Thread by @HallwayOrchard

You know the drill... it's Trash-Stat Tuesday.

Let's look at the numbers attributable to less than one half of one percent of the population and use them to infer the pandemic's impact on the community at large.

When I say "less than one half of one percent" I mean NB C19 "data" represents only what is happening in particular buildings (hospitals) in the province and only to particular people (inpatients) in those buildings.
It's provided to create an imaginary PH due diligence.

This information cannot be used to gauge what is happening in communities. Since Aug 2023, we can only watch to see if a particular place with a non-representative population is more or less impacted than prior weeks. From this all conclusions are supposition.

So who specifically is this data for?

It does not inform the public of the conditions of their communities. It does not provide a metric on which to calculate individual risk. It does not serve as a record of the impacts of the ongoing pandemic.

So what is its purpose?

The answer to this is fairly straightforward.

No information *is* the information.

The lack of message has become the message.

No message and no information implies no concern, no hazard, no risk, and in turn, it reinforces the rhetoric that the pandemic is in the past.

In the rare instance when PH officials are asked about providing data or altering public health recommendations in light of new developments, the answers are always predicated on the promise of action "should the situation change," with a theatrical nod to "the data."

"The data" is collected through such a narrow scope under such contrived and steady conditions that there can really be no trend other than implied stability.

It can't go up unless we build another hospital. It won't go down until we close a hospital.

There is no way for the public to be informed of whether there has been a "change" in the "situation."

There is no way for them to thereby hold public health accountable for acting on that change.

This is by design.

The myth that the state protects people from ill health and death, that it prolongs and improves life, is foundational to its manufactured legitimacy and authority.

The myth has been shattered by the ongoing pandemic, but in the hopeful conscious of public perception it remains.

People's ability to accept what they have been told is "low risk," is underpinned by a faith that, should something happen to them, should some adverse situation occur, there is a system in place to make them better, to fix them, to make them as whole as they are today.

What we have seen over and over is that this system is not now, and perhaps never was, truly there. Yet the illusion of its presence has become a cognitive lifeline, to which the currently-abled may secure their misconceptions about how deeply covid can affect their lives.

Having that cognitive lifeline is integral to a return to status quo extractive activities which serve the masters of the state.

People need to believe the myth.

And *that* is who the "data" is for.
That is its purpose.

The data in question is below.

Remember that it is not actual data, but a bad poem about the concept of data, which attempts to convince you that you can just forget about it all. You can walk away. The bloody deathmaking exposed by the pandemic was a bad dream.

You're safe.

DEATHS
• 4 deaths added Feb 18 - Feb 24
• Up from 2 as last week
• Minimum pandemic death total is 1016
• 7 of every 10 reported C19 deaths have occurred since NB abandoned protections
• Current definition: You can now only die of C19 in the hospital

Over 1000 NBer's reported dead from this virus.

709 of those have occurred since GNB decided it no longer gives a shit about what this virus does to you.

That's over 4 times more NBers than flu has killed in the *last 10 years combined*.

GNB's response? Silence.

HOSPITALIZATIONS
• 30 hospitalizations, 0 under 19 (first time no kids hospitalized this year)
• Up from 17 last week
• Current definition: anybody in hospital and also C19 +ve, regardless of their reason for being hospitalized

INTENSIVE CARE
• 0 ICU admissions, 0 under 19
• Down from 2 last week and the first week without ICU cases since the beginning of the "season" in August 2023
• Current definition: anybody in ICU and also C19 +ve, regardless of their reason for being in ICU

CASES
• 80 new PCR cases
• Stable compared to 79 last week
• POCT are not included and PCR are severely (purposefully) limited
• Average positivity remains near 7% with some zones as low as 3% or as high as 14%

OUTBREAKS
• A total of 6 outbreaks were confirmed
• 2 of those are in nursing homes the rest are in "other" places
• Same numbers as last week
• That's 321 outbreaks so far this "season"

"SEASON" SUMMARY (*subject to change)
• 3198 PCR cases
• 1333 "hospitalizations" (25 under 19)
• 89 "ICU admissions" (0 under 19)
• 81 "deaths"
• 321 lab confirmed outbreaks

No updates to sequencing. In the first two weeks of February, JN.1+ accounts for nearly 90% of sequences in New Brunswick.

"But Covid-19 is just the flu now right?!?!"

Fuck no.

NB is currently experiencing one of the worst influenza seasons in recent history. Even with that grim fact, influenza can't compare to the destruction Covid is inflicting on NBers.

There will be no pandemic salvation delivered through the mechanisms of the state. We won't change the structures of oppressive abandonment through the bureaucracy whose existence depends on upholding that oppressive abandonment. Attempting to do so gives the system legitimacy.

The system is not legitimate.

Your health, your time, your life. These are the currencies which pay to securely enable your masters, their health, their time, and their lives. The obscenity of the system is that it frames this arrangement as necessary and natural.

It is not.

However, it desperately requires you to believe it is legitimate.

Every time you hear or read the justifications, the accomplishments, the limits, or the importance of the system, know it is coercion. It needs you to believe it is an altruistic, organic necessity.

It is not.

We know despite ever increasing evidence of the long term impacts of C19 infection - vascular damage, brain damage, organ damage - NB Public Health remains committed to abstracting and dismantling relevant data in defence of their universally disproven "recommendations."

We know Public Health does not exist to support the health of the public. Rather, they exist to insinuate medical and scientific rigour is part of policy decisions made by those who continuously show they hold nothing short of absolute disdain for the health of the public.

We know PH has become overtly and transparently opposed to informing the citizens of NB. Instead it actively hides data and gleefully refuses media requests to divulge information. There is no accountability for their missteps and no correction for their deadly course.

So...
We protect each other. Power does not want people helping people. Communal care emancipates us and fosters a security in opposition to the widespread, manufactured precarity leveraged against the public by systems of oppression and extraction.

There are simple and effective actions you can take to help improve the SARS-CoV-2 situation in New Brunswick and keep yourself, your family, and your community safe.

Il y a des actions simples et efficaces que vous pouvez entreprendre pour aider à améliorer la situation du SARS-CoV-2 au Nouveau-Brunswick et assurer votre sécurité ainsi que celle de votre famille et de votre communauté.

If you take anything away from this thread, let it be an intention in continuing to be safe and continuing to cultivate your interest in the safety of others.
Fight to strengthen your impact.
Rest to strengthen your resolve.

Let care be your radical act.
Let community be your foundation.

In these acts we are infinitely more powerful than the deathmaking system and those who normalize and acquiesce to its horrors.