Wowzers that’s fast! I’m also surprised that the trucking industry is planning for a potential hit. The ATC side has decided to go the opposite direction entirely.
MikeJ
1592
Is it? Starting on March 16th, NY state went 950, 1374, 2480, 5711, 8402, 10356. Starting on March 27th, Ontario has had 993, 1114, 1326, 1706, 1966, 2392. This is also over a period where the provincial backlog of tests has dropped from 11k to 3k. Ontario was putting in place restrictions at around the same time as NY, so if the restrictions work at all, it should be better.
Edit: It seems cases in Toronto have gone up by a factor of 5 in the last two weeks, but in NY state they’ve gone up by a factor of 40, from a much, much higher base.
There is far, far less testing going on in Toronto, so hospitalizations are a better indication of trajectory – we’re far behind NYC currently, but the daily changes in hospitalizations, and the spread of infections among emergency services, is not promising. There are no available online grocery delivery spots going up to at least April 21st, although there are still reasonable stocks in stores if you risk going to them. I’m in a high risk category with a compromised immune system, and live in the top floor of a condo, but I’m cautious about even getting into an elevator these days and have only done so once in the past 3 weeks.
But I have some faith that Canadians generally obey government guidelines better than the U.S., and our population density isn’t as bad as in NYC, and we have plans forged in the SARS and other recent Asian flu outbreaks, which affected Toronto more than most North American cities. Still, there seems to be too much foot and vehicle traffic - it’s probably 20% of normal, but that’s still quite a bit in these circumstances.
That is my impression also, NY is doing a lot of tests now, we developed our own test. Only NY and Washington states are doing significant testing in the USA. I’m not really aware of how Canada is doing.
God only knows how many real infections there are even here, much less states like Florida and Tennessee. Problem is it takes 2 weeks to see the consequences, and 3-5 weeks to really get a feeling on death counts.
Most of Canada is doing fine, and British Columbia (westernmost province) seems to have things under control just like Washington and Oregon, and have gone through a similar pattern. The two most populous Provinces, Ontario and Quebec, are more precarious but doing pretty well - Quebec is doing worse, but Toronto in Ontario is the biggest epicenter risk. Small towns and rural areas are largely unaffected so far, as in heartland U.S.
The local governments are taking the situation very seriously, which is obviously appropriate and good. Here’s an update from today on the situation in Toronto, if any are curious:
MikeJ
1596
If we look at deaths, in the last week Ontario went from 15 to 37. If I look at the New York data, one day they were at 16 deaths and a week later at 271 (now at almost 2000 
). NY State is now about 650 tests per 100k and Ontario is at about 450 tests per 100k.
Yeah, we’re doing much better than that, so far. Hopefully that trend continues. People on ventilators are increasing about the same rate as hospitalizations, +16% daily, so we just have to lock down and stop that trend before it gets too far along. Even though I’m very concerned, especially if people have to continue to wander out and congregate frequently for groceries and other staples, there are positive signs as well that our ongoing mitigation is preventing some of the worst possible scenarios.
Mr.GRIM
1598
BC seems to be holding the line. Projections model we have enough Ventilators for a Hubie type scenario, but if things get to Italy levels we will be short. The curve seems to be flattening out thankfully.
So seems ok for now…but things can change on a dime, and I wonder how long we can stay in our homes.
MikeJ
1599
If BC can get to a point where the number of cases is dropping, eventually they can switch to testing and contact tracing as the main line of defence and hopefully relax the lock down a bit.
We have a problem. Flights are still coming in from Russia and Brazil. We have states not locked down. At this rate, this pandemic will go on forever.
Timex
1602
I wish that were the case, but we’ve got states like Tennessee which refuse to shut down.
Which means that they are going to delay the effectiveness of the response, cause increased deaths in their own populations, and force other states to keep things closed longer.
Someone should tell them that we’re in this together, so they stop fucking the rest of us over.
We need a national shutdown, mandated by the federal government.
Neal, Wuhan flu is a dogwhistle. The dude you talked to was either sounding a dogwhistle or repeating one. Covid-19 has a name, and the only people who insist on calling it something else are dipshit Trump supporters setting up a mental space where they can deflect blame.
EDIT: Oops, what the others said. I didn’t scroll down before posting.
-Tom
Timex
1604
Calling it The wuhan flu, or the Chinese flu, or whatever is in fact a dogwhistle… But it’s perhaps more nefarious than simply racist.
The reason that certain people started using such terms intentionally, wasn’t even to be racist.
It was intended to shift the narrative and cause people to argue about what to call covid19, instead of talking about how our nation’s response is going to result in hundreds of thousands of dead Americans.
Just ignore it when people use those terms, and continue to call it by it’s correct name. That argument is a pointless diversion.
Our business is getting through this as well as possible, and then holding those in power responsible for their actions or lack thereof.
Pedantic:
SARS-CoV-2 is the virus [a novel coronavirus ]
Covid-19 [coronavirus disease 2019] is the disease you get when you are infected with SARS-CoV-2
Neither one is the kansas city flu. The spanish flu earned it’s name via the infamous “the country who smelt it, dealt it” rule of 1918. That, or the competing hypothesis was that the virus originated in…China.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/topics/medicine-and-dentistry/spanish-influenza
I mean everyone posting in this forum is in this together. And criticizing current actions/inactions is definitely fair game and actually constructive - we need to do our part, and that includes lobbying politicians and civil/business leaders to take this crisis seriously and to understand the math and science involved.
Just trying to relegate the retrospective fantasies about what could have happened in January and premature blame game attribution (no doubt we’ll have a 9/11-type commission or several) to the political forum where they’re more appropriate, if you need to indulge in them, rather than starting flame wars here. There’s no doubt the entire western world should have been better prepared for this given the number of potentially similar outbreaks in the past few decades, and we should have done more to discourage the conditions that allowed them to spawn and spread. Hopefully the world will emerge from this experience having learned a lot and no longer taking anything for granted.
Testing should be 95% accurate or more. I doubt at this point it’s even 75% in many countries like the US when one considers all the factors involved.
My understanding is a single PCR test is 85% accurate as pertains to false negatives, which is why they test twice.
Michigan: always a bit behind the leaders in implementing the obvious necessary steps, but at least we’re not Florida.
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