EclectEcon

Twenty Thousand New Infections Each of the Next Few Days in Ontario?

Last summer there were days with fewer than 300 new COVID infections per day in Ontario. Today's data showed there were over ten thousand new infections reported, based on yesterday's tests, an all time high for the pandemic.

But the report had several additional disconcerting other items as well: the positivity rate was nearly 27% for all the tests done (nearly 60K reported yesterday) and there are nearly another 60K samples in the queue to be tested. See this.

Suppose the labs can crank up the test numbers and do as many as 80K tests/day (their previous  high was 76K in one day last January). If those positivity rates hold up, then we're likely to see as many as 20,000 new infections being reported each of the next few days. That's double the current record.

Let's all hope that the early reports that Omicron tends to milder for most people are correct and apply to many, many people so that hospitals and ICUs don't get clogged up.

 

Update:

Wait a minute. The province reported a positivity rate of 26.9% on 59,259 tests. That suggests there were 15,941 positive test results. But the province also reported 10,436 new cases. Were some of those tests done on old cases? or what? or WTF, eh?

Tikka Masala (with chicken)

This was pretty good. It'll be better the next time I make it.

The recipe is based on the recipe on the label of this sauce, combined with some valuable input from a friend.

Ingredients:

• • Half a jar of Tikka Masala Curry sauce
  • 1/4 large onion, chopped
  • 3 tblspns butter
  • 1 tspn chopped ginger
  • 1 tspn chopped garlic
  • 1 lb chopped chicken
  • 50 ml water
  • 150 ml water
  • 1/2 cup chopped tomatoes
  • 1/4 cup cream (or half & half)
  • 1/8 cup vodka

• Fry onion in butter until soft [I probably overcooked mine a bit because we got an Amazon delivery right about then]
• Add ginger, garlic, and prepared sauce.
• Add 50 ml water. Cook until water evaporates [I'd never run across this instruction before. It seemed to work fine.]
• Add chicken, chopped tomatoes, and 150 ml water [I might add less water next time]
• Simmer uncovered for 15 minutes.
• Add cream and stir
• Remove from heat and stir in vodka

Serve over rice.

Notes:

We were running low on half & half and are avoiding shopping for a few weeks (if possible), so we tried to mix up some dried skimmed milk powder, making it a bit thick, but that didn't really work as well as cream would. And the chicken we used was a bunch of leftover thighs and probably wasn't anywhere near a pound. We needed more.

But it was still very good.