When the media points out that there's 158 new cases in Ontario, people freak the fuck out. But when you tell people that the number of people in Ontario hospitalized with COVID-19 is only 52 at the moment, they are shocked. Or you get some idiot saying jUsT WaIt tWo wEeKs!
The reporting of new cases freaks people out and causes them to over-react. Even though there is nothing really all that special about a 0.55% test positivity rate. That's well below the WHO's own target threshold.
This is a very effective site for tracking the ICU headroom of every state and several counties in the United States. https://covidactnow.org/ We need this kind of data for Canadian provinces to give people perspective. Hospitalization data is readily available. But finding out what the ICU headroom rate is is more tricky. Because then you have to find out what the available beds are (note: There are lots of beds presently occupied by people who don't have COVID so total capacity doesn't give the full story).
And then there's the people who freak the fuck out about every COVID death, every COVID hospitalization who will never be content. And call you heartless for suggesting that there is an acceptable range of hospitalization and death for a respiratory virus.
The use of the word 'case' is the most manipulated part of the media propaganda campaign.
It means at least 10 different things depending on the medical context and the intent of the writer, and the interpretation of the reader. If we could just eliminate the word 'case' from the common lexicon we would be orders of magnitudes ahead.
Right now, at least in the vernacular of the MSM, the word case = deaths, ICU admittance, acute care ward admittance, saw the local clinic because of illness & was sent home with medicine, went to a drive through test site & got diagnosed with the virus and no symptoms, went through a test site 6 more times because I'm really really scared, got contact traced from the restaurant you ate 3 weeks ago and determined to have no symptoms, got contact traced again by your university admissions, donated blood which was acquired by a study for random COVID antibody tests, volunteered for random antibody testing....etc etc
It is endless. The only thing that should matter is what is the anti-body percentage for COVID-19 in a randomized sample of a regional population, and how does that compare to regional COVID-19 deaths.
When the media points out that there's 158 new cases in Ontario, people freak the fuck out. But when you tell people that the number of people in Ontario hospitalized with COVID-19 is only 52 at the moment, they are shocked. Or you get some idiot saying jUsT WaIt tWo wEeKs!
The reporting of new cases freaks people out and causes them to over-react. Even though there is nothing really all that special about a 0.55% test positivity rate. That's well below the WHO's own target threshold.
This is a very effective site for tracking the ICU headroom of every state and several counties in the United States. https://covidactnow.org/ We need this kind of data for Canadian provinces to give people perspective. Hospitalization data is readily available. But finding out what the ICU headroom rate is is more tricky. Because then you have to find out what the available beds are (note: There are lots of beds presently occupied by people who don't have COVID so total capacity doesn't give the full story).
And then there's the people who freak the fuck out about every COVID death, every COVID hospitalization who will never be content. And call you heartless for suggesting that there is an acceptable range of hospitalization and death for a respiratory virus.
The use of the word 'case' is the most manipulated part of the media propaganda campaign.
It means at least 10 different things depending on the medical context and the intent of the writer, and the interpretation of the reader. If we could just eliminate the word 'case' from the common lexicon we would be orders of magnitudes ahead.
Right now, at least in the vernacular of the MSM, the word case = deaths, ICU admittance, acute care ward admittance, saw the local clinic because of illness & was sent home with medicine, went to a drive through test site & got diagnosed with the virus and no symptoms, went through a test site 6 more times because I'm really really scared, got contact traced from the restaurant you ate 3 weeks ago and determined to have no symptoms, got contact traced again by your university admissions, donated blood which was acquired by a study for random COVID antibody tests, volunteered for random antibody testing....etc etc
It is endless. The only thing that should matter is what is the anti-body percentage for COVID-19 in a randomized sample of a regional population, and how does that compare to regional COVID-19 deaths.