Here's your AB COVID19 #s for Saturday, abbreviated because still figuring out what the rapidly evolving situation looks like. 1/

Cases 2473, a whopping 62.5% increase over last Friday's 1522. Seems... Crazy? Could this be some reporting error? Stacked cases from earlier days? Hard to rationalize this massive jump. 2/

Positivity also in record territory, also an incredible 12.01%, far and away the highest we've ever had. Previous record 11.16% on Dec 3rd. This would suggest our systems are flailing/failing. 2/

Variants. What to say about variants. Yesterday the APL put out a memo saying they are no longer testing each positive for the VoC or VoI. So probably no longer a role in reporting Daily B1117%s. But for old time sake, Apr 27 1238/1863=66.4%. 4/

Hospitalizations continue to confound. Inpts maxed out on Tues at 511, and have since been bouncing up and down, now 509. Unexpected plateau, hopefully real (but don't count on it). ICU also unchanged today at 152. Only one new death. 5/

Not sure what to say folks. So much negative news in the last few days, from a lack of backbone from our leaders, to the absolutely expected continuation of our exponential growth, to the failing of our Test/Trace/Isolation systems. 6/

What's to be done? I wish I knew. Nobody anticipated those at the top to care so little for the health of Albertans. I wrongly thought they were better than this. But I know our health care team will try our best, no matter what's ahead. There be dragons. fin/