Thread by @rubiconcapital_

1/ Mass Vaccination – Why Do We Need it in Ontario (or anywhere?)

- LTC residents nearly vaccinated (55% of C-19 mortality)
- Progress in the most vulnerable (70+, 87% of mortality, 12% of pop)

A short thread with clips & charts, based on my recent video

2/ The public health messaging is clear—everybody needs a vaccine.

Dr. DeVilla of Toronto: “the sooner we have needles in arms and the more needles in arms we have, the better off we all are.”

(all clips from March 1, 2021 pressers)

3/ Dr. Williams, the Chief Doctor in Ontario:

“Wait for your vaccine, it's coming, we want everybody vaccinated, not just some, we want everybody done in a timely pattern.”

4/ Toronto Mayor Tory: “the vaccines represent the best and the ultimate weapon in fighting COVID-19 and defeating it.”

5/ Dr. DeVilla again: “…we are able to quickly get needles into arms and into as many arms as possible because we know that’s a significant component of our response to COVID-19 and moving beyond the pandemic”.

6/ Why is “normal”, or something approximating it, so conditional upon mass vaccination? What does the mortality and hospitalization data say?

7/ 87% of all C-19 mortality in the province occurs in the 70+ ages and infirm. (55% of the 87% were in LTC facilities (just 78k residents)).

70+ is just 12% of the population, or 1.8m people.

69&Under mortality rate: 0.22%, 49&U mortality rate: .03%.

0 “of COVID” child deaths

8/ 53.7% of all COVID-19 hospitalizations occurs in the 70+ ages, who represent just 10.9% of the population (using Toronto data).

The rest (under 69) occurs at a 2.5% case hospitalization rate (1.2% rate under 49)….

9/ And we can plainly see that while anyone can be *infected*, severe outcome are concentrated in the 70+ ages…

10/ So why does Toronto City Councillor Joe Cressy insist that, “the science tells us we need to achieve herd immunity through mass vaccination, in other words, we need over 70% of the population to get vaccinated to truly beat this virus.”?

11/ When Dr. Williams himself says that “if we eliminate uh grade down our cases of mortality & morbidity and so our hospitalizations go down it'd be a much better different setting”

(Recall we showed above large reductions in death/hosps with just 11-12% of the pop vaccinated.)

12/ And by Dr. Williams (and others) own admission, it is unclear if vaccination stops transmission. So doesn’t that weaken the case/need for mass vaccination to prevent “upward” transmission to the vulnerable?

And aren’t we vaccinating the vulnerable anyway?

13/ Remember, 69 & Under mortality is low.

14/ 903,285 vaccines have been distributed to Ontario, and ~1.9m total will be received by April 4th.

Meaning that TODAY we have enough for all 80+ (67.6% of all C-19 mortality) to receive at least a first shot, and at least a first shot for all 70+ by April 4th.

15/ As a side note, our brave healthcare workers are prioritized for vaccination, but mortality is also extremely low in that group: 10 total deaths of 6,626 cases in HCW’s, or a 0.15% mortality rate. (…and recall unknown if transmission is prevented w/vaxx).

16/ So why are we waiting to open?

After we vaccinate the older, infirm and those with co-morbidities, are we then just vaccinating against fear?

17/ End, and thanks for reading.

NOTE, I would like to make clear: this thread was not about vaccine safety or efficacy (apart from the transmission prevention dynamics noted), and it is most certainly not “anti-vaxx”; it is simply asking questions about public health policy.

18/ Addendum

NOTE: Some clips were edited/shortened for Twitter. Full comments from officials are in the press conferences here:


Data source: data.ontario.ca/en/dataset/con…