Hard realities from Canada’s COVID-19 2nd wave

CBC News: The National: Take a look at Canada's second Coronavirus COVID-19 wave taking a toll on some of the country's most vulnerable.

Many people might wonder: Why is there a Coronavirus Covid-19 Second Wave? The coronavirus Covid-19 pandemic began early in 2020. At that time, experts wondered if there would be waves of cases, a pattern certainly seen in other virus pandemics.

The overall pattern so far has been one of increasing cases of COVID-19. There is a surge in the summer and a larger one in the fall. Some places that saw a large number of coronavirus Covid-19 infections early on, followed by a decrease, are having a "2nd wave" of increased cases.

The future could have various outcomes. Numbers of infections sure seem to increase during certain times.

Human behavior could cause a spike in coronavirus cases. State and local governments, as well as individual people, are different in their response to the Coronavirus Covid-19 Pandemic. Some follow COVID-19 precautions, such as physical distancing, hand-washing and mask-wearing. Some people don't follow those rules as much. The importance of those precautions is clear: In areas where fewer people are wearing masks and more are gathering indoors to eat, drink, celebrate and socialize, even with family, cases are on the rise.

Herd immunity is a public health term that refers to the fact that, when enough people in a community have immunity from a disease, the community is protected from outbreaks of that disease.

Infectious disease experts at The Johns Hopkins University explain that about 70% of the population needs to be immune to this coronavirus before herd immunity can work. People might be immune from the coronavirus, at least for a while, if they have already had it. However, experts don’t know this, yet.

Without a vaccine, most doctors and scientists agree that a herd immunity approach of letting the virus "take its course" is not acceptable. That is too dangerous.

The following information is according to the COVID-19 Dashboard by the Center for Systems Science and Engineering (CSSE) at Johns Hopkins University.

Total Global Cases of Coronavirus Covid-19: 58,615,834

Countries with most cases:

012,229,265 USA

009,139,865 India

006,071,401 Brazil

002,191,180 France

002,071,858 Russia

001,556,730 Spain

001,515,802 United Kingdom

001,408,868 Italy

001,370,366 Argentina

001,248,417 Colombia

001,025,969 Mexico

000,948,081 Peru

000,932,367 Germany

000,861,331 Poland

000,854,361 Iran

000,767,679 South Africa

000,642,215 Ukraine

000,558,779 Belgium

000,540,640 Chile

000,535,321 Iraq