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I find the situation in the USA is most interesting from the disinformation angle. We know Russian goals are to weaken the west and democracy by highlighting failures, widening divisions and at times creating narratives to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt of government and institutions. It is pretty clear that someone is playing from this playbook, whether it is Russian actors directly, their supported entities, or other groups with similar aims (those who think they are defending freedom but don't seem to understand what freedom is).
 
darwink said:
I find the situation in the USA is most interesting from the disinformation angle. We know Russian goals are to weaken the west and democracy by highlighting failures, widening divisions and at times creating narratives to spread fear, uncertainty and doubt of government and institutions. It is pretty clear that someone is playing from this playbook, whether it is Russian actors directly, their supported entities, or other groups with similar aims (those who think they are defending freedom but don't seem to understand what freedom is).
Click to expand...
The President of the United States by his own words and actions, checks all those boxes.!
 
241 new cases over 4 days.
Cases on the rise in Calgary, but we are doing okay for the most part. The NW is suddenly a hotspot.

* 4 DAY CHANGE * TUE, OCTOBER 13, 2020 - CALGARY COVID MAP | 1-7-14 Day | Alberta Totals: 20,956(+961) Active: 2,615(+390) In Hospital: 97(+11) ICU: 13(+2) Recovered: 18,055(+567) Deaths: 286(+4)

a8c8rf4s4zs51.png


Source: https://www.reddit.com/user/joliette_le_paz/
 
Calgary's daily case count over the last few weeks is half that of Edmonton and far lower than April/May when Calgary was considered a hot spot. This includes the recent Foothills Hospital outbreak.
The important stat to keep in mind is hospitalizations. There is no trend that would suggest that hospitals are going to see a spike in cases in Alberta. Ontario ignored this stat and pushed the panic button over a spike in case counts.
 
Hospitalizations are definitely an important part of this. It's what correlates most to the death rate. Hopefully with the increased case numbers, the hospitalizations will stay low, and my gut feeling is they will, as most of the new cases are in younger age groups.
 
JonnyCanuck said:
Ontario ignored this stat and pushed the panic button over a spike in case counts.
Click to expand...
At least in Ottawa, they were/are to the point where 60% of their ICU was COVID cases. Now, that could mean a lot of different things, especially if you don't have non-ICU isolation rooms (Calgary has lots of non-ICU isolation rooms).

We're in a minor spike in hospitalizations for now. The main caution is always the growth rate. If we can demonstrate that for every growth period we have down period, that is great.
1602777119534.png

We are way below even the 'low' projections that the province was planning for (the province's early modelling here seems to have assumed a much much higher asymptomatic infection rate which implied a high first wave and much smaller second wave):
1602777243973.png

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Targeted measures I think is Alberta's game. Having enough testing and contact tracing where targeted measures work fast enough to keep overall growth to close enough to flat that by May next spring our ICU hospitalizations are unlikely to breach 100 as a province. What does that mean to me/what would I prognosticate for the next 6 months?
  • The government will finally fold on their tracing app, and adopt the federal one
  • Indoor group exercise is banned, perhaps only spin classes and very cardio intense classes if all the tracing flags those only - distancing doesn't seem to help when it is 45 minutes of heavy breathing
  • Sport cohorts are limited to 1 (you can't be on 5 sports teams - this has already come up in BC but it is voluntary for now)
  • Last call restrictions
  • Modified guidance on social gatherings at homes: if you are going to go to or host a social gathering, choose which 1 is most important to you in every 10 day period, and only go to that 1. Require the keeping of lists of attendees for tracing purposes
 
Canadian travelers are now banned from entering the European Union. There are now only nine countries whose citizens are permitted to travel to there. Ironically, China is one of them!
 
JonnyCanuck said:
Canadian travelers are now banned from entering the European Union. There are now only nine countries whose citizens are permitted to travel to there. Ironically, China is one of them!
Click to expand...
Interesting, given the number of cases that are in Europe right now I don’t know if any Canadians would want to go there anyway lol
 
Yeah. The case count is going in the wrong direction. Fortunately, hospitalizations are still being managed and there is no sign of being overwhelmed. I just hope we don't follow Ontario & Quebec and reverse Ph 2.
 
In Ontario hospitalizations lagged significantly, especially as the infections spread from mostly young people to across the age distribution over August--> September. As much as we will try to stop it, the virus will jump back into vulnerable populations, and each extra infection in the less vulnerable population, is just another roll of the dice on a jump.

I hope we don't backslide as well. The government could take small moves today to hopefully prevent the need of big moves in the future, but they're reluctant. If cardio heavy group exercise classes need to close to keep gyms otherwise open, that seems like a good tradeoff. If last call needs to be 10 pm to keep restuarants otherwise open, so be it.

Of course, the contact tracing might indicate that it is almost all ill advised family and friend gatherings, in which case you have very limited tools. You could shut down lots of stuff to try to 'signal' people that they need to stop gathering. Or you could curfew. The complicated dynamics when a big part of your population chooses to interpret what is going on as an all or nothing scenario is hard to manage. I was living right next to Prince's Island Park and Eau Claire when the reopening process was first announced. Over night, even before the first formal date, there were a lot more people. A lot of people interpreted the pandemic as over at that point. As we've seen from Edmonton/Calgary comparisons, perhaps Edmonton ended up with even more people thinking that since their case numbers were so low during the first wave.
 
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