The Shrine

Unlike most people here (except BL, wherever he is), I’ve lived in a Covid free location.

It’s a good experiment, Atlantic Canada. We locked down early, shut borders, had mask mandates. In our 2.4 million population, very few got sick, relatively speaking - few deaths, about 4 dozen, almost all of those in Halifax from the earliest couple months of the outbreak. We have about 200 infected total right now, 11 of those are in my province - we just locked down again as a result of some community spread - in my town. And it’s not far from me, they’re all in and around my neighbourhood of West Royalty. The government is testing everyone between the ages of 18 and 29 since the sourcing has been between university students.

For a while, Atlantic Canada enjoyed a Covid free bubble, where everyone could travel and behave without risk. Sure we took precautions, just in case, but we got a little too careless this second wave and Nova Scotia and New Brunswick both allowed some university students to travel back and forth to other provinces without isolation. They infected hundreds, but for the most part we’re getting it under control. Atlantic Canada as a whole has dropped down a few dozen cases since peaking around 275 a week ago.

PEI has a Conservative government right now. But not all conservative governments are careless pricks (there’s a sleeping beauty joke somewhere here). Of the four Atlantic provinces, only Nova Scotia has had more than 10 deaths, my province has (so far) had no Covid related deaths at all. We’re all very frightened of the virus, that’s probably why we’ve avoided having it spread much.

I pretty much only go out for exercise or buy food through drive through so been relatively safe here.

Update: Atlantic Canada is Covid free in the public community, and has been for a little while now. There are 112 active cases across the 4 provinces, but they’re all in quarantine. So you can be 99.9999% sure that no one you see walking around on the street is positive. On time for Christmas!

The cases won’t go away until it’s clear in the rest of the continent because you’re allowed to enter the region still, but it’s illegal for Covid patience to leave quarantine and everyone, healthy or not, requires a 14 day quarantine if entering from outside the Atlantic bubble. So, while there are still infected people counted, they are in quarantine and not interacting with the public.

As an essential worker in the automotive industry, I can't say this hasn't been a stressful year. My girlfriend works in the psychiatric rehab hospital, and she did contract covid, thankfully she didn't get any major complications and recovered. I have barely been leaving home other than to get groceries and go to work, and have been 95% socially isolated. I've been doing everything I can to support local restaurants, ordering carry out or delivery from them rather than from chains. I'm really hoping that these vaccines get going, and we are able to be back to some semblance of normal by the end of the year. I just got an email yesterday announcing that the symphony is canceling the rest of the season, and that the total we had spent on our season subscription can be applied to next season, which hopefully will be able to happen. I hope all of you are staying healthy and safe.

I was reading on the vaccine rollout and it says that it's not uncommon to botch the initial rollout even if there was a good plan (and there didn't seem to be) but fortunately this is a problem that can be solved by throwing a lot of money at it so hopefully an end is in sight.

I got the first COVID Vaccine shot a week ago, I go back in 2 weeks for the 2nd one.

I'll be safe from death via COVID after this apparently? So that's kind of a relief lol

Although there are mutated strains out there so who knows.

I hope everyone here is safe, if one of us died, it's not like we'd find out.

There's some variant in Africa that they think where the vaccine might be less effective but obviously they don't really have much to test with right now.

From everything I've heard, COVID is going to be a new flu, it's something that will always be around, but due to robust vaccination programs allowing a majority to be protected, once we get enough people their shots, it should be something that is not the horrible pandemic that it is now.

Interesting population impact from Covid from my island.

Quarter Population (-) Deaths
1-Apr-18 -- 152,039 -- 340
1-Jul-18 -- 153,396 -- 313
1-Oct-18 -- 155,129 -- 335
1-Jan-19 -- 155,244 -- 392
1-Apr-19 -- 155,833 -- 349
1-Jul-19 -- 157,262 -- 323
1-Oct-19 -- 158,334 -- 343
1-Jan-20 -- 158,629 -- 350
1-Apr-20 -- 159,249 -- 351
1-Jul-20 -- 159,625 -- 305

Deaths for the last compiled quarter were the lowest in total since at least 2017. The closest quarter that came close had a rate of 204 people per 100,000, compared to 191. The average rate was 217.4 deaths per 100,000. The distance from average for the most recently recorded point was 97% further away from average than the next lowest rate.

At a rate of 7.6 per 1000, 2020 could end up having the lowest quarterly death rate in the province since before 2007 - that's as far back as records go. Our death rates are a little higher than the Canadian average, but that's because we're ancient as far as population goes; with average ages in the mid-40s, Atlantic provinces are the oldest in Canada.

Anyway, I thought it was interesting how Covid actually lowered the mortality rate in my province, and no doubt in the other Atlantic provinces. This is almost certainly due to the much lower rate of communicable diseases. Although, there's likely a slight offset by a rise in death from heart disease, which can occur among people who aren't exercising regularly and eating unhealthily resulting in higher than normal blood pressure.


As an update on the situation. New Brunswick had a large outbreak, mostly along the Quebec and Maine borders as a result of people becoming careless around Christmas. While Maine has the lowest rate of infections in the US, it is obscenely high compared to Atlantic provinces, but the major culprit is Quebec, who has the highest rate of Covid in Canada. New Brunswick has received about 400 new infections, although the total number of infected reached about 340. Five have died, and an equilibrium has been reached with new infections and closed cases being about equal, and now that everything is under control, cases should drop off drastically throughout the winter.

Because the Atlantic Bubble (see below for info) being shut down at the time, the other Atlantic provinces were not impacted by the New Brunswick outbreak. The remaining three Atlantic provinces have a total of 37 infections, all of them related to travel, and all of them quarantined upon return.

The Atlantic Bubble is a region of free travel and relaxed regulations so long as the person has not traveled outside the boundaries (the four Atlantic provinces). Anyone who does travel must isolate themselves for 14 days, then receive testing before entering the general population. Anyone who breaks these rules will be fined, and possibly jailed. It's tough for travelers, but it worked. Aside from social distancing in public places and mandatory masks in certain businesses, we have lived relatively normal lives compared to most other places on earth. Outside of the current situation, we had an earlier breach (reported in my previous post) resulting from asymptomatic university student spreading the disease to classmates, who in turn spread it to University populations in the 4 major provinces - luckily, the spread was limited (largely thanks to social distancing and quickly placed lockdowns in infected regions).

Some corrections, the population of Atlantic Canada is actually closer to 2.5 million, a bit higher than I thought. Deaths from Covid are up to 72, most from the initial outbreak centered in Nova Scotia where 65 people died.

The rate across all regions of Canada per million

Atlantic - 28.8
ON - 394.0
QUE - 1110.2
BC - 221.2
ALB - 323.9
MB - 577.5
SK - 209.2
Canada Avg - 409.3

Yeah, I do have much too much free time.

We have stayed safe so far. My nurse neighbor got it, her coworker died from it. Sine's sister's live-in nurse bf got it but was able to get the monoclonal antibody treatment, so he turned out fine. I am anxiously awaiting my turn to get the vaccine, but because I take an immunosuppressant infusion every 6 months for MS, I will have to time the shots so that I get the full antibody effect.