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Canadian Politics: Is that a Light at the End of the Tunnel?


Fragile Bird

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Update

Dec               9       10      11      12      13        14       15                        

BC             619    723    737     698     689     759     522            

AB           1460  1566  1738   1590   1717   1887   1341

SK             302    324    246     274     222     269     194           

MB            280    293    447     360     273     241     272         

ON          1890  1983  1848   1873   1677   1940   2275

PQ           1728  1842  1713   1898   1994   1620   1741     

Atl-4              8        9      18       11         8         7        8         

North            9                 21         2                    2        3                                                                                                                                                                                       

Total         6296  6740  6768   6706   6580   6734   6355

When I saw Ontario's number yesterday, I thought, damn, there we go. Then I read that the number was high because they changed the reporting hours window, adding two and a half hours to the day. Ok, the number will drop tomorrow, I told myself. Nope. Today's number is 2139. Everyone is expecting tighter restrictions soon, as the virus spreads out of town. But, lol, apparently not until January. Get those Christmas presents!

But, some good news. I will cautiously put forward the idea that numbers are creeping down everywhere except Ontario and Quebec. If you go to CTV's Tracking every Case page, there are downward curves everywhere else. And we haven't hit 7,000 yet, fingers crossed. Today's numbers for Alberta and BC aren't in yet, so let's hope they don't have big surprises.

I wanted to put this in perspective by looking at the US. Yesterday the US had 197,366 new cases and 3,001 deaths v Canada's 6,355 and 106. If they had Canada's numbers, it would be 55,607 and 928 deaths. California had more than 35,000 new cases and 289 deaths. And, thankfully, Poland is back down to Canadian sized new case numbers, but big deaths, 345, because of those huge 25 k numbers they were adding recently.

eta: Well, so much for my comment about Poland. I thought I was seeing the end of the day number because of the time difference. They had almost 12,500 cases today and 605 deaths.

I heard the PM say we will be getting the additional 200,000 Pfizer vaccine doses rolling in before month end. In addition, apparently we'll get 279,000 Moderna doses as soon as their vaccine is approved. The vaccines would have made a huge impact back in August, when the second wave hadn't started yet. We should have volunteered Canada as the test site.

eta: https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

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Yeah agreed - some optimism on the west coast now as the BC and AB curves are flattening. We are avoiding anything like exponential growth at this point, I just wish they’d shut things down properly so we can actually see a decrease in numbers.

Unfortunately that probably means schools shutting for longer over Christmas, but that’s what I’d do.

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Well, we just set a new record today in Ontario, 2,432 cases. Two and a half weeks after the so-called restrictions came in and the number keeps climbing. Is that going to be a wake-up call for the Ford government? Not bloody likely. Let’s face it, the positivity rate is barely over 5%, they’re going to keep businesses open until, I guess, we hit Manitoba’s 14% rate? With 58,178 tests done yesterday, that would be 8,145 cases a day. 
 

Ford is rapidly losing all the good will he built up earlier in the year.

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10 hours ago, Fragile Bird said:

Well, we just set a new record today in Ontario, 2,432 cases. Two and a half weeks after the so-called restrictions came in and the number keeps climbing. Is that going to be a wake-up call for the Ford government? Not bloody likely. Let’s face it, the positivity rate is barely over 5%, they’re going to keep businesses open until, I guess, we hit Manitoba’s 14% rate? With 58,178 tests done yesterday, that would be 8,145 cases a day. 
 

Ford is rapidly losing all the good will he built up earlier in the year.

That's crazy. Both the MB situation and the fact that Ford would be OK with us getting to that.

We are so close to post-COVID. Just save lives FFS. 

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The number in Ontario today is 2,290, the fourth day in a row we've reported more than 2,000 new cases. There will be an emergency meeting between the Ford team and medical experts. Hopefully that will lead to some stronger restrictions. However, I also need to point out that our positivity rate from yesterday's tests is 3.9%, with 68,246 done. The backlog is 81,000. We always have more tests done as the week progresses. An hour ago I saw an interview with a doctor from Iowa, who was happy to report some of their numbers were down. Their positivity rate is 19.2%.

My worry is about the spread of Covid-19 to communities outside of the GTHA area, into the Barries and Kitcheners of the province, and further north. 

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Western Canada and the Prairies seem to be sorting themselves out now. Deaths are higher than ever unfortunately, but their caseloads are all in the double-digit decrease region. 

Ontario is a problem, so Ford's announcement today was a necessary one. Albeit that it was a necessary one weeks or months ago. The province is running 20-40 fatalities / day now, which is over half of the first wave peak. I think sadly that a lot of those deaths would have been avoided if tighter restrictions were in place in, say, October, when the data was already pointing to the current predicament.  

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Update

Dec          12Sa   13Su  14Mo  15Tu  16We   17Th   18Fr                        

BC             698     689     759     522     640     673    624            

AB           1590   1717   1887   1341   1270   1571   1413

SK             274     222     269     194     169     238     245           

MB            360     273     241     272     292     221     350         

ON          1873   1677   1940   2275   2139   2432    2290

PQ           1898   1994   1620   1741   1897   1855   1773     

Atl-4            11         8         7        8       17       16       12         

North            2                    2        3         0          1        1                                                                                                                                                                                       

Total         6706   6580   6734   6355   6424   7008   6708

Ontario is going into a real lockdown, finally, for the next month, starting on Boxing Day, which took me by surprise because everyone said it would happen on Christmas Eve. Way to go, let everyone get together on Christmas. How bloody stupid can you be? Our R number, from last week, is 1.02.

I am certain that we are in this predicament because like the Tories across the country they decided the economy has to be open. To be fair, people are economically dying out there. I just have to drive around to see all the For Lease signs in the west end of the city. Only the worst hit areas will be locked down for 28 days, Northern Ontario will only get the full lockdown for two weeks, until Jan. 9. Let's hope that the government is sensible enough to extend the lockdown if in fact we don't see an impact.

Back to restricted numbers in the grocery and big-box stores. Line-ups in the cold.

And finally! Ontario is going to institute testing at the airport. If the federal government doesn't cooperate, Ford is threatening to do roadside checks, pulling over cars as they exit. In the last two weeks, according to a reporter asking questions, we've had flights come in from the UK carrying 54 passengers with Covid-19. Apparently the airport is ready to go, but the federal government is dragging it's feet. Why oh why? And the Ontario government has hotels ready for quarantining passengers. We have flights coming in today from Germany, Mexico, the US and other countries. Ford wants double testing started, a test on landing, 7 days of quarantine, and another test.

I do actually think that's a bit of a boogy man, the spread is happening because folks are getting together. But we know from NZ and Australia, catching those cases at the airport is damn important.

I need to watch more news before I can comment about the situation across the country. I am really anxious to see how vaccines will be rolled out. The quantities are so low, though, it will only be health care workers and LTC residents for a while. I saw the CDC in the US is suggesting the roll out go to Health care workers and those over 75, and then essential workers. People over 65 are far down the list.

This CTV page has a chart that allows you to compare the numbers of three countries. I did Canada, the US and Poland (man, that Polish chart is brutal, but has come down dramatically) and with Sweden. I saw a comment asking what happened to Sweden in another thread, could have sworn I said I lol'd for real, winter came, but either I forgot to post it or it was deleted. The chart shows that Sweden has tracked the US. I was shocked. While looking at Poland I hadn't really looked at other countries. There are links to other graphs on the main page. Lithuania is in the worst shape at the moment with per capita cases. If you scroll down there are more charts from other countries with a discussion about their current situation.

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/covid-19-curves-compare-canada-and-other-key-nations-1.4881500

 

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1 hour ago, Fragile Bird said:

I do actually think that's a bit of a boogy man, the spread is happening because folks are getting together. But we know from NZ and Australia, catching those cases at the airport is damn important

Agreed, it is important. But it would have made a lot more sense in the earlier stages of the pandemic before we had people transmitting COVID throughout Ontario. Unfortunately that was when a million or so Canadians were returning, so the testing infrastructure wasn't there.

Australia had it easier because they had fewer returnees and not many of them from hotspots like the US or Europe. 

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I just saw a report on how successful the screening program at US airports was. I got into fights with people on the internet about what Canada was doing because they kept saying the US was doing more to protect its citizens.

Approximately 776,000 travelers to the US had been screened by the time the program ended in September. Nine cases of Covid-19 were detected. Nine. More than a dozen screeners contracted Covid-19 and died, but the number “was consistent with the rate of Covid-19 in their community”.

The screeners asked questions about symptoms and took temperatures. They obviously didn’t catch asymptomatic travelers because no testing was done. Nobody did any testing until recently.

If you remember, when the screening started there were massive crowds of returning passengers packed into hallways for hours at a time. More Covid probably spread in those halls  because for sure there were asymptomatic carriers.

On the other hand, as I said in my post above, a reporter mentioned in the last few weeks 54 passengers coming in from the UK through Pearson turned out to have Covid-19. I assume we know this because people were ordered to quarantine for two weeks after landing. I don’t think that temporary testing program was still in place.

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Update

Dec          15Tu  16We   17Th   18Fr    19Sa   20Su  21Mo                        

BC             522     640      673    624      652     486     529            

AB           1341   1270    1571   1413   1352   1286   1240  

SK             194     169      238     245     252     226     206           

MB            272     292      221     350     238     229     167         

ON          2275   2139    2432   2290   2357   2316   2123

PQ           1741   1897    1855   1773   2038   2146   2108     

Atl-4              8       17       16       12       16         2         6         

North             3         0         1         1         0        0         0                                                                                                                                                                                       

Total          6355   6424   7008   6708   6905   6691   6382

As I said before, everyone is doing better, except for Ontario and Quebec. Although I was stunned to see pictures of the crowds at Whistler this weekend. BC already had an outbreak at a resort when employees decided to have a party for 25, and soon there were more than 30 Covid cases.

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I’m just watching the federal update. By the end of January we will have received 1.2 M doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines, which is an increase of what we were expecting (more Pfizer made available, I think). 
 

So far 240,000 have been distributed, which surprised me. That’s 120,000 people vaccinated by the next day or two. Moderna will deliver 168,000 vaccines by the end of December and deliveries will be made to the North and rural areas immediately. Right now there are 14 centers that have received vaccines (1 in each province except Ontario and Quebec, which have 2). This will increase to 100 locations in December. January will see deliveries of 200,000 vaccines doses a week., ah, 125,000 the first week. 750,000 in the month.
 

They also said the first shot of the Moderna vaccine provides about 80% protection.

eta: the Territories will receive their vaccines on Monday.

Six Million doses of the two vaccines will be received by the end of March. All Canadians should be vaccinated by the end of September. Eta: the split is 4 M Pfizer, 2M Moderna. Presumably we will also get 6 or even 7 doses from each unit, like they found in the US so far.

eta 2: although there were 14 delivery centers, vaccines have already been given at 74 different sites.

And, of course, the rumour is J&J will be ready to present their Phase 3 results the first week of January, so we’ll get more vaccine doses from them as well.

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If 3 million Canadians (just shy of 10% of the population) could be vaccinated by March, that would be pretty incredible. They should in theory be able to reduce the fatality rate to almost zero if the shots are effective and targeted at the right people. 

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Since all the Covid fatalities in the USA are the fault of Donald J Trump (GRRM's own words, and a familiar sentiment from board members here),  shouldn't all the Canadian fatalities be the fault of Justin Trudeau, who acted even later than the Trump administration did?

I survived my Covid infection.  I'm a stage 3 cancer winner/survivor, I have Systemic Lupus/SLE, and have drug induced type 1 diabetes thanks to my first treatments of prednisone for SLE being overdosed by the hospital.  In other words, a combination of issues that made a Covid19 viral infection a pretty dicey thing in terms of percentage of survival.  

They never could contact trace how I was infected, I only made a single trip out of the house each week, for shopping, and a drug infusion/hospital appt in a pretty sterile environment.  Had n95 on constantly, gloves as well, and always scrubbed vigorously with alcohol once these were removed, without having my hands go near my face.  Oh, and face shield on top of these precautions as well.

They were close to deciding to intubate me.  The survival stats after this aren't stellar, as in single percentage points, so I pleaded with them to let me just keep making that conscious decision to breath, in and out with that oxygen, with every single breath, until I passed out, and/or stopped breathing.  Then they had my permission to do whatever they wanted.  

I began improving the next day, and the day after I had very significant improvement.  I won't go into the laundry list of treatments I had, but it was pretty typical of all the various drugs you read and hear about right now.  I was already taking Plaquenil, 200mg a day, for my SLE/Lupus, as I can't take corticosteroids any longer due to the whole type 1 diabetes/reaction debacle.  

Anyhow, I hope the vaccines get here and are widely distributed quickly and that boneheads don't decide that not taking them is "their right" and good idea, for any reason.  I also hope people follow the guidelines for the rest of this xmas/NY season, and don't risk catching the Chinese lab released virus, as it can be a walk in the park for some, and a fight to the finish for others.  In my case, it was probably the 2nd or 3rd shittiest experience I've been through, and that includes eating a vehicle based IED and getting 2nd/3rd degree burns and a life long re appearing migraine, and going through both radiation and chemo, and barfing my guts out for days/weeks during that process.

edit - The "wonderful" socialized "free" health care in Canada absolutely sucks still.  I took quite a bit of vid footage I took while an inpatient with Covid.  I wish I had done so when the hospital in my mother's home town was directly responsible for her early demise due to their "free" incompetent imported doctors and policies.  Canadian healthcare is a joke, and a poor one at that.

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  • 2 weeks later...

Update

Dec          20Su  21Mo  22Tu  23We  24Th  25Fr                          

BC             486     529     444    518     582      -                    

AB           1286   1240   1021   1301  1100       -  

SK             226     206     181     159    154       -           

MB            229     167     155     201    244       -         

ON          2316   2123   2202   2408   2447  2159  

PQ           2146   2108   2183   2247   2349      -     

Atl-4              2         6      10       10       12        1         

North             0         3        0        2         1        0                                                                                                                                                                                      

Total          6691   6382  6196  6846   6858   2160

I knew this would be problematic because numbers would be all over the place, but I expected the various provinces would come out with late numbers that were split out by them. Unfortunately they weren't. I tried just splitting them up evenly, then said to hell with it and am just reporting the numbers from the last two weeks as they came out.   

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Update

Dec          25Fr   26Sa   27Su   28Mo   29Tu   30We   31Th                          

BC              -         -           -           -     2206     485      683                          

AB              -     2105     459      917     872     1287    1200  

SK               -         -       559        94     114      147      190           

MB              -         -       524      107     133      130      187      

ON          2159   2142   2005    1939    2553   2923   3328 

PQ               -     4492   2291    2265    2381   2511   2819     

Atl-4              1        2         5        16          7         4         6        

North             0        0         0          1         0          0         0                                                                                                                                                                                      

Total         2160   8741   5843   5339    8360    7476   8413

I'd say we need to prepare for hitting 10,000 some time soon, because Ontario and Quebec numbers are not slowing down. I think we're seeing Christmas shopping numbers, and pre-Christmas get-togethers showing up in the numbers.

In the meantime, I can't believe that some provinces, especially Ontario, decided to halt giving vaccines for two days over Christmas. How stupid can you be? I see that the territories received their Moderna supply and immediatey started vaccinating.

I also can't believe all these bloody politicians who've told us to make sacrifices and then head off to St. Bart's or Bermuda or Hawaii or California. Stupid idiots. And I could not believe Jason Kenney saying the guidelines from the federal government and his own province about not doing any non-essential travel wasn't clear enough to prevent a cabinet miister from going to Hawaii. And then compounding the idiocy by saying it was great to see people supporting Westjet! What the flying f! So to speak.

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53 minutes ago, Fragile Bird said:

Update

Dec          25Fr   26Sa   27Su   28Mo   29Tu   30We   31Th                          

BC              -         -           -           -     2206     485      683                          

AB              -     2105     459      917     872     1287    1200  

SK               -         -       559        94     114      147      190           

MB              -         -       524      107     133      130      187      

ON          2159   2142   2005    1939    2553   2923   3328 

PQ               -     4492   2291    2265    2381   2511   2819     

Atl-4              1        2         5        16          7         4         6        

North             0        0         0          1         0          0         0                                                                                                                                                                                      

Total         2160   8741   5843   5339    8360    7476   8413

I'd say we need to prepare for hitting 10,000 some time soon, because Ontario and Quebec numbers are not slowing down. I think we're seeing Christmas shopping numbers, and pre-Christmas get-togethers showing up in the numbers.

In the meantime, I can't believe that some provinces, especially Ontario, decided to halt giving vaccines for two days over Christmas. How stupid can you be? I see that the territories received their Moderna supply and immediatey started vaccinating.

I also can't believe all these bloody politicians who've told us to make sacrifices and then head off to St. Bart's or Bermuda or Hawaii or California. Stupid idiots. And I could not believe Jason Kenney saying the guidelines from the federal government and his own province about not doing any non-essential travel wasn't clear enough to prevent a cabinet miister from going to Hawaii. And then compounding the idiocy by saying it was great to see people supporting Westjet! What the flying f! So to speak.

I’m off to Australia to visit family soon, so I can’t get on my high horse about non-essential travel...however it is a good thing that they’ve introduced a mandatory testing policy prior to arriving in Canada. My peeve though is: where was this policy in the spring or summer? Rushing it through in the middle of the winter season is poor timing.

ETA: Totally agree on the vaccine - let's get this done. Canada has already administered 100k. By my count there are around 200k people living in care homes across the country (about 5% of our 5m seniors). Get them vaccinated ASAP!!

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