Tara Moriarty Profile picture
Sep 24, 2020 10 tweets 4 min read Read on X
OK, #Canadian scientists, #science students, science influencers, scientific societies, student & postdoc unions, and everyone else who may know someone w/ science postgraduate training

We (@COVID_19_Canada ) and the province of #Ontario really need your help...every one of you.
Ontario needs to hire and train hundreds of people to work in #COVID-19 testing labs. This needs to be done w/in 3 weeks.

We are fielding requests from multiple testing labs who need scientists w/ the following qualifications:

1. At least a Masters or scheduled to graduate soon
2. Available IMMEDIATELY (in the next 1-3 weeks) for full-time paid work for temporary short-term contracts (at least 6 months, renewable, very likely to be renewed)

3. Live w/in commute distance of an #Ontario testing lab (throughout the province) or willing to quickly relocate
4. Ideal qualifications but NOT essential for all roles:

a) BSL2 or higher training
b) experience w/ molecular lab work, PCR, RNA extraction

Candidates need enthusiasm, attention to detail, ability to switch tasks quickly, great team and record-keeping skills.
You also must be legally entitled to work in Canada.

If you're a postdoc, PhD grad, lab manager, research associate or anyone else with academic credentials beyond what is needed for lab testing, every minute you spend in this job will be important for someone's life.
If you need work right now and the job market in your area is tough due to COVID, this is a job that you can hold for 6-12 months or maybe more while the whole world gets through this. You will be part of teams working 24/7 (literally) on something incredibly important.
If all of these requirements fit your current situation, you live in #Ontario & you're interested in a job like this, here's what you have to do:

1. Sign up on the volunteer list @COVID_19_Canada (we're placing people for jobs now too) covid19resources.ca/Volunteer.html
2. Tell every single person you know who might be interested to sign up & give them the link.

We are starting to contact ppl in our database about the first round of asks from testing labs TOMORROW.

There will likely be hundreds of placement requests from labs in the next week.
We will prepare a document that you can send to all your contacts via email, social media, grad mailing lists, scientific societies, student & postdoc unions, research institutes, departments etc.

We'll post this tomorrow & start sending to universities for distribution.
For now, send ppl a link to this thread. Pls message @COVID_19_Canada if you're part of an org (informal or formal) that would like to distribute this info.

PPL need to be sent to lab HR departments, screened, hired, trained & in the lab in less than 3 wks. We have to move FAST.

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More from @MoriartyLab

Sep 1
A few things that might help people understand differences in Canadian COVID Forecast scores across provinces....

I'll focus on comparing Alberta and British Columbia, since I get asked a lot why Alberta's scores aren't as high as BC scores in the summer, even though the provinces are adjacent.

In BC, most people live in parts of the province with winters that are considerably warmer than most provinces in Canada, including Alberta.

Even southern Alberta has MUCH colder winters than the BC lower mainland, and cooler spring and fall too. I know. I've lived in both the BC lower mainland and Calgary, and couldn't get over how summer in Calgary didn't seem to really start until July.

This graph shows infections/100K people per day in BC (pink), AB (teal) and Canada (blue) since Dec 4/21.

All provinces have essentially had the same number of infections since then--the timing of when they happened just differs.

Something you'll notice about BC is that fall/winter waves often aren't as big as in Alberta or the rest of Canada.

But....infection waves are bigger in BC from spring-summer.

This is likely because infections don't start taking off till mid-summer in other provinces because there's immunity from the fall-winter infections that hasn't worn off enough until then so that people are susceptible to a new infection.

It's sort of like the brakes have been applied to new infections after the big fall/winter wave in most province, and the pressure on those brakes starts getting lighter toward mid-summer, when infections pick up again.

It's a bit different in BC, since there historically haven't been quite as many infections in the fall/winter waves, which means the population is susceptible to new infections earlier than in colder provinces.

So, in spring and especially summer BC infections tend to take off sooner than in the rest of Canada. By contrast, in winter infections are often lower in BC.

I think we're basically seeing seasonal forcing of infections in most provinces that doesn't affect BC as much because most of the population lives in a more temperature climate.

In most of Canada, there has always been a strong seasonal forcing effect on influenza seasons--stronger than in many more temperature countries, and I suspect that's what we're seeing in most Canadian infection data except those from BC.Image
Scores can also differ between provinces because of intrinsic differences in population susceptibility to serious outcomes.

Alberta is the youngest province in Canada, and now that uptake of fresh vaccine doses is abysmal across Canada (AB had higher uptake than ON this past season, for example), differences in things like infection fatality and hospitalization rates between provinces are strongly driven by things we can't control, like the average age of the population and rates of underlying health issues.

So, even if AB and BC had exactly the same number of infections in the same week, the Forecast score for Alberta would be slightly lower than the score for BC, because Alberta is younger than BC.

It's also why scores for some Atlantic provinces, particularly Newfoundland and Labrador can be a fair bit higher than the Canadian average.

Newfoundland and Labrador is particularly strongly affected by this because the population is considerably older, plus higher rates of underlying health issues, plus an acute healthcare system that doesn't function quite as well as in big provinces at treating things like heart attacks (probably translating also to treatment of COVID).

And smaller provinces have suffered from poaching of healthcare staff to larger provinces that can pay more.

So, it's not always just about number of infections either. Populations differ in their susceptibility to COVID, and outcomes per infection in Canada range from the highest number of serious outcomes per infection in NL and the lowest in Alberta.

Hope this helps.
Actually, one more thing about BC.

BC is somewhat younger than QC. Its life expectancy is similar--somewhat less than QC now.

QC, followed by BC has the highest life expectancy in Canada, which means that on average the populations in these provinces are generally healthier than populations in other provinces.

Vaccination rates are also generally similar in both provinces, dating back to the start of vaccine availability.

So, infection fatality and hospitalization rates should be pretty similar in both provinces.

However, BC reports fewer than half the hospitalizations per infection than QC, and about a third of the deaths per infection as QC.

Part of this certainly reflects reporting differences between the provinces.

Reporting of serious COVID outcomes in BC has always been considerably lower than in QC, dating back to 2020.

However, the population infection fatality rate (pIFR) for BC calculated from excess mortality is 19% higher than the pIFR for QC, even though QC is slightly older (but also has a slightly healthier population).

By comparison, the pIFR for Ontario is 4% lower than for QC, pretty similar to what you'd expect based on the difference in ages of QC and ON populations.

So why is the BC pIFR higher?

It's not just toxic drugs. We correct for this, and BC actually has more complete, faster toxic drug death reporting than QC.

Plus, the age distribution of excess mortality in QC and BC is pretty similar, with respectively 90% and 80% of excess deaths happening in people 65 and older, as you'd expect for COVID.

It does look like there may be some additional drug deaths in the 45-64 year old age group in BC that aren't yet accounted for, but not enough to explain big differences in the pIFRs in the two provinces.

It is also possible that BC is actually hospitalizing fewer than half the number of people with COVID than are hospitalized in QC, which could certainly contribute to lower survival rates.

That is, maybe BC hospitalizations are much lower than QC hospitalizations not because of under-reporting, but because of "under-treatment" (not sure if that's the right word). Or maybe it's a mix of both under-reporting and under-hospitalization in BC and QC.
Read 4 tweets
Sep 1
Canadian COVID Forecast Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024

CANADA

SEVERE (increasing)

Estimated infections this week: 1,183,400-1,350,800

About 1 in every 32 people infected

Compared to lowest point of pandemic in Canada:

-Infections ~25X higher
-Long COVID ~26X higher
-Hospitalizations ~20X higher
-Deaths ~18X higherThis image describes the Canadian COVID Forecast for Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024 by COVID-19 Resources Canada. Canada’s COVID Forecast outlook is SEVERE (increasing) with a COVID INDEX SCORE of 21.0 About 1 of every 32 people is infected. Estimated infections this week: 1,183,400-1,350,800 How much higher are key indicators compared to the lowest point in the COVID pandemic in Canada? Waste water, infections: SEVERE; 24.6X higher Long COVID estimate: SEVERE; 26.2X higher Hospitalizations, ICU: SEVERE; 20.4X higher Deaths: SEVERE; 18.1X higher HOW TO HELP: EVERYONE: UPDATE vaccines every 6 months WE...
Prévisions régionales sur la COVID-19 se trouvent ici :

Canadian COVID Forecast Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024

NEWFOUNDLAND AND LABRADOR

SEVERE (no change)

Estimated infections this week: 12,600-14,400

About 1 in every 40 people infected

Compared to lowest point of pandemic in Canada:

-Infections ~19X higher
-Long COVID ~21X higher
-Hospitalizations ~18X higher
-Deaths ~24X higherThis image describes the Canadian COVID Forecast for Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024 by COVID-19 Resources Canada. Newfoundland & Labrador’s COVID Forecast outlook is SEVERE (no change) with a COVID INDEX SCORE of 20.4 About 1 of every 40 people is infected. Estimated infections this week: 12,600-14,400 How much higher are key indicators compared to the lowest point in the COVID pandemic in Canada? Waste water, infections: SEVERE; 19.0X higher Long COVID estimate: SEVERE; 20.8X higher Hospitalizations, ICU: SEVERE; 18.1X higher Deaths: SEVERE; 23.9X higher HOW TO HELP: EVERYONE: UPDATE vaccines every 6...
Read 17 tweets
Sep 1
Canadian COVID Forecast: Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024

SEVERE: CAN, AB, BC, MB, NL, North, NS, ON, SK
VERY HIGH: NB, PEI, QC
HIGH: none
MODERATE: none

About 1 in 32 people in Canada are CURRENTLY infected. This image shows a series of gauges with the Aug 31-Sep 13, 2024 COVID Forecast scores for Canada, the provinces, and territories. Read from left to right:  Canada: 21.0 - SEVERE Alberta: 17.6 - SEVERE British Columbia: 28.0 - SEVERE Manitoba: 21.3 - SEVERE New Brunswick: 13.3 - VERY HIGH Newfoundland and Labrador: 20.4 - SEVERE North: 20.8 - SEVERE Nova Scotia: 23.4 - SEVERE Ontario: 24.1 - SEVERE Prince Edward Island: 11.9 - VERY HIGH Quebec: 12.8 - VERY HIGH Saskatchewan: 23.4 - SEVERE  All COVID Forecast input data and sources are available here: (https://covid19resources.ca/covid-hazar...
Notre aperçu national en français :

WHAT'S NEW THIS WEEK?

The Forecast score for Canada is increasing 6%/week (-2% to +11%/week for all regions). Infection levels are near the highest infection peaks for Omicron to date.

About 1 in 32 people are currently infected (~181,000 infections/day). This is close to the Aug 26 estimate for the United States (1 in 41) from @michael_hoerger and team:
Read 23 tweets
Aug 31
A thread about COVID-19 and COVID-19 reporting in Canada, as well as about validation of our latest COVID-19 Forecast model.

It's partly motivated by the latest infection estimates for Canada.

As you can see, estimated daily infections in Canada are currently at or nearing the highest Omicron peaks to date, and there's not a fresh vaccine in sight @GovCanHealth.

We URGENTLY need a decision about vaccine approval and shots in arms yesterday, not in October, which looks like it will be far too late, unless infections keep going even higher.Image
The Forecast comes out tomorrow.

I'm just posting a bit of a rant/technical discussion in advance, so that @BattlingBeaver doesn't need to deal with it when she tweets the regular Forecast thread for me tomorrow. Now she can just link to it in the main Forecast thread.
This thread is mainly an update on where we are with predicting excess mortality from waste water, our model and Forecast scores.

We're near peak predicted excess mortality for Canada since 2020 right now. We can't get new vaccines soon enough. I can't keep saying this often or loudly enough. @GovCanHealth we BADLY need the new vaccines.

About 1,000 people per week are dying from COVID-19 this week in Canada. We cannot get vaccines soon enough. Please. And provinces, we cannot delay vaccine rollout until October. This is so urgent.Image
Read 26 tweets
Aug 20
OK folks.

Here are some MPOX questions answered:

🧵
First and foremost:

The protective measures we use against COVID (N95-type masks, handwashing, surface cleaning) will work well against MPOX of any clade, regardless of transmission mode.

If you or a household member develop MPOX (Clade II only so far in Canada), seek medical care (while wearing a mask). If it's MPOX, you and contacts, including household members, will be vaccinated.

Based on what we know about Clade I, vaccination will provide excellent protection. It should for Clade II, but we don't have enough data yet to be sure.
I'm going to link out to posts from @KrutikaKuppalli , who has been providing outstanding real-time, nuanced summaries of emerging MPOX evidence.

I won't repeat some of what she's already posted, or will repeat if I'm guessing some folks might appreciate clarification.
Read 18 tweets
Aug 7
Gathering together to watch the Olympians

-FYI- When you see the Forecast thread posted, that also means that this thread is now available on the C-19 website, pages 6 - 9, for easier reading.
SCENARIO BASICS 
It’s the Summer Olympics! 
I love the Olympics.
Heart-warming stories, riveting competitions, seeing all the varieties of sports, being able to witness the best of physical prowess side by side with their vulnerabilities. Seeing people on the world stage with their strengths, joys, disappointments, grit, and humanity.
Read 44 tweets

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