Because Quebec is a province and not a country, the dire situation here is largely understated and unpublicized on the world scale, but there's no hiding the level of the disaster.
When Quebec's mortality rate is compared against other countries in the world, only Belgium is worse off.
That's right, if Quebec was a country, it would be the second worse off out of the 195 countries that make up the world.
If one was also to include New York state as a separate entity as well, Quebec would slide to third place, cold comfort indeed.
The table above compares Quebec to the rest of the world and includes the USA as a whole and the USA minus New York state, as well as Canada as a whole and Canada minus Quebec.
You might question whether making a comparison based on just one day is valid, but it does represent the here and now, and even comparing numbers over the last week or so hold up Quebec as a world-class disaster.
As the world bemoans the huge amount of virus deaths in the United States, it is largely based on the brute numbers because of America's size.
But the rate at which Quebecers are dying is actually twice as bad as that in the USA, 12.5 deaths per million in Quebec and 6.0 in the USA.
When Quebec is compared to Rest of Canada, the death rate due to the virus here is a shocking 5.7 times as large, which means that a Quebecer is almost six times more likely to die of the virus compared to someone living in the ROC!
And sadly, we are nowhere in sight of the end because the virus has implanted itself firmly in over 300 nursing homes and senior residences where seniors are being slaughtered at a rate of close to 100 a day.
Premier Legault has described the situation in Quebec as two solitudes, whereby the situation in the senior homes is ruinous, while the situation in the general population (where citizens have dutifully isolated themselves in their homes) quite manageable.
In his latest news briefings, the Premier's frustration and indeed panic was palpable, describing the uncontrollable out-of-control reality.
As the virus rips through the senior homes, the nursing staff is either out sick with the virus or have abandoned the job themselves in fear of getting sick.
The skeleton staff remaining are unable to properly tend to residents, who are in many cases left for days without food or water, something unimaginable in our modern age.
Hospitals have complained that many patients transferred are not virus-positive, but rather dangerously dehydrated and malnourished.
What is worse in all this that attempts to remediate the situation by calling for altruistic Quebecers to volunteer to go into the homes to lend a hand have failed miserably and considering Quebecers' reputation as Canadians who do the least amount of voluntary charity service, it's no surprise.
Incredibly, Quebec has actually shanghaied workers on the provincial payroll to work in these homes, forcing them against their will under threat of dismissal.
The situation is so desperate that the Premier has been forced to play his very last card, which is asking for help from Ottawa in the form of the Canadian army.
For a desperate Francois Legault and his government, begging Justin Trudeau for help is as Ayatollah Khomeini described signing a ceasefire with hated enemy Iraq, 'like drinking a cup of poison."
For Quebec, the end to the ongoing disaster is not yet in sight as the virus fire rages through our tinderbox senior homes unabated.
And so when you see the Quebec media doing sleight-of-hand and misdirection, emphasizing President Trump's virus disaster in America, remember that we are sadly in twice as bad shape.
No question we dropped the ball on the CHSLDs. However, to be fair, Philip you could have easily also shown the stats from the hardest hit region of Italy and not the country as a whole and the same for the much harder hit regions of eastern France. To me you either show the stats per country or then you break up all the countries into the regions showing hardest hit and least hit. Many regions of Italy and France were not touched that badly..western parts of France are much better off than the east and so forth. Same story with China..Wuhan obviously bore the brunt of it.
ReplyDeleteThere is no question that the Lombardy region of Italy likely was way beyond our numbers as well as the regions of eastern France and some regions of Spain.
In any case we have nothing to be proud of. I know you are somewhat sympathetic to the workers who just quit but I am disappointed in many of them. If your job is too look after the elderly and you just bolt at the worst time which surely will result in your colleagues being overworked and the elderly suffering and dying well I dont know how you live with that burden for the rest of your life. As fas as I know there salaries were all increased as well so what is their excuse? I understand some of them may be older and have health issues but 6500 of them..I doubt it? It tells me a lot about frankly a very selfish and uncaring society.
Meanwhile are there not too many people still in the hospitals..we have 1400 hospital beds used out of 7700. Can we not move more nurses and doctors out of these empty facilities to help out in the CHSLD's?
I cant imagine nurses during world war 2 just quitting because of long hours and the risk of infection and yet here we are letting people die in less critical conditions than that. Different mindset nowadays..pretty sad.
Actually, I did try to run down the number of deaths yesterday in Lombardy. Best I can guess is that of Italy's 260 deaths, about 40% were in Lombardy or about 105 deaths, same as Quebec. But Lombardy has about 10 million residents versus Quebec's 8.5, so Quebec still ahead.
DeleteStill you are right about the fact that the staggering deaths in the Lombardy in the past 2 months make it the worst hit region in the world.
Yeah but the worst has been over in Italy for a few weeks now so the numbers are much lower. However at the peak I am sure Lombardy was way higher than where we are now. I suspect we were about 3 weeks or so behind Italy. I think we are peaking now in Montreal hence should see some improvement in deaths in the next week or so.
Deletealso, as confirmed in this article from the guardian https://tinyurl.com/yb2w2q8c , italy, spain and the uk only count covid deaths in hospitals, so covid deaths in their equivalent of quebec's chsld's are not included in the published statistics. belgium and quebec do include them. this difference in compiling data make the comparison shown in the above table totaly misleading.
DeleteYeah from what I read more and more doctors are encouraged/arm twisted into calling every death of a patient with COVID to be because of COVID. Many of these patients had serious health issues already for years and were not likely to live much longer. So the number of deaths are also likely exaggerated or at least accelerating deaths which would have happened 1,2 or 3 months later but COVID added a bit of a punch.
ReplyDeleteOMG, complicated, OMG! If I understand you correctly, only senior Quebec deaths were given that little push over the edge merely days before their inevitable demise for other causes? How do you know that for sure? The answer is: You don't!
DeleteIndubitably it is the oldest seniors who are perishing the most, so while the probabilities are in place, you still don't know that for sure. Here in Ontario a supercentenarian, a woman of 111 years of age died after surviving the Spanish Influenza of 1919, two world wars, the Chinese Cultural Revolution and other horrors of life. She only entered that Toronto home for the aged where she died days ago at AGE 107! She may have lived another 4-5 years or 4-5 days without the virus. You just don't know. Supercentenarians could die just taking a nap, i.e., they spontaneously expire, or a little slip or fall can spell their demise.
Having been under what is tantamount to house arrest going on six weeks, as you pointed out in a recent blog, has perhaps made me a bit bonkers! Fortunately the double-digit daytime temperatures are starting to come at long last. The Toronto Area has yet to hit a high of 20º this year making this sequestered state even worse, not to mention days of rain that I'm sure are falling as snow being further north. Neither here nor there.
What is important is all the rotten reports I've been hearing for several years have made what's going on in your loser state a disaster just waiting to happen. Here in Ontario we heard about the Herron disaster in Dorval. I remember a few years ago there was a seniors home somewhere in Eastern Quebec that burnt all the residents to a crisp before anything could be done. It was a tinderbox.
I had an aunt and uncle, as novogenerians, finally had to move into a senior's residence, but as bad as this sounds on the surface, their having passed away ten and five years ago respectively thankfully avoided this crisis. Like the Herron, it cost nearly $10,000 per month for them to stay there. In the last five years my uncle outlived my aunt, the place got worse. I think the ownership changed and all they cared about was the bottom line. I'm sure by now it's even worse than when my uncle passed away.
Comp, Quebec deserves to be put on the spot! With over $13 billion in equalization payments and other largesse courtesy of your Quebec-based PM, it's even more disgraceful what a loser state Quebec is, how inept Le-go is (as if anyone else would do better (think that housewife, Pauline Marois)), so after all this, I think it'll be high time to dismiss Quebec from our confederation. All that money thrown at Quebec and it's still the loser state of loser states!
Phillip nailed it early on when he said that the elderly and those with underlying conditions should self-isolate and everyone else should go on with normal life.
ReplyDeleteThat was and is the solution to this thing.
Why are we discussing anything else?
Tony, your idea is being put to the test. There is a plenitude of states that are going full steam ahead notwithstanding the number of COVID-19 deaths in just six weeks has exceeded the number killed in the Vietnam War that went on for years.
DeleteInterestingly, since Manitoba has had very few deaths (six at the time of this comment), they too are going to start opening up their economy step-by-step, but are prepared to end it if it proves to be detrimental.
The Orange Turd (O.T.) said a month ago the virus deaths would be down to zero within a month...he recently said it will go up and then go down to zero at the "appropriate time". When the hell is THAT? LOL, L, L, L, L! Well, Tony, we'll see how it goes. You may end up getting the last laugh in all this...and I hope you do for just about everyone's sake...but sadly, I doubt it.
I've also heard that if you're under 65 and in relatively good health, you have a greater chance of being killed driving from home to work than you do from covid-19.
DeleteThere has been a lot of talk and debate about what the mortality rate of covid-19 is.
ReplyDeleteAssuming a base rate of 0.1% for the seasonal flu, I'm wondering at what multiple of this base rate people would be willing to shut down the global economy.
Is it 0.5% (which would be 5 times the mortality rate)? In other words, say that the typical seasonal flu mortality rate of 0.1% translated into roughly 5,000 deaths in Canada, 0.5% would translate into 25,000 deaths.
Would that number be a figure that would you could live with AND have the economy still running normally?
Or maybe you could stomach a 1.0% rate (=50,000 deaths).
Or, say, 2.0% rate (= 100,000 deaths).
I'd be interested to know what readers' thresholds are.
I dunno, Tony. In just two months, this virus has killed more people than there were fatalities in the Vietnam War, and that lasted almost ten years. Nonagenarians and centenarians are surviving, too. Some people are built better than Mack trucks, even super-centenarians are alive and well. Overweight people, even younger ones, however, are more susceptible to consequences of the virus, and even kids with asthma can be in danger. Elderly folks have survived, even if their chances of doing so are slim, and young people have died. There may be younger people who are not aware of underlying issues. It's a horrible lottery this virus. Anyway, parts of the U.S. seem to be opening their doors wide open despite 60,000+ deaths with the numbers not decreasing, so this will be the test as to what will happen. This may come across as morbid, but I wouldn't be surprised if the Orange Turd wants more elderly to die...less medical costs and social security benefits to pay out...but is the savings worth putting the elderly at such terrible riskÉ
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