A new poll from Ipsos found that 71 per cent of Canadians are “angry” that Canada is falling behind countries like the U.S. and the U.K. when it comes to the pace of our COVID-19 vaccine rollout. On top of that, just 43 per cent believe Canada will meet Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s professed timeline of having a jab available for every Canadian who wants one by September.
There are lots of reasons to be pissed off at PM Asshat.
The WIV is at the center of widespread speculation that COVID-19 could have entered the human population in China due to an accidental lab leak. Researchers at the lab were studying bat-based coronaviruses prior to the outbreak, a project partially backed by $600,000 in U.S. taxpayer funds routed to the lab through the nonprofit group EcoHealth Alliance.
For New York’s Gov. Andrew Cuomo, all those 15,000 nursing home deaths brought on by COVID patients coming back from hospitals and into nursing homes instead of President Trump’s offshore hospital ships and the cover-up in numbers was a communications problem.
In the UK a line was crossed when we enforced the first lockdown.
History attests that the defeat of a civilisation involves not only its political eclipse, but also the collapse of its values. The relationship between the two varies significantly. Sometimes, a defeated people are forced to adopt their conqueror’s beliefs; hence survivors of the American conquests were assimilated into white culture, to ‘kill the Indian and save the man’. At other times, a lack of conviction creates inner weakness, until, as in Rome, the barbarians have only to shove on the rotten gates to induce their collapse.
Many of the NBA’s top players are expressing apprehension about accepting invitations to participate in league-sponsored public service announcements to bolster broader acceptance of the coronavirus vaccine, sources told ESPN.
The NBA’s outreach to the agents of many of the league’s elite players — with hopes of getting stars to participate in PSAs to promote the safety and effectiveness of the vaccine — has been met with a tepid response, sources said. Player apprehensions about receiving the vaccine are consistent with those that also exist in Black communities throughout the country, agents and players told ESPN.
They probably don’t want to offend China.
Ontario is reporting 1,038 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 56,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 376 new cases in Toronto, 142 in Peel and 122 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 501,867 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 18, 2021
Good news from Justin? Serum Institute of India says will ship AstraZeneca Covid-19 vaccine to Canada in ‘less than a month’
Or is it? AstraZeneca’s vaccines go unused in EU as mutants spread
Just weeks ago, the European Union was clamouring for AstraZeneca Plc’s COVID-19 vaccine. Now, fewer than one-tenth of the doses delivered to Germany have been administered in the initial days of the rollout, and some health-care workers say they’re concerned about side effects.
… In an ambulance corps in Dortmund, one-quarter of the 300 people vaccinated late last week with the AstraZeneca shot called in sick afterward, a local newspaper reported, citing internal fire-department documents. Health officials in the state of North Rhine-Westphalia, where Dortmund is located, recommended vaccinating smaller groups of health-care workers at a time to avoid staffing shortages, DPA reported.
In response to the pandemic, politicians in Ottawa set up an emergency wage subsidy scheme that was meant to help workers. But some of Canada’s biggest firms have milked the subsidy scheme for billions while paying out dividends and laying off staff.
The vaccine itself can set us free. But ‘vaccine passports’ will remove people’s rights.
The vaccine rollout has been a rare success for the UK government. Not only have the most vulnerable people received shots in their arms ahead of schedule, but vaccine take-up has also been far higher than expected. For those aged 70 and above, the take-up was 90 per cent, rising to an astonishing 97 per cent among those aged 75 to 79. Hospitalisations and deaths are on the verge of plummeting. And yet, the calls for ‘vaccine passports’ – which would entail de facto mandatory vaccination – are growing louder and louder.
MPP Roman Baber, ejected from the Progressive Conservative caucus by Premier Doug Ford for opposing COVID-19 lockdowns, wants his colleagues to put their money where their mouths are.
Baber (York Centre) introduced a private member’s bill on Wednesday to temporarily slash MPPs’ salaries to the equivalent of federal CERB payments to underscore the impact of shutting down the economy to curb the spread of the coronavirus.
That would reduce MPPs’ wages from about $2,240 a week before taxes to the Canada Emergency Response Benefit’s $500.
(2/2) @PaulCalandra decided to make a joke out of the situation. As 400k Ontarians have not resumed work, 153k jobs lost in January alone, people are desperate as they lose homes, life savings & businesses, the @OntarioPCParty Government said to them "Let them eat cake". #onpoli pic.twitter.com/1363R0SJYn
— Roman Baber (@Roman_Baber) February 17, 2021
“Am I missing something here,” a journalist asked Adalsteinn Brown, the head of Ontario’s Science Advisory Table, after he had walked viewers and reporters through the latest pandemic data and modelling, “or is this presentation actually predicting a disaster?”
“No,” Dr. Brown replied, “I don’t think you’re missing anything.”
Go incognito, it’s a Globe editorial. Things do not bode well for Ontario if the variants take hold.
Also… COVID: UK variant spreading rapidly in Germany
Oh great! – Toronto, Peel Region want to extend current lockdown until at least March 9
The Canadian advisory committee on immunisation has said the government should prioritise adults from “racialised communities” for the “second stage” of the country’s Wuhan coronavirus vaccination plan.
My mother is in Covid lockdown at a Toronto Hospital, this is the 2nd time since Christmas, 5 people on her floor are infected, thankfully she is not. I was informed today she has pneumonia. She’s 96 years old no one has come near her with a Covid vaccine. But then she’s white.
Ontario reported 847 new cases of COVID-19 on Wednesday and 10 new deaths, the lowest daily increase since late October, as the province’s active caseload and hospital burden continued its long decline.
There were 257 new cases reported in Toronto, 131 in York Region and Peel Region reported 171.
Ontario government still working on specific ‘triggers’ for emergency brake as businesses reopen in many regions
The Ontario government is still working on drafting specific “triggers” for when the so-called emergency brake can be invoked, despite the recent lifting of the stay-at-home order and the reopening of businesses in many parts of the province.
Premier Doug Ford told reporters on Tuesday that he wouldn’t hesitate to use the “emergency break” to move regions back into lockdown if COVID-19 cases spike due to spread of new, more contagious variants.
Sainted Irish Mudda’s floor at the hospital is still under lockdown, 6 cases in total one of which is suspected to be the UK variant.
The pharmaceutical industry, government health authorities, and the media insist the new vaccines are safe and effective. While the initial results are promising, this is not the whole truth. Both honesty and acknowledging ignorance require answering a few questions.
h/t Marvin
Crevatin said her mother was escorted out of the hospital by security after a nurse “caught” her reaching out to hold her husband’s hand shortly after the move to the fifth floor.
“Most of the nurses in that unit were fantastic and very understanding, but there was a couple that were very into just …following the rules,” she said.
“They’ve been married for 60 years. It’s very hard for my mother not to hold his hand, not to go up close to him, to touch him — especially since that’s our only form of communication with him.”
When the nurse asked her mother to return to her chair, two metres away, she did but Crevatin said two security guards were still called and they escorted her mother out of the hospital.
