Discussions

It would be interesting to know when the unvaxxed get sick and in hospital when they recover do they get vaxxed ?

Before misinfo/conf bias squad gets too fired up like they do on social media on the whole "number of people in hospital vaccinated versus unvaccinated" talking point that antivaxxers have latched onto, reminder that the number of fully vaccinated people is more than 3x the number of people unvaccinated. Based on the difference in size of the groups it's possible to make a quite deceptive point without considering actual percentages and likelihood of each group ending up in hospital.  
 
Based on current Manitoba dashboard data...  
 
If there are 1,039,341 double or triple vaxxed and 152 are in the hospital  
and there are 316,357 that have yet to get a single shot and 133 are in the hospital  
 
That means that the unvaccinated are proportionately making up ~3x the hospitalizations as are folks that have taken actions consistent with public health advice.  
 
Put another way, applying the rate on hospitalization on the fully vaccinated to the unvaccinated there would only be 46 hospitalizations among those same unvaccinated if they happened to be vaccinated rather than the 133 that they account for right now.  

Fair to assume based on data about Omicron and what's known about effectiveness of booster vs it that as that booster number continues to increase you will see the gap wide even more.

(note that I've omitted the single-shot folks on account of smaller sample size but even single shot folks in this data are showing proportionately a lot less in hospitalizations versus those that havent had one shot) 
 
I'm not one for saying that the unvaccinated shouldn't get treatment when sick (not humane), but for many including this guy it's still hard to reconcile with us being in a situation where the medical system is taxed and there is concern for there being enough hospital beds in the days/weeks ahead when that many extra beds are being used when there's an obvious, simple and public-health advised path toward them not.  
 
Now, if you take the same data when it comes to ICU.... 
-If there are 1,039,341 double or triple vaxxed and 8 are in ICU  
-and there are 316,357 that have yet to get a single shot and 25 are in ICU  
It's another discussion altogether on the amount of ICU beds that are disproportionately being used to help those that have not been able to follow through on public health advice on vaccines. 

There will be some unknowns when it comes to Omicron that some are more willing it seems to roll the dice on than others. But try as folks might to get creative with numbers and swarm with those numbers in repeater mode, I have yet to see someone make a factual logical point that we aren't in a worse crisis situation and taking a larger risk going forward than we need to because of the still meaningful percentage of the population being unvaccinated.

The Province has all of the resources on vaccines in Manitoba at:
https://www.gov.mb.ca/covid19/vaccine/index.html 

Health Canada has further detailed info at:
https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/coronavirus-disease-covid-19/vaccines.html

from the charts above, it almost appears that 1 dose if optimum, and better outcomes than 2nd or third doses, or am I reading it wrong?

I wouldn't say that. Because there are only the 91,441 with a single dose they only make up 6.3% of Manitoba's population... so it's not surprising to see them make up a small percentage of hospitalization or ICU.  

I'm hesitant to read too far into as the sample size gets smaller, but it does still look pretty clear that even a single dose reduces hospitalization chances fairly meaningfully. For argument's sake with a grain of salt on account of sample size, doing the same exercise as I did above and taking rate of hospitalization versus population on single-shotters and applying to the unvaccinated you would come up with only 52 hospitalizations in stead of the 133. More cautious against reading into that without digging into other provinces' data too but the general point that even a single shot gives a reasonable level of help seems accurate.  
 
How you start to work in stuff like age of the shot and waning immunity over time versus boosting is a point for someone with a better handle on the medical and epidemiological side of this than me to take a stab at. 

But slice it up however one might, if public health officials across the globe advise that especially when it comes to Omicron to have second shot as well as booster I have zero reason to play Dr Me and doubt that that is the best thing for me to have done. 

But to answer the original question, don’t know.  
I’ll guess that at the very least they have a much clearer path to being exposed to facts on vaccines, efficacy and opportunity to ask questions and get real answers direct from folks with the best background and expertise to provide that info.

Which chart?  
Ton of respect for looking for the bright side and I don’t mean to be doom and gloom so much as try to keep focused on where we’re at… but the active hospitalization number for MB went up by +35 just from Thursday to Friday or 16% in the one day.  
 
This seems consistent with what Ontario has been seeing:

Another big jump in reported COVID-19 hospitalizations in Ont today. 2,594 in hospital, yesterday 2,472 (third wave peak: 2,350). ICUs 372, up from 324 (but still nowhere near 828 peak from 3rd wave). Can Manitoba be far behind? #wfp

— Tom Brodbeck (@tombrodbeck) January 8, 2022

It does sound like there’s a potentially much better place on the other side of the storm from this wave and studies like this one really do give hope… but in the here and how in Manitoba we’re in the thick of a serious situation and I hope that folks are keeping the difference between downplaying and hope in mind to make sure complacency or underestimating the thing doesnt  lead to this getting a lot worse before it gets hopefully better!

That sort of split seems to be something that certain crowds are wanting to chip away at lately, but nothing here really changes that region-to-region, country-to-country the data consistently shows that fully vaxxed account for meaningfully less hospitalizations relative to population size however one wants to slice it. Because the data consistently shows that vaccines reduce hospitalizations, no matter what the region is as soon as I see a discussion move towards hospital capacity (in beds and in staff) as it has here for the past number of weeks it's hard to not at the same time think how many of existing hospitalizations simply wouldn't have had to happen if more of the unvaxxed followed public health advice on the topic.  
 
Side note, interesting to read about a recent uptick in first doses in Quebec coinciding with Omicron and additions the list of places requiring their vaccine passport. Govs and public health folks across the country see how critical wider uptake is in the battle with this and potentially future variants and continue to try different levers to get the wider population and by extension medical system as protected as possible:
https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/first-dose-vaccinations-quadruple-in-quebec-ahead-of-restrictions-at-liquor-and-cannabis-stores-1.5731327 

Gotcha, thx... hadn't noticed that those percentages are based on the past six weeks of data. Doesn't look like its an average though, guessing its the total for the six weeks. Dug back through any Covid bulletins over the six weeks leading up to Friday and these were the hospitalization numbers given... looks like more than a doubling since Christmas of total hospitalizations and not far to go until a tripling of active cases in hospital:  
 
Nov 29: 142 (98 active, 44 no longer infectious)  
Dec 1: 143 (93, 50)  
Dec 3: 141 (88, 53)  
Dec 6: 152 (104, 48)  
Dec 7: First reported Omicron case detected in MB  
Dec 8: 153 (95, 58)  
Dec 10: 142 (87, 55)  
Dec 13: 142 (90, 52)  
Dec 15: 139 (88, 51)  
Dec 17: 139 (84, 55)  
Dec 20: 137 (86, 51)  
Dec 22: 137 (91, 46)  
Dec 24: 135 (90, 45)  
Dec 27: 158 (114, 44)  
Dec 29: 183 (141, 42)  
Dec 31: 192 (148, 44)  
 
Jan 5: 252 (211, 41)  
Jan 7: 297 (257, 40)  
 
Based on how a facility and staff will have to respond to COVID cases within that facility, no matter what the initial reason for admittance that’s a lot more strain on the system relating to COVID over just two short weeks with the trend still being up.  
 
Based on hospitalization splits between vaccinated and unvaccinated it’s clear we would have meaningfully less cases within facilities if those unvaccinated were vaccinated. Looking at through the lens that if hospitalizations are tracked the same as New York some percentage will not have been as far as admitted *because* of COVID I’ll walk back going as far as concluding how many beds would be in use otherwise without more data. Provincial dashboard says 7x more likely to be hospitalized with Covid when unvaccinated and as much as I’m not sure how it’s calculated I have no reason to doubt that or that by extension beds are having to be used that wouldn’t be if the unvaccinated were vaccinated. How that evolves with Omicron will be worth watching.  
 
For best possible picture it would be helpful to have data for total number of beds available system-wide and total in use, which I see New York is also doing. In their case it’s almost unanimous across their regions that the current bed availability is lower than the 7 day average (I.e. available beds is going down) but as of now they’re within capacity.  
 
At the same time have to consider how massively many active Omicron cases in the wider community that haven’t required hospitalization are still newer cases and how much spread seems to be ongoing. Knowing that historically it can take weeks for cases to result in hospitalizations because of COVID, how many of those as they progress will recover and how many might eventually require hospitalization? Evidence seems to suggest less proportionately for Omicron than Delta but because of shear volume of cases it can be a lot less proportionately but still send a lot to hospital. For that I guess we sit and wait, do one’s best individually in terms of limiting contacts and spread, hope that vaccine numbers continue to go up, hope for the best in terms of wider impact over these next few weeks and be extremely thankful that those working in our facilities are rising to the occasion as best they can.