π¨π¦ Did you know that more Canadians have died of COVID than died in World War II?
(πΊπΈ Also, did you know that more of our American neighbours have died of COVID than dies in combat in every war they've fought since 1775?)
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π¨π¦ Did you know that the *lowest* number of COVID patients in hospital has been increasing through 5 waves of Omicron and that the troughs have all been higher than the *peak* of the Delta wave?
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π¨π¦ Did you know that summer 2022 had twice as many deaths as summer 2021?
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π¨π¦ Did you know that the main issue with Omicron variants is no longer "tsunamis" caused by individual variants, but rising sea level with high and low tide? This imposes sustained pressure on the healthcare system.
(Image with area under the curve courtesy of @allard)
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π¨π¦ Did you know that 15% of Canadians infected with COVID (1.4 million people) report long-term symptoms?
π¨π¦ Did you know that there are now more than 700 Omicron subvariants, and that many of them can escape prior immunity and are resistant to available treatments?
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π¨π¦ Did you know that mitigation measures like high-quality (N95) masks worn properly, ventilation, air filtration, and avoiding high risk contact are all variant-proof?
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π¨π¦ Did you know that the pandemic is not over?
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Quick note about the not-low lows of hospitalizations since Omicron. Same pattern happening in various places (New York, UK, France, Denmark, etc.).
Here's hospital *admissions for COVID* in England:
I'm sure infectious disease minimizers are attributing the record-shattering surge of severe flu this year to "immunity debt". Let's think this through, shall we?
π§΅
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1. Serious mitigations ended more than 4 years ago. Why would immunity debt only kick in now? And why wasn't 4 flu seasons without mitigations enough to repay whatever "debt" there was?
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Just to recap what is happening, since public health has gone AWOL:
* This is the worst flu season in 15 years. Not just number of cases but number of *severe* cases.
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* H5N1 ("avian flu") is getting further out of control in the US. It is getting closer and closer to a human-to-human transmission outbreak.
* Measles is resurgent thanks to low vaccination rates.
* Tuberculosis is making a comeback.
* Many norovirus outbreaks.
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* COVID rates are lower than in past winters, but a) they're still way too high to ignore, and b) that's because there was a surge in summer (it's not seasonal) and the next major lineage of variants has not arrived yet.
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As you read more and more reports of uncommon pathogens infecting a lot of people, or common pathogens surging far more than usual and/or having unusually severe effects, please remember that this is what immunity theft predicts and what we've warned about for years.
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By contrast, "immunity debt" or "post-pandemic normalizing of levels" as an explanation makes less and less sense as more time goes by. In 2025, it is absurd to still be talking of new surges of illness being due to the lack of immunity from mitigations that ended years ago.
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Case in point, we wrote this more than 2 years ago.
Lots of things in biology correlate with "latitude" (biodiversity, population size, body size, etc.), but "latitude" itself isn't a thing in and of itself. What actually matters is photoperiod, temperature, precipitation, etc. That's how we should think of "seasonal" as well.
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Viral transmission may be strongly and predictably "seasonal", mostly occurring during certain times of the year (flu, RSV), but it's not either-or. Other viruses may be common year-round but also increase at certain times of the year.
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However, it's not "season" per se, it's things that vary throughout the year. Mostly this involves human behaviour (travel, congregating, being indoors more, school in or not, etc.). There may also be effects of environmental variables like UV, wind, temperature, humidity.
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So, I'm not sure the American right has thought through the implications of annexing Canada yet.
A few things to consider...
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First of all, Canada has a slightly larger population than California, so presumably we'd get at least 54 electoral college votes in presidential elections. Polls here showed that about 61% of Canadians would have voted for Harris and 21% for Trump.
Now, it would be pretty weird and surely a big ego bruiser to have one state being physically larger than the entire rest of the country combined, especially if it's blue on the electoral map. So presumably Canada would represent several states, not one.
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(Sarcasm alert) The way viral evolution works is that if you have a naΓ―ve idea of how it works and that helps with calm-mongering, that's how it works. Need some examples? π§΅
For example, if it helps with calm-mongering to think that viruses have to evolve to become mild or else they will drive their hosts and themselves extinct, that must be what happens. Don't let actual evolutionary biologists convince you otherwise! (Sarcasm)
Oh, oh -- how about this? If a virus can infiltrate the host's genome permanently and then not cause any harm, that would give it a huge advantage in long-term survival. Therefore, all viruses must evolve to become endogenous in the genome! This is fun! (Sarcasm)