Juno News - Stop the obsession with COVID case numbers

00:00:00.000 Public health officials said months ago that Canadians should probably stop so heavily fixating

00:00:10.780 on case numbers of COVID-19, raw case counts. Believe it or not, the very officials who were

00:00:16.540 previously instituting lockdowns, they were some of the first to have said at the press conferences,

00:00:21.560 okay guys, case numbers, they just don't mean what they used to mean for a whole variety of reasons.

00:00:26.620 So now various health officials such as Dr. Kieran Moore, that's Ontario's top doctor,

00:00:31.260 he says you focus on the hospitalization numbers, the ICU numbers, that's the indicator of where

00:00:36.960 things are with COVID. So calm down when it comes to the case numbers. In fact, he actually said the

00:00:41.920 phrase, I want everyone to remain calm at his first press conference concerning the Omicron variant that

00:00:47.820 there's been a lot of discussion about in recent weeks. Now one thing that's interesting about all

00:00:53.540 of this is that this is what the health officials are saying, we're told to listen to the experts,

00:00:57.860 and yet that's not being amplified all that much. It hasn't been internalized by all that many people,

00:01:02.580 so we're still looking at the case numbers, and at least when it comes to Ontario, crossing back into

00:01:08.540 the 1,000 cases per day threshold, still a lot of freaking out, still a lot of worrying going on

00:01:15.160 about that figure, the psychology of moving from being in the hundreds to crossing over

00:01:19.840 into the 1,000 number. But what does this all mean? I think we should keep in perspective that

00:01:26.440 1,000 cases now is very different than what it would have meant in previous times. During past

00:01:34.020 lockdowns, you would be in a strict lockdown, and then here in Ontario, you'd see there were 3,000 or

00:01:38.960 for a very few brief periods of time, 4,000 cases per day, and you go, human beings aren't even going

00:01:44.680 out and about. I mean, most things are under lockdown. People aren't interacting. How are you

00:01:49.200 getting this 4,000 cases per day thing? Now, in Ontario and throughout most of Canada, people are

00:01:55.000 pretty much doing everything. Now, I know those folks who are not yet out and about in society and

00:02:00.920 living like they used to live, they might see this number and get a little reticent, but I imagine the

00:02:05.500 individuals who months ago said, well, everything's open. I'm just going to live my life. I got my vaccine,

00:02:09.920 and now I'm just going to the movies. I'm going to the restaurant. I think they're probably less

00:02:14.720 likely to see this 1,000 number and be concerned about it because they've been doing all these

00:02:19.600 things that they haven't been able to do in two years, and well, it's been working out fine for

00:02:23.980 the overwhelming vast majority of them. Because 1,000 cases per day now, relative to the amount of

00:02:31.340 human interaction that's going on, well, you wonder, is it really all that much when you're talking

00:02:37.000 about most people are vaccinated? And you look at those hospitalization and ICU numbers in Ontario,

00:02:42.420 and the numbers, the ICU numbers in Ontario right now at the beginning of December are the same as

00:02:47.900 they were in September, despite the fact you've got these rise in case numbers going on. So there's a

00:02:53.300 decoupling of it all, and there's also the fact that, well, yes, this virus during the cold weather

00:02:59.780 coming into effect and during traditional respiratory virus season, cold and flu season, this virus seems to

00:03:05.420 be spreading around a little bit more when you've got millions of people out and about doing whatever

00:03:10.940 they're doing, meeting people for lunch or having conferences in the office and so forth, all those

00:03:14.980 sort of human activities. That's what's going on here. Very different than when there were thousands

00:03:19.620 of cases a day and people weren't even interacting with each other. So you go, wow, that's certainly

00:03:23.460 stuff spreading there. So I think there's a lot of context and nuance to keep in mind when we see

00:03:29.100 reports on rising cases in Ontario mitigating things to consider. And like I said, not the least of

00:03:35.160 which is public health officials saying time to stop fixating on the case counts.

Juno News - December 06, 2021