Thread by @DonaldWelsh16

The shuttering of schools and shuffling of children to an online experience is traumatic and woefully inadequate. Ontario public health and gov't hasn't explained why. I will put forward a hypothesis for consideration. 1/

Simply put, Ontario public health made 4 key mistakes 13 months ago. The include 1) viral threat inflation, 2) use of coercive messaging, 2) proclaiming vaccines as a solution; and 3) NPIs as effective. All were wrong. 2/

This poor intellectual foundation has driven policy failure after policy failure. I assume health officials, epidemiologists and politicians are now painfully aware of the disaster as the harms aren't trivial. 3/

Lets assume they are attempting to dig themselves out of this hole. They would have to walk a balance between fixing their serious failings while maintaining some core faith in gov't. Solutions are unlikely to be pretty. 4/

Enter Canada's latest bungle, the long awaited vaccine rollout. Straight up, these are experimental vaccines that haven't finished proper phase 3/4 trialing. This isn't how it's normally done and there are problems. 5/

Adverse reaction databases reveal concerning levels of deaths, hospitalizations and severe reactions. While observational, this data propels analysts to examine aggregate data and to look for correlations. 6/

Here is an example of Ontario specific data. As mass vaccination has ramped up, so has cases and to a lesser extent hospitalization. We have no death data as it isn't collected in a timely manner. Remember, correlation isn't causation but this data should give one pause. 7/

This seems especially warranted as similar trends have been seen world wide. This phenomenon appears early in the mass vaccination process. A few examples are attached, the first being the UAE 8/

Here is one from Uruguay. 9/

This is a nice paired example of Austria vs Hungary. Curves are the same until mass vaccination starts in Austria. Thanks to @RealJoelSmalley for this data. 10/

So why vaccinate? Its because health officials believe, with justification, that short term issues eventually give rise to long tern benefits. This seems reasonably correct based on data from Israeli and LTCs. 12/

Great in theory but how would the public react. Not well I suspect which is the overarching problem. So how could Ontario Public Health balance long term benefit while dealing with a temporary spike and not alarming the public? 13/

How about creating a 3rd wave storyline to sit on top of the vaccine rollout? That would solve part of the problem. But what happens if clusters of people from the same work setting vaccinate together? 14/

You would see clusters of sickness and perhaps something more serious. Whole sectors might be shut down and this in turn could drive public concern. Cue the teachers' union wanting rapid vaccination and perhaps the preemptive closure of schools. 15/

This is a hypothesis, one of many where people are trying to fit data/ policy actions together. Perhaps, there is additional reasoning underlying the 3rd wave narrative. This hypothesis, however, might explain the strange actions of public health over the last few weeks. End.