Next Season (COVID-19 Discussion Thread) [Part 2]

[RayzorIsDull]

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't Covid cases reported by a region's health unit and not city by city. Oshawa is part of Durham Region.

They have it by city. Oshawa is ranked 3rd for cities in the Durham region for total cases of 342, Pickering and Ajax are carrying the covid flag for the Durham Region.

 

[Fischhaber]

Wrong not Oshawa. Durham region. Read your link.

I think most of us understand that the largest city in a region does not compose the entire region, but would have similar numbers.

For instance, not all 108 cases (2 active) in Sudbury district have been in the city of Sudbury, but the numbers give a reasonably accurate picture of the situation in that city.

You're really missing the big picture. If there is a big outbreak in Owen Sound, for example, then the league will find it difficult to play there. It doesn't matter what city it is. The government statistics were simply listed for reference. Denying or understating the recent spike will not help the season begin. Your attitude only serves to undercut the government's efforts.

 

[Fischhaber]

Depends on the health unit. I know the Windsor-Essex County Health Unit talks about cases for Windsor and the county but also provide city-by-city stats.

Do you have any insight on how Windsor-Essex has been able to mitigate a second wave so far? Health officials and citizens are obviously doing an excellent job, despite a lot of border crossings. We have the same issues to deal with here in the Soo.

 

[Naz]

You can debate/argue what ever you want but a second wave is coming and it will put the ohl in jeopardy of not having a season.

 

[Generalsupdates]

Correct me if I'm wrong but aren't Covid cases reported by a region's health unit and not city by city. Oshawa is part of Durham Region.

Not sure about everywhere else but they’re reported city by city in the Durham region and it’s updated every day. Oshawa has 16 active cases for a population of almost 200,000

All of Durham region has 103 active cases for a population of 700,000. Either if you go by just Oshawa (0.008% of the population) or by all Durham Region (0.014% of the population), those are really, really good numbers. I wish the mods would delete (or edit and correct) when people willingly post wrong information on here. I see that has become a thing on twitter now that they’ll flag tweets that purposely spread misinformation

Power BI Report

 

[OMG67]

Ontario
As of this morning....

Active cases: 5474
Hospitalizations: 176
ICU: 43

This compares to April 28 with number of active cases...
Active Cases: 5466
Hospitalizations: 957
ICU: 239

The numbers are very telling.
24% of hospitalizations are ICU today and 25% in April. Those are pretty direct comparisons. So we know if you are hospitalized, you have a 25% chance of being in intensive care.
However, what we are seeing is a far greater difference between hospitalizations per active case.
Oct 5 = 3.2%
April 28 = 17.5%

There are a few reasons for this. First, we are seeing the Virus transmit through a younger age cohort that is able to battle the virus with success outside of a hospital. Second, we have done a pretty good job protecting the more vulnerable. Third, we are testing a heck of a lot more. We are identifying mild & asymptomatic cases now that we didn’t identify previously.

I think there is a lot of depth of analysis that we need to do before we start talking seriously about what we should do going forward.

I think the country needs to create a metric that identifies a danger zone. For example. In baseball people used to look at batting average, Home Runs and RBI’s as the metric for success at the plate. Now they have far more advanced statistics to calculate Wins Above Replacement (WAR). The WAR is generally accepted As the tool to evaluate the value of a player.

We need a Virus Metric that truly provides a real update that incorporates way more information than daily Positive case counts. In actual fact, there is one metric that has been used for decades and that is the death rate. Unfortunately, no one wants to use the death rate. The death rate is calculated using the deaths related to your entire population, not deaths per infection. The reason why they do the death rate as deaths per entire population is because it also incorporates the R-0 rate. This means you could have a terribly deadly virus that kills in the very high percentages but only a very small fraction of people are susceptible. If you get it, you probably die but it is really hard to transmit. Conversely, you can get a virus that is super easy to get but it results in very low deaths...example the Flu.

If we aren’t going to use the death rate (with Covid is very low - currently about 3 times a bad flu I believe) then we need a metric that incorporates all the most important data into one number. I say this because right now people are going nuts over daily infections but the rate of hospitalizations, ICU’s and Deaths are very low by comparison to previous numbers. We NEED perspective.

 

[Otto]

Ontario
As of this morning....

Active cases: 5474
Hospitalizations: 176
ICU: 43

This compares to April 28 with number of active cases...
Active Cases: 5466
Hospitalizations: 957
ICU: 239

The numbers are very telling.
24% of hospitalizations are ICU today and 25% in April. Those are pretty direct comparisons. So we know if you are hospitalized, you have a 25% chance of being in intensive care.
However, what we are seeing is a far greater difference between hospitalizations per active case.
Oct 5 = 3.2%
April 28 = 17.5%

There are a few reasons for this. First, we are seeing the Virus transmit through a younger age cohort that is able to battle the virus with success outside of a hospital. Second, we have done a pretty good job protecting the more vulnerable. Third, we are testing a heck of a lot more. We are identifying mild & asymptomatic cases now that we didn’t identify previously.

I think there is a lot of depth of analysis that we need to do before we start talking seriously about what we should do going forward.

I think the country needs to create a metric that identifies a danger zone. For example. In baseball people used to look at batting average, Home Runs and RBI’s as the metric for success at the plate. Now they have far more advanced statistics to calculate Wins Above Replacement (WAR). The WAR is generally accepted As the tool to evaluate the value of a player.

We need a Virus Metric that truly provides a real update that incorporates way more information than daily Positive case counts. In actual fact, there is one metric that has been used for decades and that is the death rate. Unfortunately, no one wants to use the death rate. The death rate is calculated using the deaths related to your entire population, not deaths per infection. The reason why they do the death rate as deaths per entire population is because it also incorporates the R-0 rate. This means you could have a terribly deadly virus that kills in the very high percentages but only a very small fraction of people are susceptible. If you get it, you probably die but it is really hard to transmit. Conversely, you can get a virus that is super easy to get but it results in very low deaths...example the Flu.

If we aren’t going to use the death rate (with Covid is very low - currently about 3 times a bad flu I believe) then we need a metric that incorporates all the most important data into one number. I say this because right now people are going nuts over daily infections but the rate of hospitalizations, ICU’s and Deaths are very low by comparison to previous numbers. We NEED perspective.

How do they compare to August 1st?

 

[OMG67]

1

How do they compare to August 1st?

Active Cases: 1319
Hospitalization: 73
ICU: 27

You see a higher percentage of ICU to hospitalizations but that is because the cases were coming down so there were people remaining in ICU while the hospitalization rates were coming down.

Hospitalization rate was 5.5%. Slightly higher than now but we are testing more now.

EDIT:
In raw numbers, we see:
4x the active cases
2x the number of hospitalizations and ICU
***Compared to August 1st.

 

[Otto]

1


Active Cases: 1319
Hospitalization: 73
ICU: 27

You see a higher percentage of ICU to hospitalizations but that is because the cases were coming down so there were people remaining in ICU while the hospitalization rates were coming down.

Hospitalization rate was 5.5%. Slightly higher than now but we are testing more now.

EDIT:
In raw numbers, we see:
4x the active cases
2x the number of hospitalizations and ICU
***Compared to August 1st.

Interesting, so we should see a greater increase in hospitalizations and ICU in the coming days and weeks as the cases continue to increase

 

[Otto]

 

[Generalsupdates]

2 QMJHL teams were shut down for the rest of October today

 

[OMG67]

Interesting, so we should see a greater increase in hospitalizations and ICU in the coming days and weeks as the cases continue to increase

Yes, provided the cases increase. As of right now we saw one giant leap over the course of a couple weeks but now we have experienced a flattening of daily cases to about a 1:1 ratio. We may see a higher percentage of ICU beds used in relation to hospitalizations because patients that go to ICU stay in hospital longer.

If we see cases rise, we will see more hospitalizations and ICU care and obviously more death. However, if the daily case count does not rise and stays constant at between 600 and 700 cases daily, we should see relatively similar hospitalization and ICU bed usage.

However, related to the first wave, we won’t see the same sorts of hospitalizations, ICU care or deaths. The numbers right now are showing that. Right now we are seeing approximately 500% reduction in hospitalizations per positive test compared to early April when the positive tests were similar to what we are seeing today.

The underlying point is positive. The primary goal is death prevention first and foremost. Secondary goal is stress on the health care system. Third, is the overall health of the population with respect to infection.

When you consider there is a 500% reduction in hospitalizations and ICU beds used today vs the beginning of April, that is a positive result.

Conclusion. Pick your poison. Either the additional testing is resulting in the identification of more infections (mild and asymptomatic) compared to the beginning of April (meaning when there were 5000 positive cases it means there were a considerable amount of cases undiagnosed compared to now) OR we are doing better at protecting the vulnerable which is resulting in less hospitalizations. It is probably a strong combination of both. To what degree? I can’t say. I don’t think anyone really can.

In the end, 600 positive cases today vs 600 positive cases in April do not net the same dire outcomes. There has to be a way to properly weight that and use it in decision making, including the operation of many businesses including the Ontario Hockey League.

 

[ohloutsider]

So I went to a local store ( Walmart) to do an order pick up. Noticed that it was very busy for a Monday. I ask the young man who brought out my stuff why it was so busy? His response was, " people are Christmas shopping" . He went on to say customers are telling him that they are worried that the province may step the stores back to stage 2 and they want to make sure they are not in a pinch for the Christmas season. He also said although there is no dire shortage of toys there is less toys available this year and there will be less inventory later.

So my take away - if you have kids you might want to find that favorite thing now before panic buying hits a fever pace in December and if this is how people are reacting to a slight chance of an issue now, how in H are they ever going to get fans back in the seats in arena's with the population this spooked???

 

[OHLTG]

Do you have any insight on how Windsor-Essex has been able to mitigate a second wave so far? Health officials and citizens are obviously doing an excellent job, despite a lot of border crossings. We have the same issues to deal with here in the Soo.

Generally speaking, people are following the guidelines without whining or complaining, and businesses are very firm on what needs to be done. There are some who insist that masks are the devil and shall never go near them, but those are drowned out pretty quick (or they comply when required). I was at an event yesterday out in the county, masks required, and within 2-min of arriving, they asked for my contact info. No sweat. Even the people inside went about their business and I didn't hear a single negative comment.

 

[BadgerBruce]

2 QMJHL teams were shut down for the rest of October today

Do you have a link for this? I assume they are in the hot spots/red zones?

 

[Otto]

Do you have a link for this? I assume they are in the hot spots/red zones?

 

[OHLTG]

Do you have a link for this? I assume they are in the hot spots/red zones?

 

[Generalsupdates]

Do you have a link for this? I assume they are in the hot spots/red zones?

 

[Fischhaber]

Generally speaking, people are following the guidelines without whining or complaining, and businesses are very firm on what needs to be done. There are some who insist that masks are the devil and shall never go near them, but those are drowned out pretty quick (or they comply when required). I was at an event yesterday out in the county, masks required, and within 2-min of arriving, they asked for my contact info. No sweat. Even the people inside went about their business and I didn't hear a single negative comment.

Good to hear, I'm glad they are having success. We have the contact info collected in my city as well and they have made it mandatory in Toronto and nearby cities where people have not been following the rules. Hopefully that will assist with contact tracing.

 

[IcemanTBI]

And here it starts, as I said in my last post on here, no way does the QMJHL get passed October/November without incident. Considering the OHL and WHL haven't even begun their seasons, I could not understand how the QMJHL got going. I guess the $20 million was paid to them? In any event, I suspect the entire league will be suspended not too long from now.

 

[Otto]

And here it starts, as I said in my last post on here, no way does the QMJHL get passed October/November without incident. Considering the OHL and WHL haven't even begun their seasons, I could not understand how the QMJHL got going. I guess the $20 million was paid to them? In any event, I suspect the entire league will be suspended not too long from now.

This has nothing to do with anything the league has or hasn't done. The league has had zero positive tests.

 

[OHLTG]

This has nothing to do with anything the league has or hasn't done. The league has had zero positive tests.

... until now...

 

[MatthewsMoustache]

First case in the QMJHL. However this plays out should be a huge indication for what happens with the OHL.

 

[BadgerBruce]

Yes, positive case confirmed by the league.

https://www.oursportscentral.com/sports/quebec-major-junior-hockey-league/l-112

 

[windsor7]

And here it starts, as I said in my last post on here, no way does the QMJHL get passed October/November without incident. Considering the OHL and WHL haven't even begun their seasons, I could not understand how the QMJHL got going. I guess the $20 million was paid to them? In any event, I suspect the entire league will be suspended not too long from now.

Cancel the season