Agreed. I felt mild trepidation about Astrazeneca, but decided the risks were negligible. Now that the blood clots seem to be about 1 in 60000 cases, the risks… still seem negligible. Can nobody do the math?
“Math is hard” — Barbie.
I think it’s simply the journalistic ethos to tell all sides of the story.
Yep. 25,000 dead from Covid. 1.3 million infected, some of them with life-altering results. But we have to find another side.
OMG! Two died from suspected blood clots from one of the Vaccines!
THESE ARE JUST THE SAME! SO BEWARE OF VACCINES!
- People suck at understanding risk factors.
- Journalists suck at understanding science, and feed into #1 above
“It’s like algebra…why you gotta put numbers and letters together?” — Letterkenny
VITT is basically an immune reaction to a drug which lowers platelets. It’s not like it’s something completely new to medicine, perhaps 3.5% of people who are given heparin might have a similar reaction. I don’t want to minimize problems or discount those who suffered. However, I believe the risk, much lower than something like taking birth control, should be weighed against the benefits, the fact Covid causes problems (and “long Covid” might be due to small clots) and the increase in anxiety and people deciding not to vaccinate… it’s a bit of a dog’s breakfast. If other vaccines are available now, and lack those problems, that is another thing.
Well, another day gone and I didn’t use calculus once.
BC hit a two month low today. Alberta cases trending down. Also Saskatchewan, but not as fast as BC and Alberta.
Manitoba had it’s highest ever caseload today. Anybody there who can tell us what’s happening? An anomolous spike? Something else?
My aunt, who has one kid in Nova Scotia and another in BC (none in ON) tells me that in Ontario there is now a three and a half year backlog in elective surgeries. —if you put your name in now for a knee replacement, say, you can expect to get it in late 2024. The delay”s all caused by COVID she says.
- is this true?
- if so…wow.
That’s not what the Ontario website is saying:
Patient’s Wait Time from Decision to Having Orthopedic Surgery – Health Quality Ontario (hqontario.ca)
Except that optional knee surgery is a poor indicator. That was probably all just canceled. The wait time for that specific surgery for low priority cases at a specific hospital may be much worse than even the Ontario orthopedic surgery averages.
FWIW, waiting-time blowout is probably under-reporting. It says that optional low-priority medicine was canceled, and ‘doctors visits’ are optional low-priority medicine, and that means that the waiting lists for optional surgery are artificially depressed because doctors aren’t referring patients for surgery.
Figure that the median waiting time may not go down when full service is restored – because the wait lists are going to be growing as fast as the completed surgery lists.
This article says that there is an 84 week backlog of elective surgeries in Ontario. And that is from September 2020.
I’ve just had some x-rays on my hip that has been giving me problems. My thought is that I might need a replacement down the road and I am considering getting ‘in line’ now.
Using historical data, that suggests that the backlog is much greater than the waiting list.
… and that it will take 84 weeks for the backlog to clear. (But an 84 week period to clear the backlog could mean that for 84 weeks, the waiting list is 1 week longer than normal.)
Hospitals in general have a much different view of backlogs and waiting lists than patients do: 95% of the patients might see that they have to wait for surgery screaming in pain, and the hospital staff might see that 99% of the time the surgical theater is empty and the staff are unemployed. It’s rare for medical services to give as much attention to variance as they do to averages (and even more rare for attention to be given to 3rd-moment statistics).
I expect the wait-list to rise once the backlog starts to clear, then eventually the wait list to fall as the backlog is cleared. The hospitals will have a limited ability to clear the backlog, and a more limited ability to increase that rate at which they clear the backlog.
… and an even more limited ability to increase the rate at which they are allowed to increase the rate at which they clear the backlog: the number of new staff they bring on, and the rate at which they can bring on new staff is limited, and the rate at which they can increase that rate is also limited…
Yeah, in general the prognosis is not great.
A lot of Canadian surgeons would happily operate more. They cannot always get as much staffed OR time as they want. That said, backlogs were a thing before Covid, which obviously makes them much worse.
What Canadians have done well is generally wear masks and follow advice. Our death rate per capita is better than many.
Federal government has extended the body set closures for another month, until vaccination rates in Canada hit targets.
We also say sorry when we forget to wear masks.
Alberta drops all restrictions on July 1, and Saskatchewan on July 17. This is probably too early as there are still so many unvaccinated people. I imagine the newest variant will rip through some unprotected communities. The good news for me is I got my second shot on the weekend. My first was AstraZeneca and I choose Pfizer for the second.
I will still avoid Calgary Stampede this year though. Mixing with thousands of people not wearing masks seems like asking for trouble. I also have a feeling their will be a lot of anti maskers there, who are not vaccinated.
Ontario is reporting under 300 cases for the 1st time in 9 months:
They have also announced the ending of quarantine for returning fully vaccinated Canadians & PR, effective July 5: