Vincent J. Curtis
8 Oct 20
Isn’t there anybody in authority who can read a goddamn chart? Doctors, politicians, even journalists?
We have the Ontario Hospital Association warning that the health care system would be quickly overwhelmed by a second wave. “There is enormous growing risk” they say, and “Much more effective health care measures are needed,” which is code for more lockdowns.
Hamilton is hiring 75 more support staff to cope with another public health emergency. But what are the facts?
Hamilton has precisely five people hospitalized for COVID-19. But the most important data which falsifies all the fears is available on Ontario’s COVID-19 data page.
Ontario is already well into the second wave of cases. The second wave is already larger than the first, and the case numbers are still climbing. But hospitalizations and deaths remain stubbornly low. Both graphs of hospitalizations and deaths have been flat and low, just above zero, since the middle of July. The second wave of cases, unlike the first, is not producing a corresponding number of hospitalizations and deaths. The second wave is a bust.
The cases curve isn’t being flattened; it’s still rising. But hospitalizations and deaths are already flat and low. There is no justification on the basis of the data for panic. There is no justification for lockdown measures. The data and the science doesn’t support it. The claim that hospitalizations are up “sharply” is deceptive. Going from 137 to 206 hospitalizations is nothing compared to the 1027 in mid-April. There are over 250 hospitals in Ontario, with a population of 14.6 million people, fewer than one case per hospital.
By any measure, the important numbers of the second wave are trivial compared to the first, and worries about a collapse of the health care system, its need for more support, and a re-imposition of lockdown are vastly overblown.
We’re supposed to believe in the science and the data, well there it is and they both say we care start moving on.
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