin said Public Health Ontario will be publishing new antibody survey reports at regular intervals, and hoped to track this data in children as schools reopen. Researchers believe that kids may also be under-identified using the typical viral-genetic testing, known as PCR, because they are more likely to have a mild or asymptomatic case of COVID-19.

“Our estimates are very, very low for children in this report. How is that going change in the fall? . . . we may be able to capture it, if we get enough of a signal with these samples,” Bolotin said.

The percentages of antibody prevalence differed by geography, too. Toronto and the “Central East” portion of Ontario, which includes Peel Region, both had estimates of 1.5 per cent. In Toronto, that means the true caseload is likely closer to 44,000 than the official count of 15,400.

Dr. David Fisman, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto’s Dalla Lana School of Public Health, said that catching one in three COVID-19 cases is “fantastic.” His own analyses of published antibody blood surveys have suggested that globally, only about seven per cent of the true number of infections are being identified.

“Given some of the struggles we’ve had with testing, and the restrictions on testing, I think it’s quite remarkable that we identified one-third of cases,” Fisman said.

In New York City, one of the hardest-hit cities in the pandemic, data from antibody blood surveys has estimated that approximately 23 per cent of residents have been infected by the novel coronavirus, 10 to 12 times higher than reported case counts. A recent study estimated that in Missouri, true case counts are 24 times higher...
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TL;DR -- the vaccine will not be 100% effective, so the most likely scenario is that COVID-19 turns into a seasonal illness, while probably evolving to become milder than it is today.

www.theatlantic.com

The Coronavirus Is Never Going Away

No matter what happens now, the virus will continue to circulate around the world.
www.theatlantic.com www.theatlantic.com
 
As long as the government keeps printing money, we should be fine. So many industries are going to need to government bail outs.
 
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