Canada seems to be a little behind other countries with deaths and number of confirmed infected people. Is it because of the various restrictions in place for some weeks now, or that the virus is late developing here and the numbers will be similar to other countries in ‘x’ number of weeks?

All we can do is wait and see, the health officer in BC is optimistic but says we haven't hit our peak yet and the next 2 weeks is critical.

Today's announcement for BC is:

86 new cases, they didn't update Sunday so this includes tests that came back on Sunday and Monday.

2 additional deaths, plus the first community death which I believe means the person died outside of hospital.

106 people now in hospital, with 60 in ICU.

48% of total cases have now recovered, including 80 who were previously in the ICU.

13 care homes now have outbreaks.

19 hospitals are devoted COVID-19 sites now and able to accept COVID patients.

4,233 vacant acute care beds across the province available currently.

BC has been receiving orders of medical equipment and supplies including 1 million surgical masks received today.

They are also prepping some offsite locations for people who are less sick including 200 beds at the Vancouver Convention center, but doesn't sound like we are at the point where such sites are needed, they are preparing so they are ready if needed.


Reports that Air Canada is will laying off 15,000 more workers coming out today as well.

Not many still living, but a few older folks who were young children during the Spanish Flu pandemic, this 102 year old survived it, but her father died, she has a simple yet important tip.

"All you have to do is behave yourself and just do what you are told," she said. "I mean try to do something constructive if you can."

These guys are heroes. They destroyed the virus.

https://www.citynews1130.com/2020/03...nges-covid-19/

Vancouver not enforcing various parking rules effective now.

BC Hospitals will not charge for parking until further notice starting Wed.

Have noticed recycling in our building has decreased, people probably don't want to touch the gross and very dirty handles to open the recycling bins, where trash has no lid, just toss the trash in.

A thought occurred to me recently.
The other day Trump suggested that he'd like the US to resume normal activity by Easter. I suspect that he hadn't a feel for what that would mean in terms of fatalities and consequencies but others did. One argument against this made by them was that it would mean an acceptance that, since the elderly appear to be at most risk, there would be a acceptable sacrifice of the old to achieve a national aim.
But...
Don't they do this all the time?
How many 70 year olds have the US sent to Afghanistan recently? It is a routinely accepted principle that it is the young that countries sacrifice to achieve their military and diplomatic aims.
Logically it would seem that should the C19 generated economic health of the country become an existential threat then I see no difference, and I speak as an oldie here, between the two propositions.
There is a paradox here.

Absolutely unhinged. It really is no wonder that so many people back Trump if this is the kind of bullshit they hoover up.

I watched that just to see how unhinged they are. Jesus f'ing Christ. Who the hell does that guy think he is to be "demanding" anything of his deity? I thought the point of prayer stuff was to "supplicate" - to ask for something humbly, meekly and earnestly. This guy was none of those things. And yet somehow this is what (this strange sect of) Christianity has become in 21st century America. I'd say "God save them all" except that even if I believed such a thing was possible, I'm not at all sure it's the desired outcome...

I am hoping its the latter. We were definitely ahead of the states in putting our restrictions in place and testing, still are. Thankfully much of this was down to the provincial governments. So maybe we won't be as bad as other countries. As I have mentioned here a couple of times, the states will be the worst hit country in the world. Trump's handling of it has been a disgrace, but he still patting himself on the back....not sure what for.

don’t you mean for former?

remember the US is a country of approx 360,000,000 million people...not 20/40/60,000,000. So of course the numbers are going to be far greater than the smaller countries.

Sorry!! yes, I meant the former!

I realise Canada is a tenth of the population of the US, but even taking that into account even at this early stage you can tell where its going to go...

I watched an article on the news last night, asking if Toronto could end up like New York....Toronto is a lot smaller than New York but the cities are often compared. Seoul in South Korea is a lot more densely populated than New York, but their curve reached nowhere near that of New York just because they started testing earlier and had restrictions in place, thankfully Toronto and Ontario have done the same. New York was basically left unchecked, in my opinion other cities in the US will follow the same path as New York as suitable measures have not been put in place earlier enough, many Americans are still not taking it seriously! meanwhile Trump has the nerve to say if we lose under a 100,000 people I think I will still have done a good job. His arrogance knows no bounds.

Eh? The US put travel restrictions in place way before Canada did. Testing doesn't prevent the spread (unless you know something that I don't) it simply confirms the numbers.

Density of the population is the big issue and New York is significantly skewing the figures in the US. If you believe that Canada's success was down to the actions of the Provinces, surely the same applies to the lack of action by the various governments in States in the US too, doesn't it?

No I didn't mean travel restrictions, (Canada should have done that sooner) I meant social distancing measures, much of the US still doesn't have sufficient measures in place, whereas schools, pubs, restaurants, and closure of non essential business's was done in Canada sooner than the US....well at least in Ontario.

I would say testing is important as although it doesn't prevent the spread it tells us how many are infected and in what areas, the WHO stressed this from the start.

Isn't it best when comparing countries to compare the rate per 1 million rather than total cases?

While the US is top place for total cases, several European countries have more cases per million and more deaths per million by a fairly large amount in some cases.

Totally agree..

San Marino isn't doing too well in the cases/million

https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/#countries