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Canadian Politics: The Surreality of Life under King Corona


Tywin Manderly

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On 11/21/2020 at 3:19 PM, Fragile Bird said:

Twenty-three new cases in New Brunswick today...

I think the Atlantic bubble may have just burst.

Yup, the bubble did burst. Nfld and PEI pulling out of the bubble for two weeks. We're up to 44 cases now in NS. It's scary how fast it spread from just a few people who caught it while travelling outside the bubble and either them not isolating or those living with them not isolating. Bah.

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1 hour ago, Tyria said:

Yup, the bubble did burst. Nfld and PEI pulling out of the bubble for two weeks. We're up to 44 cases now in NS. It's scary how fast it spread from just a few people who caught it while travelling outside the bubble and either them not isolating or those living with them not isolating. Bah.

And more cases in the Atlantic provinces today. I just looked at my paper record of daily numbers, and you know what? There hasn't been a new case-free day in the Atlantic bubble since Sept. 26. It was mainly NB that reported cases every single day, with occasional cases in other provinces, but that changed Nov. 4, when every day but one NB plus other provinces reported cases. Sounds like everyone had Thanksgiving and said, hell man, we've done it! And guards dropped.

Really, really shocking to me was yesterday's number out of AB - 1584, with a population of only 4.4 M, beating numbers in the ON (14.6 M and 1534 cases) and PQ (8.5 M and 1154 cases). And still the province won't take stronger measures.

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18 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Really, really shocking to me was yesterday's number out of AB - 1584, with a population of only 4.4 M, beating numbers in the ON (14.6 M and 1534 cases) and PQ (8.5 M and 1154 cases). And still the province won't take stronger measures.

TBH I think Manitoba is even worse and more shocking. Nearly 300 in hospital and 50 in ICU. That's comparable to AB, despite MB having a much smaller population. 

On Quebec and Ontario, I think I said a few weeks ago that so far their second waves have been much more mild. That analysis stands, with ON reporting around 10-15 deaths / day now compared to 30-50 in the spring. Quebec is at 20-30 / day compared to 50-100 in the spring.

Unfortunately, the Prairies and BC are having far more severe second waves, which is making Canada as a whole look similar to earlier in the year.

Silver lining (you guys know I'm always looking for these): the current EU wave has been far larger and deadlier than Canada's. 

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4 minutes ago, Paxter said:

TBH I think Manitoba is even worse and more shocking. Nearly 300 in hospital and 50 in ICU. That's comparable to AB, despite MB having a much smaller population. 

Manitoba shares border with North Dakota, the state that is truly doing herd immunity, with the highest number of positives and infections per capita in the world, with a very small population. 

 

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1 minute ago, Zorral said:

Manitoba shares border with North Dakota, the state that is truly doing herd immunity, with the highest number of positives and infections per capita in the world, with a very small population. 

Haha I usually partner MB in my mind with Minnesota more than North Dakota...this time they are channeling their red state neighbours!

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The Peace Gardens are on the shared Manitoba - North Dakota border.

Canada's closed to USians is probably wreaking havoc with a lot people who have expensive medications, that they are used to crossing borders to Canada (and Mexico) to buy less expensively.  And in the meantime the US post office is still entirely screwed up, particularly here in NYC.

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I just saw Doug Ford's response to the Auditor's report on the Covid response. Whine, whine, whine about how unfair it was. 'We worked so hard and sooo loong!' Some one really should break the news about working smarter, not harder one of these days. But then Dougie was never much for brains anyway.

And then comes the news story about a family, who work for the government, stealing 11 million dollars from the Ontario Covid relief funds.

'Great job, Dougie."

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13 hours ago, maarsen said:

I just saw Doug Ford's response to the Auditor's report on the Covid response. Whine, whine, whine about how unfair it was. 'We worked so hard and sooo loong!' Some one really should break the news about working smarter, not harder one of these days. But then Dougie was never much for brains anyway.

And then comes the news story about a family, who work for the government, stealing 11 million dollars from the Ontario Covid relief funds.

'Great job, Dougie."

It amazes me that 4 members of the same family held jobs in the IT department. This has been a long-standing issue, decades long, with the hiring practices of the Ontario government. Get a job in the government and all of a sudden your brothers, sisters , your children, your cousins, all find it easier to get a job. Or work on the election campaign of an MPP. I guess every province has the same issue, but it's galling in a big province like Ontario. I understand that happens in PEI and NB and other small provinces, but with 14.5 M people surely we can hire people unrelated to each other.

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Back in a positive frame of mind...Ontario and Quebec have stabilized the number of active cases in the last 10 days (QC's has actually fallen). Hopefully they start falling soon as recoveries take effect and less new cases materialize to replace them.

Western Canada and the Prairies...no joy yet. 

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Update

Nov.            18       19       20       21       22       23       24                        

BC             762     538     516     913     626     594     941            

AB             730   1105   1155   1336   1584   1549   1115

SK             132       98     153     439     236     235     175  

MB            400     475     438     387     243     543     476      

ON          1417   1210   1418   1588   1534   1589   1009

PQ           1179   1207   1259   1189   1154   1164   1124     

Atl-4            14        5       17       36       20       29       44           

North          10         5       13       25       21       10      10                                                                                                                                                                

Total        4644    4643   4967   5713   5418   5713   4894

I had so much to say over the week, but I think I've forgotten most of it. Let's see, that record day in Ontario was actually a mistake, apparently they usually release numbers in a set 24 hour period and by mistake someone went outside the time, so there were fewer cases on the 23rd and more on the 24th, for what it's worth. Quebec this time around is doing better than Ontario, but I think stronger rules were put in place earlier.

I looked at the numbers earlier this week, the record 5713 on the 21st, and it took more than a month, 30 days, to double the number of daily cases. We hit 2,786 on Oct. 22 and hit 5,713 on Nov. 21. On Oct. 25 we hit 3,010 cases, let's see when (if?) we hit 6,020.  In terms of total cases, we had 347,466 total cases as of yesterday, and half that total, 173,123 on Oct. 7, 49 days ago. I always look at the States, mainly because we are so close, and it took them longer to double the total, Sept. 5 they had 6,569,109, hitting 13,138,219 yesterday (Worldometer numbers). I think I pointed out in an earlier post, maybe in the Covid thread, that our case growth was almost 70% while US cases grew at about 50% since mid September. Of course, we had a much lower base. eta They doubled daily cases in a bit more than two weeks, 82,066 on Oct. 28 and 188,185 on Nov.13. Hopefully cases don't double again.

Alberta finally put in stronger measures this week, but holy hell, casinos are still open! Someone was recording all task force meetings in Alberta and released tapes to the CBC and it seems pretty clear Kenney ignored medical advice because, like Trump, he thought keeping the economy open was more important.

And now, of course, Conservatives are attacking Trudeau because he didn't negotiate Canada standing at the front of the line to receive vaccine doses! Like, guys, every country producing vaccines locked up the first millions of vaccines for their own countries. But no, it's Canada's fault that no pharma company in Canada has produced a vaccine and the ones who have won't manufacture some here. We are in the top five in line to get vaccine doses, but that's not good enough. 

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33 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

And now, of course, Conservatives are attacking Trudeau because he didn't negotiate Canada standing at the front of the line to receive vaccine doses! Like, guys, every country producing vaccines locked up the first millions of vaccines for their own countries. But no, it's Canada's fault that no pharma company in Canada has produced a vaccine and the ones who have won't manufacture some here. We are in the top five in line to get vaccine doses, but that's not good enough. 

Yeah vaccine availability is going to be an interesting one. Australia is rooting for the AstraZeneca vaccine as it will be manufactured on its shores...but there are no guarantees. 

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Quote

But no, it's Canada's fault that no pharma company in Canada has produced a vaccine and the ones who have won't manufacture some here.

It's not Canada's fault, it the conservatives fault. They significantly damaged our biomedical industry (amongst others), of course now the conservatives want to blame the current government for not fixing everything the cons broke.

Seriously "they've had five years why didn't Justin Trudeau rebuild Canada vaccine manufacturing capacity" is an argument I've actually seen made.

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13 minutes ago, TrueMetis said:

It's not Canada's fault, it the conservatives fault. They significantly damaged our biomedical industry (amongst others), of course now the conservatives want to blame the current government for not fixing everything the cons broke.

Seriously "they've had five years why didn't Justin Trudeau rebuild Canada vaccine manufacturing capacity" is an argument I've actually seen made.

So much happened under the Cons I can’t keep track of it all. What did they do?

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

So much happened under the Cons I can’t keep track of it all. What did they do?

I had a co- worker who worked at a pharmacy company. Under Harper all the drug manufacture moved to India. 

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4 hours ago, maarsen said:

I had a co- worker who worked at a pharmacy company. Under Harper all the drug manufacture moved to India. 

And that was the second round, the Mulroney government privatized Connaught Labs in the 80's.

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/contributors/2020/03/11/the-public-lab-that-could-have-helped-fight-covid-19-pandemic.html

Privatization is a bane on healthcare.

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I caught some of Power & Politics tonight and the consensus is that the attacks on the vaccine delivery are all about deflecting criticism away from Conservative premiers who are under attack for their lousy response to Covid-19. And it wasn't exactly rocket science to figure out that vaccines were going to be delivered first in the countries producing the vaccines. Conservatives are prectically demanding vaccine doses be delivered to Alberta on Dec. 15.

And I heard the comment made by that (unflattering description) Michelle Rempel, mouthy little thing that she is, saying vaccine won't be delivered until 2030. Honestly, what a first class bitch.

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3 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

She is somehow the fucking shadow minister of health.

It's all the same group of idiots, but are they even more brazen in their idiocy recently? Or am I just more aware of how breathtakingly incompetent these people are?

Whenever we have a crisis, that is when you see people, and leaders, as they truly are. Do they stand up and actually try to solve the problem or do they continue to do what they always do? The heat that melts the butter hardens the steel. 

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