Richard White
Senior Member
According to Premier Ford today's Covid numbers are 365.
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- Thread starter AlvinofDiaspar
- Start date
Bayer
Senior Member
Mortality is one thing, but many COVID patients require extensive care. We will soon see the impact of the current higher number of cases on hopitalization rates. Also, I see no reason to be complacent and to consider flu deaths as being "normal". If simple health measures such as mask-wearing during flu season can save lives, I don't see why they should not become commonplace.
Jasmine18
Senior Member
Places of worship dont need to be all closed. Close the ones that cant enforce rules.
My local temple has such strict controls more so than many businesses that would stay open.
Northern Light
Superstar
I must confess, rarely though it happens, I'm inclined to disagree with you here.
Masking through flu season isn't merely intrusive and unlikely to garner broad public acceptance, its also unlikely on its own to alter mortality materially.
Just as with Covid the majority of death due to influenza occurs among the elderly and immune-compromised.
We could adopt measures tomorrow that would suppress these, at least for the residents of long-term care.
The measures would mirror what has been done or suggested by experts for Covid.
Full-time staff who work at only one facility, ideally only on one floor so not moving disease from facility or unit to another.
All private rooms (one resident/patient) per room.
Restrictions on visitors.
The reasons these are not done today is cost, cost, and the secondary consequences of separating residents from their loved ones/family, and the misery that inflicts.
Those measures, however, would surely cut influenza deaths overall by more than 25%, and more than 50% inside long-term care.
Likewise, for older residents living at home, we could take actions to reduce exposure risks, though enforcement would be a much greater challenge. But broad mask wearing would be immaterial in most cases.
It would be managing interactions with family, PSWs and delivery people, and mandatory vaccination.
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Worth saying here, I'm in favour of the measures I noted above for long-term care (private rooms, and full-time, single-facility staff).
Those are costly, but I think worthwhile and with no adverse secondary affects other than cost likely.
But I don't see people accepting precautionary making on a universal basis, for 5 months out of of every year.
Nor do I see sufficient benefit in terms of reduced disease transmission among those mostly likely to be at risk.
tiffer24
Senior Member
Quebec reports 462 new cases of COVID-19, five additional deaths.
www.sootoday.com
Montreal and Quebec City move to orange 'moderate alert' COVID-19 level
MONTREAL — Quebec is imposing tighter restrictions on public and private indoor gatherings in Montreal and Quebec City, among other parts of the province, Health Minister Christian Dube said Sunday evening, after a recent increase in COVID-19 cases.
www.sootoday.com
Bayer
Senior Member
I entirely agree with you when it comes to improvements to long-term care. But there have been studies that show face masks can also be useful to prevent the transmission of flu viruses (but are less effective in the case of rhinoviruses), and they could reduce the burden of disease. My business partner has COPD, so I am highly conscious of the fact that working members of the community can also be vulnerable to respiratory viruses. I am just thinking that a certain proportion of people will get used to wearing a mask, and that it might be useful to continue after COVID on a voluntary basis.
We will see what happens with the flu this season (though it will not be representative of a typical season, since many people will remain at home until COVID has been dealt with).
tiffer24
Senior Member
Police break up 'car meet' in Ancaster, Ont. with up to 1,000 people gathered.
https://www.cp24.com/news/police-disperse-car-meetup-in-ancaster-with-hundreds-of-people-1.5112537
https://www.cp24.com/news/police-disperse-car-meetup-in-ancaster-with-hundreds-of-people-1.5112537
TrickyRicky
Senior Member
For the record my daughter tested negative which I was like 95% certain about.
This experience raises some interesting questions and observations:
No one in my family has been sick since before march owing to social distancing. Assuming a 3-day lag between infection and symptom onset, some kind of kiddy cold took 7-days to rip through the child centre. No precaution from home screening, site screening, strict enforcement, masks, co-horting etc. made any difference.
What does this suggest? It suggests:
a) that covid-19 is not near as infectious as this common cold. If it were near as infectious we would all have already got it.
b) Covid-19 is primarily a social behavioural disease. Social distancing is by far the most significant protective measure, like by orders of magnitude. All the other stuff we worry about is fine tuning
This experience raises some interesting questions and observations:
No one in my family has been sick since before march owing to social distancing. Assuming a 3-day lag between infection and symptom onset, some kind of kiddy cold took 7-days to rip through the child centre. No precaution from home screening, site screening, strict enforcement, masks, co-horting etc. made any difference.
What does this suggest? It suggests:
a) that covid-19 is not near as infectious as this common cold. If it were near as infectious we would all have already got it.
b) Covid-19 is primarily a social behavioural disease. Social distancing is by far the most significant protective measure, like by orders of magnitude. All the other stuff we worry about is fine tuning
gabe
Senior Member
I live near a school. most kids have no idea how to properly wear a mask and they don't social distance. Getting off the school bus, half of them had the mask off their faces or under their chins. They are just little kids. They don't understand.
1st elementary school in Ontario closes after students, staff test positive for COVID-19
Student and staff member test positive for COVID-19 at two more Toronto schools
The Toronto Catholic District School Board (TCDSB) is confirming two positive cases of COVID-19 at two separate schools on Sunday.
toronto.ctvnews.ca
1st elementary school in Ontario closes after students, staff test positive for COVID-19
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Jasmine18
Senior Member
To me the solution is ... grade 6 and higher push to online learning. As those kids can stay home by themselves mostly (apart from health reasons) and parents are not willing to, well that's their problem.
Below that put default as online learning and if parents need to work, they can send kids to a school that would have not many students.
This will allow to keep kids mostly at home, allow parents to work who cant work at home.
This is much better then people who just want to go full doomer and shut everything down till next spring.
Below that put default as online learning and if parents need to work, they can send kids to a school that would have not many students.
This will allow to keep kids mostly at home, allow parents to work who cant work at home.
This is much better then people who just want to go full doomer and shut everything down till next spring.
Rimsky44
Active Member
Yet, kids in east Asia (Singapore, Korea, Japan, HK) seem to have no problems wearing it throughout school. Is it just the kids there are more mature there, or are parents not teaching their kids here?
Richard White
Senior Member
It is the demographic. In Asia and Europe they are much more inclined to wear a mask and brought up that way.
I have seen plenty of low income people not wearing a mask or thinking it is their god given right not to. I live near a few low income buildings and none of the kids are wearing masks. Their parents are either not wearing them or wear them on their chin.
There are also plenty of older people who also appear on the surface to be low income or mentally ill who also refuse to wear a mask.
AlvinofDiaspar
Moderator
The education system in East Asia - for good or ill - focus on and expects discipline from students even in Kindergarten. School uniforms (and expectations around it and appearances in general) is the norm. You will have great difficulty transplanting that here quickly.
AoD
Johnny Au
Senior Member
In individualistic cultures (especially the United States), it's much harder to enforce safety measures like wearing face masks.
In communitarian cultures (such as East Asia), almost everyone would follow safety measures.
Rimsky44
Active Member
I was being cheeky, as my point was that parents aren't teaching their kids properly here in my opinion, since kids are no more mature there than here. We don't teach our kids to run out onto the street without looking both ways - it's a safety issue. We don't teach them to talk to strangers, or play with knives. Younger kids are capable of understanding if the issue is framed properly. Do you want your 7 year old friend with diabetes or asthma to potentially die? Not wearing masks is a safety issue.
In Asia, it's already well established that this is a safety issue, so it's not hard to accept wearing it. Here, you've had mixed messages from Dr. Tam initially stating wearing masks aren't beneficial and changing the messaging to masks are useful later on (not that I'm criticizing her - she was working with the best info she had at that time). If you've never been through a pandemic, you don't know who to believe. Lower education (correlated with income typically) parents, as Richard noted, would be less inclined to wear as a result of the mixed messaging and this train of thought is passed on to their kids.