dialamah

Not even a 37 in 2 million chance of dying, but only of having a clot. That was in Germany; the UK was different (can't remember the numbers exactly) and researchers aren't sure why, but possibly because each country prioritized different age groups, or maybe the clots weren't directly caused by the vaccine. Anyway, still lots to learn.

Ontario is one of the provinces specifically mentioned as having not had an effective lockdown, along with BC, and other provinces. The Atlantic provinces and territories are the Canadian examples demonstrating that hard lockdowns have been most successful. The article wasn't about masks. The study examined real world data of countries around the world, including Europe, Asia, North and South America. Maybe you should have read the link before responding.

Turns out that the countries (and Canadian provinces) who locked down the hardest have had the fewest deaths and best economic performance, according to this study France did, covering 82 million people. "By almost every measure, nations that decided to eliminate the virus have achieved better results. “They are seeing significantly fewer deaths, their economies are performing more strongly, and their people are not held back to the same degree by mobility restrictions, whether voluntary or mandatory. Nor have they had to cancel other medical treatment.” In contrast, nations that pursued mitigation programs are now battling variants that are more lethal and contagious with a variety of “circuit breakers” and “emergency brakes." "As Canada’s experience illustrates, the implications of the two policies for ordinary people have been profound, said the report. It found that half of Canada, which adopted a rigorous elimination approach, has fared much better than Canada’s most populous provinces — generally led by premiers who have emphasized impacts on the economy over the other considerations. In provinces and territories that worked at eliminating the virus, traffic in restaurants and bars and cafés, for example, declined by only 21 per cent this year as the variants emerged. In contrast, traffic declined by 42 per cent in the mitigation provinces, according to Google data. “Canada thus benefits from a pilot test area that shows the superiority of the Zero COVID strategy and its feasibility in a democratic continental country,” notes the report. The lingering cost of ‘half-measures’ The Canadian data “suggest that the French strategy, consisting of sustained efforts to mitigate the virus without eradicating it, stems from a miscalculation, insofar as it does not provide for a return to a near-normal situation.” The high economic and mental cost of one effective lockdown as opposed to half measures “is not lasting when they help eradicate the virus and remove the restrictions on people and economies on a sustainable basis,” added the report. “Meanwhile, the beneficial nature of curfews and other half-measures fades away when we see that they extend over time, multiplying the economic and social costs, as is the case today in France.”

Funny how you are all about not wearing masks, or reducing social interaction because the risk of dying from Covid is so small (2 out of 100), but are up in arms about a tiny risk (37 out of a 2 million) with a vaccine.

And if Canada had suspended use because Europe did, your bunch woulda had some issue with that - probably something like "Trudeau can't even think for himself.. yada yada yada". Yes, I could wait a few weeks for other vaccines. You ask questions that even a tiny bit of common sense provides obvious answers to.

As much as you agree that right-wingers are permanently detached from reality.

Right-wingers are completely lost in some bizarre alternate reality, even stone-cold sober. At least left-wingers are able to tell the difference between reality and fantasy.

I was given the AZ vaccine yesterday, aware of the risks before I went in, and they were explained again before actually jabbed. Once again I see misinformation spread on this forum by right-wingers. What is the matter with you people, anyway?

I'm not even a refugee or immigrant (well, my great-grandparents were immigrants) and I would love to see "Judeo-Christian" culture destroyed. Also, "Islamic culture"; really, I'm ok with any and all religious culture destroyed. Maybe you need to re-read Mark 12:3; John 3:17; Philippians 2:4; Matthew 25:35-40; Romans 15:1 because according to those scriptures, a "Christian" nation would most certainly be accepting and helping refugees and immigrants. But here you are, advocating against that, so maybe it's people like you who are turning us away from our "Christian roots". And why does a nice Christian like you decide to insult someone you know nothing about, merely because he's a first generation immigrant? Perhaps a review of Romans 2:1 is in order for you. I'd be happy enough with Christianity if everyone actually followed what their holy book teaches; sadly too many of them, as evidenced by Blackbird, use their religion to support their hatred and intolerance of anyone who doesn't fit the standards of their little club. Once the world is rid of xenophobic, exclusionary, judgmental and cruel religionists, the rest of us can live life a moral and ethical life, accepting our differences instead of hating each other for them, practicing actual peace, love and charity, instead of the pretend version practiced by so many religious people. There will be no chance of being dragged backward to a time when women/LGBTQ+/minorities are oppressed because "God said". I don't suppose it'll happen in my lifetime.

Each wave is "defeated" for six months - "maybe" longer, is that your idea? Because that just sounds like a perpetual pandemic, to me. A "carefully controlled spread"? For the past year, governments have been trying to limit the spread but people have gotten sick and died anyway. Unless you think people with co-morbidities and the elderly should be permanently separated from everyone else, locked in their homes perhaps? In this "targetting for herd immunity" plan, you need to ask yourself what percentage of the workforce is not "healthy enough" to be exposed to the virus. You need to include fat people, people who smoke, people who have asthma or any other COPD, people who've recovered from cancer, people with kidney disease or heart disease, people with diabetes, people who've had a transplant, people who are immuno-compromised from other conditions you've never heard of. Just because someone looks healthy and shows up to work every day doesn't mean they're among "the healthy" and unlikely to get very sick or die from Covid. Even if someone is "healthy enough" to get Covid, what about the people they live with - their spouse, kids, siblings or parents - are not? How do you "target" all but one for getting Covid, when everyone lives together under one roof? The idea that you can keep a virus contained to a certain group, and leave other groups unaffected, is as sensible as thinking you can pee in a pool and keep it all within some defined boundary. Mass immunization for Covid is the best scenario, even if it has to be regularly repeated, and even if it "only" reduces the severity of illness and the likelihood of hospitalization and death. If that is the case, researchers will develop more effective vaccines over time. Which they'll no doubt be doing anyway.

Maybe you would if you weren't so set in seeing Canada as the worst. Since you seem to want to claim that Canada isn't a democracy (in two threads that I know of), why do you decide to exclude non-democracies? Anyway, I don't know and am not going to research it right now. If you want to prove that Canada is the worst, making it a failed democracy, you can look it up and present your evidence. As it happens, late in 2020, claims that Canada wouldn't be done till mid-2022 were rampant; now it looks like September of 2021 - assuming producers continue to supply the vaccine as promised. So whatever the situation today, it could be better or worse tomorrow or next week. To posit that a moment in time of a changing situation defines Canada as democratic, or not, is a bit silly, imo.

Every country has had citizen complain that their leadership screwed up, lied, or misled the people. Did anyone resign as a result? Can you imagine mass resignations and subsequent elections happening around the world during the pandemic because "some" people think their government did it wrong? Most Canadians agree that Canada has had reasonably good leadership throughout the pandemic, even if "could have better" is acknowledged. What kind of democracy would it be if a minority of malcontents forced elections for everything they didn't happen to like? I don't understand this comment.

I guess one acknowledges success as well as opportunities for improvement, while the other only sees failure.

BC has posted dates for vaccinations - my date is mid-April. In a democracy, people are elected to lead for some particular period of time. Everybody has a different idea of what is the "best" to do in any situation and there are always malcontents. Concluding that democracy doesn't exist because your particular ideas aren't at the forefront of the government action plan is hyperbolic, to say the least. Just because the US and UK have done things differently also doesn't mean democracy is dead in Canada. Different countries, different cultures, different population densities, different vaccine providers, different standards for vaccine approval, even different terrain can affect how vaccination logistics are approached and solved. I generally think Canada probably could have done better, but that doesn't mean we, or our leaders, have failed in some horrible way. We're still far ahead of most countries in terms of vaccine rollout and overall deaths.

We can always do better of course, but Canada is at the top of the democracy index, outperforming even the United States. Canada is also among the least corrupt in the world. It's important to reveal when indiduals in public service fail to live up to standards, and our media does a good job of exposing those lapses. I think it's also important to know that Canada is better than almost every other country in terms of its political culture. Some of the things you've listed as failures are really just differences of opinion. You think something about lockdowns are hypocritical; I disagree. Failure to achieve certain goals - that is less a leadership issue than an issue of how people within our society view those issues. Many people think poverty is the fault of the poor and that gov already provides more than enough support. Same with the water issues on reserves and climate change actions. How much any government pushes a policy that a significant portion of the population opposes is a feature of democracy, not an indictment of it. So, I do not think there is reason for "concern", although we should always, imo, pay attention to what our politicians are doing and how we, as a country, can improve.

For sure. Ok. I think there are more factors at play than you give credit for, but I'm not going to deny that social and culture components also play a part.

Probably because it's never happened to them. Google home invasions and carjackings for either state, and you'll see neither are immune. Investigate a little further, and you'll find that Nevada has more violent crime, including robberies and car theft, than New York. You'll also find out that urban areas and poverty-stricken regions are more prone to violent crime. You are right - Wyoming is one of the safest states in the US. Per my remarks above, it is also the least populated and has a higher median income than 50% of US States. Anyway, research indicates that Stand your ground and similar laws do not reduce crime and may, in fact, result in more injury, death and homicides. Which kind of makes sense: if law-abiding citizens are willing to use guns, why wouldn't criminals also be willing to use guns? Also, I have more direct experience with criminals than you do - and I repeat - consequences for getting caught are generally not high on their list of consideration when engaging in criminal behavior. I'm pretty sure your buddy would tell you the same thing. His size and willingness to use violence may be persuasive to some degree when dealing with these people, but it doesn't make him safe from attack.

This is what I dislike about so many religious people: they ignore science and history in favor of imposing their narrow morality on everybody else. They pride themselves on their "specialness", being God's chosen, having the truth of him, so they can practice oppression of everyone they disaprove of. You know nothing of this individual, their birth, their physical attributes, their inner struggles, their heart, how they came to this decision, how many years they've fought to be heard and understood. Nope; in your narrow, judgemental world, they were born female and nothing else matters. The world without religion would be much more humane.

Nope, you would not. Criminals assume they're gonna get away with it. They aren't doing a cost-benefit analysis of their actions beforehand, or the potential lawsuits they could bring if they were injured while committing a crime. The potential reward is virtually always a bigger factor than the potential consequences. Many criminals have difficulty even imagining consequences, given the predominant age group and gender, intellectual functioning, and/or drug use. And of course, some just don't care.

The court supported the boy; the man defied a court order not to talk about his son's situation with media and to respect his son's decision to transition from female to male. The court also gave him more than one opportunity to comply, but he refused. No doubt Post-Millenial put some other spin on it, designed to bolster the religious and non-religious right winger's hate and fear of anybody different.

??? Making no sense, not surprisingly. But it reminds of my white supremacist ex-neighbor - the first time he said "race-traitor", I thought he said "race-baiter".

Yup, mine for sure. As an individual, perhaps not you, since you insinuate that your ethnicity is something other than European. But certainly the parents of most White UK descended folks, which is most of us in Canada.

Do not 'foreign born' people also include Europeans, of which you are so enamored? Or Asians, about which you are only slightly less enamored? Anyway, Stats Canada tells us that 25% of visible minorities are South Asian; 20% are Chinese, 15% are black. The remaining 40% are, in descending order, Filipinos, Arabs, Latin Americans, West Asians, Koreans and Japanese. Stats Canada also tell us that 37.5% of children are foreign-born, or have at least one parent who is foreign-born - nowhere near the "half" you are claiming. But, unlike you, Stats Canada does not assume that every non-white person in Canada is foreign-born. And, given that 16% of all immigrants are from Europe/UK, that 37.5% number includes non-brown folks, too. So, as usual, you are a spreading misinformation to support your xenophobia.

I have family members who are both status and non-status What's sad is that several of them downplay their aboriginal background because they know they'll be looked down on by a lot of people and have said as much. Still, one of them, at least, faces her history straight on and what happened to her parents and grandparents. She doesn't blame the current crop of Whiteys, but she does expect not to have the truth of the past and present denied. Or relegated to ancient history as something our ancestors did. What are my 'racist' assumptions, exactly? Please itemize them. Unless you mean the facts around the way our parents and grandparents instituted polices that resulted in the decimation of aboriginal families and culture; that is well documented.

You may not think you do, but your comments on here about certain immigrants and First Nations belies your words.