Ontario doing better without restrictions than when they were in place so far...
There are a lot of frightened people in Ontario, convinced that the lifting of mandates like vaccine passports, gathering limits and the requirement to wear a mask in most indoor public places, that this is the wrong move with case numbers and infection rates climbing.
A simple look at the data though shows this to be untrue. But that is what fear does to people, it triggers an emotional response and higher brain functions like reasoning are lost. You can verify the numbers I am going to present by going to the Ontario government’s Covid portal page here:
https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations
I’m focusing in on hospitalizations because the case count is so reliant on testing levels. At times Ontario’s testing has gone up to 60 or even 70K per day, while now we’re more typically somewhere around 20-30K per day.
Hospitalization data is a far better metric in my opinion because when someone is sick they go to the hospital. Many “cases” are missed because people don’t consider themselves sick enough to bother with an instrusive nasal colonstopy.
Back in January of 2022 hospitalizations in Ontario peaked at over 4,100. January 18th 2022 to be specific had 4,183 patients in hospital who’d tested positive.
To be clear though not everyone who is in hospital and tested positive WITH covid is being treated FOR covid. The province now breaks that down and it’s typically right around 50/50. 50% of patients are in hospital for other reasons but tested as being infected, while the other half are actually being treated for covid itself.
But using the broad number of positive tests among hospitalized patients allows for a more apples to apples comparison.
So again, this past January 18th hospitalizations peaked at 4,183. And that was with mask mandates, gathering limits and vaccine passports in effect. There is no way to know for certain obviously, but if these measures had some positive impact, then the number of hospitalized patitents would have been even higher without the mandates in place.
Which brings us to where we are now, in early April of 2022.
Now the vaxx pass has been elimianted in most places, although some private businesses may still require it. Also gone are gathering limits along with mandatory masking in most public spaces. And yet, while case numbers are on the wise, and waste water surveillance is indicating that infection rates are climbing. In spite of all that the number of people in hospital with a positive covid test is only a little over 800, to be precise 804 as per the most recent update.
One would expect that if masking, gathering limits and passports were effective that things would logically have to get worse than they were back in January when those measures were still in place. And of course it’s still early, April has only just started so we’ll have to wait and see if the numbers do climb north of the 4,100 area they were in back this past January when the restrictions were still in effect.
One might think that with April being a warmer month than January, that this might mitigate things and keep the numbers lower. But that is not what happened last year. In January of 2021 hospitalization peaked at just over 1,700 and then they went even higher in April of 2021 to up over 2,300.
Which brings up another interesting point, and that is the question of the vaccines and how effective or ineffective they are. In early 2021 hardly anyone in Ontario was vaccinated. While the vaccines were given an interim authorization in December of 2020, things in Ontario ramped up very slowly as Canada was at the back of the vaccination line globally.
And yet last year, with far fewer people vaccinated, there were fewer people being hospitalized with covid than now when something like 90% of the eligible population has rolled up their sleeves at least twice. Many Ontarians having already gotten a 3rd shot, and now of course there’s talk of a need for a fourth.
Fear is such a strange thing, it can be traumatizing, and people like to have their fears confirmed. I get the distinct impression that some are actually hoping that hospitalization numbers blow up worse than they were in January so that restrictive mandates can be restored.
It’s like the restrictions have become akin to a security blanket to a two year old, and goodness help the parent who tries to take away a little toddler’s blanky.
They’re screaming and crying, but then a lot of people in Ontario have the mentality of children.