COVID-19

Our government isn't failing.  Our citizens are failing.

Posted by: syncro

I'm not a fan of the tone or some of the language in this article from the Tyee as I think it represents fear mongering, but it correctly points out where our governments have failed and continue to fail in regards to managing the pandemic.

COVID is teaching us once again that a highly transmissible variant is more deadly than a lethal one because it will infect more people in short order and thereby injure or kill more people. A highly transmissible virus is something to be feared and respected.

Four myths we chose to embrace

Myth 1: Vaccines will get us out of this.
Myth 2: Pandemics are unpredictable and have nothing to do with policy or human behaviour.
Myth 3: We can live with this virus, and it will become milder over time.
Myth 4: COVID is just a flu-like virus.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/12/22/Omicron-Here-Invited-In/

I think the idea that vaccines would get us out of this made more sense with COVID classic's rate of infection.  The idea of vaccines getting us to herd immunity made sense early on.  The main problem was that only the wealthy countries vaccinated and the less lucky ones kept the virus in circulation and mutating.  

For myth 3 a finding from the other day may be helpful.  It appears that when vaccinated people have a breakthrough infection they come out the other side with what they are calling "super immunity".  So if Omicron keeps going hard it might be making all the vaccinated people in the country much more resilient to COVID.  I think this myth is more of a "we can't say for sure" situation.

Posted by: chupacabra

I think the idea that vaccines would get us out of this made more sense with COVID classic's rate of infection. The idea of vaccines getting us to herd immunity made sense early on. The main problem was that only the wealthy countries vaccinated and the less lucky ones kept the virus in circulation and mutating.

For myth 3 a finding from the other day may be helpful. It appears that when vaccinated people have a breakthrough infection they come out the other side with what they are calling "super immunity". So if Omicron keeps going hard it might be making all the vaccinated people in the country much more resilient to COVID. I think this myth is more of a "we can't say for sure" situation.

Good points on #3. I see the concern there with timing where as the efficacy of the vax's wane if we haven't received a booster we may be more susceptible to the variant floating around at the time.

Edit. The caveat to the super immunity means having to catch covid and survive it, and there are people in ICU who have been double vaxed, albeit those people are in the high risk categories to begin with.

Posted by: switch

Our government isn't failing.  Our citizens are failing.

Our international borders have been porous from the get go and we've probably fared worse because of it. The situation early on with health care facilities was also abysmal.

How much have we beefed up our healthcare facilities to deal with this in the last two years?

Also our case counts are an order of magnitude less than south of the border in Washington state so maybe it's a silver lining.. I dont know I've just about completely checked out on caring about this..

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/some-covid-19-testing-waits-exceed-5-hours-in-metro-vancouver-as-lineups-begin-before-dawn-1.5717252

I'm double vaxxed and boosted, still not sure if I should curl back up into a ball and hide from the outside world again or not.

The Tyee has been a proponent of Zero Covid and they base all their editorial analysis from that point of view.  Given the protest of even minor health measure from the pro-pandemic anti-science crowd, getting to zero Covid is not realistic in BC/Canada/NA.

Posted by: syncro

Posted by: chupacabra

I think the idea that vaccines would get us out of this made more sense with COVID classic's rate of infection. The idea of vaccines getting us to herd immunity made sense early on. The main problem was that only the wealthy countries vaccinated and the less lucky ones kept the virus in circulation and mutating.

For myth 3 a finding from the other day may be helpful. It appears that when vaccinated people have a breakthrough infection they come out the other side with what they are calling "super immunity". So if Omicron keeps going hard it might be making all the vaccinated people in the country much more resilient to COVID. I think this myth is more of a "we can't say for sure" situation.

Good points on #3. I see the concern there with timing where as the efficacy of the vax's wane if we haven't received a booster we may be more susceptible to the variant floating around at the time.

Edit. The caveat to the super immunity means having to catch covid and survive it, and there are people in ICU who have been double vaxed, albeit those people are in the high risk categories to begin with.

The double vaxed who end up in the ICU are also the population who were previously hospitalized when they caught the flu, or if they neglected to take their medications for a few weeks. The unvaxed people in the ICU are heterogenious but many have no history of respiratory disease and are otherwise relatively healthy. We really aren't seeing any healthy vaxed people end up in the ICU.

BC is cancelling elective surgeries come January because largely unvaxed covid patients are filling the wards. My hospital that is funded for about 150beds is up as high as 210. We have patients in the hallways of every ward. Nurses are continuously doing extra shifts to cover the increased patient load. We already cancelled elective surgeries because there was nowhere to take care of the patients after their surgery. So although Vaccines may not be perfect, we would be screwed without them.

I just hope that people take this seriously and stay safe/healthy.

Posted by: Adam-West

How much have we beefed up our healthcare facilities to deal with this in the last two years?

Our problem is lack of medical personnel. There is no way to really improve that in the last two years when every other jurisdiction is also short on the same people. If anything we have fewer medical staff now than we did at the start through attrition and lack of sufficient replacements.

Yeah. Maybe we should pay that sector more so there's some more interest in it.. we have the same problem at my work..

Posted by: RAHrider
I just hope that people take this seriously

It has been very clear from day 1 that this will sadly never be the case.

Humans are dumb as rocks.

Posted by: Couch_Surfer

The Tyee has been a proponent of Zero Covid and they base all their editorial analysis from that point of view.  Given the protest of even minor health measure from the pro-pandemic anti-science crowd, getting to zero Covid is not realistic in BC/Canada/NA.

Yeah, I agree that zero covid is unrealistic, I just think that article raises some points that are valid in the whole scope of things. Re zero covid, it could be achievable with the right lockdown process and better control of the borders, but I don't see that happening. China just instituted a strict lockdown in a city with an outbreak - everybody stays home for six weeks with only exception being 1 person from each household is allowed out once every two days for essentials like food. Something like that would never fly here.

Posted by: Adam-West

Yeah. Maybe we should pay that sector more so there's some more interest in it.. we have the same problem at my work..

I don't think pay is the problem. More spots in training programs would help, but that will take a decade to result in new people and still take time to then build up numbers. There is a lot of interest in the school programs and the people that are leaving are due to burn out and shitty work conditions from the pandemic workload. Of course as people leave that makes the problem worse for the folks that are left.

The only solution I can see while the pandemic is raging is to keep infections low enough that the hospitals are not struggling to deal with seriously ill COVID patients.