Alvin, that is a gross mischaracterization of my posts. I’m not sure what or who you are projecting onto me. I pressed your button by looking at the numbers and speculating on how and why covid is spreading the way it is. You don’t care about numbers and theories. Fine. My point was that...

Alvin I'm not trying to raise your blood pressure! If you look at the history of this thread I've been one of the most vocal critics of Canada's response at all levels of government and society to this pandemic. I would go so far as to say it's shattered my image of Canada and trust in...

Based on my Germany proxy I estimated with confidence on December 31 that we would get to 4000 cases a day in Ontario with 1000-1300 of these in Toronto. Today's numbers are an anomaly but it's reasonable to believe that we will get there next week. That would make us on a two-week-ish lag...

More numerical literacy issues. From the article PinkLucy posted: "During the week of Nov. 29, the positivity rate among children between the ages of four and 11 was 5.22 per cent, after 580 children tested positive for COVID-19. By the week of Dec. 27, the province recorded a 116 per cent...

Richard White, The Ford government is bungling the rollout early on with questionable decision-making. This is cause for worry and criticism; however, the rate-determining difference between leading vaccine roll-out nations and us is the supply and procurement process that the Federal...

^I agree but why stop at the Provincial government? The Federal and City governments are equally culpable. The slow vaccine rollout is largely an issue of Federal government failure in the procurement process...

Toronto finally publishing some workplace outbreak data. Along with mildly more rigid international travel restrictions it's good that our governments are starting to implement self-evident policy after 10-months of delay. They should publish data about outbreaks in large multi-residential...

The thing with streaming services I find though is there is just not quite a high enough threshold of desirable content to keep me from cancelling. I’m enjoying The Expanse but the only reason we have Prime Video is because of my wife’s Prime membership. The only reason I haven’t cancelled...

I’m old school (watch sports and have young kids) so I have a rogers bundle with ignite TV. I actually like the consolidated in-system apps so (at home at least) all the content is available in one simple voice activated contol. It doesn’t help on price but it’s just easier to just say what...

Federal government finally tightening international travel rules. People often use the argument that international travel is responsible for only a few percent of the total case load as an argument against focus on this source; however, like the retail and restaurant business lobby focusing on...

Germany now solidly past 5 x first-wave peak which gives me confidence to expect Canada will soon top 10,000 cases a day (our 5 x peak). Proportionally, that would be 4000 cases-a-day in Ontario. Toronto City proper tends to run at 1/4 to 1/3 of total Ontario cases so we should expect about...

At present rates the total number of people infected with covid-19 will double by about the end of March in Canada and the US.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-we-are-not-prepared-the-flaws-inside-public-health-that-hurt-canadas/ A detailed account of Canada’s pandemic warning system and it’s demise under the Harper and Trudeau governments. Shameless tragedy. Anti-science budget cutting and shift from...

It’s good water-cooler talk but ultimately it doesn’t really matter who they chose to go first; however, if we are speaking in the theoretical it is NOT clear who should be vaccinated first. There are different outcomes you can optimize such as protecting vulnerable populations, containing...

I also think they should publish vaccination numbers. It’s a hopeful metric. I think government will be hesitant (like with everything else) because the numbers initially don’t make them look good. I also feel the messaging coming from all levels of government is kind of disingenuous now...

Further to the list of what is open and closed: https://beta.ctvnews.ca/local/toronto/2020/12/21/1_5240344.html Many international peers would not recognize this as a hard lockdown assuming this list is still current. We’ll see how it goes but I doubt we will see a quick turnaround. I...

Just a one day snapshot but today you can see that Toronto’s numbers are back down to proportional to population. Toronto is 21% of the Ontario population and had 21% of lab reported cases. Lockdowns work. They just do.

One thing I haven’t stumbled across yet is what does the “normal” surge pressure on our ICU’s look like at this time of year? Like do we still have ample ICU capacity at this time of year or is it all filled up normally during flu season? This is kind of relevant because it matters to...

After my cousin had bypass surgery he regularly walked in the mall in the winter. There are a lot of people who use malls in the winter for exercise. There could ironically be real negative health consequences from mall closures. Outdoor exercise is great but there are a lot of people who...

I never looked at the raw data but an interesting point that was made in today’s update was that the percentage share of total Ontario cases made up by GTA hot spots is actually dropping. That’s an interesting trend as I have been fixated on Toronto and Peel’s worsening numbers but the current...