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Canadian Politics: The Surreality of Life under King Corona


Tywin Manderly

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21 hours ago, Paxter said:

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. 

Yes, but the number of tests completed has also fallen over the last two weeks I believe.

 

 

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9 minutes ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Yes, but the number of tests completed has also fallen over the last two weeks I believe.

Depressing. Slovakia tested two thirds of its population (around 3.5m people) in two days. 

Though even if you took a more blunt (albeit slightly lagging) indicator like fatalities, both provinces are running consistent (rather than rising) numbers. And both are at less than half (closer to a third) of their respective spring peaks. 

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1 hour ago, Paxter said:

Though even if you took a more blunt (albeit slightly lagging) indicator like fatalities, both provinces are running consistent (rather than rising) numbers. And both are at less than half (closer to a third) of their respective spring peaks. 

I think you jinxed us, Ontario just reported 1855 cases, about 266 more cases than the previous high.
 

 

1 hour ago, Lord of Oop North said:

Yes, but the number of tests completed has also fallen over the last two weeks I believe.

 

 

Actually no. I was shocked to see we tested 58,037 people yesterday. I don’t check every day, I think the highest I’d seen before was 45,000 or 46,000.

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I think you jinxed us, Ontario just reported 1855 cases, about 266 more cases than the previous high.

Haha. I think you know what I think about these previous caseload "highs" by now. If we are ever going to talk about "highs" in a sense relative to the rest of 2020, we need to be using hospitalization or death data. 

For now, I will maintain my position that Phase 2 is around 1/3 (and no more than half) as severe as Phase 1 for Quebec and Ontario! 

ETA: That is good news on testing. But really it needs to be six figures and beyond to be catching more asymptomatic cases. I'll give the case of Australia (always a convenient example I'll admit!) which has tested about 31% more people per capita than Canada. And a lot of those extra tests are of asymptomatic people. 

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Bubble 'sploded. Went from zero to 114 in NS blah. I'm sure there will be more when the results from today's testing are in. It's mainly in the HRM, which makes sense since that's where half the population of the province lives. People outside of the HRM are being asked not to come in unless they have to and then to isolate when they get home.

On a brighter note, Dr. Strang being his awesome self :wub:https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/robert-strang-special-visits-hughie-1.5818324

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5 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

I think you jinxed us, Ontario just reported 1855 cases, about 266 more cases than the previous high.
 

 

Actually no. I was shocked to see we tested 58,037 people yesterday. I don’t check every day, I think the highest I’d seen before was 45,000 or 46,000.

Yes, yesterday, but what about over the last few weeks? I know that early-to-mid November it was dropping a lot.


ETA: Found the data

https://covid-19.ontario.ca/data

Date Total tests completed Change from previous report
     
November 27 58,037 increase from previous business day21.99 %
November 26 47,576 increase from previous business day31.88 %
November 25 36,076 increase from previous business day33.35 %
November 24 27,053 decrease from previous business day27.8 %
November 23 37,471 decrease from previous business day19.22 %
November 22 46,389 decrease from previous business day0.6 %
November 21 46,671 decrease from previous business day3.12 %
November 20 48,173 increase from previous business day15.14 %
November 19 41,838 increase from previous business day25.11 %
November 18 33,440 increase from previous business day26.34 %
Date Total tests completed Change from previous report
     
November 17 26,468 decrease from previous business day20.64 %
November 16 33,351 decrease from previous business day20.98 %
November 15 42,206 decrease from previous business day5.87 %
November 14 44,837 increase from previous business day10.68 %
November 13 40,509 increase from previous business day2.40 %
November 12 39,559 increase from previous business day7.77 %
November 11 36,707 increase from previous business day26.03 %
November 10 29,125 increase from previous business day2.55 %
November 9 28,401 decrease from previous business day24.42 %
November 8 37,577 decrease from previous business day4.05 %

 

Date Total tests completed Change from previous report
     
November 7 39,165 decrease from previous business day5.1 %
November 6 41,268 increase from previous business day15.42 %
November 5 35,754 increase from previous business day25.16 %
November 4 28,567 increase from previous business day13.01 %
November 3 25,279 decrease from previous business day9.42 %
November 2 27,908 decrease from previous business day24.84 %
November 1 37,133 decrease from previous business day11.42 %
October 31 41,920 increase from previous business day2.22 %
October 30 41,008 increase from previous business day15.12 %
October 29 35,621 increase from previous business day18.70 %
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@Lord of Oop North

i looked at those numbers and decided to look at them on a weekly basis. I see the weeks mainly start low, with more tests as the week goes on, with Thursday, Friday and Saturday usually being the biggest days. I went back a couple of more days to have complete weeks. 
The numbers ebb and flow, so I think you have to look at more than just individual days.
 

From Mon. Oct. 27 to Sun. Nov. 2, 237,545 tests were done, for an average of 33,935 a day. Nov. 3 to Nov. 9 it was a tiny bit less, 236,011, average 33,715 a day. Nov. 11 to Nov. 16 it was 266,294, 38,042 a day. Nov. 17 to Nov. 23 saw 280,450 in the week, or 40,064 a day. And for the four days of this week, the average has been 42,185 a day. So we have been creeping up.

I also remember Ford complaining at press conferences 6 or 7 weeks ago that not enough people were coming out to be tested. He kept saying, come on folks, get tested. And he kept promising that Ontario’s capacity for testing would keep going up.

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Update

Nov.            24        25        26        27        28        29      30                        

BC             941      738      887      911      750      731     596 + 277            

AB           1115    1265    1077    1227    1731    1608    1733

SK             175      164      315      329      197      351     325  

MB            476      349      383     344      487      365     343      

ON          1009    1373    1478    1855   1822    1708    1746

PQ           1124    1100    1464    1296   1480    1395    1333     

Atl-4            44        21       29        25       22        28        23          

North          10        12          3         4         5         13         5                                                                                                                                                                                 

Total        4894    5022    5633    5967    6494    6199    6381

I thought I would do to the end of November now and pick up with December tomorrow. That double-barrelled number for BC was a data base clean-up. I don't know how they dealt with the extra 277 cases, so I just added them to the announcement day. I really don't have a whole helluva a lot to say about the numbers. Winter is coming.

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Looks like BC and MB are bending their curves. No real increase in daily cases for the past week or so. AB is the unwanted outlier as usual.

ON and QC continue to run at about 1/3 of their respective spring peaks in terms of fatalities. 

Happily my prediction of 200-250 deaths / day by Christmas looks off.

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Update

Nov/Dec     30         1         2         3        4                        

BC             873     656     834     694     711            

AB           1733   1307   1685   1854   1828

SK             325     181     238     262     283  

MB            343     283     277     368     320      

ON          1746   1707   1723   1824   1780

PQ           1333   1177   1514   1470   1345     

Atl-4            23      18       24       18       26          

North            5        1       13         6         9                                                                                                                                                                                   

Total        6381   5330   6307   6476   6301

A couple of months ago Canada was number 13 on the list of countries on Worldometer. We seemed to stubbornly stay there forever, but then slowly but surely we got a handle on things and crept up the list as other countries passed us. When my SiL announced she was going to Poland, whose population is almost the same as Canada's, it was 65th or so on the list. I noticed it was creeping up as the day approached for her flight, and around the time she left Canada was 30th and Poland was 31st. She didn't want to take masks, just face shields, but I gave her a box of 50 disposable masks to take with her. Not long after, we were 31st and Poland was 30th.

During the 7 weeks she was there the situation just got worse and worse. And, hey, we're back at 29th now. But Poland is in 13th spot, that place where I worried we'd never leave. On Sept. 1 we had 129,424 cases, and Poland had 67,922 cases. Today our number has skyrocketed to 402,569, but Poland now has 1,041,846 confirmed cases. Canada's population is 37.88 M, Poland's is 37.82 M.

This is what I fear. You know the feds warned us if we didn't take more care we could see cases go to 60,000 a day. Poland only got up as high as about 28 k (last week they did a data clean up day and announced almost 38 k cases) and their numbers have been slowly dropping since that peak. I am hoping we are seeing the peak of the Thanksgiving surge, and people have learned their lesson and will not make the same mistake at Christmas, but I'm not holding my breath. 

I just look at those Alberta numbers and really worry. For a second day in a row Alberta has had more cases than Ontario. I hope they can get things under control.

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Well, worth noting today. Quebec announced 2,031 new cases, the first time a province exceeded 2,000, and their highest total since (sorry, not Nov. 14) just a few days ago, on Dec. 2nd, when they set a record of 1,514. (The Nov. 14 number was from Ontario.) I guess Ontario won’t be far behind.

All of Canada hadn’t reported 2,000 cases in a day in the first wave, except when Quebec did a data clean-up day and we reported about 2,800, but those cases had happened over several weeks.

eta: Quebec is saying the new cases were not necessarily from yesterday but could be from a couple of days, because of the time it takes to do tests, but that would be the situation every day.

And a Manitoba court has turned down an request for an injunction against the province, saying refusal to allow a drive-in church service was against constitutional rights. The court ruled the standard to overturn a rule made to benefit all people in society is very high, and the church had not met the standard.

 

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4 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, worth noting today. Quebec announced 2,031 new cases, the first time a province exceeded 2,000, and their highest total since (sorry, not Nov. 14) just a few days ago, on Dec. 2nd, when they set a record of 1,514. (The Nov. 14 number was from Ontario.) I guess Ontario won’t be far behind.

All of Canada hadn’t reported 2,000 cases in a day in the first wave, except when Quebec did a data clean-up day and we reported about 2,800, but those cases had happened over several weeks.

eta: Quebec is saying the new cases were not necessarily from yesterday but could be from a couple of days, because of the time it takes to do tests, but that would be the situation every day.

And a Manitoba court has turned down an request for an injunction against the province, saying refusal to allow a drive-in church service was against constitutional rights. The court ruled the standard to overturn a rule made to benefit all people in society is very high, and the church had not met the standard.

Interesting RE: the Manitoba court case. Seems like a reasonable decision to me. 

On caseloads...I think Quebec is not travelling too badly. When you look at how much testing has expanded and the fatalities data (which is significantly lower relative to spring), as well as the fact that daily caseloads are not rising exponentially, they are probably going as well as they can expect for this time of year. They are outperforming their Euro counterparts comfortably this time around. More concerning to me is that 27k of Canada's 60k or so active cases are in AB and MB. 

I saw also that the QC Premier is not allowing Christmas gatherings, which of course is the correct decision. Whether it stops families from getting together...I'm dubious. 

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I was scanning Europe's data on the Fall wave tonight...it is noticeable that while the increase in cases was massive, nation-wide lockdowns have had a swift and significant impact on the caseloads in many countries.

By contrast, Canada just sort of wobbles along with a wide array of partial lockdowns. Perhaps unavoidable in a federal system, but I can't help but wonder if a OneCanada policy might have averted a lot of the current problems. 

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13 hours ago, Paxter said:

I was scanning Europe's data on the Fall wave tonight...it is noticeable that while the increase in cases was massive, nation-wide lockdowns have had a swift and significant impact on the caseloads in many countries.

By contrast, Canada just sort of wobbles along with a wide array of partial lockdowns. Perhaps unavoidable in a federal system, but I can't help but wonder if a OneCanada policy might have averted a lot of the current problems. 

Assuming the current government? Probably. Assuming a conservative government? Everyone's Alberta.

The solution is of course to crush the conservative parties, federally and provincially.

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Update

Dec               3         4        5        6        7                        

BC             694     711    647    726    647            

AB           1854   1828  1879  1836  1775

SK             262     283    203    415    274   

MB            368     320    354    383    325      

ON          1824   1780  1859  1924  1925

PQ           1470   1345  2031  1691  1577     

Atl-4            18       26      15     16      14          

North            6         9        8        2        3                                                                                                                                                                                        

Total        6496   6299   6996  6993  6503

Wow, we came close to 7,000 new cases there. If you follow Worldometer, you saw 7,500 or more cases yesterday, since BC reprts 3 days on Monday, but I break them out. I'm holding my breath waiting for Ontario to report 2,000 or more cases, we've come close, but today there was a sharp drop. Mind you, there were 6,000 fewer tests done, and at 5% positivity that's 300 cases, basically the difference in the number of cases.  

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Since no one has posted this yet, Canada has approved the Pfizer vaccine. We will receive ‘up to’ 249,000 doses, shipped by air from Pfizer’s Belgium headquarters where the manufacturing plant is, this month. I assume this means that Trump has indeed blocked shipments out of US plants. That’s the equivalent of the US getting 2.2 M doses this month instead of 40 M from Pfizer. Canada would get 4.5 M if we were treated the same.

We have 14 of the deep freezers (so far, more are coming), each province has at least one and ON, PQ, AB and BC have two. The territories will not get any of the Pfizer vaccine because not only does it need the deep freezers but it is very fragile and once it’s shipped to a destination further shipment may damage it. They will receive the Moderna vaccine, which is less fragile.
 

Apparently the Moderna vaccine is expected to be approved shortly.

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Holy crap, no wonder they don’t want to ship the vaccine further once it gets to Canada. Pfizer uses UPS to ship the vaccine. You’d think UPS could load a plane in Belgium and fly it to Montreal or Toronto, but no sirree! They ship it from Belgium to Cologne, Germany, and then from Cologne to a UPS distribution centre in Kentucky, and then from Kentucky to wherever.

What, are there no bloody UPS distribution centers in Canada?

eta: a reporter at a press conference asked why shipment took 36 hours, was Pfizer doing the shipping or were they using Air Canada. I guess they thought they were being witty, but I’d bet that Air Canada would manage to find a Canadian city to land a plane in.

eta 2: We will receive 6 M doses by the end of the 1st quarter, plus, of course, vaccines from other companies once they are approved.

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Alberta finally shuts down (effective this Sunday). I thought it would never come. 20,000 active cases (easily the most in the country) and 100 deaths just in the last ten days or so finally forced Kenney's hand. Plus the modelling he is seeing would not be pretty. 

Vaccine situation...probably looking rosier than I expected? I thought the US might be able to force us to the sidelines, but 3m vaccinated by end of March would not be bad. You could probably more than halve the fatality rate if the most at-risk take the vaccine. 

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I want to mention something that many of you may have heard about in the news but didn't pay attention to. A real legal giant in Canada passed away earlier this week: Joe Arvay died of a heart attack at the age of 71.

This hits hard because Joe started teaching at the Faculty of Law when I was in first year. Joe was such a mild mannered, sweet kid, that a lot of students didn't take him seriously. Besides that, he walked with crutches, having been left a paraplegic after a bad car accident. I remember a classmate telling me she took one of his classes because she felt sorry for him. Many thought he was just another naive academic who thought he was going to change the world. In fact, he did change the world for many Canadians, heck, for all Canadians. I always knew he wanted to eventually practice law, and a few years later he moved to BC to join the AG's department, and later set up his own practice. People figured he could afford to do it one day because rumour had it he had been paid a huge settlement after the car accident. I don't think very many people realized how very bright he was. (And I see a story that says he was injured in a skiing accident. That's news to me, and in fact I heard an interview with the former AG of BC and he mentioned the car accident.)

Among the cases Joe argued before the Supreme Court of Canada was the assisted dying case, Carter v. Canada, that led to the law being changed. The court, having given the federal government one year to rewrite the law, suspended the law for his client during that year, in case her condition worsened and she wanted a physician-assisted death. And in 1995 he successfuly argued that gay and lesbian people were entitled to equal treatment under the law. Later he represented the Little Sisters bookstore, which was being unfairly targeted by Canada Customs. He also argued that same-sex marriage was another right gay and lesbian people were being denied, which eventually led to the legalization of same-sex marriage.

And just last year, he was the lawyer who successfully argued solitary confinement was cruel and unusual punishment. Altogether he appeared 78 times before the Supreme Court.

The most shocking thing of all to me was the fact that he was only 6 years older than me. I knew he was young, but not that young. That meant he completed law school and a graduate degree at Harvard and then got hired to teach at Windsor. The dean of the law school, Ron Ianni, hired some pretty bright professors. Another very young professor at the school who also planned to go into practice was a lawyer you may also have heard of, James Lockyer, who has argued many times on behalf of the wrongfully convicted. 

Rest in peace, Joe, rest in peace. You will be deeply missed.

https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/british-columbia/article-constitutional-lawyer-joe-arvay-71-helped-change-canadas-laws-on/

 

 

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Welp, the federal health officials are predicting  that, without further action being taken, modeling expectations of 12,000 cases a day by Christmas Day.

Manitoba is reporting 447 new cases today, and the 5 day positivity average is 13.2%. In October the indigenous community hadn’t had a death, and now 1 in 10 are. In Nunavut one of the fly-in communities, Arviat, reported another 16 cases.

Native communities across the country are really being hit hard. They will be receiving the Moderna vaccine as soon as it gets approved, since it only requires a regular freezer, not the -80 C freezer.

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