Living with a pandemic – 42

 

Schools are opening; the pandemic is still going on…

This is the first week of school openings in many parts of the world. In the great unknown of what to expect from or due to Covid-19, parents, teacher, school officials and government authorities are predictably nervous.

Many families have opted for home schooling rather than risk the health of their children or others with whom they would come in contact at home. One friend told me that since his son’s wife is a doctor, she could not take the chance of having one of her children bring the virus home. A positive test would mean she would have to quarantine for two weeks, knocking her out of her job for an extended period and causing havoc with family finances, not to mention getting sick herself and possibly passing it on to her patients. That is especially dangerous for medical personnel as we depend on them to keep the system running in case the rest of us get sick.

Information about whether children who contract the virus get seriously sick – in the short term or long term – is very much lacking at present as this is a new disease. The death rates for younger people have remained low and it is those age groups that are chaffing at the bit to get back to working and normal lives. Who can blame them?

Classification		Cases		Hospitalizations		ICU		Deaths		Lethality
		No.	%	No.	%	No.	%	No.	%
All		121,372	100	11,382	100	2,315	100	8,968	100	7.4
Age	80+	18,669	15.4	3,701	32.5	270	11.7	6,404	71.4	34.3
	70-79	8,395	6.9	2,337	20.5	539	23.3	1,629	25.4	19.4
	60-69	11,564	9.5	1,908	16.8	573	24.8	650	25.4	5.6
	50-59	17,872	14.7	1,567	13.8	480	20.7	210	2.3	1.2
	40.49	18,115	14.9	848	7.5	224	9.7	50	0.6	0.3
	30-39	17,658	14.5	539	4.7	115	5.0	15	0.2	0.1
	20-29	18,885	15.6	337	3.0	87	3.8	9	.01	0.0
	0-19	10,214	8.4	145	1.3	27	1.2	1	0.0	0.0

Table 1 – Cover-19 cases in Canada by age as of August 23, 2020

Infections are rising in those groups, though, with the probability that the virus can and will be passed along to the older members of the community who remain the most vulnerable. There are also new strains being recognized about which we know nothing, particularly what their impact may be on younger people. During the 1918 pandemic, it was the second wave that killed more people in the prime of their lives.

Most countries have now taken measures to keep their hospitalization numbers low. That’s a good thing. Were we too uncertain about where numbers would go without restrictions on social distancing or other restrictions? One only has to look at a few places where controls were lax to see that systems could be stretched to the limit had the infection rate been allowed to go unchecked – looking for that herd immunity being professed as an ultimate cure.

The telling statistic is in death rates, not cases identified. There has been a wide spread of test numbers, in total and as a ratio to population. In most areas, tests have only been given to those who had been in contact with infected people or who showed signs of sickness. That is gradually being opened up. The infections per number of tests remains generally the same indicating that there are many people who have the virus but don’t show symptoms.

While deaths may be more than are being recorded, we can still get an idea of the magnitude from published data and compare how various countries have handled the pandemic. Canada is doing reasonably well relative to other jurisdictions. South Korea and Taiwan locked down hard and early. The United Kingdom was late and haphazard in its reaction. The respective death numbers probably illustrate how different rules resulted in different results.

Country	Population (millions)	Covid-19 Deaths	Deaths/ Million
Belgium	11.46	9,884	862.48
UK	66.65	41,504	622.72
Spain	46.94	29,152	621.05
Italy	60.36	35,483	587.86
USA	328.2	187,441	571.12
Sweden	10.23	5,808	567.74
France	66.99	30,661	457.70
Netherlands	17.28	6,220	359.95
Canada	37.59	9,126	242.78
Switzerland	8.57	1,725	201.28
Germany	83.02	9,371	112.88
Turkey	82.00	6,370	77.68
Australia	24.99	657	26.29
South Korea	51.64	326	6.31
Taiwan	23.78	7	0.29

 

Table 2 – Death rates for select countries as of August 31, 2020

Lockdowns, on the other hand, are causing severe strain on economies, not helped by generous contributions of cash by governments to assist people who have become unemployed or have had unexpected expenses. There is a worrisome trend among some of those in charge in keeping the gravy train rolling rather than open up business again. That, of course, garners votes from many people who like more money for less work. In the end those policies will hinder rather than help any recovery and disincentivize people from working at all – and paying taxes to reduce the debts being accumulated.

News reports from around the world indicate infection rates are rising almost in lockstep with the relaxation of social distancing rules and opening of businesses. We will have to eventually do the latter, but it may also be necessary to still control the former. In Alberta, the numbers are showing that either we did not flatten the first wave as well as we thought or that a second wave is well in progress. Flattening, or at least keeping the spike in numbers low can, I think, be attributed to locking down our society. Had that not been done, it is not inconceivable that all those cases now being seen might have been experienced months ago and the peak could have been much higher – and still growing.

The argument rages whether locking down early or late is best. Ultimately, we won’t know if there is an answer to that possibly for several years. It has been inconvenient. It has been devastating for businesses. It has caused hardship for families. But then every pandemic through has had those results. Some have killed many more people, in total and as a proportion of the populations. We don’t know that this virus would not have had or will not have the same impact without the stringent rules put in place. Hindsight is great. We are learning more each day about it and about how people respond to both the illness and the restrictions put on them.

It is clear to me that, since I am in a highly vulnerable age group, I will need to take more precautions about how I interact with others, that I might have hoped to be able to do with respect to other diseases and epidemics that have and continue to come along.

That’s just the way it is going to be! No use in getting stressed about it.