The Curious Case Of High ICU Occupancy – But Not From Covid.

Authored by Paul Staley

Currently, in Ontario, there’s another lockdown and talks of further restrictions like limiting big box stores to essential items only and only allowing curbside pickup for other retailers. What’s widely being reported is that there’s a great concern to overrun the hospitals. One thing of note though is the % of ICU admissions that are related to Covid. Which is how I came across howsmyflattening.ca a site that tracks stats such as this.

What I found curious were Windsor and Niagara, two different hospitals near or at max ICU occupancy but yet their occupants consist of individuals that are not suffering from Covid. As you can see from the data below 103% occupancy at Niagara with only 7% Covid occupancy, meanwhile Windsor at 90% occupancy only has 13% Covid ICU occupancy.

You can argue that we need to lock down to prevent more from entering these hospitals or maybe the lock-down isn’t as important as other issues going on – and we should focus on them.

While this lock-down has numerous targets, in the past few days the target has been the school system with numerous schools throughout Ontario closing the doors and returning to remote online learning. Online learning has 80% of kids failing two or more classes. In response, various higher-ups involved with Sick Kids, including Dr. Ronal Cohn the President and CEO of The Hospital For Sick Kids have sent a letter stating that the schools need to stay open, which has been a massive talking point these past few days and will no doubt continue to be one.

They asked that we re-focus our vaccine effort and focus on essential workers including teachers. If you follow the data, which seems like our government officials have not. It will tell you that kids are largely unaffected by this virus and that schools should be open and remain open. Yet, we are closing them again, causing more issues now and down the road and causing kids to fall further behind. You can see the letter below.

These lockdowns cause numerous issues and seem to solve none. As they say, if it worked we wouldn’t need three of them. Should we not be looking at a different direction in terms of vaccines, one that includes taking care of the highest transmission areas like community and workplaces with essential workers? I believe so, but why don’t our elected leaders?

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