"It's An Ill World After All"

 In spite of what the Canadian Public Health Authorities would have you believe, Canada is doing not too badly in the global view of covid cases.

Here is a chart from a week ago showing countries' weekly covid case rates.  Weekly, rather than total rates, being an indication of which countries are experiencing the worst outbreaks right now.

[As always, click on any graph to zoom in.]

European countries in yellow dominate the hit parade.  Czechia leads the way, with a rate of 737.

Canada, in red, is well down the list.  Even the US is only 11th.

The next chart compares rates a week later; comparing the Oct 18th data (above) with yesterday's weekly rates.

The chart is a bit complicated, but to highlight some points;

• Czechia still leads the pack, but now its rate has increased from 737 to over 900.
• Eight of the top nine countries are in Europe, with virtually all seeing an increase in rate.
• Canada still well down the list, with our rate essentially unchanged.
• The US still at 11.
• China still at the bottom, at zero. Boy, can those totalitarian states really get their people to toe the line!

So what about Canada?  Our rate of increase has leveled off somewhat.

At least compared to what it was three weeks ago.

So who cares about Canada - what about Toronto!!

This is an updated chart showing 7 days case rates, with Ontario's "lockdown" target of 25 cases per 100,000 population (most of the world uses per million population).

The Toronto case rate continues its upward march seemingly unabated.

So two offsetting events took place about this time. Toronto closed its bars and restaurants on Saturday, Oct 10th, and the (super spreader?) Canadian Thanksgiving occurred at the same time.  

From my read. closing those bars and restaurants didn't do anything to quell the outbreaks.  In fact, maybe mitigated the impact of Thanksgiving.  [Said the guy who frequents bars more than Thanksgiving tables.]

I'm betting on Thanksgiving as the culprit, as stories from university campuses - in spite of health officials pleading with people to stay home, specially asking university kids to not go home - according to one pundit, campuses looked like Grand Central Station.

I guess some people felt those restrictions were meant for...other people.

So the question is, if rates keep rising, what trigger can governments pull next?  Putting a few more regions into lockdown?  Putting all regions into lockdown?

That certainly seemed to work in June and July.

The only thing preventing that is can people be trusted to do the right thing?

Ah, what does he know.