First of all, your assrtion about case numbers being half is not correct. The third wave peaked at 25k active cases. The current peak is at 21k active cases.
Second, despite the case number not being higher than the third wave, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are higher for the current wave compared to any before. This is despite the higher vaccination rate and due to the higher dangers of the delta variant. The third wave peaked at 555 non-ICU and 183 ICU; the current wave is at 860 non-ICU and 268 ICU. ICU cases are predominantly (~90%) unvaccinated individuals.
So the system is falling apart because the hospitals are being overwhelmed, because the delta variant is more dangerous that the previous dominant variants for unvaccinated people and there are more people in hospitals and in ICUs than ever before because of this.
And this is hurting everyone, not just anti-vaxxers or those who get COVID. They even had to close 75% of operating rooms in children's hospital, because they needed to divert the resources to adults in ICUs with COVID.
But why hasn't the higher hospitalization rate played out in other countries?
And regardless, it seems odd that you can hit 70%+ vaccination rates and see a worse outcome than when the vaccination rate was ~5%.
The only way those numbers work is if Delta is several fold more deadly/severe disease causing than the prior variants, and that hasn't been seen elsewhere.
I agree. The reasons for the situation in Alberta are
1) Delta variant being more dangerous that the previous ones, causing a higher number of infections ending up in hospitals and ICUs. I shudder at the though of what would have happened if we got a delta wave before vaccination. We are lucky we got it after vaccinating 70% of the population. India and Iran (and I am sure some other countries) got their delta wave before being able to vaccinate a large enough percentage of people and the result was a human tragedy.
2) During the previous waves, when the number of infections went up, the government imposed harder restrictions to avoid this very eventuality. During this wave, government thought the vaccines meant hospitalization and ICU would be fully disconnected from case numbers, so did not impose restrictions until it was too late and the ICUs were already on the verge of bursting. Restrictions such as mask mandates and capacity limits which were present in previous waves were not imposed until two weeks ago for this wave.
There doesn't seem to be much evidence to suggest Delta produces all that much more severe disease.[1] The CDC says "it might be". Much more infectious, yes, but not more deadlier or at least not so much deadlier as to explain the Alberta numbers (especially comparing a population that is 70% vaccinated now versus 5% in the last wave).
And again, we aren't seeing the same impact outside of Alberta. In the US, which has a lower overall vaccination rate, the death rate is actually lower than prior waves.
US's death and ICU rates are higher than Alberta though, which can be explained by the difference in vaccination rates. So Alberta's current wave is not out of ordinary.
Rate of death (per 100k population) over the past 7 days:
Alberta: 2.3
United States: 3.01
Number of COVID-19 patients in ICU per million population:
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
Second, despite the case number not being higher than the third wave, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are higher for the current wave compared to any before. This is despite the higher vaccination rate and due to the higher dangers of the delta variant. The third wave peaked at 555 non-ICU and 183 ICU; the current wave is at 860 non-ICU and 268 ICU. ICU cases are predominantly (~90%) unvaccinated individuals.
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm...
So the system is falling apart because the hospitals are being overwhelmed, because the delta variant is more dangerous that the previous dominant variants for unvaccinated people and there are more people in hospitals and in ICUs than ever before because of this.
And this is hurting everyone, not just anti-vaxxers or those who get COVID. They even had to close 75% of operating rooms in children's hospital, because they needed to divert the resources to adults in ICUs with COVID.
https://calgaryherald.com/news/local-news/alberta-childrens-...