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Since the start of the endemic, I can hardly find a title on CBC not having the distinct COVID-19 mark in it. Did we all stop to live. Anything else happening in this country?

I think this cuts to the heart of the matter regardless of what Trump or others did or didn't do. Justin Trudeau has not demonstrated the ability to place Canadians at the highest priority for this and other issues. As you indicate, his actions demonstrate not only a continuing virtue signaling narrative for political gain, but an underlying belief system that may be incompatible with making the hard choices for Canadians' interests. Justin Trudeau does not have the same stuff as his "just watch me" father.

Shout out to Home Depot: one entrance, 50 carts. Each customer has to wait for a cart before they can go into the store, and the cart handles are wiped between customers. Great job, hope more stores follow suit.

No we could not have and hindsight as you know makes criticism easy. The point is this virus has no real symptoms making detection very difficult.

It makes perfect sense if you believe that after 14 or 21 days the virus will be completely eradicated and won't come back again. It makes no sense if you realize that this virus will be around for at least the next year. Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea had less time to prepare for this than we did but they all handled it much faster and better.

We know who is implementing good decisions: Taiwan, Singapore, South Korea. Why are we not imitating them instead of Italy?

Someone commented about Trump, saying that he was an 80 yr old. That's why B_C commented that Trump was "younger than the average 80 year old". I think most people missed it. Trump is 73. So I "made up" the "stat" about him being 7 yrs younger than the avg 80 yr old. He is 7 years younger than the avg 80 yr old.

I hear ya Rue, but all politicians receive varying opinions from different people. It's their job, as a leader, to choose the right path. That's why we need to choose someone intelligent and pragmatic instead of someone who talks a good game but is an actual scumbag in real life. Eg, I give Trump a lot of credit for success vs islamic state, but I do so knowing that the actual plans that were drawn up all came from the minds of his generals, and his job was just to decide when to nod his head. Trudeau definitely heard the same counsel that Trump did from at least one source - limit travel from virus hotspots - he just stayed true to form: he took an opportunity to do some virtue signalling even though everyone in this country knew that he was risking the health of Canadians. Much in the same way as he chose to let islamic state terrorists walk free. It makes him look good at the UN, but again it's an obvious risk to Canadians.

I plead ignorance with regard to Singapore's leadership. I endorse neither right nor left. Ideology is impracticle. Some problems are solvable by conservative action and some by liberal. Some problems defy solution and sometimes luck makes all the difference. In the current situation, strong government action based on science, seems to have a positive outcome. Ronald Reagan was considered a great President. He was smart enough to know his limitations and surrounded himself with people who were smarter than he was and he listened to their advice.

The left believes the public are not smart enough to make their own decisions and therefore require a strong leader. The right believes people do not require big government to act as a nanny state.

I've had real Canadian soldiers to look up to as my archetypes Frank Mellish, Dave Preeper, Scotty Collins, Carl DeRoche, Chuck Barnsley, Ainsworth Dyer, the real deal is in even more intense than the movies Vaughn Ingram, charging into the forlorn hope, he should have been awarded the Victoria Cross. All my heroes are Royals, Patricia's & Airborne Ducimus

Testing isn't draconian, shutting down the economy is. South Korea was less heavy handed than China or Italy, and that is why their model is being ignored by the panic monkeys who think the more government panic in shutting down the economy, the more things are under control. They think hurting the economy is the best way to battle the coronavirus, because the media are knee-jerk nanny state fools who think times are more desperate than they really are, and are therefore only willing to think that desperate measures are the only effective ones, because they are in a panic and are unable to think straight. They think suggesting more effective measures simply means you want everyone to die, otherwise you'd support their draconian proposals that are counter-productive. That way they can easily dismiss any disagreement with their position as only people with bad intentions hold those views and everyone with good intentions agrees with us, so no need to pay those who disagree any mind other than to get angry at them and act like a sanctimonious twat.

Government intervention in Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea is arguably heavier than here. But instead of shutting down their economies they're doing mass testing, even those who have no symptoms, and mandating isolation for those who test positive. Unfortunately, since we did nothing to prepare for this, we don't have the lab capacity or the test kits to do mass testing.

Because Italy got more draconian in it's crackdowns, and the press prefers to live in world where they think more government intervention makes everything better. It makes them feel safer, even when the opposite is true. South Korea didn't panic and shut everything down, so the people who do want to panic and shut everything down out of ignorance ignore that example that flies in the face of their overreaction, and want the China-Italy model instead.

You have good intentions, but your solutions simply make things worse, and result in the worst of both worlds double whammy style, while making you feel like you are helping, even though you are actually doing the opposite. Having good intentions doesn't mean you know how to implement good solutions.

If these medical models are correct we'd need to quarantine like this for 8-18 months, and I just do not think this is doable. I think we need to go the way of Taiwan instead, and do aggressive testing, tracking and isolation of those who test positive. There is simply no way we can shut down the economy and schools for that long. Canadians may have to face 32 weeks of aggressive social distancing to prevent thousands of deaths — nearly eight months to keep intensive care units from being overrun with the sick and get us closer to when vaccination may be a possibility, according to outbreak modelling by researchers at the University of Toronto and University of Guelph. “Aggressive social distancing for 32 weeks does act to slow transmission significantly and essentially flatten the curve,” says Dr. Amy Greer, Canada Research Chair in Population Disease Modelling at the U of Guelph. https://nationalpost.com/health/could-the-covid-19-crisis-mean-well-be-social-distancing-for-eight-months-or-more?video_autoplay=true

No, I care about minimizing deaths and maximizing the number of people being able to eat. No money means no production and vice versa. Both equal national Jonestown massacre.

If we slow the outbreak now, maybe we can start going back to some level of normalcy in the next few weeks.

Indeed, but it's very promising. Pretending like it isn't just because Trump says it is, is Trump Derangement Syndrome.

You're such a cry baby. No one threatened you, they just told that if you got the stupid heavy handed government machine you wanted put in place by the Canadian government, you'd be the first victim of it, so be careful what you wish for you counter-productive SIFCLF. People are simply pointing out, that your idiotic suggestions for improving things actually make things worse for everyone, including yourself. You are just too blinded by panic to understand how counter-productive your foolish suggestions are.

That will not make the virus go away.

As a person who works with statistics, I'm well aware that numbers are the devil's playground. I warn all those who put their faith in statistics, beware. These numbers should all be treated with some suspicion. For one thing they are only as good as the governments that report them. For example, I note that our death count increased to 13 today. A Canadian citizen died, but in another country. This is being added to Canada's death count. Does that mean the country they died in adds to their death count as well? Who knows. Doesn't even matter, on the whole the magnitude is insignificant. That doesn't mean we should do nothing of course, but we need to provide a proportional response. We need to do things that will work, and in a responsible manner. People losing their livelihood overnight is but one example. It's inevitable some companies will have close forever. Then there are the people trapped all over the world, as countries suddenly shut their borders and no more flights. Canadians are stranded, imagine it. No place to live, no job. No one taking care of your affairs at home. Within days you could be living under a bridge. Waiting for our government to get their act together, the only hope these people have. Not to even mention... the incredible cost. We are undone.

It wasn't a threat. I don't have a helicopter and live thousands of miles away from you so am incapable of stringing you up from a lamp post even if I had the rope to spare. Stop being a baby.

I'd only want you thrown out of a helicopter for littering. I wouldn't want anyone experimented on medically for any crime. That's Nazi death camp mentality and should be avoided at all costs.

The first error in the assumptions is that Tur...TRUdeau is or can provide any sort of leadership. His selection of a cabinet based on political correctness and racial/minority inclusiveness was and is a recipe for disaster, and disaster we have. In all fairness, the political opposites South of 49 did an even worse job. The time to manufacture critical things was 2 months ago. Instead, we see the idiot child trying to score points by telling us HE is going to get business to manufacture ventilators etc. when nobody has even started to tool up for the purpose. Leaving airports open to international and even domestic flights with NOTHING in place to monitor condition of travelers was IMHO a criminally negligent lack of action. NOBODY can or could stop the virus, but those in position of power were and are obligated to delay long enough to put in place what they/we did not and do not have - adequate preparedness. IMHO: the world's gold standard in this has been Taiwan. The turd standard will probably be African nations.

"Kumabaya, my lord... kumbaya...."

Smoking rope seems to be today's answer for everything. Contrary to Taxme's attitude, I believe the media is doing a REASONABLE job on keeping people informed of the Wuhan Virus' progress. It IS the politicians I rebuke for waiting far, far too long to do ANYTHING, putting this continent in an ineffective reactive position when news out of China should have made us proactively enact drastic measures. As much as I dislike the media in general, this is not an issue they have totally wrong. BTW: I also visit a very technical website that is international in membership, but the US members almost to a man agree with Taxme. When dozens of engineers and technologists can't even understand the very basics of how exponential growth shapes a curve, it worries me greatly. One of the companies I work with laid off ALL employees effective end of month (collapse of commodities market - triggered by Wuhan Virus, but coming anyhow), and my largest client (former partners) cancelled all of the projects outside of the shop (essential services, so won't be shutting down). Many of the cancellations are coming from their clients, and ALL of those are in rather essential services that have delayed things that are not an actual system failure until it is safe to do so. Once again, the Canadian ones are leading the US ones by about a week or so (largest is/was in CA - I pulled out of that one last week, but client has yet to officially cancel the whole project). The silver lining in this dark cloud is the re-thinking of HOW we do business. I was scheduled to be in West Africa this month, and our New York (New Rochelle, no less) office called that off over 2 weeks back. Told the client there is a LOT of planning to do for their project, and we can effectively hold all meetings by video conference and they can send the support data we need to be massaged by engineering. To my mind, the huge growth of international air travel has been a detriment to cost control in many business relationships. I would rather spend twice as much for a ticket and buy 1/4 as many.

They never really were, no one ever crossed the British border without being checked for eligability like you could in the Schengen zone. We even had the power to regulate the residential rights of fellow EU members but never exercised them because migration of labour was seen as mutually beneficial. The lack of EU migrants is already causing problems in many sectors of industry especially healthcare and agriculture which are particularly vital right now.

In the state of de facto military emergency enacted right now, that could be prosecuted under the Counterterrorism Act if a Canadian was caught doing it, or an American, they could end up in the Supermax next to the Unabomber, but these criminals are probably offshore in India or someplace like that

Banning flights from China early on doesn't seem to have helped the US much. I do think that Canada could have banned gatherings much earlier but realistically would people have put up with that when there were so few cases ? Were the chief medical officers recommending that ? We also could have sealed off the borders, but the above questions remain. Also - the two options above are ridiculous. 1 - obvious solutions don't work; 2 - some random idea is THE solution; PICK ONE ...

Yeah, but you're a lunatic.

I would be very critical and suspect of any plans that try to stretch quarantines beyond about 6 weeks or even a month, because if a four week mass quarantine is done right, there shouldn’t be any new infections. Stretching it out is just a sign that quarantining wasn’t done properly. It means getting very strict right away. I’m thinking this should be in place by Sunday.

I'll be long dead before the world ends, I just live in the now, and right now I'm sitting pretty Although now my wife is trying to get me to stay home while she goes out, because she's younger and healthier I don't have anywhere to go anyways, I'm just waiting for some sunshine & warm weather

There is no news now. What we have today is just a medium for leveraging panic, fear and mind control. Now stay inside you fool, do as you've been told.

Lift the US sanctions. Iranians are paying a heavy price for the regime's actions. They suffer from this brutal regime and at the same time they pay a price with US sanctions, At this time Coronavirus also has hit them hard mainly due to corrupt incompetent nature of this murderous regime. To ease the suffering due to the pandemic May be it is time that US sanctions against Iranian people should be lifted so that there would be one less pain this defenseless nation to have to deal with so that food and medicine urgently needed can flow again and not blocked by the banking system..

I've been wondering the same thing. It's ridiculous, all about the virus whether it's Canada news, World news, sports, weather, traffic, business. Virus virus virus. Apparently there was an earthquake in the USA this week. Never heard about it in the news.

Then it would be called the Israeli virus...not "Jewish". Jews live in many different nations. China is getting exactly what it deserves for alleging that the U.S. Army started the virus in China.

I was definitely taking something...

Vaccines are going to be a while, in the meantime Plaquenil is a good solution, it will work, they're already using it in the hospitals Just don't take it until you actually get sick, because it does have some side effects.

1)There are no right wing extremists here. 2)Leftist run in lock-step with the mob and regurgitate idiotic talking points, even after they're disproven. They're hard leftists because they don't allow themselves to experience cognitive dissonance, or allow new facts to change their POV. 3)People on the right don't run in lock-step. They look at relevant facts and form their own opinions. Disagreement is inevitable and isn't frowned upon.

China lied. People died.

I agree about the coronavirus we should not be sad nor glad, we should be mad; very mad as hell at the way our health care system and emergency readiness is so totally unprepared. The result of decades of nothing but cut, cut, cut to these services. Meanwhile bureaucratic costs keep going up. There is no limit to that department, it seems. Well, how do you like it now Mr. Trudeau. Things are not looking so pretty anymore. It's always easy to be a leader when there is no big problem, when all is sunshine and smiles. But when there is a problem, that's when real leadership needs to come out. Meanwhile in Ottawa: Granted these are fairly big problems to solve, now that we've receded so far away from an actually working model. So better get started working on them now. Then we can forget about this virus and get back to working on the other really big problems we have to solve.

It's Christian to love sinners. This person is being allowed to define their own version of the religion. Holy slippery slope, Batjesus !

You're a fricken' loon.