Say it with me... it's Trash-Stat Tuesday.

Why am I doing this? While it is continually shown that the pandemic's harm to those it infects is only a small portion of the wider health crisis, and that the majority of C19 deaths occur outside of hospital, the *totality* of NB metrics are taken solely from hospitalized people.

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.

James Cantor, a psychologist who has never worked with trans kids, is now speaking to media on behalf of @pcnbca, citing repeatedly debunked numbers in attempted support of Higgs' regressive policy changes and transphobic rhetoric. Since 2021, Cantor has testified in over 25 cases, including bills to restrict transgender healthcare, to ban trans students from school sports, and to restrict student use of school bathrooms.

All despite having zero practical experience treating minors with gender dysphoria.

Newly installed christian nationalist candidate and vile anti-trans "activist" Faytene Grasseschi calls legitimate questions about the implications of her theocratic extremism "radical, extreme, woke, left-wing conspiracy theories." If you're presented with erroneous accusations about your beliefs or your character, you refute them.

If the accusations are true and you're interested in hiding that truth, you make up elaborate strings of buzzwords and dog whistles in an attempt to obfuscate and distract.

As one of her last acts as NB CMOH, Dr. Russell will be questioned by the Standing Committee on Public Accounts Nov 2. During the 2 hour session, the committee will ask her to provide justification for decisions made by her office during the province’s pandemic response.
🧵 While the much anticipated AG’s report on the pandemic response had little substance, opting instead to focus on the absence of structure, procedure, and documentation, it made one thing clear. The CMOH was at the bottom of the decision making process.
cbc.ca/1.6959112

🤔
cbc.ca/1.6979497 🤔
cbc.ca/1.6934198

Part 1: On June 12, 2023 I submitted a Right to Information request to the Office of the Premier asking for records referenced during, related to, or produced as a result of the New Brunswick government’s review of EECD #Policy713.
🧵 #nbpoli The purpose was to validate the statements made by Higgs and EECD Minister Bill Hogan regarding “hundreds” of emails containing “misinterpretation & complaints” with respect to Policy 713; a mass of documents which according to Higgs’ & Hogan’s narrative, precipitated the review.

If you are curious whether you are on the right side of history with respect to any particular issue, there is an easy metric.

Look for which side is actively engaged in community care. Which side has groups ensuring communities are cared for?

Which side has people assisting each other in navigating loss, grief, and despair?

Which side is creating hope?

The narratives around unmasking healthcare settings (arguably the most important area to continue masking) are rife with implicative framing.

Reading the quotes in this CBC article leave the average person wondering how masking persisted this long.

🧵
cbc.ca/news/canada/pr… Arguments for removing basic protections in healthcare settings are never presented as science based; they are qualitative, anecdotal, and rely heavily on vibes and the emotional queues of people who should be speaking scientifically.

In February, the Canadian Institute for Health Information (@CIHI_ICIS) released provisional data on Covid-19 Hospitalization for Apr - Sep 2022.

NB spent $40.7 M on hospitalized Covid-19 patients in those six months alone.
🧵

h/t @amandalhu for the heads up.
#nbpoli $40.7 M breaks down to an average of $19.4 k per hospitalized Covid-19 patient.

Since pandemic protections were removed, the RHAs report an average of 94 hospitalized Covid-19 patients on any given week.

With an average stay of 2 weeks that's a cost of ~ $911.8 k / week.

Knowledge is power.
Trash-Stat Tuesday is like a provincial blackout.

• Record low testing continues
• 3 deaths added, occurring Jan 3 - Mar 21
• Hospitals not testing or masking and HCW absences are up ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ As predicted, with negligently low testing positivity becomes useless.
Tiny, inconsistent sample sizes will yield wildly fluctuating results week to week.
Individual zone positivities are:
1 - 11.4%
2 - 9.7%
3 - 10.0%
4 - 9.8%
5 - 6.3%
6 - 20.0%
7 - 9.7%

Yesterday, I was denied a vaccination.

The reason was due to the newly revised and recently imposed regulation that restricts access to boosters for those who received their most recent immunization in the fall, unless they fall under the category of "at-risk." This classification, a product of sociological engineering and eugenics, was created to further marginalize and other disabled individuals while downplaying the effects of Covid-19 on the already disenfranchised and increasingly disengaged population.

For over a year, the province has been overtly nudging the public toward accepting mass infection and disregarding increasing debility and death. They do this by leveraging the public's belief in the myth of government protection.
🧵 The government and the office of public health claim legitimacy and authority through propagating the idea that they protect people from illness and death, that they improve and prolong life.

This is a myth.

The most stable of Trash-Stat Tuesday's is upon us.

• 6 deaths added, occurring Nov 14 - Mar 8
• Positivity down in all zones but remains 50% higher than the national average. Downward trend is good. Until positivity is well below 5%, we are missing cases. The higher above 5%, the more we are missing.

Individual zone positivities are:
1 - 24.0%
2 - 19.4%
3 - 15.7%
4 - 7.2%
5 - 12.7%
6 - 13.3%
7 - 8.1%

A very special Trash-Stat Tuesday falling on the anniversary of one of the biggest "fuck yous" ever delivered by PH to the public of NB.

• 1 person < 20 hospitalized
• 6 deaths added, occurring Jan 26 - Feb 23
• Positivity inconceivably up again in 4 of 7 zones A reminder that high positivity is an indication of insufficient testing. Until positivity is well below 5%, we are missing cases. The higher above 5%, the more we are missing.
Individual zone positivities are:
1 - 22.8%
2 - 19.5%
3 - 25.4%
4 - 27.7%
5 - 25.7%
6 - 13.9%
7 - 13.4%

Today marks one year since New Brunswick Public Health and @Gov_NB ceased all pandemic mitigation, outright abandoning 800 thousand people to a highly transmissible, ubiquitous, neurotropic, vasculotropic, cardiotropic pathogen. On March 14, 2022, NB Public Health removed all mandated pandemic protections, at a time when the province had just experienced the highest covid death counts of the entire pandemic and showed no signs of slowing down. The year since has been cruelly lethal.

What?... it's another Trash-Stat Tuesday! Let's see how stable everything is.

• 4 people < 20 hospitalized (ಥ﹏ಥ)
• 8 deaths added, occurring Jan 4 - Feb 16
• Positivity inconceivably up again in 4 of 7 zones A reminder that high positivity is an indication of insufficient testing. Until positivity is well below 5%, we are missing cases. The higher above 5%, the more we are missing.
Individual zone positivities are:
1 - 16.8%
2 - 16.2%
3 - 25.4%
4 - 18.5%
5 - 12.8%
6 - 26.5%
7 - 13.2%

In one year we went from timely transparent information to an utter absence of understanding of our current situation.

The lack of information has become the information.
The lack of message has become the message. As we came into 2022, NB had daily covid reporting and almost daily public press briefings. Consequently we had a population who understood the situation in their communities.

Now, it is difficult for versed and numerate individuals to make heads or tails of the data.

As of Jan 21, an estimated 7547 Canadian children have lost a primary or secondary caregiver to Covid-19.
24% of those have been since protections were removed in individual provinces.

Individual provincial impacts are in this thread.
🧵
#canpoli #cdnpoli As of Jan 28, an estimated 117 NB children have lost a primary or secondary caregiver to Covid-19.
57% of those have been since protections were removed.
#NewBrunswick #nbpoli

Public Health's revised Covid Watch report is less clear than any of their previous pandemic reporting.
Naturally, there are questions regarding the reason and timing of this change.
🧵 In particular, age specific hospitalization data has been combined into new cohorts, with the weekly number hospitalized removed from the report.

Instead we now have a quantity of people who have been hospitalized since Aug 28; a number which is meaningless without prior values.

Today's GNB report sheds some light on last week's death revision.
I am inferring (emphasis here since we lack explanatory material) the 86 revised deaths were not in addition to previous "weekly" deaths.

The truth is we have not known *any* weekly death numbers since September.

https://twitter.com/HallwayOrchard/status/1604169946426408960

Looking at the chart in the revised death count report, we see that 82 deaths have been "newly confirmed" in the period between Sep 3 and Dec 4 (news release said 86).

We assumed these 82 were in *addition* to the 64 deaths in weekly reports over those 12 weeks.