What is #COVIDzero? What is elimination? What is strategy? A primer

1. #COVIDzero is a slogan. It is aspirational. It sets a high bar for a country that has failed to set a bar. @JustinTrudeau yesterday said that it doesn't make sense to have a unifying mssg. I beg to differ.
2. Elimination, in the proper sense of the term, means reducing incidence of infection or disease to zero in a geographical region for a period of time, with continued efforts.

Nobody seriously believes you can keep the cases of COVID at zero for any sustained period of time.
No country on the planet has been able to eliminate COVID, and this includes the best performing countries: New Zealand, Vietnam, China, Australia, South Korea, etc. They all have cases.

But they have an elimination strategy and mindset.
3. A strategy is a plan to achieve a goal. I am a basketball coach, and I like to believe I devise winning strategies. That doesn't mean we win every time, but I try to put my team in the best possible position to win.

An elimination strategy is a plan to eliminate.
4. Every winning country battling COVID has a #COVIDzero elimination strategy and mindset. None are eliminating it sans vaccine. But they're acting like they are, w/ economies returning, life normalizing, and few deaths. 🇨🇦/Canadians can achieve this if we set our mind to it.
Every losing country lacks a #COVIDzero strategy and mindset. No country attempting #COVIDzero is failing. None. All of Europe - Failing. S America & Central America - Failing. US - Failing. Asia-Pacific countries not following (e.g. India, Sri Lanka, Philippines) - Failing
5. What does it take? Well, it starts at the top. We need a PM who will lead with a unifying message. If he has one better and more accurate than #COVIDzero, great! Let's use it. #COVIDlow doesn't inspire, nor does #COVIDbetter. Once he uses it, the Premiers can start too.
6. Next is to figure out how to get there. Well, we already know how to do that, we just haven't insisted on it, because we haven't had a #COVIDzero mindset:

World class Test-Trace-Isolate
Meaningfully supporting everyone who will be adversely affected in the pursuit of zero
Doing everything to prevent importing cases into, and movement of cases within the country
Crystal clear, science-based public health communication
Societal cohesion
Leadership
Aggressive public health measures.

This one is the most challenging, but with a unified voice and a clear vision, we can do this. Most places, save Atlantic Canada, are facing serious restrictions on their behaviour out of necessity. This affects everyone.
We need to reduce the number of daily cases. The wiser and more aggressively we act—and the more compliant the public—the faster the numbers fall. Daily cases can halve up to every 7 days, but it is often closer to 14. That is 5-8 halving cycles for most regions of the country
If you are really aggressive, you can get close to zero by about 8-10 weeks in worst-hit areas, but 12-14 weeks is more realistic for most. If you have few cases in a region, it may be only a few weeks only. But once you get there, there is ALMOST no looking back w/ #COVIDzero
7. Why bother? It sounds awful, 3-4 months! Yes, except, we have 1-2 months of this regardless, and then we are almost certainly going to have a 3rd wave in February-April. So we do this now, to get us to February and no third wave. I don't want schools closed after March break
In fact, I don't want schools closed d/t COVID ever again. How does that happen? #COVIDzero.

Unanimous opinions says keeping cases low in community will keep schools, long-term care, hospitals, group homes, shelters, workplaces, and everyone else safe.
8. It is obviously more complicated than this. It takes more than a slogan or strategy to win a championship but #WeTheNorth . Let's stop losing with COVID and win. For our kids, parents, and neigbours. We need all hands in, working towards the same goal for this. #COVIDzero
Wanna learn more?
Three useful resources (for me) are
endcoronavirus.org tomaspueyo.medium.com/coronavirus-th…
johnsnowmemo.com

You will learn that the only thing that is substantially different is a slogan and hashtag. Live with it, or we people will continue to die without it.

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More from @ASPphysician

17 Nov
I am friends/like/respect @BogochIsaac and have listened/read his views. Unsurprisingly, we agree on ~ everything.

Main areas of disagreement:
1. Feasibility: if there is PUBLIC/POLITICAL WILL to protect small businesses, older adults, vulnerable and down-the-road freedom ✅
2. Time/severity of hardship: these are, again, public and political DECISIONS. People need to know what they are choosing. If I told everyone facing today that we could have avoided the certainty of today's hardship with a bit more hardship, would we have endured it? ✅
3. Border restrictions and restricted movement: Atlantic Canada have freedom of movement within, with a shared US-Canada border. How have they done it? Thoughtful determination. Would you rather be in a Canada Bubble right now then our current reality? ✅
Read 7 tweets
12 Nov
I have drafted multiple rage-tweets following today's 2 pressers, but realize that I am just emotionally exhausted from the inevitability of it all:
- people getting sick
- families and businesses ruined
- healthcare overwhelmed

Let's start with what won't work:
2- TO 4-WEEK CIRCUIT-BREAKER:
These WILL reduce the case load. But, if we take the examples of Melbourne and Belgium, the halving time will be somewhere between 7-14 days, depending on completeness and adherence of any "circuit-breaker".
If we start at, say, 1300 cases, then we can expect getting to 650 cases in, say 7-14 days, 325 in 14-28 days, and 162 in 21-42 days. That would bring us to where we were around Labour Day. Taking our foot off the breaks, though, would expectedly bring us back up to where we are.
Read 11 tweets
5 Nov
What is wrong with Ontario's latest approach to COVID?

It is #So1stWave. Emerging from the first wave, we were happy we survived it, and thought that if we could just keep case counts reasonably low or prevent hospitals or ICUs from being overwhelmed, we would win the battle.
This is the ExCUSE (Examples of Canada, US, and Europe) approach. The govt. released their new plan predicated on this thinking. If I were to bet, it was conceived over 6 weeks ago (i.e. around Sept. 23). To remind you, this was ExCUSE total deaths and cases 6 weeks ago.
I will focus on 2 countries to demonstrate what happens when you take a #So1stWave approach. We will start with Belgium (pop 11.5m), using data from @OurWorldInData and Belgium's National Science Institute: epistat.wiv-isp.be/covid/covid-19…. Here was where they were Sep 23. <4 deaths/d.
Read 10 tweets
2 Nov
Prompted by several posts and threads, I am going to outline what I view as the "A-PAC Approach"

A-PAC refers to Asia-Pacfic and Atlantic Canada: 🇦🇺(25M), 🇨🇳(1.39B), 🇯🇵(126M), 🇳🇿 (5M), 🇰🇷(52M), 🇹🇼(24M), 🇹🇭(69M), and 🇻🇳(96M). Atlantic 🇨🇦 has 4 provinces ((NS, NB, NFLD, PEI, 2.4M)
These countries/provinces have varying geography, population size and density, degrees of democratic norms; some are islands, but others share sizable borders. Several have used a cordon sanitaire (i.e. making a region an island, even if it isn't one) to create an "island".
The A-PAC Approach consists of 6 principles:
1. Aim for really low number of new cases and zero transmission
2. Ensure any new people (esp. cases) coming in from outside are quarantined
3. Aggressive test-trace-isolate
4. Strong public health leadership
Read 11 tweets
29 Oct
I have spent the past day weighing whether to like article because it is a fantastically executed example of #scicomm or dislike it because it is propaganda that distorts the evidence.
english.elpais.com/society/2020-1… via @elpaisinenglish
What makes it so effective is the #dataviz, the relatable examples, and the plainspeak. I read the translated English version, and it really is wonderful to read. I came away thinking that aerosol transmission was so clear and plainly obvious. Until I realized this is propaganda.
It quotes a letter as an "article in the prestigious @ScienceMagazine" [finding] that there is 'overwhelming evidence' that airborne transmission 'is a major route'" for transmission. This is misleading.
Read 9 tweets
22 Oct
As @JPSoucy points out in this excellent 🧵, we have a experienced a considerable drop in testing. The question we don't know is: how many should we be testing? @skepticalIDdoc and other super-smart people suggest keeping our eye on %+. I am going to try to reframe the problem.
I will start off by saying this:
"cases" are numerator
"tests performed" are denominator
"% positivity" are cases/tests performed

If you do 20 surveillance tests (i.e. in asymptomatics) in a school, or 200, the % positivity will remain the same, but the "cases" will increase.
Cases matter.
They theoretically matter to the case (so they can receive treatment if they need it).
They should matter to public health to identify contacts (who may be infected) #ContactTracing
They should matter to everyone if we are treating them as surveillance.
Read 9 tweets

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