Whoa. This is what happens when you walk 5 km in the first wet, snow fall of the year with a wool toque on. Straight hair. A 'curly hair' girls dream!

Our numbers are going up. In the last week the 7 day rolling average has increased from 476 to 573. Take a look at this graph: https://covid-19canada.com/graphs#ON Scroll down to New Cases Analysis by Date. There's our fourth wave. Is it becoming a 5th wave? Not yet. Still looks like a blip to me. Which way will we go? That's up to us. If we follow in the footsteps of some European countries like the Netherlands where there were 19,000 new cases yesterday or Austria where there were 12,000, we will have a fifth wave. Here is their graph for new daily cases. https://www.google.com/search?q=new+covid+19+cases+in+austria&rlz=1C5CHFA_enCA952CA952&oq=new+case+in+Austria&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j0i10i22i30.7493j0j9&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8 Austria has just set a national mandate for the unvaccinated: They are back into lockdown. Projections suggest we could be in a fifth wave by January but here is our sweet spot. In Austria, only 60 % of the population is fully vaccinated and, like other European countries, they completely opened up in the summer. Now that people are gathering indoors, 60 % was not enough to prevent the spread of COVID-19 and a surge into a 5th wave. So far, 88 per cent of eligible Ontarians have received one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine and 85 per cent have fully vaccinated ( in the vaccine eligible). Many vulnerable populations are receiving booster shots and the province will likely offer a third dose to everyone in the new year. More on that later. We can avoid a 5th wave. We can keep our numbers hovering under 600 and not head to 1,000 new cases a day in the coming weeks. We can keep the number of people with COVID-19 in hospital and the ICU under 300 and not overwhelm our healthcare system. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations Waning immunity might be part of the reason our numbers are climbing but of the 500 to 600 new cases a day, 100 or so are in kids who are not vaccinated and vaccines are about to be offered to them. Kids are not getting seriously ill with COVID-19 and that's a blessing. Waning immunity, unvaccinated kids and some breakthrough infections in the fully vaccinated, all reasons for an uptick in numbers. But, very few fully vaccinated folks are getting seriously ill either. Take a look at this graph and scroll down to the ICU pie chart. Thirteen fully vaccinated in the ICU out of 13 million fully vaccinated people. Sixty-four non-vaccinated in the ICU which is still an incredibly low number out of the 13 million people in Ontario that are fully vaccinated. https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data/hospitalizations The answer? Keep masks on in public. Keep indoor gatherings small. Gather indoors with fully vaccinated people. Make sure the vulnerable people in your gathering have received a third dose. Keep two windows preferably on the opposite side of the room slightly ajar. Yeah, that makes the room colder but we are Canadian. We own big sweaters and lovely scarves. On the weekend, I am heading to the 21st birthday party of a young man I delivered. I am old. He will turn 21 on November 21st in 2021. They call that a champaign birthday and they are very rare. We will celebrate.....with fully vaccinated people, with under 25 gathered, with the people over 70 boostered up and I will sneak a couple of windows open. Maybe I should warn them about that. We can do this, all winter long. We can do this until our children under 12 are fully vaccinated and until as many people that need to have a booster, have a booster. NO FIFTH WAVE. WE'VE GOT THIS. Please share. Anne-Marie We are assisting in the roll out of COVID vaccines in Lesotho. If you would like to be apart of this vitally important work towards making sure that vaccines are distributed in resource poor countries like Lesotho, you can donate here: https://www.braceletofhope.ca/ways-to-give/ For non-Facebook users, you can find this post here: https://braceletofhope.blogspot.com/