The trend is still upward - the worst is yet to come. Follow the rules and we will get through this

By Pepper Parr
March 27th, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON

The number of people infected and the number of people dying of COVID-19 are higher now in the United States than they are were in China.

Our data comes from a reputable source – you might want to review all the data. It can be found HERE

The increase for New York city was 40% in one day.

The data below shows what has taken place in one week.

March 27

March 27th, 2020

March 26

March 26th, 2020

Livde screen Mar 23

March 23rd, 2020

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1 comment to The trend is still upward – the worst is yet to come. Follow the rules and we will get through this

  • Tom Muir

    Yes, it’s early days in the unprecedented events, and in my view, quite outstanding and responsive collective policy mix of our 3 levels of government. I agree we will make it out of this place – time will not end – but the transition and recovery will likely be a profound and painful journey. This is truly a civil emergency, and the policies to get us out of this hard place will only work if we do not ignore these rules.

    However, it is evident from the daily news that many people just don’t get the gravity of the situation and are in fact scoffing at or making light of the situation by actively violating the rules, particularly social spacing, case isolation and quarantine, mixing in groups, and staying home as much as possible. I just heard that some are treating shopping as family outings. This is mindlessly stupid and in fact dangerous.

    Do these people know that the health care system, hospitals, doctors and surgeons are now is an mode of preparation and for many things are shut down. There are actually recently diagnosed cancer patients who cannot get surgery to remove tumors because of the patient case loads already surging due to COVID19.

    Such people should have to watch the TV news coming out of New York showing nursing staff crying every shift as the watch patients die unable to speak to relatives because their lungs are full of fluid and they are suffocating to death.

    Personally, I am thankful for the responsive leadership shown by our Mayor Meed Ward, the Provincial Premier Ford and Cabinet, and Prime Minister Trudeau and the leaders of all minority parties. I’m not sure they fully comprehend what they have all done collectively, but it does measure up as a much needed start to meet the history making time we are now living in.

    Of an underlining note to the responsiveness of this policy-making mood, in my view, the COVID19 outbreaks and needed control policies that closed a significant number of businesses has been met with government fiscal policy large stimulus programs. Today, March 27, Prime Minister Trudeau announced a wage subsidy program paying up to 75 % of the wages of employees who have lost their jobs due to COVID-19impacts and suppression policies, and whose employers qualify under the policy.

    This is a most important and substantial policy to greatly lighten the burden on displaced workers. It means the possibility of not just staying at home, but potentially working too.

    I think this is fabulous, as whatever the cost, it will be worth every penny because we need to succeed in propping up the small and medium business structure in danger of collapsing due to what public health policies are needed to save the country, the health care system, and the economy from this scourge.

    Much of the comment following is abstracted from the below named studies, mainly Imperial College, and condensed and edited by me.

    Modelling results from 3 organizations (Imperial College, Johns Hopkins, and a Dutch Health Agency as reported in the Science Weekly News edition of March 27 2020) demonstrate that to get towards control it will be necessary to layer multiple interventions, regardless of whether suppression or mitigation is the overarching policy goal. However, suppression will require the layering of more intensive and socially disruptive measures.

    The situation in Burlington and Halton reflects the policy mix of the Federal, provincial and municipal governments. This policy mix is extensive and includes; population-wide social distancing and “staying home”, partial mandatory lock-down of defined non-essential economic activities and business, home isolation and quarantine of cases, and school and university closure.

    Overall, the modelling results suggest that this policy mix has a high potential to suppress transmission below the threshold of R=1 (each case infects one other case) required to rapidly reduce case incidence. The mean starting R is between 2.0 and 2.6, replication.

    This rapid reduction goal is what we want, indeed need, to try to avoid what we see elsewhere. We do not want to wait too long and wait too late, and we all need to get on board and comply if this is going to work.

    Agreement is emerging that this may take at least several weeks to see a flattening response, and likely persist for months, eventually until a vaccine is generally available. It is also agreed that we are far behind in monitoring cases so we really don’t know how many there really are and where we are on the curve, so the urgent need for actions.

    For suppression of this virus, early action is important, and interventions need to be in place well before healthcare capacity is overwhelmed. Given the most systematic surveillance occurs in the hospital context, the typical delay from infection to hospitalization means there is a 2- to 3-week lag between interventions being introduced and the impact being seen in hospitalized case numbers, depending on whether all hospital admissions are tested or only those entering critical care units. This means acting before COVID-19 admissions to ICUs exceed the critical capacity.

    Perhaps the most significant conclusion in the Imperial College study is that restricting the policy goal to mitigation only (between doing nothing, and suppression) mitigation is unlikely to be feasible without emergency surge capacity limits being exceeded many times over (in the research context of the UK and US health care systems).

    In the most effective mitigation strategy examined (case isolation, household quarantine and social distancing of the elderly), the surge limits for both general ward and ICU beds in this context would be exceeded by at least 8-fold under the more optimistic scenario for critical care requirements that were examined.

    In addition, even if all patients were able to be treated, we predict there would still be in the order of 250,000 deaths in GB, and 1.1-1.2 million in the US. In the UK, this conclusion has only been reached in the last few days, with the refinement of estimates of likely ICU demand due to COVID-19 based on experience in Italy and the UK (previous planning estimates assumed half the demand now estimated) and with the NHS providing increasing certainty around the limits of hospital surge capacity.

    It is therefore concluded that epidemic suppression is the only viable strategy at the current time.

    The social and economic effects of the measures which are needed to achieve this policy goal will be profound. Many countries have adopted such measures already, but even those countries at an earlier stage of their epidemic (such as the UK) will need to do so imminently.

    To repeat from above, to try again to get the attention of people to what is needed and expected – population-wide social distancing and “staying home”, partial mandatory lock-down of defined non-essential economic activities and business, home isolation and quarantine of cases, and school and university closure.

    Folks, everyone get with the program and follow all these rules, everyday, all the time – it’s the only way out of here..

    As the story headline says;
    The trend is still upward – the worst is yet to come. Follow the rules and we will get through this