10 ms·

Canada's vaccination rate overtakes US

52 points by leblancfg 5y ago

retrac 5y ago
For fully vaccinated. Up here we have focussed mostly on first-dose coverage, and we even delayed second dose to get as many first doses out as possible. Ontario is now at 79% first dose coverage for those over 12 (93% of those over 60 years) and 60% fully vaccinated over 12. It looks like we may ultimately settle around 90% over the next few months? I'm pleasantly surprised. I honestly expected it to drop off after about 70% and for us to start running out of volunteers not much after the USA. I guess people's hesitancy has dissipated. And the antivax spectre was overblown, at least here. Some local data for the curious: https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinations https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinatio...
- Someone 5y ago
  According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL~USA~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_W..., it’s for single doses, too, and by a much wider margin. That might be a different definition, though (e.g. full population vs those over 18) or data may be lagging for either source.
hourislate 5y ago
They vaccinated a ton of people with Astra and then let them mix second doses and I know people who got Pfizer 1st dose and Moderna 2nd dose and just a complete shit show. I'm surprised they arn't injecting people with soup of the day at this point or some hybrid of all 3 (Astra/Pfizer/Moderna). What's funny is they find this worth bragging about while under the worlds longest lock downs and still not completely open. The whole thing is a disaster from start to finish but they have this huge inferiorty complex where they compare themselves to the USA in every way and then pat themselves on the back convincing themselves they're better in some way. Just cringe..... Disclaimer: Canadian
- liketochill 5y ago
  In British Columbia I thought everyone did pretty well at navigating the different challenges. We had reasonable leadership and communication and I skied all winter. Would have sucked to be in Ontario. The mix of vaccine shots doesn’t bother me. Indeed comparing and following the USA is a problem.
  - sodium833 5y ago
    > Would have sucked to be in Ontario. It did!
  - etimberg 5y ago
    Ontario did a terrible job at pretty much everything. I volunteered with a some other devs to build https://vaccine-ontario.ca https://vaccine-ontario.ca because otherwise there was no single dashboard to find a vaccination clinic that had available appointments.
    - theluketaylor 5y ago
      The Ontario covid experience has been Whose Line is it Anyway: everything is made up and and the points don't matter. The rules changed all the time and with no explanation or justification. Government ministries didn't speak to one another or the regions. Multiple times the education minister said schools were opening while the premier said they were staying closed (or vice versa). Vaccinations were delegated almost entirely to the regions and it was complete chaos, especially since the pharmacies were left to do all their own booking. I registered with the region and over 30 pharmacies to get my first dose. Then I got offers of first dose for more than a month after that I had to keep cancelling. 2nd dose was much more straight forward, but that was just luck since I know plenty of people who had to search and scramble. The re-opening stages have minimal differences between them and don't offer any incentive to get vaccinated since there are no exceptions or enhancements for those fully vaccinated. Government failed us pretty hard.
      - kwooding 5y ago
redis_mlc 5y ago
Well, I would hope so since Canada has: - socialized, universal health care - a relatively homogeneous, well-educated society (aside from Quebec, of course) - virtually no illegal immigrants/future voters (D) outside the system. So I'd expect Canada to rapidly pull ahead of the US with it's dystopian health care system, as long as it has enough vaccine doses.
- speed_spread 5y ago
  > aside from Quebec, of course Is Quebec not homogeneous or not well-educated? I believe vaccination rates there are similar to the rest of the country.
  - k12sosse 5y ago
    Ze French, they are, how do you say, différent.
- smnrchrds 5y ago
  What exactly do you mean by homogenous? More than one in five Canadians are foreign born. More than one in five Canadians are visible minorities. More than half of Torontonians are visible minorities.
  - Proven 5y ago
    When you can't think in any other terms than races and nationalities, that's the only thing you see. He meant politically. Canada is predominantly socialist.
- dudul 5y ago
  The vaccine is free, even without insurance. Anyone can walk into a CVS and get it. I don't see what the health care system has to do with that. That's actually an instance where privatized health care should work better than a government controlled one - and it does compared to a lot of other countries. The US does much better than many European countries for example.
cal5k 5y ago
Canadians love flattering comparisons to the US. As a Canadian, however, this pandemic mostly revealed how dangerously incompetent most levels of government are in this country. Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada. The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again. Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country. All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so. The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!". With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade. The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.
- jsbdk 5y ago
  Practically all of this happened in Spain. Recently one of the higher courts ruled our first lockdown, which was absolute, as unconstitutional. Over a year later! They will return all the money they stole from us in fines. But what about the time, and our rights? If I had known this I would've gone out... And they have the media in their pockets so no one will complain. Until recently we were forced to wear a mask always, even if we were completely alone in the middle of the street. The police kicked doors down if they suspected there was a reunion going on in your private property. It was a nightmare. If you are American, cherish your freedom! You don't know how valuable it is.
bluenose69 5y ago
It's interesting to compare time-series graphs of doses/(100 persons) for various nations. The USA had an inflection point in mid-April, at about 60 doses per 100 persons. I don't know the ratio of single-dose vaccines to double-dose vaccines, but assuming the latter to be in the majority, this suggests that the eventual coverage will be in the range of 60%. By contrast, Canada seems to have hit an inflection point in mid-June, at about 90 doses per 100 persons. In Canada, about 13 percent of persons are under 12 years of age, and the vaccines are not permitted for them. Therefore, in rough terms, the pattern so far is indicating that essentially every eligible Canadian is likely to receive the vaccine. Linear extrapolation based on vaccination rates over the past 10 days suggests that this result may be achieved in under 2 months. Naturally, linear extrapolation is a problem in a system like this, but the Canadian data are not sufficiently past the inflection point to justify nonlinear regression. The Canadian story is being played out in several other countries as well: inflection points occur somewhere above 80 doses per 100 persons. As in so many things, the USA is exceptional. Graphs, as of today, are at https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt, based on data from covid.ourworldindata.org. (I don't want to post my website where this graph is auto-updated daily, along with case data for various nations, plus provincial data in Canada and state data in the USA, simply because it is on a server in a research group that cannot withstand hackernews-scale traffic.)
nameisname 5y ago
I would love to know how they're tracking this because when I ask at the clinic they said all the proof I have of my vaccine is the paper they printed off and it's up to me to inform my doctor. I also mixed Pfizer and Moderna at the recommendation of the government and had a terrible reaction. I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing. In line with the top comment, I've lost all faith in Canada, it's government and its people.
- kenmacd 5y ago
  > I would love to know how they're tracking this Heath cards. You're welcome to attempt to get a third dose. > I also mixed [] and had a terrible reaction And I had the same and had a terrible reaction, including vomiting. Both our situations are anecdotal though. I haven't seen any research showing that the reactions to mixing mRNA vaccines is worse. > I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
  - peytn 5y ago
    > Not for any known negative reason though. That statement applies to most medical interventions before testing. If a public health organization thinks they’ll need to mix doses, they should have the foresight to sponsor a trial. It’s very ethically questionable to foist untested interventions on your citizenry.
  - kwooding 5y ago
    Did your province not give you an option to report followup symptoms? In Ontario, at the time of shot, we could opt-in to followup symptom reporting. Doing so got you a mail like this, which was followed by a pair of surveys, several months apart: > The Canadian Immunization Research Network is performing active surveillance for adverse events after immunization against COVID-19. You are being invited to take part because you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and agreed to be contacted about vaccine studies. The purpose of the study is to see how often health events occur after COVID-19 vaccination. If you might be interested in helping with this surveillance, please visit https://CANVAS-COVID.ca https://CANVAS-COVID.ca for additional information on how to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
johan_larson 5y ago
Here are the current number of deaths per million from COVID for the G7 nations: Japan - 119 Canada - 696 Germany - 1,093 France - 1,704 US - 1,876 UK - 1,886 Italy - 2,118 Judged by this metric, Canada came second among the major first-world democracies. We did well. To be sure, there were missteps. We should have done better. But we could also have done a whole lot worse.

52 points by leblancfg 5y ago

For fully vaccinated. Up here we have focussed mostly on first-dose coverage, and we even delayed second dose to get as many first doses out as possible. Ontario is now at 79% first dose coverage for those over 12 (93% of those over 60 years) and 60% fully vaccinated over 12. It looks like we may ultimately settle around 90% over the next few months? I'm pleasantly surprised. I honestly expected it to drop off after about 70% and for us to start running out of volunteers not much after the USA. I guess people's hesitancy has dissipated. And the antivax spectre was overblown, at least here. Some local data for the curious: https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinations https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinatio...

Someone 5y ago
According to https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_WRL~USA~CAN https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations?country=OWID_W..., it’s for single doses, too, and by a much wider margin. That might be a different definition, though (e.g. full population vs those over 18) or data may be lagging for either source.

hourislate 5y ago

They vaccinated a ton of people with Astra and then let them mix second doses and I know people who got Pfizer 1st dose and Moderna 2nd dose and just a complete shit show. I'm surprised they arn't injecting people with soup of the day at this point or some hybrid of all 3 (Astra/Pfizer/Moderna). What's funny is they find this worth bragging about while under the worlds longest lock downs and still not completely open. The whole thing is a disaster from start to finish but they have this huge inferiorty complex where they compare themselves to the USA in every way and then pat themselves on the back convincing themselves they're better in some way. Just cringe..... Disclaimer: Canadian

liketochill 5y ago
In British Columbia I thought everyone did pretty well at navigating the different challenges. We had reasonable leadership and communication and I skied all winter. Would have sucked to be in Ontario. The mix of vaccine shots doesn’t bother me. Indeed comparing and following the USA is a problem.
- sodium833 5y ago
  > Would have sucked to be in Ontario. It did!
- etimberg 5y ago
  Ontario did a terrible job at pretty much everything. I volunteered with a some other devs to build https://vaccine-ontario.ca https://vaccine-ontario.ca because otherwise there was no single dashboard to find a vaccination clinic that had available appointments.
  - theluketaylor 5y ago
    The Ontario covid experience has been Whose Line is it Anyway: everything is made up and and the points don't matter. The rules changed all the time and with no explanation or justification. Government ministries didn't speak to one another or the regions. Multiple times the education minister said schools were opening while the premier said they were staying closed (or vice versa). Vaccinations were delegated almost entirely to the regions and it was complete chaos, especially since the pharmacies were left to do all their own booking. I registered with the region and over 30 pharmacies to get my first dose. Then I got offers of first dose for more than a month after that I had to keep cancelling. 2nd dose was much more straight forward, but that was just luck since I know plenty of people who had to search and scramble. The re-opening stages have minimal differences between them and don't offer any incentive to get vaccinated since there are no exceptions or enhancements for those fully vaccinated. Government failed us pretty hard.
    - kwooding 5y ago

redis_mlc 5y ago

Well, I would hope so since Canada has: - socialized, universal health care - a relatively homogeneous, well-educated society (aside from Quebec, of course) - virtually no illegal immigrants/future voters (D) outside the system. So I'd expect Canada to rapidly pull ahead of the US with it's dystopian health care system, as long as it has enough vaccine doses.

speed_spread 5y ago
> aside from Quebec, of course Is Quebec not homogeneous or not well-educated? I believe vaccination rates there are similar to the rest of the country.
- k12sosse 5y ago
  Ze French, they are, how do you say, différent.
smnrchrds 5y ago
What exactly do you mean by homogenous? More than one in five Canadians are foreign born. More than one in five Canadians are visible minorities. More than half of Torontonians are visible minorities.
- Proven 5y ago
  When you can't think in any other terms than races and nationalities, that's the only thing you see. He meant politically. Canada is predominantly socialist.
dudul 5y ago
The vaccine is free, even without insurance. Anyone can walk into a CVS and get it. I don't see what the health care system has to do with that. That's actually an instance where privatized health care should work better than a government controlled one - and it does compared to a lot of other countries. The US does much better than many European countries for example.

cal5k 5y ago

Canadians love flattering comparisons to the US. As a Canadian, however, this pandemic mostly revealed how dangerously incompetent most levels of government are in this country. Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada. The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again. Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country. All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society." Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so. The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!". With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade. The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.

jsbdk 5y ago
Practically all of this happened in Spain. Recently one of the higher courts ruled our first lockdown, which was absolute, as unconstitutional. Over a year later! They will return all the money they stole from us in fines. But what about the time, and our rights? If I had known this I would've gone out... And they have the media in their pockets so no one will complain. Until recently we were forced to wear a mask always, even if we were completely alone in the middle of the street. The police kicked doors down if they suspected there was a reunion going on in your private property. It was a nightmare. If you are American, cherish your freedom! You don't know how valuable it is.

bluenose69 5y ago

It's interesting to compare time-series graphs of doses/(100 persons) for various nations. The USA had an inflection point in mid-April, at about 60 doses per 100 persons. I don't know the ratio of single-dose vaccines to double-dose vaccines, but assuming the latter to be in the majority, this suggests that the eventual coverage will be in the range of 60%. By contrast, Canada seems to have hit an inflection point in mid-June, at about 90 doses per 100 persons. In Canada, about 13 percent of persons are under 12 years of age, and the vaccines are not permitted for them. Therefore, in rough terms, the pattern so far is indicating that essentially every eligible Canadian is likely to receive the vaccine. Linear extrapolation based on vaccination rates over the past 10 days suggests that this result may be achieved in under 2 months. Naturally, linear extrapolation is a problem in a system like this, but the Canadian data are not sufficiently past the inflection point to justify nonlinear regression. The Canadian story is being played out in several other countries as well: inflection points occur somewhere above 80 doses per 100 persons. As in so many things, the USA is exceptional. Graphs, as of today, are at https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt, based on data from covid.ourworldindata.org. (I don't want to post my website where this graph is auto-updated daily, along with case data for various nations, plus provincial data in Canada and state data in the USA, simply because it is on a server in a research group that cannot withstand hackernews-scale traffic.)

nameisname 5y ago

I would love to know how they're tracking this because when I ask at the clinic they said all the proof I have of my vaccine is the paper they printed off and it's up to me to inform my doctor. I also mixed Pfizer and Moderna at the recommendation of the government and had a terrible reaction. I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing. In line with the top comment, I've lost all faith in Canada, it's government and its people.

kenmacd 5y ago
> I would love to know how they're tracking this Heath cards. You're welcome to attempt to get a third dose. > I also mixed [] and had a terrible reaction And I had the same and had a terrible reaction, including vomiting. Both our situations are anecdotal though. I haven't seen any research showing that the reactions to mixing mRNA vaccines is worse. > I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
- peytn 5y ago
  > Not for any known negative reason though. That statement applies to most medical interventions before testing. If a public health organization thinks they’ll need to mix doses, they should have the foresight to sponsor a trial. It’s very ethically questionable to foist untested interventions on your citizenry.
- kwooding 5y ago
  Did your province not give you an option to report followup symptoms? In Ontario, at the time of shot, we could opt-in to followup symptom reporting. Doing so got you a mail like this, which was followed by a pair of surveys, several months apart: > The Canadian Immunization Research Network is performing active surveillance for adverse events after immunization against COVID-19. You are being invited to take part because you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and agreed to be contacted about vaccine studies. The purpose of the study is to see how often health events occur after COVID-19 vaccination. If you might be interested in helping with this surveillance, please visit https://CANVAS-COVID.ca https://CANVAS-COVID.ca for additional information on how to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.

johan_larson 5y ago

Here are the current number of deaths per million from COVID for the G7 nations: Japan - 119 Canada - 696 Germany - 1,093 France - 1,704 US - 1,876 UK - 1,886 Italy - 2,118 Judged by this metric, Canada came second among the major first-world democracies. We did well. To be sure, there were missteps. We should have done better. But we could also have done a whole lot worse.