Hi there!

Yeah, I said I’d be back for a periodic update once in a while… I guess it’s time… it’s been a month, and a month ago things were looking pretty good…

Sooooo…..… have I… missed… anything…

OK, let’s break it down a bit because it’s not as bad as it looks. It’s not great, but there’s a big huge tremendously-relevant asterisk next to the column of concerningly-quickly-growing case counts, and that is… that whereas in the past, these sharp increases in numbers would be followed by sharp increases in hospitalizations, ICU admissions and, ultimately, deaths… we’re not likely to see that this time. In fact, looking below, it’s pretty clear what it looks like when things aren’t going so well, courtesy of our stubbornly-unvaccinated neighbours to the south.

Actually, it’s astonishing. Look at the US hospital/ICU/death graph compared to Canada or any of the provinces. This is “Do vaccines work?” answered in a few simple pictures.

Dr. Bonny has said we’re on track for the Phase 4 reopening, and I tend to agree. Why wouldn’t we be? Those dates were largely based on assumptions to do with “load” on the medical system.

The graphs below are as of May 1st, so let’s go with that.

Around May 1st, B.C. was seeing around 800 new cases a day – consistently. Around 4 people a day were dying of C19. Provincially, there were over 500 people in hospital and almost 200 of them in ICU. In fact, since that day, just over 200 people have died of C19 in B.C.

But… today…? Alarmingly increasing case-counts notwithstanding, there are 58 people in hospital, 21 of them in ICU. These numbers will unfortunately go up, but not in hugely concerning numbers, most-especially for those who are – all together now: Fully Vaccinated.

In the U.S., on May 1st, they were getting less than 50,000 new cases a day. Today it’s over 100,000. On May 1st, they had 34,000 people in hospital, 9,100 of them in ICU. Today’s hospitalization number is probably around 45,000 and the ICU number over 11,000. I say probably because those numbers are simply the last published, but they’re getting so slammed that they are several days behind. Those flat lines at the right of the American graph aren’t because cases have stopped growing, and it’s not hard to see the trend they imply. They’ve managed to undo everything that was achieved to that point, and now continue to watch things get worse.

We have our own local version of the U.S. in the interior of the province where the young, infallible, healthy-so-who-cares-about-anyone-else crowd is driving these cases. Overwhelmingly, those getting sick enough to be hospitalized are unvaccinated. And the demographic is skewing younger. Now map those proportions from B.C.’s interior to all of the red states. Yikes. Oh, if only there were a way to mitigate the risk.

At the end of the day, C19 is here to stay. There is a 100% chance you will come into contact with it. The Delta variant is far more contagious than anything that came before it, and, as it turns out, vaccinated people are able to transmit it to others. You may be carrying it as we speak.

That sounds alarming until, again, you simply consider the fact that being exposed to C19 in any fashion is far less concerning if your immune system is primed for it. You may have it and you may be contagious, and you’ll never know because it’ll silently come and go. I may have come into contact with Measles, Shingles and even potentially Tetanus (that little bike accident) recently. I don’t know… and I don’t care… because I’m vaccinated against all of that, and, while nothing is 100%, my chances of getting seriously sick from any of those things has been drastically reduced. That’s as much as any of us can do. And it’s exactly how I feel about C19. I’ve done what I can to protect myself, everyone around me, and strangers with whom I come into contact. I suppose if everyone felt this way, we’d eventually have nothing to talk about… but we’re far from that. We may never get there.

Do what you can, including being careful around those whose immune systems may not be as strong… and take some solace in knowing that it’s probably enough. I’ve said that it’s all going to be ok, and it still is. But the road ahead has some unknown turns and bumps. The Delta variant isn’t going to screw everything up, but it’s going to make things drag on longer. I guess we’ll see what the next little while brings…