Nearly 60,000 people were hospitalized in what the CIHI calls 'vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations' across Canada in 2024.
New data from the Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI) has found that hospitalization rates for COVID-19 and other respiratory infections are still in the thousands, while vaccine rates drop.
Nearly 60,000 people were hospitalized in what the CIHI calls “vaccine-preventable respiratory hospitalizations” across Canada in 2024.
Influenza and respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) accounted for more than half of hospitalizations, while COVID-19 contributed to more than 40 per cent.
This number of hospitalizations is “significantly more for our hospitals to handle,” Melanie Josée Davidson, director for the health system performance team at CIHI, said.
Sorry I've been MIA. Life has had some pretty good highs and some really horrible lows recently. Christmas was great, but a few days later my mom went back into the hospital. After spending a day in the ER she was transferred back down to Philadelphia. She has a bad exacerbation of her CHF and it's not looking great. It's already gotten to the point where being the primary caregiver for both mom and dad has gotten to be too much, but now there's no way I'd be able to take care of her post-discharge, whenever that may be. Thankfully I have an amazing brother and SIL who are here for me and we are all going to do this together. My SIL drove me and dad down to Philly today to visit with mom. It took about an hour to get there. It was so nice to be able to see mom, not on facetime, but in person, and be able to hold her hand, talk to her, give her a hug and a kiss. But it was so fucking hard to see her like that. I don't know how long she will be in the hospital, but it's going to be a long stay. In the meantime, once the social workers reach out this week, we will all have to work together to figure out what type of facility is best suited for mom's needs, is close to home, and can safely provide all the care she needs. It kills me knowing that mom won't come back home. Just sitting here writing this, sitting in the living room where I usually am watching TV with mom at this hour, being here alone is hard. I'm crying just thinking about it. I hate this. I hate all of this. Coincidentally enough, the weekly email from church last week included a flyer about an anticipatory grief support group that another place nearby will be hosting. I signed up for it, its virtual, for 8 weeks, and starts February 1. I'm glad, because I don't know how to do this. I'm so scared.
They had been in a coma for almost a week, and their body was borderlining useless.
The nurses were doing some scans and checking vitals when the Doctor pulled Caretaker out of the room.
“Are they going to be okay?” Caretaker asked, hopeful. Whumpee wasn’t even supposed to wake up, so that meant they were getting better, right?
The doctor took off their glasses. “I’m afraid we don’t have a positive answer for that. The cells in their body are being attacked by the virus, and it’s eventually going to spread to their heart and lungs, then their brain. They aren’t going to make it past tonight.”
Caretaker felt their heart drop. They knew this was the expected outcome, they knew this was how it was going to end, but they so desperately wanted to believe they would be alright.
“There’s nothing you can do?”
The doctor shook their head. “It’s too late to do anything... I would get my last goodbyes in.”
Caretaker nodded, composing themself. There was no reason Whumpee needed to know that they were dying.
They had a fear of dying, so why make them suffer for their last hours alive?
Whumpee was sitting up, smiling as Caretaker entered the room. “Hey caretaker!”
They sat in a chair next to Whumpee’s bed, gently grabbing and kissing their fingers. “Hi baby, how are you feeling?”
“Ugh- like I got hit by a fucking bus.”
“Language whumpee,” Caretaker joked, as Whumpee stuck their tongue out.
“Alright mom, sorry I nearly died and lost my fuck privileges.” They shifted slightly, wincing. “So what’d the doc say?”
“Oh uh, they said you’ll be out in no time.” It wasn’t completely a lie, just not what they wanted to say.
“Oh thank god. I was worried they were going to force me to stay in this gross hospital gown.”
Caretaker rolled their eyes, stroking Whumpee’s hand with their thumb. “You’ll survive being in a hospital gown for a little longer.” They wanted to bite their own toungue off after that sentence, but Whumpee didn’t notice a difference.
“I doubt it. Anyways.” They moved over, making a spot with for Caretaker to sit next to them. “Come.”
“I don’t know it I should.”
Whumpee’s face grew sad. “Please? You look so stressed out.” Caretaker almost felt tears grow in their eyes. Whumpee shouldn’t be spending their last few hours alive worrying about how they were feeling.
Caretaker have them a small smile, climbing and sitting next to Whumpee. “Alright fine, you’ve convinced me.”
Whumpee clapped their hands happily, snuggling into Caretaker’s side. “So what are we going to do after this?”
“After we get out of the hospital?”
They could practically hear the eye roll coming from Whumpee. “Obviously.”
Caretaker wrapped their arms around whumpee, pretending for a moment they both were going to walk out of that hospital. “Well you’re the one trapped in the blue gown, what do you want to do?”
“Hmm... well I’m just going to go down the list of all the things I’ve always wanted to do. I want to try stretchy ice cream.”
“Stretchy ice cream?”
“Yeah, it’s like... Turkish? I think?”
“You mean Booza.”
They shifted slightly in Caretaker’s arms. “That’s the bitch.”
“Okay, trying Booza, what else?”
“Hm... I want to start a shitposting Tumblr account, I want to push Woody Allen down the stairs, I want to find out more about the Mandela effect...” Whumpee went on, listing all of the things they wanted to do.
Caretaker held them close, nodding along to whatever they said. Eventually a nurse came in, bringing them a bottle of water and checking Whumpee’s Vitals, asking how they felt.
Caretaker and Whumpee talked, and cuddled, until eventually Caretaker noticed the way that they were losing energy, and having trouble continuing on the conversation.
They hugged them tighter, feeling their eyes well up with unshed tears. They didn’t want to say goodbye to Whumpee yet.
“Hey Whumpee?”
“Yeah?”
”I love you, you know that?”
“I love you too Caretaker. Why- why do you sound so sad?”
Caretaker pulled away, gently cupping Whumpee’s face and looking at them. “I’m not sad, I’m happy actually. I’m happy you’re awake, and I’m happy your alive, and I’m just so fucking glad you’re okay baby. When we get out of this hospital we are going to do everything you ask for.”
Whumpee gave them a happy, but exhausted smile. “Hell yeah- my head hurts,” they slurred slightly, burying their head in Caretaker’s chest.
“I know baby, why don’t you try and get some sleep. I’ll be right here when you wake up.”
Whumpee nodded, laying down as Caretaker went to get up, but was stopped. “Please stay with me.”
They smiled, laying next to Whumpee and pulling the blanket over both of them.
The sound of the flatlining monitor came only minutes later.
A senior intensive care registrar urges youths to get jab saying Covid patients are ‘getting younger and younger’
The belief in the early months of the pandemic that young people didn’t get COVID-19 was never true. But now the number and percentage of kids and younger adults contracting the virus have notably increased.
While young people are generally at a much lower risk of dying from Covid, doctors say they are increasingly witnessing them become severely unwell. Dr Samantha Batt-Rawden, senior intensive care registrar, said the patients they were seeing were “getting younger and younger”.
“The vast majority of those requiring intensive care are unvaccinated: some of them will die. It is heartbreaking for us as NHS staff to watch people suffer unnecessarily knowing that this almost certainly could have been prevented by the vaccine,” she said.
Even if you don’t die, you could still end up in an ICU or even on a ventilator.
The 2020 mindset that it was mostly old people ending up in hospitals is as out of date as a Trump tweet.
The latest data from the Office for National Statistics shows that coronavirus in England is now largely an infection among young adults, with cases in 16- to 24-year-olds almost six times more common than in 50- to 69-year-olds.
In the US, the percentage of people under 30 being hospitalized with COVID-19 has crept upwards.
At the start of 2021 the percentage of those hospitalized for COVID-19 who were under 18 was 3%. Hospitalizations for the 18 to 29 group was 5%. Combined, that’s a total of just 8% for the under 30 population.
But as of last week, the under-18 and the 18-29 groups each made up 8% of hospitalizations for COVID-19. That’s a grand total of 16% of those hospitalized being under 30-years-old. In other words, the under 30s percentage of hospitalizations for the virus has doubled in seven months.
The easiest way to avoid hospitalization is to get vaccinated. Even if you come down with the virus after vaccination, it will be a milder case. On the other hand, unvaccinated people under 30 risk dying like this young man in Alabama.
If you are vaccinated, good job! You are protecting yourself as well as your friends and family. If you aren’t yet vaccinated, quit looking for excuses to avoid doing so from dodgy social media spreaders of disinformation.
“Precautions” my mother’s school has taken for Covid 19
Sidenote: this isn’t supposed to be a political blog, but I am very angry at the state of the world rn so fuck it.
My mom is a teacher. Her school district has been online this entire semester and students are supposed to come back this Monday (October 26). Their kids are doing a block schedule so only half of students are present on any given day so that they can social distance. The district also promised to provide the teachers with cleaning/sanitation supplies to keep them safe. Here’s what they got:
1 package of napkins (in lieu of paper towels) per teacher
1 bottle of alcohol-free hand sanitizer per teacher
That’s it. The first round of “hand sanitizer” that came through came in clear, unmarked bottles. Turns out it was hand soap. The cleaning supplies that came were unnamed but had an ingredients list. The science teachers looked through the list and realized that the cleaners contained toxic chemicals. Both were recalled by the district, and teachers are buying their own disposable masks for their classes. The admin is also allowing students to get schedule changes because they all want to be with their friends, even though they told teachers from day one that schedule changes would not be approved. The admin also said that they would put up social distancing markers in the hallway, which they did not.
This is unsafe enough, but also consider that the school almost didn’t reopen because the county they are in is a Covid red county (meaning the county has so many hospitalizations that there are no available ICU beds). According to national data, hospital records, and healthcare workers’ public testimony, we are a red county. HOW FUCKING EVER our stupid-ass governor (Kevin Stitt) refuses to officially label the county red. He is publicly disputing national data so that schools are forced to reopen. Doctors are turning away patients and telling them to commute hours away for treatment because there is no space, and Governor Stitt is forcing my mom’s school to open up.
PLUS some of the teachers/teachers’ families have preexisting conditions. One of her coworkers has an immunocompromised spouse, and one of the teachers, who is elderly, has type 1 diabetes (which research shows makes a person more likely to contract Covid) and MS (multiple sclerosis). They have both told their bosses they won’t come into work if more precautions are not put in place, and legit the district sent them a letter stating that they have provided protections (which are the two things I listed above) and expect the teachers to be in class on Monday.
