Alberta: Current measures made the growth rate less extreme.
B117 is doubling now every 20 days instead of every 7 days.
It's still very fast - similar to doubling time in the 2nd wave (18 days)
Current measures are insufficient to bend the curve downwards.
Ln scale graph 👇
At this rate we can expect:
3,000 daily new cases on May 12
4,000 daily new cases on May 22
2/
This wave is worse than the fall one.
2nd wave: at 1877 daily cases we had 100 ICUs
3rd wave: at 1860 daily cases we have 146 ICUs, and *we are still growing*
That's *despite* many people being already vaccinated. W/o vaccines it would be even worse.
3/
COVID-ICU numbers grow in a clear exponential fashion since Mar 09. Doubling every 3 weeks.
At this rate we may expect:
May 16, 250-270 ICUs
May 22, 300-320 ICUs
4/
"Oh, but we are not like Ontario."
Well, not yet. We started at lower ICU numbers. But we are on exactly the same steep upward trajectory as ON.
Babies have the highest SARS2 ICU admission rate among all age ranges.
They should be protected from infection by those around them and those around pregnant people & parents.
1/
Things that'd protect newborns in NICU from infections w/ SARS2, RSV, Influenza
1) Mandatory N95s for staff & visitors (stops short range aerosol transmission) 2) Mandatory testing for RSV/C19/Flu 3) Vaxx requirement C19/Flu & other 4) Medical leadership implementing #1-#3
2/
Safety of newborns (and their future health) hinges on point #4:
i.e. Medical leadership deciding to prevent irreversible health harms to newborns.
3/
Hopeful claims w/o evidence: "thanks to gained immunity reinfections pose minimal risk of #longCOVID"
Scientific evidence: studies that reported on reinfections & LC show that #longCOVID incidence follows (almost too well) the theoretical cumulative risk growth pattern. 1/
For hopeful claims that "SARS2 reinfections pose minimal risk of LC" to be true, observed data points should form a horizontal line (parallel to X axis).
They don't.
Even for those infected only with Omicron subvariants. 2/
Risk increases w/ the # of infections.
Long-term COVID-19 symptoms prevalence per number of infections, reported by StatsCanada, fits perfectly the theoretical cumulative risk growth curve.
Also for infections w/ Omicrons only.
Since 4 years (at least - that’s when I started paying attention to what they say) some 🇨🇦 health officials are feigning ignorance and innumeracy.
It is unserious. It needs to stop.
It misleads ppl & decision makers, leading to misinformed personal decisions & errenous policies
Basic basic basic math:
3% is 1 in 33
5% is 1 in 20
In medical lingo when talking about drugs’ side effects 3% or 5% means ‘common’.
Calling 3%-5% ‘rare’ (especially when dealing with exponential phenomenon) is a serious misinformation.
Misleadingly “reassuring” narrative circulating in 🇨🇦:
“Reassuring: measles outbreaks will fizzle out”
Yes. They will. That’s how measles behaved before it was eliminated.
That’s its intrinsic feature — outbreaks that die out (and come back later)
Grounds for reassurance = 0 1/
Measles was eliminated in Canada.
Now it isn’t.
That’s a fundamental and *categorical* difference.
Anyone understanding epi-math knows it.
It should be honestly communicated.
We crossed the qualitative border btw two “states”: From ‘zero/elimination’ to ‘circulating’
2/
The immediate effort should be to quickly go back to ‘zero/elimination’ state.
‘Elimination’ is a lower energy state. The costs of sustaining it are lower than costs of “controlling” a highly transmissible harmful disease which circulates.
3/
That's how bad some research on paediatric #LongCOVID is.
In our letter to @JAMAPediatrics we point to obvious & fundamental errors in paper which claims that Post Covid Condition in kids is "strikingly low"
Those errors are so egregious, they should warrant a retraction
🧵 1/
In brief,
What authors said they were going to measure in the intro (the formal WHO definition) was not what they measured in results.
They neither addressed the discrepancy in the paper nor in public.
The work has been platformed extensively. 2/ jamanetwork.com/journals/jamap…
Here are links to the paper and our letter.
The flawed paper is open access.
The critique is pay walled.
(That's problematic for the transparency, open scientific discourse, and scientific "self-correction" process) 3/
It seems that we have another coordinated misleading narrative going.
It’s extremely concerning how easily health institutions & MD community are used as an amplifier of scientifically incorrect and harmful narratives (eg. ‘Omicron is a natural vaccine’, ‘not airborne’ etc.) 1/
I wish @CIHR_IRSC would investigate who distributes such messaging/narrative-talking-points in Canadian health decision making circles, and not fall for such manipulation in the future.
2/
@CIHR_IRSC The timing of those posts coincides with Jan 18th US Senate hearing on Long Covid.
The effort of understanding this disease and of raising awareness about it is hugely carried by patients.