Canada Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) Model Reports
I think most grade 12 students could produce a better report than this. Page 21 of the April 28 document is strikingly bad.
Assumptions: 7.8% of all cases are hospitalised; 2.4% of cases require ICU care; and 1.2% of all cases die (based on Imperial College London estimates of age-related variations in severity)
The above should link to an online document, or cite a published document, so we can see what the ICL assumptions, data sources and modelling methodologies are.
The Canadian documents should have links to data and methodologies. It should be like a scientific document, so the wonks that want to dig deep can dig deep. This is junk. Note also on page 21 the absurd numbers for >=25% infection rates. We could not hospitalize or put in ICU those kind of numbers, they would be dying in the streets, stacked in the gutters. This is a crappy Public Health system we have in this country.
According to Johns Hopkins, on April 29, there have been 3 million plus cases on April 29, with 210 thousand deaths; that is a 7% fatality-case rate. Where is the ICL evidence for 1.2%? Even the USA, with their self-proclaimed "best health care system in the world" is running around 6%.
If we are going to derive public policy and encourage public behaviour based on these models, they have to be based on science, and good data, and they have to be able to withstand peer-review by the virologists, epidemiologists, health scientists of all types and stripes and the data scientists this country has in abundance. Canada has plenty of resources; by now the feds and provinces should have been able to rally them to this task.
Our governments should not subsidize students or the under-employed; we need to press-gang them into contact tracing and dragoon them into data-entry and shang-hai them into running mobile testing stations.
Then one discovers this, on page 10: These data are presented on a logarithm scale. Log scales show relative values instead of absolute ones. Log scales are perfectly suited for presenting absolute values, that is why we use them. They manage to take unruly linear data that would require a very tall graph to represent a million and a thousand on the same graph, and make it fit into a convenient size page. When you do not put in the intermediate grid lines on the y-scale, you then plain misrepresent the data. But, of course, page 10 has already failed due to the data presented. The page title is : Canada's epidemic growth is slower than many international partners. Sure. and it is worse than others; this is a classic data trick, present the "best-fit" for your message. Comparable countries whose epidemics began earlier were chosen for this comparison. The word comparable begs for definition, but one is not supplied. How are Spain, Italy, France, Germany and the UK comparable to Canada? Greater populations, greater population density, bigger major cities. What is the comparable bit? In the go-to dashboard, the Johns Hopkins University global view, Canada is running 12th or 13th in the world, and has been for weeks. But, there, again, the data is skewed. Not every nation is not lying, not every nation is counting bodies the same, not every nation is testing with similar criteria. There is not enough coherent data to make anything other than maybe-good guesses. The number of cases in Canada is doubling every 16 days. Pretend that is true, as Canada's case load is mainly driven the rates for Quebec and Ontario (unspecified in the document for Quebec and Ontario) where the people are.
As I read the Canada and provincial data and modelling and testing regimes, I feel more and more like I live in a Third World country.
Somebody wrote this: COVID-19 is a mirror, and it shows us all our flaws.
Source mainly from Covid Science Table
For the April 16 update, Adalsteinn Brown presented the briefing on the updates to the press conference and signalled a very strong desire on the Science Table's part to add paid sick days to the mix, and pay for time off to get a vaccine. I thought he was setting the table for Doug Ford to announce reversing his stance on those. Instead, Ford closed playgrounds and proved the police with stronger powers to stop people and find out where they were going and what they are doing and issue fines for not complying with the stay-at-home order. The outrage was thick. Even the police forces said they would not enforce those rules. And by Sunday, Ford had to walkback the changes from Friday.
Panicked would be the only word to describe the Ford government's response.
On the CBC Ontario show, "Fresh Air" on Sunday, april 18, Dr. Peter Jüni was in tears because of the government response or lack thereof and ignorance of the science table's advice and refusal to guide policy by that table's advice. But, he refused to quit...for now.
actual photo of the virus
"Whoopee! we're all gonna die."" - Country Joe, a different fight, long ago.