‘But really, would you take a one-in-200 chance of dying?’

The true measure of lethality, he says, is the infection fatality rate — of all the people who get it, whether or not they show symptoms or are even tested, how many will die?

Nature reports that a growing number of studies from different regions is pegging the infection fatality rate at between 0.5 and one per cent, meaning five to 10 people will die for every 1,000 infected.

For seasonal flu, it’s 0.1 to 0.2. Not only is COVID deadlier, it’s profoundly more infectious. More people are going to get it. And although some doctors are reporting that the nose swabs being taken now are different from the swabs at the beginning of the pandemic — there seems to be less viral load — to Deonandan that just means we’re testing fewer symptomatic people. Lower the thresholds for who gets tested, and you’re going to get people who are less sick.

“That should not be confused with having a less severe disease present in the community,” Deonandan says.

A pandemic has a way of revealing the nature of a society, he says. “It either exacerbates the disparities or it highlights the strengths.” Canadians, more so than our neighbours to the south, “have embraced this ethic of communal responsibility,” says Deonandan. “For the most part, people are onboard with protecting other people, with wearing masks, with doing what’s right for the community. That’s not a message you see coming out of the USA.”

Other positive signs: Transmission by fomites (contaminated surfaces and objects) doesn’t seem to be as serious as once thought. According to a commentary published last week in the Lancet, most studies used large amounts of virus, higher than what would happen under real-life scenarios. “In my opinion, the chance of transmission through inanimate surfaces is very small, and only in instances where an infected person coughs or sneezes on the surface and someone else touches that surface soon after the cough or sneeze,” within one to two hours, writes Emanuel Goldman, professor of microbiology, biochemistry and molecular genetics at Rutgers University.

Cleaning surfaces is still important, Deonandan says, but perhaps we don’t have to be obsessed with it. The WHO this week acknowledged airborne transmission is a thing, but it’s not the primary way people get COVID-19. It’s by droplets, and masks diminish droplet transmission, Deonadan says. “It tells me we have the tools to contain this well.”

Dhalla believes so, too. “The overall story I see is that Canada has the resources and expertise to both contain COVID-19 and reopen schools and workplaces at the same time.” That’s provided we keep outbreaks from spinning out of control with well-resourced strategies to test, trace, isolate, support and mask, and hotel rooms for the homeless, or somewhere they could be supported and physically distanced.

Still, it bothers him when people want him to say that COVID-19 isn’t that serious. “I have a hard time with numbers, everybody has a hard time with numbers. It’s hard to get your head around concepts like 0.5 per cent or exponential growth at 1.1 — what do these things mean?

“Ninety-nine-point-five per cent sounds pretty safe. But really, would you take a one-in-200 chance of dying? I wouldn’t. It’s very clear now, four months into the pandemic, that this is a serous illness that has resulted in great loss of life.”

FOR THE MOST PART, PEOPLE ARE ONBOARD WITH PROTECTING OTHER PEOPLE.