McMaster study on masks talks of possible benefits and possible harm...

I recently engaged in a discussion with the author of another blog, Cathie from Canada.  There was a a piece expressing the opinion that had the wearing of cloth masks been mandated from the very beginning, that it would have meant better results in Canada's fight against the novel coronavirus.

I commented on her blog saying that I have yet to see a proper scientific study that demonstrates their effectiveness.  She countered citing research by McMaster, and I found an article with an interview of their mask study's first author.   The article is from the end of May of this year:

Evidence shows cloth masks may help against Covid-19

The title of the article says a lot.  If something "may help" that automatically infers that it also "may not".  Basically meaning there is no conclusive evidence one way or the other.  

I realize many people simply look at headlines, they see a reccomendation coming from an authoritative source like McMaster University and they say:  "Okay, that's all I need to know, everyone should wear a mask".  They then become SJWs and proclaim themselves to be touting scientifcally provable fact.  In reality all they're proving is that they're eaisly led and good at following direction.  Like African Americans who signed up for free medical treatment, unaware that they were being infected with syphilis in order to track the untreated progression of that disease. 

Basically you can say I'm a cynic, or a skeptic, take your pick.  

When authorities advise a course of action I do not accept it at face value, I like to dig deeper.  If others prefer to simply follow advice blindly, that's their choice, it's still a free country after all, at least for now.  When experts said we had no choice but to go to war with Iraq because of their WMD I looked into it, and then reached my own conclusions and protested in front of the U.S. consolate in Toronto.

Getting back to the McMaster study, please read it if you're going to comment.  If you get to the end you'll see this quote from the study's first author:

"Given the severity of this pandemic and the difficulty of control, we suggest that the possible benefit of a modest reduction in transmission likely outweighs the possibility of harm".  

Read that again.  Basically it is saying that "maybe" there's a benefit of a modest reduction in transmission, or maybe not.  And further that it "likely" outweighs the possibility of harm.  That automatically infers that it is possible that the harm could ultimately outweigh the benefit.  Put simply, they don't know and are guessing, and they're covering their posteriors.  "We never said it was beneficial or that it wasn't harmful".  

I have yet to wear a mask during this pandemic, and there are several reasons why, and a big one is that I'm in no way convinced that a cloth mask will have any effect on preventing viral spread.  Another reason is that I hardly see anyone wearing them,  and those that I do see with them on are often tugging, pulling and adjusting them, and then sometimes inadvertenly wiping their eyes.  

The grocery store I shop at doesn't mandate their use, and I  have yet to see a single employee wearing one.  As for the customers, based on my own observations my thoroughly unscientific best guess is that no more than 25% of people have one on.  If staff aren't wearing them, and I'd guess (again just observation) that there are likely 30 to 40 employees working at any given time, then what's the point.  

There's also a school of scientific thought with research to back it up that suggests being hyper hygenic may actually weaken the  immune system.  All this handwashing and use of sanitizer, wiping every square inch of visible space down with lysol wipes, and wearing masks, that it's robbing our immune systems of vital and life saving practice.  The human immune system is described by some as a muscle, and muscles that aren't used grow weak.  The last thing anyone wants with a novel and potentially serious pathogen floating around is a weak immune system.  

Beyond those reasons another point is that I am an extrovert, I enjoy engaging with people.  My cynical nature notwithstanding I absolutely love the human race, we are God's greatest creation.  My faith teaches that we are all image bearers.  The human face conveys so much without a word being spoken, and hiding half of it under a piece of cloth just doesn't sit right with me, especially when there's no imperical evidence to suggest any utility.  

And finally it comes down to what Mac's lead author called "the severity of the pandemic".  The novel coronavirus is not the Spanish Flu, it isn't even close.  Our goverments adopted draconian and devastating rules because medical officials told them that we were going to be lined up 10 deep to be put on a ventilator, even with the emergency measures.  That's what computer modelling suggested, and thankfully the computer modelling has been horribly (and wonderfully) wrong, things have never gotten nearly as bad as expected.  

Ontario has a population of 14.5 million, with roughly 500 hospitals spread across the province.  As I write this the goverment's own portal for Covid-19 shows just 214 patients with 51 of those in ICU and of the ICU patients 36 are on on a ventilator.  

Bottom line is this.  If you want to wear a mask, fill your boots.  But don't get all morally superior and high and mighty with those who dare disagree.  It's possible they've simply done more reading and research than you have.  

Despite the best efforts of authorities, many still not afraid of the novel coronavirus....

We're over three months into the global pandemic with a constant stream of death and disease filling the public airwarves and digital news outlets.  Our world has been tossed upside down.  Millions of Canadians out of work, businesses closing never to re-open ever again, people dying because their life saving medical procedures were indefinitely delayed, children isolating at home with unemployed depressed parents with booze declared essential.  

Horrific and devastating measures, but absolutely needed to slow the spread of the supposedly "deadly" coronavirus.  You think we'd all be terrifed by now, but many aren't. 

According to Ontario's own Covid-19 portal this province of roughly 14.5 million people has just 214 patients being treated in our roughly 500 hospitals, 51 of them are in ICU and of those in ICU 36 are on a ventilator.  

Some believe the reason the numbers are so low is because we've done a really good job at social distancing and all the rest.  But the reality is that we haven't.  First there were the so called "yahoos" protesting at Queen's Park, then the ~10,000 people who gathered in Trinity Bellwood park in Toronto, followed by the massive BLM demonstrations.  All these activities were supposed to send the numbers soaring, inundating our hospitals with people sick and dying of Covid.  

Then there's the daily drumbeat of people having friends and neighbours over, fines being handed out daily for people not following the advice of public health officials.  Anyone with a decent set of eyes can see that there are all kinds of people out and about paying little heed, at least in my province of Ontario.  I went for groceries this past Wednesday and again today (Sunday) and I saw no more than a quarter of shoppers wearing masks, and not one single store worker wearing one.  

So why isn't Ontario suffering as bad as a state like Florida where case numbers and  hospitlizations are reported to be soaring?  I don't know, I don't think anyone does for sure.  With Covid the advice and science seems to change pretty much weekly.  First it was that asymptomatic people didn't contribute to spread, then they were the main drivers of contagion, now it's that some asymptomatic people may spread the virus and others may not, emphasis on the word "may"....

I have my own thoughts about why Florida is having a worse go of it than Ontario based on the science being reported.  A University of Florida study pegs the rate of obesity for the Sunshine State at 37.1%.  For a state with roughly 21.5 million people that's almost 8 million people for whom Covid has shown to be more serious and potentially fatal.  In Ontario our obesity rate is pegged a much lower 26%, working out to about 3.8 million with the potential for Covid to be serious.

Add in the fact that Florida has a large senior population, combined with more poverty and those with darker skin tones making Vitamin D deficiency more likely and it's perhaps not surprising that some are calling Florida the new American Covid epicentre.  On top of that Florida's population density is exponentially higher than Ontario's.  Miami's greater metropolitan area has about the same population as the GTA, but they also have Tampa, Orlando and Jacksonville all with over 1 million people.  

My own view is that Florida has not only more people, but a larger population of people for whom Covid can be serious, and they're packed in much closer together increasing the opportunity for viral spread than what exists in Ontario.  

Maybe the reason people aren't afraid is that they figure they're part of the marjority, those for whom Covid has not proven to be serious.  That can be dangerous thinking in my view for people with underlying conditions, no matter how healthy they may think they are.  

Asthama, Obesity and Diabetes are three conditions that are in no way uncommon, and I can see some viewing themselves as healthy despite these underlying conditions.  Then there are other more acute conditions like cardiovascular and kidney diseases and cancers, or any condition that impacts the heart and/or lungs.

Ideally I hope and pray that those with these underlying conditions, be they mild (asthma, obesity) or acute, that they have gotten the message and are doing everything they can to keep themselves safe.  And given our incredilby low patient numbers in this province, in spite of 1,000+ cases being identified each week as testing keeps ramping higher, it strikes me that by and large people at risk are paying attention.  

But if we want to pretend we're doing really well at social distancing and wearing masks, well fairy tales are popular with some.  

Florida and Ontario - Why the divergence in Covid results?

Simple people like simple solutions.  We've had it drilled into our collective little brains that the only measure to fight the novel and mostly benign coronavirus is with social distancing and isolation measures, more broadly referred to as "locking down".  Hence when one jurisdiction has differing results from another the automatic assumption by many is that the results are directly linked to these measures.

Florida has opened up businesses like bars and restaurants and has seen a spike in identified cases, hence the argument is that one caused the other.  While I don't doubt for a second that opening up businesses somewhat increases the rate of transmission I do believe there are other important factors that are being ignored.  And in my mind the biggest factor is testing.  Florida is processing a massive number of tests when compared to Ontario.  On Friday the Sunshine State conducted over 78,000 tests, a record number.  

Ontario by contrast only conducted 33,492 tests, also a record for this province, but less than half of what Florida tested.  Given the number of people who contract the virus without being aware of it because the symptoms are either incredibly mild or totally absent, it stands to reason that if Ontario more than doubled the number of tests, then our identified case number would also climb substantially.  

Just to put this into even more perspective, the 78+ thousand tests conducted by Florida in one day is more than the nation of Taiwan has conducted altogether since the start of the pandemic.  

Taiwan is a country people like to point to as having done a tremendous job in battling this novel virus, and I would argue a large part of their success can be attributed to the lack of testing.  Call it the Donald Trump approach.  If you want to make it look like you're doing a good job just don't conduct the necessary measurements to gauge the results.

So we have a couple factors in play now that could reasonably be pointed to as explaining why Florida has seen its number of identified cases climbing.  One being the opening up of the economy with places like bars and restaurants able to operate again, and increased testing to catch more of the mild and asymptomatic cases. 

Are there perhaps other reasons why Florida is seeing more cases than Ontario, even on a per capita basis?  I think there are several more, the biggest one being population density.  

Florida has more people living in a smaller space than Ontario.  Florida's population density is 136.4 people per square kilometre, while in Ontario it's only 14 per sq km.  I know some might argue that a large number of people in Ontario live in the GTA, and that's true at about 6 million.  But that's about the same as in the Greater Miami Area.  After that the comparison breaks completely down though as Florida has more large population centres.  The sprawling Ottawa area in the only other Ontario metropolitan centre with around 1 million people, Florida has Tampa at 2.4 million, Orlando at 1.5 million and Jacksonville at 1.3 million.  

Also consider agriculture, we've seen in Ontario how hard migrant workers have been hit in the Windsor Essex region.  Florida also has a large farming industry, and as in Ontario a large number of migrant workers are employed.   While Ontario's agriculture sector is just beginning to ramp up with the harvesting of crops like asparagus, Florida's by contrast is largely year round.

Another major consideration is our differing health care systems.  While Canadian provinces have a single payer government run system where the focus is on reducing costs, for American hospitals the goal is profit.  Ironically this pandemic has hammered the U.S. health care industry with reports of hundreds of thousands of workers being laid off as hospitals (like in Canada) operating far below capacity.  The recent surge is probably being welcomed by American hospital administrators staring at a lot of red ink lately.  

With so many other health services curtailed or stopped completely, Covid is in many ways the only game in town for hospitals to generate revenue right now.  And with government funded Medicare and Medicaid each patient that can be treated for Covid means much needed billings, Medicare reportedly pays up around $30,000 for each Covid patient put on a ventilator.  The profit motive in my mind is a dangerous thing when it comes to delivering quality health care.  

Beyond increased testing, a denser population and for profit health care there are other socio-economic reasons that I believe contribute to Florida being worse off than Ontario in controlling the pandemic.  The United States does not have a social safety net that runs as wide and as deep as we have in Canada, and poverty is proven to be a big driver in negative health outcomes.  Add in the larger numbers of people likely to be Vitamin D deficient in Florida as compared to Ontario and that just adds to the numbers.

Bottom line is that there is no silver bullet.  Ontario is not Florida, and there are multiple factors in play that can explain why their numbers are so much worse that what we're seeing in Ontario.  Ultimately the solution to making the situation look good in either jurisdiction may be to simply follow the lead of countries like Japan and Taiwan and hardly do any testing.  

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody is around, does it make a sound?  Conversely if someone contracts the novel coronavirus but never gets sick or tested, then is that really a case?  

Japan, Taiwan and South Korea - Is reduced testing really the answer?

Many are lauding the success that countries like Japan, Taiwan and South Korea have had in controlling the novel coronavirus.  Policies like contact tracing and widespread use of masks are cited as the reasons why their numbers are so low. 

Japan has identified 18,110 cases and has tallied 968 Covid deaths, that's just 8 deaths per million of population.  Taiwan has a mere 447 confirmed Covid cases and just 7 deaths for less than 1 per million of population.  South Korea has identified 12,602 cases and has 282 deaths which works out to 6 deaths per million of population.

Contrast the numbers with Canada where we've  had over one hundred thousand cases and 8,504 deaths so far, which comes to 225 deaths per million of population. 

So should Canada look to copy the response of these three countries?  If so that would mean drastically reducing the level of testing taking place here.  Canada has conducted over 2.5 million tests so far, for every million Canadians we've tested 67,794 people.  We're significantly behind Donald Trump's United States where they've tested 92,910 per million. 

Japan has only done 3,443 tests per million of population, Taiwan just 3,192 per million and South Korea 24,036, nowhere close to the level we're at in Canada. 

While everyone is touting masks as the answer, citing the success in Japan, Taiwan and South Korea, maybe the real answer is to conduct testing at similar levels.  Maybe this is where Donald Trump got the idea that the best way to manage a situation is to not measure it, it seems to be working in some other countries. 

Sacrificing children because of Covid fear....

Young children are often the most vulnerable members of our society, they can't advocate for themselves and rely on community support networks to protect them.  Places like school, church, sports teams, clubs and camps.  When children are abused it is not the parents turning themselves in or calling for investigations, it's teachers, coaches and other community workers who've been trained to recoginze the signs.

I'm a parent, and it is a stressful job regardless.  Add in circumstances like losing a job or a business, of having to survive on inadequate goverment welfare cheques and it can be a recipe for disaster.  Toss in booze being declared essential and the word tragic doesn't begin to describe the horror some kids are very likely facing right now.  

And everyone says "Yeah...buh, buh, buh, but Covid".

Now pull your head out of your nether regions and look at the data.  About 8,500 Canadians dead, 75% of whom were residents in LTC facilities where people are old, sick and dying.  The vast majority unable to dress, bathe, feed or go to the bathroom withoug assistance, most congitively impaired with conditions like cardiovascular and kidney diseases.    

If anyone tries to tell me that we can't do our best to keep the novel coronavirus out of LTCs, AND keep our schools and other support networks for children open, they're going to have a very hard time.  Even with schools closed we've done a horrible job of protecting the old and vulerable.  We couldn't do any worse than what's been done already.  

People die in Canada, almost 800 every single day, and that was BEFORE covid. It sucks, but it happens.  And we should not be sacrificing young children in hopes that maybe someone in a nursing home will survive to have a few more months of diaper changes.  

I teach Sunday School, or at least I used to until mid March of this year.  Before I could though I had to have a vulnerable sector check done by the police, and I had to attend a training session that taught what to look for and what to do if abuse is suspected. 

All that is gone now.  Kids aren't seeing their teachers, their coaches or other community members, even play dates are discouraged or banned.  I'm genuniely terrified about what we're going to be finding out if child advocacy experts are right.  Hopefully pediatricians like Michelle Ward are wrong, she's quoted in the following article as saying that abuse hasn't gone away now, it's simply not being reported because we've removed vital and life saving networks.

https://www.nationalobserver.com/2020/04/01/news/child-abuse-will-spike-amid-covid-19-crisis-advocates-warn

Maybe they'll be as wrong as the medical science professionals who said that places like Ontario were going to be seeing people lined up 10 deep to be put on a ventilator.  That was the reason emergency measures were put in place after all, you can't change the script when the predictions have been proven horribly wrong.  

Sadly I don't think the child advocacy experts will be as wrong as the medical science people were when they forecasted the severity of Covid with nothing but bad assumptions and computer simulations.    

NYC nurse shares shocking hospital video of covid patient treatment....

This is so horrifying that I pray it isn't true.  But I have trouble believing this nurse would go on record if it weren't.  She is alleging that people not in need of a ventilator are being put on them, that patients with compromised immunity but Covid negatitive are being placed with Covid patients.  The reason she believes this is being done is due to Medicare and Medicaid providing extra funding for Covid patients, $29,000 for those put on ventilators. 

Her name is Erin Marie Olszewski, and she has been getting some press.  I'm surprised I hadn't come across this sooner. 

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8290251/NYC-nurse-claims-coronavirus-patients-literally-murdered.html

If these allegations are true it changes the narrative of this pandemic almost entirely.  While this is reportedly what happened at Elmhurst hospital in Queen's NYC, I don't doubt that if it did indeed happen there then it is also happening elsewhere in the for profit U.S. hospital system. 

Support for emergency measures shows how selfish some Canadians can be.

"We're all in the same boat".

How many times have you heard this thoughtless platitude?  I've heard it many times, and without exception it has come from someone for whom emergency measures are not that bad.  By "not that bad" I mean they have stable incomes, either from continuing employment or pension/retirement income.  They're healthy, secure and happily binge watching dumb TV shows.

All their essential needs are being met, and many that aren't essential.  There are armies of workers out keeping the supply chain open, maintaining the hydro grid and internet connections so that these selfish idiots can hunker comfortably in their bunkers while millions around them are too scared and depressed to speak.  I recently spoke with a high school acquanitance who actually prefers the new normal.

Put your feet into the shoes of someone who has lost a family member because their vital by-pass operation was cancelled.  Or a patient with a lump or growth that was due to be screened two or three months ago, told that early detection is the most vital tool in the box for surviving cancer, now sitting and waiting and wondering if it'll be too late to treat.  People dying alone because their families aren't allowed to visit, and then denied the chance to properly grieve with a funeral service.

If that's not enough to open the eyes of the self absorbed, then think of young children who have had their schooling taken away.  And in its place many have out of work depressed parents, with booze declared essential, a sure fire recipe for mental, physical and sexual abuse.

Things have gotten a bit better as lockdown type measures have eased, but there is still a lot of pain out there.  Millions are still out of work, people who've gone from being productive working members of their communities to being forced onto government welfare.  Businesses that have watched the Wal-Marts, Amazons and Home Depots be declared essential and not even shut down after outbreaks, while they sit and watch the bills pile up without adequate government support to keep them afloat.

I could go on and on.  For most people these emergency measures have been an inconvenience, but for a significant minority (my guess is 33% of the population) they've been devastating.

The SARS-Cov-2 is not going away anytime soon.  Maybe we'll get lucky and a rushed vaccine will be made available.  I won't be rolling up my sleeve though because doing science right takes time, vaccines take 3-5 years to develop, not a fraction of that for a very good reason, safety.  Maybe we'll be lucky and it will be safe without rigorous testing, but I'm not going to be taking the chance for at least a couple years

For me these self absorbed "we're all in the same boat" morons are the true Covidiots, and they're all crying again because of the huge crowds at Toronto beaches.  Hey kids, you can work in the grocery stores and Wal-Marts, at Amazon fulfillment centres and Tim Horton drive-thrus, because I want those things.  But when you're off stay home because I'm scared of this virus and I want to go visit my elderly Mommy and Daddy soon.

Go whine on someone else's shoulder and get over yourselves.

Zero evidence for extending Ontario's state of emergency

Ontario's provincial legislature is set to debate continuing Ontario's state of emergency once again this coming week.  The state of emergency, which has already been extended several times, is set to end on June 30th.  If approved it would mean emergency measures would be in place until at least mid July. 

These emergency measures are causing more death, pain and misery than they were designed to alleviate.  The cure has been worse than the disease.  Don't believe me?  Talk to someone who watched a family member die because their by-pass surgery was cancelled.  Or to the people who have been waiting for a cancer screening, knowing that early detection is the most vital tool in the box when it comes to surviving a malignancy.  Cancer is the number one cause of death in this country.  

Let's talk about the kids, forced to stay home because schools were closed.  Many kids have been isolating with parents who lost their jobs.  Job loss can and does lead to depression, which in turn often leads to alcohol and substance abuse, which in turn can lead ot child abuse....mental, physical and sexual. 

Those are the hard ones, but there are plenty more.  People dying alone, families denied the right to be with mothers, fathers and other loved ones as they pass.  No funerals to help people through the grieving process.  Graduations and other milestone events gone.  I'm 53, my cancelled vacation plans can be put off until next year, but you don't get graduations, the proms and sweet 16 parties back.  

Our entire society was tossed on its collective ear, with much of the pain being borne by the poor and marginalized.  Ain't that always the way.  This was supposed to be a war, we were fighting a virus that was going to have us lining up 10 deep for a bed in the ICU.  

It never happened.  Forecasts of Ontario needing a minumum of 1,300 critical care beds never came to fruition.  Thank God.  I'm not blaming the politicians for acting, they had experts forecasting a devestating scenario, and they had to do it without science but with computer based simulations.  There wasn't time for real science, and I don't fault the medical community for being wrong, they had to work on assumptions because that was all there was to work with.

The reason for declaring a state of emergency was to spare our already overburdened and underfunded health care system from being devastated.  Well, it has been.  As I write this there are only 286 people being treated for Covid in Ontatrio hospitals.  86 of those patients are in ICU and of those in ICU 59 are on a ventilator.  For every 50,000 people in Ontario this means one patient being treated for Covid.  This is evidence, not forecasts based on computer simulations.  

Ending the state of emergency does not mean life goes back to normal of course.  That will only  happen if a vaccine becomes available, or if the novel coronaviurs mutates and becomes even more benign that it already is, a scenario that is scientifically plausible however not certain.  

Education needs to continue so we can identify the small percentage of people who are at risk, and we need to stop killing people and destroying lives with emergency measures now.  

How does obesity factor into the severity of Covid-19?

From the very start I've viewed social distancing and so called lockdown measures as being almost entirely useless.  Empahisis on the word almost because I do think there is some minimal benefit, but nothing that is worth the costs that Canadians have had to pay, and continue to pay.  

I use the term "so called" when describing lockdown measures because nobody has ever been truly locked down.  People are still going to work, to pharmacies, bank atms, grocery stores, and much more.  We've simply been encouraged to limit our travels to that which is essential and to avoid contact with people outside of our immediate households as much as possible, with some places now liberalizing the rules somewhat.  

This is why I've always thought that these measures aren't going to do much to stop viral spread.  Think of Amazon fulfillment centres, food distribution warehouses, meat processing plants...and many more.  Basically you have veritable armies of workers going in and out of their places of employment 24/7.  They're also buying gas, riding transit, shopping in grocery and pharmacies, keying in their pin numbers on keypads.  No way the virus is going to stop spreading with all the activity going on, even at reduced levels there's still too many vectors for this virus to spread.

And yet we look at the results of countries and we see some getting slammed hard, others very lightly and every point in between.  Pretty much every developed western country has brought in social distancing and lockdown style measures except for Sweden.  So the assumption by many is that the countries that did well had citizens who were more diligent in following the advice of government and health officials. 

But that could be completely wrong.  

Looking at Belgium and Sweden, the country that had stricter lockdown measures, Belgium, has fared much worse than Sweden where schools, bars and restaraunts were allowed to stay open.  Why???  Did the Belgians totally disregard the orders of their experts?  That strains credulity I'm afraid.  

Maybe social distancing and all the other measures aren't the answer.  Perhaps there's a better and more logical explanation for why Sweden's death toll has been significantly lower than Belgium's.  To give you the magintude of the difference, Beligium has almost 9,700 deaths due to Covid as I am writing this, with a population of almost 11.6 million. That's 837 deaths per million Belgians.  Sweden by contrast has just 5,053 Covid deaths and their population is about 10,1 million.  That's 500 deaths per million Swedes.  

So Belgium's deaths per million is 67% higher than Sweden's.  WHY???

Perhaps Swedes are simply healthier than Belgians?  There's a growing body of evidence that is showing obesity is a major risk factor when it comes Covid being fatal.  The Guardian recently did a story with this title:  

Obesity is a major risk factor for dying of Covid-19. We need to take it more seriously.  

Does Belgium have a higher incidence of obesity than Sweden?  It turns out they do.  Belgium reportedly has 22.1% of its population listed as being obese, in Sweden the number is 20.6%.  It's not a huge difference, but it's not insignificant either.  In a country of 10,000,000 people each percentage point equals, 100,000 people.  So Belgium has over 200,000 more people that could be considered vulneralble based on this emerging scientific research.  

I'm not saying that obesity is the smoking gun, research shows that there are a number of variables that impact how severe Covid is.  But it does make sense that obseity would be a significant contributing factor because of the strain all that extra weight puts on a person's organs, especially the heart.  Being obese increases the risk of diabetes and kidney disease, and a host of other conditions.

In Canada we've seen what the biggest risk is, being old and sick.  When the novel coronavirus breaks out in a Long Term Care facility the deaths pile up.  LTCs as everyone knows are the final stop for those who are elderly, sick and dying.  Take away this demographic group and this would not be considered the emergency that it's being billed as.

This blog is a bit of a one string banjo, and the note I keep playing over and over is that lockdown measures are doing more harm than good.  The cure is exponentially worse than the disease.  We know a lot about who is at risk from covid now, and rather than destroying millions of lives by trying to keep everyone from getting infected we need to focus our limited and dwindling resources on protecting those for whom it's serious and let those who are younger and healthy get back to rebuilding their lives, sadly for some it's already too late.    

Are people losing faith in science due to Covid?

I'm noticing a worrying trend among people I talk to and interact with on social media.  Because of all the bad direction given from scientests in the medical field some are starting to question science itself.  I see it as being similar to what happened with many Roman Catholics after all the sex abuse scandals, some didn't just turn their backs on the Roman church, they turned their backs on God.

Not everyone of course, some still believe everything the high priests of science say, just as some Roman Catholics continue to believe in the authority of  the clergy within the Roman church.

Just yesterday (Friday June 19th)  this was a remark made by one Karen Ruddy in the comment section for the Facebook live feed of Doug Ford's latest briefing:  "I am sorry but after the riots and protests started I didn't believe any of the so called experts".

https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=2695130540602158&notif_id=1592586782556445&notif_t=live_video

What Karen is referring to obviously is the direction that was given about it being absolutley essential that people not gather in large groups.  Directives on social distancing have caused enormous pain and hardship, but the experts said it was absolultely required. So much so that By-Law officers have been handing out fines in the hundreds of dollars to people who dared to invite friends over for a backyard BBQ or other similar type activities.

There's a church in my town that held its first drive in worship service last Sunday.  I saw a video of the event posted to Facebook and some parishoners got out of their cars.  I didn't see any mixing and mingling, just people stretching their legs and some feeling of The Spirit. 

I spoke to a senior member of this church and indicated I'd be attending this coming Sunday service.  She told me that the pastor will be giving strict instruction for everyone to remain in their vehicles.  Although she did question why that should be needed when crowds numbering in the hundreds and even thousands can congregate in close proximity to protest. 

It's a good quesiton.

Personally I don't fault science, I lay blame on the medical experts speaking in the name of science.  For me it's no different from tainted clergy who claimed they were speaking for God.  It has been going on since the very beginning and some have tossed in the towel, rolling their eyes when some medical expert starts talking.

Right at the start Anthony Fauci among many other experts told us that the novel coronavirus was at least 10 times more deadly than the seasonal flu.  It wasn't expressed as "we believe", or "based on the evidence so far we're operating on the assumption", or even "our working hypothesis is....".

No, Fauci and the other high priests of medical science absolutely KNEW.  Now however that notion of covid being 10x more deadly (at least) is being called into question by some very reputable scientists.  Even the CDC has been reported as pegging the actual infection mortality rate at 0.4%, double what they list as the infection mortality rate of influenza which they peg at 0.2%

This isn't come from some alt-new site either, the reporting is from NBC:

https://www.wcnc.com/article/news/health/coronavirus/data-cdc-estimates-covid-19-mortality-rate/275-fc43f37f-6764-45e3-b615-123459f0082b

This has been going on far too long.  When the world first started paying attention to this virus Canada's top medical officer Dr. Tam confidently told Canadians that there was no need for people coming into the country from Wuhan or Italy to isolate.  Exercising an abundance of caution was not warranted because of the "opinion" of scientific experts with the WHO.  Only it wasn't presented as opinion, but scientific fact.  God has spoken, and God is science.

Masks aren't effective then they are.  People absolutley must avoid gathering in large groups, but then it's okay if it's a demonstration for something important.  Asymptomaitc people don't spread the virus, or maybe they're the main drivers of outbreaks, or maybe some asymptomatic people are infectious and others aren't.

It is past time to start taking the scientific gurus to task for the mayhem they have created.  Isolation measures resulting in millions of unemployed, suicides, deaths because of cancelled surgeries, abuse of spouses and children. A large number of Canadians have suffered tremendously because of decisions made based on bad medical scientific advice.  While it's strictly an opinion I am certain that more people have been damaged by lockdown measurs than the eight thousand three hundred odd deaths due to covid, exponentially more.

Mortality Rate

Totally useless, and just a political football being kicked around by those in favour of lockdown and those opposed.  Regardless of whether the percentage is 0.1 or 1 or even 10, Covid is not a disease that affects everyone the same.

Kids are getting it in Quebec after going back to school, but still not one Canadian child has died of the disease.  But when a breakout happens in a nursing home, look out.  An 85 year old with cancer, diabetes and cardiovascular disease likley has less than a 50/50 chance of surviving Covid, while a healthy 12 year old has next to zero chance of dying based on all the published data.

I will make one very important distinction though, mortality rate can be measured two ways.  The most common one I see being used by arm chair epidemiolgists is the case mortality rate.  These wanna be experts on infectious disease look at Canada's 100 odd thousand identified cases and the 8,300+ deaths and conclude that the overall mortality rate is over 8%.  WRONG, that's the case mortality rate.

The more important figure, and the one we don't know, is the infection mortality rate.  Because so many people contract the novel coronavirus but don't get sick, by and large they're not getting tested.  Why submit yourself to an invasive and painful nasal swab when you're perfectly healthy? 

There have been random studies done in New York, California, Great Britain and now Indiana that suggest the actual number of infections is at least 10x greater than what has been indentified.  There are now antibody tests that can be done to detect those who were infected previously but never got sick.

Why an advanced western nation like Canada hasn't undertaken such a study is beyond my comprehension.  There may very well already be one or even two million Canadians who have been infected by the novel coronavirus, but we don't know it becasue we haven't done random testing.  Why not?  This is standard operating procedure for infectious disease and is used to guide evidence based decision making.  Ontario alone could do it, simply test 25 or 50 thousand random people who are reasonably reflective of the province's population with parameters like sex, age, ethnicity and health profile.

Risk factors:

This is far and away the most important element in any discussion of Covid-19 for me.  The question that has yet to be completely answered is this:  Why do some people get seriously and sometimes fatally ill from Covid, while for others it's completely benign.  I say "completely answered" on purpose, because we're not totally in the dark here, and more and more information is coming out, almost every day.

Underlying Conditions that can make Covid more serious.

These are the ones of which I am aware.  Cancer, Cardiovascular and Kidney diseases, Diabetes, Asthma, Liver Disease, Obesity....and basically any condition that affects the heart or lungs and/or comprimises the immune system.  Combine these underlying conditions with advanced age and it's even more serious.

https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/need-extra-precautions/groups-at-higher-risk.html

Vitamin D deficiency:

Everything I have read so far says that more study is needed, but that there is a statiscally significant correlation between Vitamin D deficiency and Covid being more serious and deadly.  It is being linked to the Cytokine Storm where a person's immune system goes into hyperdrive, attacking not just the virus but healthy cells and tissue as well:

https://www.miamiherald.com/living/health-fitness/chew-on-this/article243653087.html

Gentic markers like HLA

This is a relatively new one that I came across.  A statistically significant differentiation between those with a presence of Human Leukocyte Antigen and those who lack it, with the latter having better covid outcomes.  Apparently people in Northern Italy were more prone to have this genetic marker than those in the southern parts of the country, and it was Northern Italy which was the much harder hit of the two regions.

https://www.newswise.com/coronavirus/genetic-shield-may-explain-lower-covid-mortality-in-southern-italy-compared-to-north/?article_id=732676

Blood Type:

This is the most recent potential risk fact that I've come across.  Its now being reported that people with blood types of A have a statiscally significant greater risk of Covid being serious, while those with O types have better outcomes.  As with pretty much all risk factors the experts are saying more study is needed.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/sci-tech/study-ties-blood-type-to-covid-19-risk-o-may-help-a-hurt-1.4989349

Conclusion:

Ultimately policy decisions on how to deal with the coronavirus pandemic need to be EVIDENCE BASED, not on opinions stated as fact.  It boggles my mind that Canada has only recently begun talking about collecting Covid data with racial statisistics included.  I find this absolutely and utterly incomprehensible.

Everyone is pointing to lockdown and isolation measures as the definitive reason why some countries and regions are having better outcomes than others, but it doesn't stand up to scrutiny.  I have little doubt that social distancing and all the rest has had some affect on the rate of transmission, but it's impossible to say how much.

Why is a country like Belgium that brought in strict measures being hit harder than a country like Sweden that kept schools, bars and restaraunts open?  Lockdown proponents likes to compare Sweden with Norway where deaths have been extremely low.  But maybe the reason has a lot to do with things like the overall health of the population, blood type dispersal and genetics.

Look at the United States, the land of deep fryed supersized everything.  I've seen studies suggesting fully one third of Americans are clinically obese.  Is it any wonder perhaps that some states are being so hard hit?  Maybe the solution isn't to keep people away from each other so much as it is to keep people away from the dessert cart.

Let's spend our limited and fastly dwindling resources on understanding this disease, and base  decisions on what we know.  Advise those for whom data demonstrates a statistically increased risk of Covid being serious to be hyper vigilant and cautious, and constantly update the population as new and better information becomes available.  And in the meanwhile open things back up and rescue the millions of people who are seeing their lives destroyed.

For many it's already too late, lockdown measures killed them, not Covid.  Scientists aren't infallible, no more than Roman Catholic priests.

Are blacks more prone to criminal behaviour?

Before anything I want to answer the question in the subject line of this blog post.  And the answer is NO!!!  Skin pigmetation has no role in determining behaviour, be it criminal or otherwise,  ZERO.  

Why did I choose to make the subject line so inflamatory?  

I imagine some saw it and felt their blood pressure go up a notch.  Sadly I think others probably saw it and said "Good, here's someone who shares my point of view".  

It's this latter group that I'm hoping will read on.  I wrote what I wrote intentionally, because it's a view that is still out there.  And this part is hard to admit, but its a view that used to simmer deep down in my conciousness.  Not my subconcious....it was there, not at the top of my mind, but just below the surface. 

A big reason I think that problems persist is that it can be very difficult to ask the hard questions.  I know that in putting up as a title the question:  Are blacks more prone to criminal behaviour....that I'm stepping in it big time and this can go horribly wrong.  That's why people don't ask the hard questions, and that's why I believe difficult but essential questions never get asked, and people persist in their views.  Basically things never getter better in any meaningful and lasting way.

I said this was a view that simmered just below the surface in my own concious thoughts.  Why?  

Why did I think that it could be possible for something as random as skin pigmentation to predispose some people to certain behaviours?  I didn't come to this view all on my own, I had a lot of help, too much help.

I'm 53 years of age, born in 1966.  I have lived in many different places, both in Canada and the United States.  Most of my early childhood was spent in the U.S.  For about ten of my first twelve years our family lived in Staten Island New York, Northern New Jersey and Oregon.  Most of my growing up in Canada was in the suburbs of Toronto, places like Burlington, Pickering and Etobicoke.

Back it the 1970s, so up until I was 14 years of age, everywhere we lived had one common denominator, I always lived in areas that were white.  Not just predominatly white but overwhelmingly white, that was true both in the United States as well as Canada.  

I lived in Bergen County New Jersey from the time I was in kindergarten until I was in grade four.  At Clare E. Coleman Elementary we had one black student, not just in my class but in the entire school. Her name was, (and I pray still is) Cathy, she and I were in Mrs. Vandenberg's class.  In  October of 1975 we moved to Burlington Ontario, and I don't recall there being even one black student in the entire school.   From there it was onto Portland Oregon for my grade six year, and again I don't recall there being a single black student.  In fact the only minority I remember was Jason who was Hispanic.

It wasn't until our family moved back permanently to Canada in 1978 that I saw some racial diversity.  At Frenchman's Bay P.S. in Pickering there were some students of colour, Curtis, Troy, Spencer were my age, there was also Sterling whose background was Indian (from India), still predominantly white but not as much as in my earlier years.

I hope I'm not boring my readers, (all three of them) with my personal history.  

What I'm trying to do is to establish my context.  That of a white kid growing up in an overwhelmingly white world.  I was not friends with Cathy back in NJ, and I didn't have a black friend until grade 7 when Curtis and I hung out together at times.  Calling Curtis a friend is probably stretching things, but we did interact at school.  

It was actually Curtis who was the first (and I believe only) person to accuse me of being a racist.  Someone burned me with a joke in grade seven and I was anxious to repeat it.  I was asked:  "Hey Gordon, how tall our you"?  When I said 5'4" (or whatever height I was back then) the retort was:  "I didn't know shit piled that high".  I repeated it to Curtis, with no racist intent, and he went at me.  Thankfully I was able to hold him down and explain that I was just repeating a joke someone had burned me with, that it had nothing to do with him being black.  He forgave me.  

I'm lucky, I had amazing parents, and neither would tolerate racism.  I was in grade two or three when I first encountered the N word, but I didn't know what it meant.  I went home and asked my mother but she didn't answer.  She took me into the bathroom and had me stick out my tongue and then swabbed it with soap.  She said if I ever said that word again she'd make me eat the whole bar.

In 1977 when we moved to Oregon my Dad was opening a retail bank branch in dowtown Portland.  The new branch was on a street called Halsey if memory serves, and years later I was told that Halsey was Portland's own Mason Dixon line, one side white and the other black.  As you moved further into the white area the city was richer, further into the black area became poorer.  My Dad's bank was on the black side of the street.  Because of this my Dad made a point of hiring a number of black tellers, not because of affirmative action or anything like that, but because he wanted his staff to be reflective of the community where he was operating.

I'd never heard my father swear, he was not a man given to profanity.  But one day some big wigs from head office in Toronto came to our house just ahead of the grand opening.  I was ushered into my bedroom while Dad and these execs sat around the bar in our family room.  My father was stressed out with the opening and had developped strep throat, his voice was a rasp.  

One of the Toronto guys asked my Dad what the plans were for the opening.  "Nothing special", was my Dad's reply, "just gonna do the usual coffee and donuts thing".  All I remember at that time was my Father finding his voice and hearing raspy but loud and strong F bombs being dropped.  

Years later my Mother filled me in.  When my Dad said he was gonna do coffee and donuts one of the T.O. crew said:  "Don't do that, you'll have every coon in the area coming in".  Years later my Mother filled me in:  "Your Father threatened to kick their effiin asses all the way back to Toronto if they told him how to run his branch".  About six months later he handed in his resignation, I think he would have done it sooner, but with a wife and three children he had to make sure he had his ducks lined up before leaving.

I think I've painted the picture well enough, a white kid with a priveleged upbringing, raised with decent values.  Not perfect maybe, but pretty darned good.  

I'm going to add one more snippet, from when I was about sixteen.  Ah sixteen, on the cusp of adulthood, when one looks to assert their independence and identity.  The Dukes of Hazzard was must see TV on Friday's, and besides Catherine Bach in her mouth watering Daisy Dukes there was the General Lee, a car that had the confederate flag on its hood.  

I bought a confederate flag at a flea market and hung it over my bed, I was a rebel.  My Mother didn't explode, but she told me in no uncertain terms that she wasn't allowing a racist symbol in her house.  When I protested that it wasn't a racist symbol, that it was about rebellion she gave me a history lesson.  The flag came down and was replaced with a red Maple Leaf.

So how did I come to have this notion, just below the surface, that skin colour could play a role in criminality?  I recall a debate that raged sometime in the 1980s, about whether Toronto Police should collect criminal statistics based on race.  And I recall thinking it was perfectly rationale, that data is good....that planted the seed.  

Media had already been working on me as well.  Look at Dirty Harry, there's a scene that I've seen shared on social media where Clint Eastwood's character foils a robbery at a coffee shop.  In this snippet all the gun weilding criminals are black, all the victims are white.  Then in the late 80's the TV show COPS hit the airwaves.  Laws divided drugs between rich and poor, hard and soft, black and white....crack was a black hard street drug, cocaine was a softer rich white drug.  

That seed took root, thankfully those roots didn't run deep, but they were there.  

I differentiated between prejudice and racism.  For me prejudice was unavoidable, and in many ways I think it still is.  It's part of human nature to compartmentalize things, even fellow human beings and I don't think it's exclusive to people who are white, everyone does it.  Racism however is acting on that prejudice, and that's something that was drilled into my tiny brain from an early age.

That's why I believe the United States was able to elect Barack Obama twice to the Presidency of the United States, and then turn around and elect such a disgusting waste of skin like Trump.  Obama was the exception, while Trump plays to the prejudiced and racist rule.  

So how do we get past it?  How did I get past it?  

Unfortunately I don't think it's easy, the answer is education.  Starting in my late twenties and onward I've educated myself, and much of what I've learned is distrubing, in fact disturbing isn't a strong enough word.  I apologize for the profanity, but fucking disgusting is what it is.  

After the Civil War in the United States the economy of the southern states was utterly in ruin.  Yes the slaves had been emancipated, but if they could be tossed in jail they could be forced to work as slaves again, to rebuild the infrastructure the war had destroyed.  Black men were arrested for things like vagrancy, or anything else that could be thought up.  

When prison gangs were seen working the roads, bridges and railways they were either predominantly or entirely black.  Get the picture?  See all those criminals in their prison outfits?  Black equals crime.

I've read that the greatest human migration in history that wasn't the result of war, famine or natural disaster happened after the Civil War when a great exodus of blacks left the south for places like Oakland, Detroit, Chicago and NYC.  It wasn't for economic opportunity that blacks fled the south, it was to escape being tossed in jail and enslaved again.  

Nova Scotia is said to be a hotbed of racism in Canada.  Before the Civil War it was the final destination for many on the Underground Railroad.  Former slaves with no formal education entrenched the racist opinion here in Canada, black equals ignorance and stupidity.    

I could go on and on but I'll end it here with a suggestion.  Anyone who still has even an inkling that somehow a person's race plays a role in behaviour, criminal or otherwise, please watch the Netflix documentary 13th.  I saw it a few years back and it added to what I already knew and helped water the roots of better understanding in my own mind.  

Before watching this amazing documentary I wasn't even aware of the 1912 film "Birth of a Nation" that glorified the KKK and was praised by U.S. President Woodrow Wilson.  

Here is a clip, please watch:

Only 383 Covid patients in all of Ontario, yet the state of emergency drags on

Ontario is a province of more than 14 million people, about 6 million of whom live in the Greater Toronto Area, or GTA for short.  Out of this entire population there are currently only 383 patients being treated for Covid-19, the disease that can result from being infected with the novel and mostly benign coronavirus.  

I use the words "can result" intentionally, because I have trouble with the concept of saying someone has a disease when it doesn't make them sick.  The whole problem with trying to stop or even slow the spread of this virus is that the majority of people who get it, they don't know they have it because their immune system is strong enough to fight it off.  

It's time Canada and our respective governments came to their collective senses, we can't stop this virus from spreading, to think otherwise is nothing short of rank ignorance.  I know there are some dim bulbs out there who think we could somehow just lock everyone in their homes for two weeks and then magically the virus would go away.   

Even if we could do that somehow, it still wouldn't work.  The virus would still be spreading while everyone was locked down.  Morons are getting their shorts in a knot whenever there's a report of an outbreak somewhere, thinking that somehow the virus is just going to vanish and allow everyone to go back to life the way it was before the heavy hand of government came slamming down.  Like little children who think if they're extra good Mommy and Daddy will let them stay up late.

Does anyone with two IQ points to rub together seriously think we could shutter hospitals, police and fire departments?  That we could simply tell people to stock up with two or three weeks worth of groceries and to hunker in the bunkers for fifteen or so days?  Anyone who seriously thinks that is possible isn't just building sandcastles in the sky, they're close to moving in.  

The virus isn't going away, and in point of fact it may never go away.  It could very well be a constant thing, much like influenza which killed 8,511 people in 2018 according to Statistics Canada.  

So what are we going to do?  Are we going to continue destroying the lives of millions of people for a virus that isn't a health threat for 99% of the population?  

There's only one logical thing to do in my less than humble opinion.  

We need to do whatever we can to protect those for whom Covid can be serious and potentially fatal, and take our lumps.  It sucks, but not as much as what we're doing in trying to slow the spread.  From the beginning I've been singing from the songbook that says our response is worse than the disease, and the chorus is getting bigger and louder.  

If you don't believe me check out Dr. John Ionnidis, someone The Atlantic said may be one of the most influential scientists alive.  

https://insurancenewsnet.com/oarticle/world-leading-infectious-disease-expert-explains-why-government-lockdowns-should-end#.XurGd5pKi70

What does it mean to be progressive now?

I'm old, my twenty year old thinks I fart dust.  I used to view myself as a progressive, I still do but I don't know whether my views match up with the broader culture now.

I tend to view the political realm as being a circle, and the centre of that circle represents the ideal, something we'll likely never reach but something that we strive for.  No matter where we are on the line of the circle, there's an angle and distance we must progress to reach that ideal.  As a society we can be off by a few degrees, but we can still be moving in the right direction and can come close to that ideal.  But if we keep moving in the same direction after coming close to that wonderful spot, then we'll move further and further away from that perfect point. 

After JK Rowlings twitter musings on "people who menstruate" I was scratching my head.  I'm old, for me menstruation is not a word that comes up in normal conversation, and certainly has never been used to identify people.  Recently there was a Meghan Murphy's talk at a Toronto public library, and the protests that ensued.  I didn't even know what TERF meant.  

It struck me how human rights really is a zero sum game, that extending rights to one group means taking them away from another.  When women were granted the right to vote it cost men the weight of their franchise.  When slavery was abolished in the United States it removed the rights of slave owners.  Both these are positives, women make up roughly 50% of the population, and nobody should have the right to own another human being.

But what do you do when it's the rights of some women to feel safe, versus the rights of transgender people to use the change rooms and facilities that line up with the gender they identify with?  Grant rights to those who are transgender and you take away the rights of women who don't feel safe.  This is all about feelings isn't it?  As I understand the whole transgender issue is that there are people who don't identify with their biological sex, there are men who don't feel they are men, and women who don't feel they are men.  

To my way of thinking this doesn't compare with issue like abolition or the suffrage movement, not even close.  I don't wish to be unkind to anyone who is transgender, and I must admit I don't know anyone, although I have in the past, but not well.  

It's been said that the adage:  "May you live in interesting times" is a curse, and it seems to me that as I travel down the backside of the hill of middle age towards senility and everything that goes with it, that these are indeed interesting times.  

As the clamps come off cases will likely rise....

Lockdown restrictions are easing, in my part of Ontario you can now dine at a restaraunt provided there's a patio.  I've been out on the tennis court several times and have played a couple rounds of golf.  I'm still waiting for my home church to re-open but another congregation has started drive in services.  It's still a long way from normal, but at least we're moving in that direction.

In my small community there is a fear being expressed by some that we will start being inundated with people coming from the GTA where more stringent measures are still in place.  My own opinion is, let them come.  I have never wanted to live in a society where people had to show their papers when out and about.

Covid is not going away anytime soon, and notwithstanding some reports that a vaccine might be available within just a few short months, I believe it is something we're simply going to have to get used to.  

Vaccines typically take 3+ years to develop, and there is good reason for that, it's called safety.  Pre-clinical work followed by phase one, two and three trials are designed to provide mountains of data and lots of time to assure both efficacy and safety.  Rush things along and a vaccine might not prove itself effective, and worse still it might prove to be unsafe.  Side effects can sometimes take years to come to light, and I will not be rolling up my sleeve for at least a couple of years if a shot does become available late this year or early next.

Meanwhile if I gaze into my cracked and cloudy crystal ball I'm seeing places that have largely been spared getting hit hard with new cases.  I don't necessarily view that as a bad thing, so long as cases don't turn into a surge of patients overwhelming the healthcare system.  If the vast majority of cases result in people simply having to isolate themselves at home for 14 days, then all should be good in my view.  

It's past time that the Nanny State backed off and started trusting her children.  We've been at this for three months now and people know the risks.  We've been allowed to shop at Wal-Mart, Home Depot the grocery store and order from Amazon fulfillment centres.  And despite outbreaks none of these places have been forced to shut down.  It's time to let restaraunts and other businesses open their doors and leave it up to individuals to decide whether or not they're comfortable patronizing them or not.  

Life goes on, if you're a person of faith this life isn't the end, it is simply a transitional phase of eternal existence.  For those who think this life is all there is, when it's over....oh well, then it's over.  In the meantime I'll try and leave you with something I think is funny.

With Ontario now talking about 10 person "bubbles" its basically crisis over...

We must remember that so called lockdown measures were never put in place to save lives or to stop people from contracting the novel coronavirus.  The rationale from the start was to slow, (not stop) the spread and to flatten the proverbial curve so that our health care system would not be overwhelmed.  

That was the reason, full stop.  

You can't change the narrative after destoying the lives of millions of people, heaping pain and misery on counltless individuals including young children.  People get sick and die, it's been happening since time began and Canadians know that it's reality.  That's why we don't do this every year.  

8,511 Canadians died from the flu in 2018 as per Statscan, including young children, , the 6th leading cause of death that year.  But we accept that because our health care system is used to it, so we have to practice hallway medicine and perform triage, that's the price of having a functioning society.  

About 12,000 people are killed or seriously injured on Canada's roads every year, again inlucluding young children.  And here too, we accept that because nobody has wanted to live in a society with Big Brother watching our every move, restricting all driving to only that which is strictly essential.  

And this year we're seeing people die from Covid-19.  Death is death is death.  Somone dying of Covid isn't more dead than somone who died of the flu, or from cancer, or from being in a head on collision because of texting and driving.  Canadians accept death.  It happens.  This year Canada was expected to have somewhere around 290,000 people die, regardless of Covid.  

Could we bring in draconian measures and mitigate some of these deaths?  Absolutely, but we don't, or at least we never have until this year.  And we only did it because Covid-19 was so lethal that our hospital ICU beds were going to have people lined up 8, 9, or 10 deep waiting for a ventilator, or so the computer models said anyway.

Well, that never happened.  

In Ontario the number of patients being treated for Covid has been dropping steadily for weeks.  I started tracking daily on May 25th after the massive gathering took place in Trinity Bellwood park.  Remember how that was going to cause a surge of patients needing treatment?  It never happened, on May 25th Ontario Hospitals had 878 patients, now that number is down to just 527.  

It's hard to fault the Ontario government for moving slowly, after all they and their media mouthpieces have spent the past 3 months trying to scare the bejeebers out of everyone.  And by and large they accomplished their goal, many people are still terrified of the novel and mostly benign coronavirus.  

On my facebook page high school friends of mine admonsihed me for my views, and I was told that a classmate of mine had contracted the virus.  "Gordon, you have to take this seriously, Morag (not her name) has Covid and she's fighting for her life".   As it turned out she was quarantined in a motel room in the northern part of the GTA after contracting the coronavirus at an LTC where she works. 

Yes, Covid can be deadly, for less than 1% of the population. But it's not anywhere near as deadly as early computer models predicted.  Incidentally, for anyone who isn't clear on the subject, computer modelling is not science.  

I'm convinced the Ontario government is aware of this, that the crisis is over, that in fact there never really was a crisis.  But politics is politics and they just can't wave a flag and say:  "Okay, everyone go back to life as normal".  Not after weeks and months of doom and gloom, that would be electoral suicide.  Sorry for all the suicides, deaths from cancelled surgeries and to all the kids locked down with out of work, abusive alcoholic parents but the computer told us to do it.  

Instead we get 10 person bubbles, which anyone with any degree of critical thinking skills knows is frought with so many problems as to make it almost totally pointles.  I see it as a pretty much an empty gesture designed to make it look like something is being done. 

"I don't want Bob's family in our bubble, I asked Joe about his but he said his bubble is already full, and Jane wants Jeff's family in her bubble but they have five kids".   What a joke.   

One last note.  While the crisis is over for over 99% of the population, there's still that small minority for whom Covid is extremely serious and potentially deadly.  My biggest fear is that complancency will set in and that people will behave recklessly around those for whom Covid could very well mean a trip to the ICU and possibly a ventilator.  

Peace.  

Ontario's case mortality rates by age....

Determining a broad based mortality rate for Covid-19 has always seemed a pretty pointless exercise to me, given that this disease is exponentially more serious for those who are older.

Going off the numbers reported by CTV today (Thursday June 11, 2020) Ontario has identified 31,544 positive cases and 2,487 deaths.  Those numbers show that there is almost an 8% fatality rate for people who test positive for the novel coronavirus in the province of Ontario. 

But of course there's a huge difference between a case mortality rate and an infection mortality rate. Because not everyone who becomes infected with the novel coronavirus gets tested the actual infection mortality rate is going to be much lower than the case mortality rate.

Based on randomized testing in places like California, New York, Indiana and Great Britain the actual number of infections in Ontario is likely at lest ten times greater than what has been identified through testing.  That would mean more than 300,000 cases of Covid-19 in the province, and a mortality rate of less than 1%. 

But "likely" doesn't mean certainly.  The actual number of infections is unknown, without randomized testing  all one can do is guess, and guessing is not scientific.  That's why the computer models have been so horribly wrong. 

So dealing with what we know here are the numbers.

For Ontarians aged 0-19 years of age there have been 1,314 identified cases and zero deaths.  That makes the math simple, for this group the case mortality rate is currently 0%.  

The 20 to 39 age group has 8,708 confirmed cases with 11 deaths, puting the case mortality rate at 0.12%

For those aged 40 to 59 (my own bracket) there have been 9,675 identfied cases and 94 deaths for 0.9%

60 to 79 years has 6,171 confirmed cases with 657 deaths equalling 10.6%

And finally 80+ has 5,662 confirmed cases with 1,725 deaths for over 30% mortality.

All this simply serves to confirm what everyone already knows, that Covid-19 is increasingly deadly the older a person is.  It would be edifying to have access to further data including the number of people dying with compromised health conditions like cancer, diabetes, cardiovascular and kidney diseases, hypertension and all the rest. 

And it would helpful to have a better idea what the actual infection rate is, not just those who've been identified by a confirmed positive test.  Is the actual number of infections double, five times greater, ten times greater or more?  Regardless we can see that for those under the age of 60 there's less than a 1% of dying from Covid-19.   

Why did it take George Floyd's death for Canadians to rediscover their humanity?

For almost three months Canadians had quarantined their humanity out of fear of the novel coronavirus.  When funerals were cancelled hardly a peep was heard, little concern expressed for those grieving the loss of loved ones.  "We have to stop the spread", was the reply, so we have to make sacrifices.  Same when schools were shuttered, with many children also seeing their parents lose their jobs.  Hardly anyone raised a hand to object that this was a recipe for abuse, especially with liquor stores being essential.  

Yes, liquor was essential, but our humanity was locked down.

Back on February 26th I decided to give up on social media posting during the Lenten season.  I ended up breaking that fast on March 18th, unable to hold my digital tongue any longer when I saw the insane response governments were making to combat Covid-19.  

I posted a message to both an investor  forum I was participating in, and then copied and pasted it to my FaceBook page.  I spoke to a family member who, while agreeing with what I said, advised that it was "too soon", and that people were too afraid.  I took it off of Facebook, but it stayed up on the investor forum where I participate with the name growacet.  

Here is what I wrote almost three months ago now:

THIS IS NUTS!!!  

Kids are calling coronavirus the "boomer remover", and while inventing that term won't win anyone a Nobel prize, its pretty bang on the money.  I just read about a study done on deaths in Italy and overwhelmingly the poeple falling victim to Covid are the elderly, especially those who also have medical conditions like diabetes, cvd, pah and the like.  

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2020-03-18/99-of-those-who-died-from-virus-had-other-illness-italy-says

Our society has such a fear of dying,  I've heard people, when asked their age, say something like: "I'm eighty three years....young".  We can't even say the world old.  And now instead of funerals we have celebrations of life, ugh, we're in total denial as a culture.  Everyone on this planet is suffering from a terminal illness called life, and the mortality rate is 100%.  

So now we're turning society upside down so that some 75 year old whose battery is down to its last 10% can have another few years in a wheelchair.  No wonder so many old people are ignoring all the social distancing advice.  If I was 75 and suffering from Diabetes....I would too, cripes I might only have 5 or so years left, and each passing year is worse than the one before.  

"What's that sonny, you want me to skip going to the Fleetwood Mac reunion show"?  "Shut the front door, I ain't gonna live forever"!

https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/baby-boomers-coronavirus-covid-19-966935/?fbclid=IwAR15xfKcAViccIeCFshLb03A_uhah3gzTMJFunxPra5FlJBqlQBDY1BR8PE

In Canada Prime Minister Selfie is talking about $80 billion in borrowed money being thrown at this, in the US with President Multiple Bankruptcies they're talking about a trillion.  Not to save lives though, but rather to flatten the curve so the death toll is more manageable.  Why not take $5 billion and convert some hotels into temporary hospitals/pallalitive care centres....maybe get Fleetwood Mac to tour them.  

And meanwhile leave the young and otherwise healthy to enjoy their lives, and if they get Covid....oh well, some of them will get the flu too.

I know it sounds callous, but jimeney crickets this is getting out of hand....they're talking about the possibility of martial law in Canada, brining in the Extreme Measures Act...a reworked version of the old War Measures Act.  Civil liberties?  Not if you sneeze.  

Peace, God bless and be well, none of us is going to live forever.  

Well for almost three months it lasted, until George Floyd's brutal murder, and then Canadians finally "grew a set".  It should never have taken that long.  

We can care about racial equality, and about people being separated from loved ones who are dying, for kids locked out of school and locked down with parents who have been tossed out of work with full access to booze, a recipe for abuse if ever there was one.  We can protest for racial justice and police accountability, and speak out for the people dying because their cardiac surgery was delayed, as well as for those who will die because their cancer wasn't detected early.