It seems to be quite a mess out there. If you were one of those folks that avoided the news in March and April, it is time to avoid it again. All you need to know is that we will get through this but the fall and winter will be bumpy. I have been preparing myself for the end of summer for the last month or so and I think preparation as we hang on and wait is a good idea. Thanksgiving, Christmas and Halloween will not look the same as last year and when dark settles in at 4:30 mid December ( man, I hate that ) we will all need something to occupy our time. Back to that in a minute. Some troubling stuff as we head into fall. Not unexpected though. We are watching the convergence of more COVID 19 daily cases with a return to school. In Wellington-Dufferin Counties ( Guelph included) these new cases are mostly young people who attended big indoor and outdoor parties, bars and BBQ's. Most of these infections can be traced to the event where people were standing shoulder to shoulder screaming over the loud music and their drinks; a perfect storm. In BC, their daily cases hovered around 20/day mid- July. Now they are averaging 80 new cases a day. Ontario's numbers have been climbing as well but not as dramatically. For the last two days, there have been over 200 new daily cases and nation-wide we have crept up over 500 consistently this past week which is an average of 25% more new cases/day. Does it seem like a terrible time to be sending our kids back to school? Before you answer that, let's sprinkle these numbers with a bit of perspective. From March 28th to June 13th the daily new cases in Ontario were all above 200. From April 8th to June 24th, on most days the number of new cases was hovering close to 500 with a peak on June 24th of 540. That's just in Ontario. Take home message, we are watching a very slow uptick in cases. Take a look at the new cases by date graph to review: https://www.covid-19canada.com/graphs That graph makes me breath a little easier. Now check out the graph that shows the rate of new cases (the speed at which new cases were occurring) and take a really deep breath. The rate was 42.1 % on March 23rd. And today, it is 0.4%. And, just because I know you are eager to take in more statistical information ( remember, I am married to a geeky statistician), this graph is the most amazing. Check out Figure 3. found in this link: https://bit.ly/3mqDe3Z which is titled, 'Number of COVID-19 tests completed and percent positivity'. Now that's a thing of beauty. If you can't see the graph, here is what it means. The purple line shows how many positive tests there were out of all the tests that were done on a given day. OnApril 12th, 9 % of some 10,000 tests done that day were positive. Compare that to September 12th when 36,000 tests were done in Ontario and less than 1% were positive. Yes, there is a slow uptick. Yes, there were over 200 new cases in Ontario today and yes, the press is all over that with warnings about a second surge and the risk this might bring to our students and teachers and the folks in long term care and those at risk. But this is not a surge, yet. And what is incredible is how far we have come since March. We have the capacity to do 36,000 or more, tests each day. We have the ability to trace each and every positive test result which just so happens to be a small number, quarantine those folks, and stomp on outbreaks before they occur. We are keeping COVID 19 on a slow burn. It is not a terrible time to send our kids back to school. It is time. We will see positive cases in schools but so far, most of the new cases seen in other provinces who opened their schools earlier were not transmitted from within the school but were cases that came in from outside the school and each case was picked up quickly by public health, preventing in school outbreaks. And outside the school, that community spread? That's our responsibility. Summer is almost over. With it should be the parties and large gatherings in bars where public health guidelines were not adhered to. We have at least six months to go of living out these guidelines. I hate to say it but in that six months are Thanksgiving, Halloween, Christmas, New Years and Easter not to mention birthdays and anniversaries. We need to reshape our thinking and our ideas around these upcoming events. We need to get back to a 10 person social bubble and keep all of the large gathering venues, indoors and outdoors..empty. Most people handle COVID 19 very well but are you willing to stretch outside the guidelines, just this once, just a tiny bit, no one is looking anyway, it's not a big deal right? It is if our children contract the illness and bring it home to at risk people or pass it on to at risk teachers. I just cannot be responsible for that. Today is the second Sunday following labour day. It's the day every community in the country takes to the streets in honour of Terry Fox. When I say his name, I still cry. I was 16 years old when her ran through the community I was working in; a summer job as a waitress in a greasy spoon. I will never forget turning on the restaurant TV with everyone gathered round, cheering him on. Terry rejected every endorsement he was offered. He did not want anything to distract him from his goal of raising awareness for childhood cancers. He has alway represented to me, all that is honourable and selfless in us. We need a 'Terry Fox' attitude toward COVID 19. A rally cry that joins us as a nation to stick to it even though it is bloody hard. It was hard for him too. Let's do this. And for those of you returning to school this week, washing hands and wearing masks keeps you safe in a school where the community transmission is low. Our job is to keep it that way, for all of you! Anne-Marie Please share
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