Listening to the Protect Our Province update. @jvipondmd says if the doubling trend continues, we’ll have more than 400 patients in the ICU by Sept. 19. ICU staff says they are full now.
Interesting point about asymptomatic spread—some people have zero symptoms but can still spread the virus. Unlike the flu where if you have it, you *know* you have it and feel bad, so you know to stay home, with covid, you may not have any idea.
Now Conor Ruzycki is going to explain airborne transmission basics. Aerosol particles stay in the air and can be breathed in. It’s not the same as particles that fall to the ground. We all produce aerosols by exhaling all the time. If we have the virus, this happens.
If the aerosol particles are in the air, you can breathe it in, even if you are not close to the person exhaling, just like you can smell cigarette smoke even if you are not right next to the person smoking.
Vaccines *alone* are not enough to prevent spread of the virus, due to the fact that it’s airborne and there is asymptomatic transmission. We need layers of protection like vaccines AND masks indoors (everyone, everywhere), AND good ventilation.
We should avoid “hygiene & filtration theatre” or devoting time and energy to things that don’t actually do anything to slow transmission. An example is ‘deep cleaning’. Plexiglass barriers are not much help because they impede effective ventilation.
We should also be avoiding maskless indoor gatherings.
Important takeaways:
-avoid unnecessary indoor gatherings
-if you must be gathered indoors, be masked indoors at all times—distance doesn’t matter
-try to get better masks like N95s
-avoid unnecessary indoor gatherings
-if you must be gathered indoors, be masked indoors at all times—distance doesn’t matter
-try to get better masks like N95s
Dr. Gosia Gasperowicz shared her projections for exponential growth in Alberta. Doubling time is 2 wks. We will reach 2000 daily new cases by mid-Sept. if no measures are put in place. Growth of new cases, hospitalizations and ICU is exponential and not ‘decoupled’ from vaccines.
If we do hit 2000 new daily cases, this is the point where the ICUs and hospitals become overwhelmed. This is what happened in the 3rd wave. What we are seeing now was predictable in May. Delta is 40% more transmissible than the Alpha Covid we had before.
We had an amazing decline in May due to vaccinations. The gradual reopening would not have led to what we are seeing now if not for the Delta variant. The Delta variant infects people twice as much, so it is not possible to control it by vaccination alone.
If you didn’t have a chance to watch the live update, go check it out on YouTube. The information is clearly explained and makes so much sense. It is clear that we need public health measures in addition to the vaccine.
Understanding the science of this is *comforting*. It’s not impossible to bring covid under control. At all. But we do need people to understand this, do something about it, and STOP pandering to covidiots. I don’t CARE how they feel about wearing masks. Too bad. Do it.
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
