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

[Fragile Bird]

Update 

June        7Mo  8Tu   9We 10Th  11Fr  12Sa  13Su  14Mo

BC           133   165   148   153    180     96    113      68   

AB           127   139   313     78    170   179    165    115     

SK             68     90     57     77      81   106      66      55

MB          169   237   250    251   223   294    194    124

ON          525   469   411   590    574   502    530    447

PQ          193    149   178   189   180    182    151    123

NB              1       1      13      3       1        7        7        1

NS            14      17     13     15      8       10       8        8

PE              0        0       0       0       0        0        0       0

NL              2       3       3       5        3        6        1       4

North         0       1       4       5        5        3        0       0

Total     1232  1271 1390 1466  1425  1215  1235   945

Finally, yesterday we dropped below 1,000 new cases! And even better news, Ontario's number today is just 296, a number we haven't seen since mid-September when numbers started to creep up after people returned from whatever holiday they may have foolishly or carelessly taken. I hope we (Ontario) can stay below 500 all week, but looking at the numbers everywhere else I hope Canada will be below 1,000 all week. "knocks on wood"

The Atlantic Bubble is re-opening. Only New Brunswick hasn't officially announced it yet, but they expect to tomorrow, because the goal they had to reach was 70% of those +12 vaccinated with one dose (they are 75%, as is Nova Scotia) and 20% of those +65 fully vaccinated, which they expect to hit today.

I saw a Power and Politics panel where the someone from Alberta explained the province set up their lottery because they need to hit 70% of those +12 getting their first dose, and they were 48k away from that goal a few days ago. The Calgary Stampede is supposed to open July 9th and it can't open until that goal is hit. The Stampede, she said, is the biggest political fund raising event of the year, so it's very important to Jason Kenney!

Vaccine news is great as well. This week alone we get 2.4 M Pfizer doses and 7.1 M Moderna, now that we are being supplied from the US instead of Europe. The Moderna will come in two shipments, 2.9 M in the middle of the week which will be shipped out to the provinces right away and then 4.2 M at the end of the week which will get shipped out for the start of next week. That 9.5 M amount is more than we got in all of the first quarter! In one week!

The most recent surveys say about 90% of the country plans to get a vaccine shot, let's hope that comes true! The Yukon is at 82% of the +12 crowd, the NWT has probably already hit that number and Quebec will be there in one or two days. I worry about Ontario being down at 73.4%, the second dose group is likely crowding out the first dose group. Ontario needs to campaign for more first doses being done, because the likelihood they'll get their second is so high.

Worldometer has now added a weekly update feature, probably because it's just not US states that are moving to weekly reporting, and we're now well below US new case numbers, 240 per M versus the US at 290 cases per M. Deaths are much lower as well, by more than a third. I keep looking at Poland, since their population is the same as ours, and after having a staggering huge third wave, their cases have dropped dramatically. They only had a mere 60 cases per M over the last 7 days, but they are still working through deaths, 404 versus our 183. I look forward to our numbers dropping down 60/M.

 

[Zorral]

That's really good news for you al; -- congratulations on getting down there like that!

[Paxter]

This is disappointing (from Globe and Mail):

Quote

In Toronto, for example, while nearly 83 per cent of residents aged 18 to 24 have chased down their first shot, the rate among those over the age of 80 is stuck at 75 per cent.

So 1 in 4 Torontonians over 80 would rather burden the healthcare system with future COVID symptoms than get a vaccine.

Meanwhile, younger Canadians, who have been criticized throughout the pandemic for their behavior, are doing the responsible thing and getting the shot. 

This should be getting called out a lot more. It's probably one of the main reasons why we may need to resort to lockdowns again to save lives in the future. 

[Fragile Bird]

47 minutes ago, Paxter said:

This is disappointing (from Globe and Mail):

So 1 in 4 Torontonians over 80 would rather burden the healthcare system with future COVID symptoms than get a vaccine.

Meanwhile, younger Canadians, who have been criticized throughout the pandemic for their behavior, are doing the responsible thing and getting the shot. 

This should be getting called out a lot more. It's probably one of the main reasons why we may need to resort to lockdowns again to save lives in the future. 

I suspect the fault lies in the local health unit not getting enough people out to vaccinate the over-80 crowd. However, you need to take what the Globe says with a grain of salt. I’m sure you are familiar with the saying lies, damn lies and statistics.  

First of all, there are only 400,000 people in all of Ontario who are over 80, out of 14.75 M. About 200,000 live in Toronto, so that means the 25% is about 50,000 people.

When it comes to the highest risk groups, the 60 to 79 group are almost all at over 80%, except the 65-69 group at 79.4%, slightly behind because the younger cohort were allowed to get AZ shots back in March, if you remember. But when it comes to second doses, the 80+ crowd is 50.4% fully vaccinated, which is awesome! The 60-79 group is all over 35% fully vaccinated, except, again, the 65-69 cohort, at 26% because they were the last in line and getting that 2nd shot in Toronto is tough at the moment. I guess it may be easier if you want to go to a pharmacy to hunt down a shot but if you prefer a vaccination center with medical staff on hand they’re currently directing you to Bradford, for crying out loud. 
 

Keep in mind the big death count in the 80+ group were the folks in old age homes, not those living at home. I see that over 90% of seniors in Ontario live at home. There were only 121,000 people over the age of 80 living in senior residences in all of Canada according to the last census. 

Compare that to other provinces. New Brunswick, for example, had the goal of fully vaccinating 20% of the +80 as a target they had to hit before rejoining the Atlantic bubble. Toronto, on the other hand, has concentrated on getting the hot spots vaccinated, especially the work force. The laggards are the 30-49 group, all under 70%, and these are people who don’t have mobility issues! Mind you, the lowest percentage is just 67.2%, in the 35-39 group. The 12-17 group is only at 57.5%, but they just started and boy oh boy, they ran to get to vaccinated!

[Paxter]

You're very generous Fragile Bird. 

But when we get to the Fall (or even sooner) and start seeing deaths go up again, it will be primarily unvaccinated older Ontarians who themselves end up as statistics. We are already seeing this play out in jurisdictions that have dispensed more jabs than us (notably the UK). 

[Fragile Bird]

1 hour ago, Paxter said:

You're very generous Fragile Bird. 

But when we get to the Fall (or even sooner) and start seeing deaths go up again, it will be primarily unvaccinated older Ontarians who themselves end up as statistics. We are already seeing this play out in jurisdictions that have dispensed more jabs than us (notably the UK). 

We administered a record number of vaccine doses yesterday in Ontario, 202,984! And since Canada is getting so much vaccine supply this week, with steady supplies in the following weeks, I think our numbers are going to stay at those levels, at least to the end of July. I think we will get up to 75% of the population vaccinated with one dose and 85% of those 12+. After all, we're already at 65% and 75% of the country in those categories now. We might hit 50% of the country fully vaccinated by the end of July. We've just opened up second doses across the country not very long ago, and in the last 7 days we've averaged 262,400 second doses a day. That figure is going to go up. If we can average 300,000 second doses a day we'll hit 50% at the end of July.

[Paxter]

ETA: Deleted an unnecessarily snarky comment. Bad mood day. 

[Fragile Bird]

32 minutes ago, Paxter said:

ETA: Deleted an unnecessarily snarky comment. Bad mood day. 

I didn’t see it, but that’s ok, we are all entitled to some snark these days!

[Fragile Bird]

I hope everyone reading this thread in Canada has already received a first vaccine. By the end of the day when all the numbers have been reported we'll see that 75% of the country has been jabbed at least once. The Delta variant is stalking us, so if you haven't been vaccinated, please go get one. They have had an outbreak in the Calgary Foothills hospital and two patients died, one unvaccinated and one fully vaccinated. Six patients and five workers who got infected were fully vaccinated, eight patients and one worker had one dose, and 3 patients were unvaccinated. Stories say 30 people so far were infected in two wards, presumably more cases will show up.

If you live in Toronto or the GTA, there's news of a spreading outbreak of Delta in the Kitchener-Waterloo area that started in homeless shelters. The Waterloo region reported 72 new cases today, the largest number in Ontario, exceeding both Toronto and Peel. Health officials say people need to assume Delta is widespread in the community now, and they warn that Waterloo may not move to the next phase of re-opening if the numbers keep increasing.

And speaking of re-opening, I can't believe the sleaziness of Ford. After standing in front of the microphones just two weeks ago and swearing that the province will not move to a next phase until a minimum 21 days has passed, he's announced that he will "discuss" the idea of speeding up re-opening. Ffs.

The US administration has announced it is "donating" 1 M doses of the Moderna vaccine to Canada. I think it was the word, donating, and not "lending". Whatever, another million doses is appreciated, but the majority of vaccine used in Canada is Pfizer, not Moderna, and we're getting in the situation where we are mixing vaccines already. If you've had AZ you can choose to get a second dose of AZ, if available, or you can choose Moderna or Pfizer. Now I'm hearing health officials say if your first dose was Pfizer but we've had this flood of Moderna come into the country, you can choose Moderna if you are worried and want to speed up your second dose. Meanwhile, back in the US, no one is mixing doses. I was watching the federal news conference the other day and a CTV reporter thought she was laying a trap for Dr. Tam, first checking with her that it was indeed alright to mix doses, and then pouncing on her with the what she thought was the coup de grace by saying the CDC did not recommend mixing doses. Dr. Tam had a look on her face that seemed to say "what are you, an idiot" and simply said Canada has made different decisions than the US in many areas.

[Paxter]

I’d say we are pretty close to bottoming out in terms of daily cases (maybe we hit the absolute bottom at the end of June). As Delta takes hold, we will start seeing cases rising again and the vaccine firewall will be tested.

The science panel advising Ford estimates that Delta now accounts for just over half of new infections in ON.

[Fragile Bird]

Update 

June       11Fr  12Sa  13Su  14Mo 15Tu  16We  17Th  18Fr

BC           180     96    113      68     108    113    120    109   

AB           170   179    165    115     127    153    150    124     

SK             81   106      66      55       47      74      94      98

MB          223   294    194    124     116    144    183    189

ON          574   502    530    447     296    384    370    345 

PQ          180    182    151    123     105    153    161    127

NB             1        7        7        1         3        3        4        3

NS             8       10       8        8         4        8      14       11

PE              0        0        0        0         0        0        0        0

NL             3        6        1        4          2        1        1        1

North        5        3        0        0          3       16        9       0

Total     1425  1215  1235   945      824   1043  1107  1006

It was a decent week, even though we were under a thousand cases only twice, oh so close today. That jump in the north was infections at a mine in the Yukon, even though they have 62.5% of the population fully vaccinated and 75.9% of those over 12 fully vaccinated, 87.8% with one dose. Some of the new case numbers looked a bit funny to me, so I actually went through CTV's lists and totals and most of the days are off by a few cases. That happens because the province will come along and subtract or add a few cases in corrections and CTV makes the adjustment without telling you.

In case you haven't heard, the vaccine dose numbers have all of a sudden become epic. Between Moderna finally making good on past doses and Pfizer accelerating deliveries, we'll have 55 M doses in by the end of the month and 68 M by the end of July. By my rough calculations, we have about 34 M people over the age of 12 in this country, so we'll have enough vaccine to fully vaccinate every eligible person in the country. We will be awash in doses. We have received 34 M doses so far, so we'll equal that number over the next 6 weeks. We need a lot more people to get their first doses, we're at 75% and that means 8.5 M people need to get their acts together.

The problematic thing is that because we decided to do the one dose for everyone routine and Moderna fumbled the ball so badly, we have more people vaccinated with Pfizer than Moderna. We won't have that many people who had Moderna as their first dose as we have vaccines, unless the government decides right now to stop giving Pfizer as first doses and declares that all first doses going forward are Moderna. I've been hearing a lot of talk about how it's okay to mix doses, which is beginning to annoy the hell out of me. I don't see why I should get a Moderna second dose when my first was Pfizer, and I don't want to show up on my second dose date and find out they switched to Moderna. Either that or Canada is going to be donating Moderna vaccine by next month.

In other news, Alberta hit their 70% number and Kenney has announced all Covid-19 restrictions will end as of July 1. He sounds like a friggin' Republican governor, "we can't live in fear". I really have a bad feeling about Alberta going forward.

Border restrictions have been extended to July 21, in the standard one-month increment we've been doing for months now. American congressmen and senators are foaming at the mouth in fury. They want unvaccinated Americans to be able to enter Canada if they can show they've recovered from Covid-19, they want Americans who've only had one shot to be able to cross the border. A Canadian reporter in Washington said there is an undercurrent of anger at Canada, that we are not respecting American concepts of liberty and freedom. I kid you not. Try that on Europe.

[Paxter]

34 minutes ago, L'oiseau français said:

In case you haven't heard, the vaccine dose numbers have all of a sudden become epic. Between Moderna finally making good on past doses and Pfizer accelerating deliveries, we'll have 55 M doses in by the end of the month and 68 M by the end of July. By my rough calculations, we have about 34 M people over the age of 12 in this country, so we'll have enough vaccine to fully vaccinate every eligible person in the country. We will be awash in doses. We have received 34 M doses so far, so we'll equal that number over the next 6 weeks. We need a lot more people to get their first doses, we're at 75% and that means 8.5 M people need to get their acts together.

I predicted a while back that we would max out at around 80% of the adult population vaccinated. We are currently at 75% of all 12+, so I think my guess will be off (we can probably push it up to 85% or even 90% of 18+s from here). 

For comparison, the UK is at 80% of 18+s at least partially vaccinated and they are a couple of months ahead of us in terms of the overall rollout. So it's impressive from Canada overall. I'm still annoyed at the take-up rate among vulnerable age groups though, as I think that's going to place significant pressure on hospitals by late summer/early fall. 

On the US border, I don't know if it will make much difference at this point. Clearly Canada is comfortable with new variants entering the country or else we would have a far stricter border policy. We've seen that the three-day hotel thing is not stopping variants. So if vaccinated Americans want to enter, it's potentially not much of a change in risk. Unvaccinated is another matter.

And yes, it's time for Canada to think about donating X million vaccines. 

On mixing vaccines, I think it's probably fine health-wise. But travel-wise I'm not sure Australia will let me home with a mix-and-match approach. 

[Fragile Bird]

33 minutes ago, Paxter said:

I predicted a while back that we would max out at around 80% of the adult population vaccinated. We are currently at 75% of all 12+, so I think my guess will be off (we can probably push it up to 85% or even 90% of 18+s from here). 

For comparison, the UK is at 80% of 18+s at least partially vaccinated and they are a couple of months ahead of us in terms of the overall rollout. So it's impressive from Canada overall. I'm still annoyed at the take-up rate among vulnerable age groups though, as I think that's going to place significant pressure on hospitals by late summer/early fall. 

On the US border, I don't know if it will make much difference at this point. Clearly Canada is comfortable with new variants entering the country or else we would have a far stricter border policy. We've seen that the three-day hotel thing is not stopping variants. So if vaccinated Americans want to enter, it's potentially not much of a change in risk. Unvaccinated is another matter.

And yes, it's time for Canada to think about donating X million vaccines. 

On mixing vaccines, I think it's probably fine health-wise. But travel-wise I'm not sure Australia will let me home with a mix-and-match approach. 

I was looking at the UK page - so the UK has not yet approved vaccines for the 12 to 17 group, I guess? Looking at the percentage of the entire population with at least one dose, for the UK it's 62.19% and for Canada it's 65.92%, but we are vaccinating the youngsters. I can't find a number that breaks out 18 and above. I guess we're pretty close.

The problem with the Americans is that they are using the arguments against Canada that they are using in the US for excusing the states where the vaccination numbers are low. That someone who has recovered from Covid-19 is just as good as someone who gets vaccinated, which may be true, but they have no tracking system. Not to mention there are many states that have utterly rejected any concept of a vaccine passport or confirmation system, so how exactly are Americans going to supply acceptable proof of vaccination?  But the EU won't let in unvaccinated Americans, I don't see why we should (and of course, they'll face the same proof issue). The issue I have with letting in vaccinated Americans is that I don't see why we should do that until we have vaccine parity. They can wait until we have 45% of the country fully vaccinated. For one thing, if we allowed Americans in freely, Canadians would get angry if we can't travel freely to the US, except we aren't fully vaccinated.

[Paxter]

7 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

I was looking at the UK page - so the UK has not yet approved vaccines for the 12 to 17 group, I guess? Looking at the percentage of the entire population with at least one dose, for the UK it's 62.19% and for Canada it's 65.92%, but we are vaccinating the youngsters. I can't find a number that breaks out 18 and above. I guess we're pretty close.

The problem with the Americans is that they are using the arguments against Canada that they are using in the US for excusing the states where the vaccination numbers are low. That someone who has recovered from Covid-19 is just as good as someone who gets vaccinated, which may be true, but they have no tracking system. Not to mention there are many states that have utterly rejected any concept of a vaccine passport or confirmation system, so how exactly are Americans going to supply acceptable proof of vaccination?  But the EU won't let in unvaccinated Americans, I don't see why we should (and of course, they'll face the same proof issue). The issue I have with letting in vaccinated Americans is that I don't see why we should do that until we have vaccine parity. They can wait until we have 45% of the country fully vaccinated. For one thing, if we allowed Americans in freely, Canadians would get angry if we can't travel freely to the US, except we aren't fully vaccinated.

American pharmacies and vaccine centres do issue vaccination cards after doses, so I guess they could just upload those the same as Canadians will to some sort of app. My Canadian friend who was vaccinated in MI just did that to enter Germany. Fraud is always a possibility, but that will be the same for Canadians when they re-enter (until there is a proper vaccine passport linked to Health records - this will not be ready in time for the new travel regime). 

On unvaccinated Americans, there are some EU countries that are planning to let them in so far. France and Portugal are first out of the gate on that.

And yeah, the UK is not giving vaccines to 12-17 year olds. Neither is Israel. Looks like North America is alone on that one? I’m not sure what Europe is doing.

[Fragile Bird]

I see somebody decided to celebrate National Indigenous Day by burning down two Catholic churches in BC.

That’ll help with reconciliation.

[Fragile Bird]

Update 

June       15Tu  16We  17Th  18Fr  19Sa 20Su  21Mo 22Tu

BC           108    113    120    109     94      90      45      56  

AB           127    153    150    124   127    100      60      57  

SK             47      74      94      98     55      60      48      36

MB          116    144    183    189   151      93      74      69   

ON          296    384    370    345   355    318    270    296

PQ           105    153    161    127   160    103      90     84

NB              3        3        4        3        5       2        0        1

NS              4        8      14       11       6       2        0        2

PE               0        0        0        0        0       0        0        0 

NL               2        1        1        1        0       0        0        1

North          3       16        9       0      42       0       30       8

Total        824   1043  1107  1006   995   768     612    610

Things continue to go in the right direction everywhere across the country except the Yukon. As I mentioned in the Covid-19 thread, the Yukon has the best vaccination record in the country, with 88.5% of those over 12 vaccinated with one dose and 76.4% fully vaccinated. They now have 100 cases, with fewer than 43,000 people, and it seems that all or almost all are the Gamma variant (P-1) and it's mainly high school and grade school kids who celebrated the end of the school year. Various provinces are lifting restrictions, Alberta on July 1, Saskatchewan on the 11th, Quebec going to the green level. Ontario has hit it's parameters for opening up, 20% of the adult population fully vaccinated and 75% with one dose. There's so much double speak from the Ford government I'm not clear if they use 12+ or 16+ as the base line. They kept saying for days we'd hit the 75% when the trackers clearly showed we hadn't, but it turns out they meant the adult population. Even now I'm not sure if that's 16+ or 18+. But it means we're about a month ahead of schedule, and I've been hearing doctors warning not to repeat the same mistake we made earlier this year, rolling out of lockdown and rolling straight into the third wave. Will we stick to 21 days for each level? 

The Atlantic provinces are doing so well now I may switch back to reporting the Atlantic 4 instead of breaking them out.

On the vaccine front, first doses have really, really slowed down, only 65,153 given across the whole country yesterday out of 472k doses given. It may take until the end of August to hit 70% of the population at the rate we're going (we're at 66.32% now). Well, maybe we'll hit 75% by then, at a rate of 0.25% a day. But we're averaging more than 1% in 2nd doses every day, so we should hit 30% by month end and hopefully 60% by the end of July. The goal the federal government wanted to hit by Canada Day was 75% of eligible people with one dose, which we've hit, and 20% of the population fully vaccinated, which we've also hit already. But now that we're getting steady Moderna supplies, there's going to be a slowdown in Pfizer the first two weeks of July. I predicted that people would be told to take Moderna as their second dose and that has in fact happened now. 'Don't worry, they're interchangeable!' I'm not sure what I'll do if I show up for my second Pfizer dose and there's only Moderna available. We'll see.

I also forgot to mention with Friday's numbers that the rolling 7 day average of new cases had dropped from 1,456 a week ago Friday to 1,056 this past Friday. We should be below 1,000 all week this week, I think.

[Paxter]

8 hours ago, L'oiseau français said:

Will we stick to 21 days for each level? 

I agree with the above, he needs to stick to it. But. We know from the UK experience that Delta is probably going to dominate and trigger the next wave, regardless of decent vaccination rates. It's only the severity of that wave we can influence at this point through sensible policy. 

I will refrain at this point from ranting about unvaccinated vulnerable groups!

[TrueMetis]

Do we know if the first dose vaccination rate has slowed down because we've hit our vaccination limit, or is it because we're focusing more on second doses?

[Paxter]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Do we know if the first dose vaccination rate has slowed down because we've hit our vaccination limit, or is it because we're focusing more on second doses?

I'd say both:

• Authorities sped up the second dose eligibility schedule because they're worried about a single dose being insufficient against new variants. 
• Demand for first doses has fallen off as a lot of the remaining unvaccinated people are reluctant, have less information about vaccines or face physical, logistical or administrative barriers to vaccination (e.g. living in remote areas, lack of internet access). 

It's hard to disentangle the two effects. But I would speculate that even without Point #1, demand for first doses would have fallen off by now. It's certainly what has happened south of the border, even in Blue states. 

[Fragile Bird]

2 hours ago, TrueMetis said:

Do we know if the first dose vaccination rate has slowed down because we've hit our vaccination limit, or is it because we're focusing more on second doses?

The Yukon and the the NWT are leading the way, the Yukon is going to hit 90% first dose (72.8% total population) very soon of people 12+, and the NWT are at 83% (69.6%). Both NS and PQ should hit 80% (71.1% and 69.7% respectively) tomorrow, PEI is at 77.5% (68.3% total population), NB and NL over 76% (67.9% and 70.6%) and BC just under (67.9%). I feel confident that they’ll eventually hit very close to the first dose numbers for second doses as well.

ON is getting closer to 75% (66.2%) but you’re seeing dramatically higher second dose numbers as the province races to head off the variants. 227,318 doses yesterday and 198k were seconds, only 29k firsts. If we can continue at .2% or a bit more over the next 40 days we’ll get over 70%, we really need that first vaccination rate around 35k a day until the end of July to get up to 75% of the province first-dose vaccinated. We were there until last week, now we’ve dropped to the 25k range.

A bigger slowdown has really occurred in AB, SK and MB. AB and SK were always ahead of everyone else, always above the Canadian average, but they seem to have hit rough water getting to 70%. Alberta just made it to 70.9% (60.3%) but Saskatchewan is now at the bottom of the list at 68.7% (60.2%). That’s a whopping 6% lower than the national average for population vaccinated. Manitoba is a bit better at 73.3% (62.5%). All three provinces have communities where the uptake was only 10 to 15% as of last week.

I looked at the City of Toronto numbers and we’ve administered more than 3M doses, enough for every person in the city,  66.4% of the population with first doses and 25.7% fully vaccinated. All groups from 60 to 79 are over 80% and the 18-24 group is at 85%. Sunday is Vaccine Day at Scotiabank Arena and a record of 25,000 appointments has been set, a Canadian single day record. And yet there are neighbourhoods with only 35% of the population vaccinated. Get those up to 66% and we’ll be flying.