The “new normal” is starting to look pretty normal

Jeff Green | Nov 03, 2021

Aside from a spike in cases in the local region over the last ten days, the news has been pretty good about COVID in Kingston Frontenac Lennox and Addington, and in Ontario as a whole.

The 4th wave of COVID-19, fuelled by the Delta variant, did not result in much in that many cases locally, and only one or two hospitalisations over the late summer and early fall. Vaccination rates, boosted by a vaccine passport program for indoor venues, has remained steady enough that the 90% threshold for first doses, for those over 12, is now within reach. Second doses are creeping as well, although hitting 90% before Christmas might not happen.

But with the announcement two weeks ago that restrictions are set to ease in the new year, and be essentially eliminated by the second anniversary of the social and economic shutdown in March of 2020, people are starting to see that the end of COVID will come.

But the question remained about this fall, and pre-Christmas events. With the lifting of outdoor capacity last week, along with the lifting of indoor capacity limits a week earlier, the stage is now set for the fall of 2021 to resemble 2019, but with masks.

Children decked out in costumes descended on the hamlets in Frontenac County on Halloween, with much less of the tentativeness of the very careful Halloween last year.

Remembrance Day organisers had been asking people to pre-register for their services across the region, but with the change in gathering limits being announced, a full two weeks before November 11, they are able to change their own protocols. The public is now invited to attend Remembrance Day Services without registering in advance. Distancing protocols and masking will still make the scene around cenotaphs look different from normal, but the freedom to gather at Cenotaphs, in the biting November cold, for two minutes of silence will be another step towards normalcy.

Christmas parades will be the next things to come back, along with craft sales, and concerts.

It appears that the vaccination program, and social distancing measures have been highly effective in Ontario generally, and in KFL&A in particular.

As for adverse reactions to vaccination, concerning which some of our readers have complained that we have ignored, I had a look this week.

Public Health Ontario (PHO) publishes regular detailed AEFI (adverse Effects Following Immunization) reports, the most recent covering all reports of AEFI between the first COVID immunization on December 13, 2020, and October 24, 2021.

In that time, of the over 22.3 million doses administered, 14,410 AEFI reports have been received, and of those 798 meet the “serious” definition that public health employs, and most of those (790) have required hospitalisation. The way Public Health Ontario reports it, there have been 64.6 AEFI cases per 100,000 doses, of which 3.6 per 100,000 are considered “serious”. Of those 81 have reported “persistent or significant disability/incapacity related to the adverse event” according to PHO report, adding “due to the relatively short follow-up time for AEFIs reported in CCM, it is uncertain whether these disability/incapacity will eventually resolve, but had not yet resolved at the time of reporting.”

PHO also reports that there have been 8 reports of death “temporarily associated with receipt of COVID vaccine that meet the provincial surveillance definition”. These are deaths that have not been clearly attributed to other causes, and the PHO report then says “these reports should not be interpreted as causally related with vaccine.”

Of the 8 deaths, in two cases it has been determined that the “cause of death was not attributed to the vaccine, in one other, the death “was not clearly attributed to the vaccine”. In four cases, the vaccination “may have contributed but was not the underlying cause of death” and in one case “A coroner’s investigation determined that the immediate causes of death included vaccine induced thrombotic Thrombocytopenia, a rare but significant side effect of the AstraZeneca vaccine.

Analysis of the benefits of vaccination are not as definitive as the adverse effects reports, which each create a file and an investigation.

One thing that the data does show is that people in KFL&A, and Frontenac County in particular, have fared better than almost all jurisdictions in the world. The case and death rate when compared to the US, the UK, Canada, and other European countries, is a fraction of what it is in those places.

For example, the death rate in the United States is 75 times higher than in our region. The death rate in Sweden is 50 times higher, the death rate in the rest of Canada is 30 times higher, and the death rate in Israel is 30 times higher.

There is a question of accuracy when comparing regions with vastly different populations, but the rate of difference, in all of these cases, and I picked other countries at random and found similar results, is extreme enough to conclude that we have done well. People continue to work, we have taken care of each other, our schools are open, and we are planning events with family, friends and our communities over the next few months.

Is it the vaccination rate that we have, the social distancing we have done, or the fact that we live in places where there is space between us, that is responsible for this outcome?

Perhaps all three, but whatever it is we can thank our lucky stars that we live in a rich country with a functioning social order, in spite of our differences.

Public Health is asking us to keep masking up in public until we clear the final hurdles of COVID, and while there are still no severe cases in our region, the caseload as a whole is up, with two reported cases, since October 15, in Central Frontenac, two in South Frontenac, and four in Addington Highlands.

COVID is not gone, but we are starting to be able to live our ‘normal’ lives, as long as we keep a few measures in place.