We know what careless containment leads to: we saw it in Northern Italy, NYC, and Wuhan early on. Bodies piling up in refrigerated trucks. Patients not receiving care because the resources aren't there. LTC residents not being cared for. Exponentials care not what you want. You can moan about how the price we paid is not worth it based on the lives lost so far. Had we done nothing we'd have mass graves.
Indeed.
Let's do some basic math and extrapolate, shall we? Because some seem to want to diminish our death rate as "oh, this happens anyway."-BS and haven't bothered to even research beyond the most superficial of anti-lockdown talking points.
Our numbers are currently what's happened when the disease has been confirmed to have hit 224,000 people in the province (0.15% of the population of 14,570,000), killing 5,021.
10,969 have been hospitalized, 2,121 ended up in the ICU. These numbers as of Jan 10.
What we know:
10,969 / 224,000 = 4.89% of known infections end up hospitalized.
2,121 / 224,000 = 0.95% of known infections end up in the ICU.
5,021 / 224,000 = 2.24% mortality rate.
The above has been (thankfully) without the total overwhelming of the health care system
What we can extrapolate based on all of the above:
Assuming herd immunity is 60%—conservative numbers are more in the 70-80% range. Also assuming it takes a full year to get to that stage.
60% of 14,570,000 = 8,742,000 total cases of covid infection in Ontario.
8,742,000 x 4.89% = 427,484 Ontarians would end up in the hospital.
8,742,000 x 0.95% = 83,049 Ontarians would end up in the ICU.
8,742,000 x 2.24% = 195,821 Ontarians would die. (Strong DISCLAIMER: this percentage will go up quite a bit in the retrospect, as our current surge isn't yet reflecting the deaths).
195,821 deaths in a year while it runs its course.
On an average year, only ~110,000 Ontarians die from myriad other causes (cancer, heart disease, old age, etc.).
The three leading causes:
~30,000 deaths are from cancer
~36,000 from heart disease
~5,300 from stroke
There will of course be some overlap between covid deaths and other causes, so lets assume only half of the normal deaths in Canada during that time aren't Covid-adjacent and add an additional 55,000 deaths to the Covid-related deaths.
250,821 deaths in Ontario. Almost 2.5x the normal number.
Okay, so it's a lot of deaths. But what about those hospitalizations?
It's hard to get an exact number, but we seem to have (including all additions this past year) ~26,000 total hospital beds in Ontario. We have 2,136 ICU beds as of Dec 15th.
427,484 in 26,000 beds over the course of the year. With the average Covid-related hospital stay being about 2-3 weeks, it pretty much means every hospital bed in the province full of nothing but Covid patients. No surgeries, no heart attacks, no car accidents, nothing but Covid. Many more would die without bed availability.
83,049 in 2,136 ICU beds. This also means absolute saturation of covid patients for a full year. Again, many more would die without bed availability.
But here's the kicker:
Ontario has ~15,000 physicians.
Ontario has ~104,000 nurses.
15,000 x 2.24% = 336 fewer doctors to deal with Covid treatment. Given their average age is ~52, it means a good number of them are in the high-risk category, not including the additional risk posed by just treating Covid patients.
104,000 x 2.24% = 2,330 fewer nurses. Again, much higher risk.
Oh and also:
8,742,000 Ontarians will be off work for a length of time. 13 in every 1000 Ontarians will die.
At a bare minimum, 10% of working-age Covid patients are ending up with "long covid"/sustained disability. That means at least 874,200 new Ontarians on disability; permanent or otherwise.
What happens to the mental health and the economy when almost 9 million Ontarians are off work each for a couple of weeks? What happens to mental health and the economy when almost a million Ontarians are newly unable to work from disability? What happens to the mental health and the economy when when almost 200,000 Ontarians die?
People arguing against lockdown for "mental health" and "the economy" are strangely not bothering to look into those things.
Worst of all:
The above assumes that:
a) There's sustained immunity from contraction (versus vaccination).
b) There is no complete failure of the medical system.
c) There is no complete failure of the economic system.
d) That exponentially higher rates of infection doesn't mutate the virus into something more deadly, more infectious or less treatable.
e) That all of the above happens in a sustained flow, rather than several larger surges.
To summarize, anti-lockdown and anti-mask advocates need to STFU. 
www.reuters.com
