Daily Archive

Canada is experiencing a fair amount of Covid fatigue.  The reception of news of the fourth wave seems like only a small ripple in the news.   Unsurprisingly the news isn’t particularly good.  The light at the end of the pandemic tunnel has gotten farther and dimmer as the delta variant of Covid 19 makes its rounds through the population.

“The country’s seven-day average for new daily cases is now close to 1,300 — an increase of nearly 60 per cent over the previous week, with cases ticking back up mainly in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario and Quebec.

“We’re absolutely in the fourth wave,” said Dr. Peter Juni, who is the scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. “There’s no doubt about that.”

But unlike previous waves, which overwhelmed various hospital systems and led to catastrophic death in long-term care facilities, there is hope this spike won’t be quite so dire.”

Do we have the pandemic under control?  I think much of that answer to that will depend on how willing Canadians are to get fully vaccinated.

“High vaccination uptake across the country has changed the game: Roughly 60 per cent of Canadians are now fully vaccinated, and research continues to show leading vaccines offer high levels of protection from serious illness, even against the fast-spreading delta variant.”

“The point is we can’t go back to normal,” said Juni. “Because we continue to have a challenge with the large proportion of people who remain unvaccinated.”

As usual, we have the crowd that arduously shout about how their personal freedom is being impinged upon by pubic health measures.  This is the segment of the population that will knowingly or unknowingly cause the pandemic to drag on for much longer than necessary.

“Unprotected individuals around the world have proven vulnerable to the highly contagious delta variant in recent weeks, with surges of cases — including serious infections and deaths — in areas of low vaccine coverage, ranging from entire regions in Africa to certain U.S. states.

“This is going to overwhelmingly be a disease of unvaccinated Canadians and under-vaccinated populations,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases physician and member of Ontario’s COVID-19 vaccine task force.”

The Delta variant is kicking the ass of un-vaccinated populations, not only in Canada, but world wide.  It is very much a personal responsibility/consequences issue.  It’s just that in this case the vaccine hesitant are, in my opinion, are acting irresponsibly and unfortunately the consequences can be quite dire.  No one should have to suffer intubation or the Long Covid when we have the means of preventing the majority of such outcomes.

“With early signs of a delta-driven wave beginning and the fall approaching, efforts to increase the proportion of fully vaccinated Canadians and reinforce individual precautions per local public health advice are crucial to reducing virus spread and lowering the risk of a resurgence that could lead to health-care capacity being exceeded this coming fall and winter,” said Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, in a statement on Tuesday.”

Let’s make this pandemic as short as possible and continue to follow the best evidenced based public health practices.