PLEASE SHARE:
There's been some questions to me why we in AB need a mask mandate given that our numbers are "lower" than ON and QC.
ANSWER: We need to compare apples to apples, not the raw numbers. ON and QC have +++ population than the west, but we can look at Rates per 100K:

You can see our AB rate of 202 cases per 100K ppl is closer to the 253 case per 100K in Ontario as of today July 13, 2020, #COVID19AB #COVID19

More closer comparisons: The tables look different because there's no uniform reporting across provinces.

Here are comparison tables of Calgary (1.35 mill), Ottawa (1.25 mill) and Toronto (2.9 mill).
Calgary #yyc is close in population size to Ottawa.

COVID19AB

The current active case rate is #yyc is 16.2 per 100K ppl today. It's much higher than Toronto's or Ottawa's which both have mask mandates just started.
Even last wk TO was at 14/100K
Credit @imgrund for graphs.

Then with the real-time Reproduction number (the number of ppl each case spreads to), (don't have city level data), but look at the jump between July 2 and July 13 for each province, but especially in AB again!

Thanks to @DFisman for the calculations!

If Rt is above 1.0, the virus will spread quickly. When Rt is below 1.0, the virus will stop spreading.
1.77 means that every person with #COVID19 spreads it to 1.77 ppl & they EACH in turn will spread 1.77 ppl.

We WANT our businesses to stay open while keeping the spread down

To do that, we need to do EVERYTHING we can that we know helps to contain the spread as we interact more and support the economy. This means #WearAMask #WashYourHands #Keep2mDistance. ALL THREE is best!

PLEASE @nenshi and #yyccc institute a mask mandate now to help our spread.

We don't have the luxury to sit back and wait. We want our economy to remain open safely and hopefully have our kids get back to school.

But we'll need mask mandates to get 80% of the population to mask NOW.

Mask mandate= clear message; no enforcements needed.

#MaskUpYYC

#Masks4Canada

@jannarden @kdlang @Crackmacs @mikesbloggity @KnifeNerd
@CBCCalgary @JenLeeCBC @CTVCalgary @TheDriveOn770 @CTVBMacfarlane @GlobalCalgary @FionaMattatall @RajBhardwajMD

I KNOW there's TOO MUCH going on in AB. I'm a doctor, I feel it. And I am in full solidarity w all my colleagues and fellow public servants in fighting for our public services.

And I know we're ALL tired of this pandemic.

Masks will help make it better to manage/deal with.