Recently the AB gov't began reporting comorbidities along with its daily COVID death count. This appears a cynical effort to somehow minimize or diminish these deaths, as if to suggest that most of these people were really on Death's door anyway.

So ...
*** A THREAD ***
1/X

We've all seen the dismissive comments on FB and Twitter from the COVID deniers: "But most of those people had comorbidities," or "But if you take out the number of people with pre-existing conditions, the numbers are really quite low."
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I'm going to ignore the absolute ghoulishness of those comments in this thread. Instead, I want to talk about the numbers, because you'd get the impression from many of these comments that comorbidities are as rare as third nipples. So let's just have a look ...
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Let's start with a big one: age. There's a sliding scale at work here, of course. The older you are, the greater the risk. But we're an aging country. There are 6,835,866 Canadians 65 and over, or 18% of the total population.
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Of course, we're not just getting older but also fatter. And while excess weight, like age, puts us on a sliding scale of risk, let's focus on the worst case: 1.9 Million Canadians are described as being "severely obese".
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An increasing offshoot of obesity is diabetes, another COVID risk factor. Diabetes and its precursor affect fully 1/3 of all Canadians. ONE THIRD. ONE. IN. THREE.
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Essentially all acute & chronic respiratory ailments can serve as COVID comorbidities. These include:
Asthma - 3.8M Canadians
COPD - 2M Canadians
Pneumonia - 135K ER visits per year
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Then there are circulatory issues:
High Blood Pressure - 6 million Canadians
Heart Disease - 2.4 million Canadians
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And neurological conditions, including but not limited to
Dementia/Alzheimer's - ~3.8 million Canadians
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Organ diseases:
Kidney Disease - 4 million Canadians
Liver Disease - over 3 million Canadians
Cystic Fibrosis - 4.2K Canadians
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There are just under 400K births each year in Canada. This is a good thing. But pregnancy is another COVID risk factor.
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Then there are ALL the forms of immunosuppression, which are almost too numerous to track. But let's look at transplant recipient figures (all figures exclude Quebec):
Liver - 5.9K
Heart - 2,2K
Lung - 1.9K

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Cancer and cancer treatment (chemotherapy, radiation) are both comorbidities for COVID.
225K Canadians are diagnosed with cancer annually.
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And, of course, our behaviours and habits can also make us more susceptible to serious illness from COVID. Notable here is smoking.
4.9 million Canadians smoke.

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Now, obviously there are overlaps among these #s which prevent us from simply adding them up to arrive at a total of Canadians who carry a comorbidity with them in their journey through this pandemic. Eg. A smoker might have high blood pressure and suffer from heart disease.
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But if you've managed to read to the end, I challenge you to walk away from these figures without a clear understanding that there are *many millions* of Canadians with pre-existing conditions that put them at grave risk from COVID.
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Do not dismiss their lives. Do not discount them. They are your neighbours, your family members. Hell, there's a very good chance YOU are among them.
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And the next time you encounter one of those comments on this platform or elsewhere, feel free to link to this thread in response. I'll have the block button ready for the crazies.

Thanks for sitting through my TED Talk.

Deobald out.
18/18
Fin.