It was nice to finally get some numbers to back-fill all the missing data; it’s been a while since it’s all looked complete, especially B.C. The last update we had around here before today’s was Dec 24th. The B.C. numbers look good, dropping down like that; it looks good on paper… but it likely implies less testing these days. If you’re planning to break the rules and get together with family, it’s probably better to stick your head in the sand. That’s better than going and getting a positive test and then knowingly violating the mandatory 14-day quarantine. It’s simply better to take the risk and hope for the best… and it’s that agnorant askholish behaviour that will unfortunately turn these numbers around in the coming days.

In the meantime, I’ve taken the opportunity to clean things up a bit, and add a very important row of data. You’ll notice the gray-shaded area up top… it’s now a bit clearer to read… a summary of totals for each region, with columns for: per million, percentage and delta (change since yesterday)… for cases, deaths, and… now, also… vaccinations.

That’ll be an interesting row of data to follow, especially the “% pop” number. In fact, it’s such an important number, I’ve highlighted it. Depending who you ask, you’ll get a different answer with respect to what’s needed for herd immunity. 50%? 70%? 90%? At what point are enough people vaccinated that we can stop worrying about it?

We have lots of time to discuss it, because we’re still far away. The U.S. has vaccinated 0.64% of its population; Canada is only at 0.19%. Broken down a bit more, B.C. itself is at 0.23% for our 5 million people. For comparison, Quebec leads the nation at 0.26% while Ontario has managed only 0.12%.

The one thing all of Canada has in common is that all of those numbers round to zero; it’s still very early, obviously… but whereas in the past we’ve all been rooting for numbers to go down (we still are, for all those numbers below the gray area…), at least now we can cheer for a number to go up… hopefully exponentially. Unfortunately, the only numbers likely to grow quickly in the next two weeks are those bad ones below… but that’s short-term. Keep an eye on those singular, highlighted numbers in the coming days, weeks and months… they are the beacons of light guiding the way out of this dark tunnel.

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