This had to happen at some point: an acceptable level of dying must be chosen. Where Ontario notes that a continued 500 cases/day is an outcome from re-opening but with the current vaccinations and behaviours, both the tone of the model presentation and this journalism indicates that 500/day, indefinitely, is acceptable.
Population-proportionate, that would be about 170/day for BC, and I suspect that wouldn't be unpopular here, either, nor 1300/day for all-Canada. Because Delta's worse, and because most "cases" are unvaccinated, the death rate is still about 1%, so that's 13 dead/day for Canada, about 4700/year. We are clearly also choosing those deaths as "acceptable".
It's all pretty acceptable to we vaccinated, of course: the unvaccinated are risking our lives, too, by keeping it circulating and giving us that very small chance we'll be a "bad" breakthrough case. But the case-load is suppressed enough that's just not a big risk in our lives. Just a few dozen of those 4700 dead will be vaccinated, not elderly or previously sick; total flukes, like a car accident.
The real risk will all be borne by about 10% of the population that aren't vaccinated, and aren't little kids. One suspects that vaccination rates will exceed 95% after a year or two of it, and cases will finally peter out.
You stated that there is a nuance between "risk assessment" and "risk actualized" - My comment is to add an observation: School boards could really help parents and teachers assess the amount of risk they face by activating a mandatory test regime. Instead, with parents not required or enabled to test their children who are showing symptoms (not only that, but most parents don't have the time or convenient transportation to take their kids to a testing centre which is likely across town) the only requirement in our school board is to keep them home for a few days. So everyone is left in the dark. How can you assess risk when there is no mandatory testing?
This had to happen at some point: an acceptable level of dying must be chosen. Where Ontario notes that a continued 500 cases/day is an outcome from re-opening but with the current vaccinations and behaviours, both the tone of the model presentation and this journalism indicates that 500/day, indefinitely, is acceptable.
Population-proportionate, that would be about 170/day for BC, and I suspect that wouldn't be unpopular here, either, nor 1300/day for all-Canada. Because Delta's worse, and because most "cases" are unvaccinated, the death rate is still about 1%, so that's 13 dead/day for Canada, about 4700/year. We are clearly also choosing those deaths as "acceptable".
It's all pretty acceptable to we vaccinated, of course: the unvaccinated are risking our lives, too, by keeping it circulating and giving us that very small chance we'll be a "bad" breakthrough case. But the case-load is suppressed enough that's just not a big risk in our lives. Just a few dozen of those 4700 dead will be vaccinated, not elderly or previously sick; total flukes, like a car accident.
The real risk will all be borne by about 10% of the population that aren't vaccinated, and aren't little kids. One suspects that vaccination rates will exceed 95% after a year or two of it, and cases will finally peter out.
You stated that there is a nuance between "risk assessment" and "risk actualized" - My comment is to add an observation: School boards could really help parents and teachers assess the amount of risk they face by activating a mandatory test regime. Instead, with parents not required or enabled to test their children who are showing symptoms (not only that, but most parents don't have the time or convenient transportation to take their kids to a testing centre which is likely across town) the only requirement in our school board is to keep them home for a few days. So everyone is left in the dark. How can you assess risk when there is no mandatory testing?