Is the explosion in the cases really due to Thanksgiving?

A national tradition since the days of George Washington. The United States celebrates Thanksgiving this Thursday, October 26. The Canadian version of this celebration, Thanksgiving, was celebrated in early October. He was also an example for Olivier Véran to warn the French of the end of year holidays: Canada is facing a resurgence of the coronavirus epidemic due to this holiday.

As Christmas approached, government views were divided on the question of the beginning of the decline. Canada, “which had put in place measures to deal with the epidemic” has let families reunite “and many cases are growing behind and the country is forced to close,” the health minister said. November 17. “We don’t want it and the French will resent us, and that’s right. we will do things at the right time“, He continued.

Thanksgiving is a perfect laboratory for realizing the harmfulness of a virus in case of a rally. In early October, Canada recorded an average of 1,700 new cases every day. Two weeks later, the country has grown to 2,500 cases on average. On Wednesday 25 November the record was reached with 5,139 new contaminations in 24 hours. Since then, the growth has been exponential.

Different epidemiological situations

In France, the model will not necessarily be the same. Canada celebrated Thanksgiving as the country had been in the center of the outbreak since September. An element is also surprising when analyzing the graphs: contamination peaks from 19 October, a week after the celebration. However, it takes fifteen days to realize the level of infection of an event. Since then, the country has experienced a long straight climb.

The festive end-of-year epic has not yet begun in France, where the number of cases is declining. It is therefore difficult to compare the two countries because the epidemiological situation is not the same at the time of family celebrations. While Canada is one of the two largest countries in the world, it has a population of only 37.59 million. In France we are 67 million.

Thanksgiving however remains a good example because it shows that the broadcast is based on an individual approach. LCI reporters noted the words of a somewhat fatalistic Canadian researcher: “Although the restrictive measures were adopted on October 1, particularly in Quebec, they could not prove their effectiveness. It had to reduce contamination, Thanksgiving has finally picked up the pace“.

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