Doug Ford and Covid 19

[Boges]

I'm glad they had the self-awareness not to do it before Christmas. 

You're listen to us, so we're going to lock you down after you gather indoors en masse so you can't spread the disease more afterwards. 

And I'm guilty, I plan to see family on Christmas as well. Might as well if I'm going to get shutdown afterwards. 

[Argus]

1 hour ago, Boges said:

I'm glad they had the self-awareness not to do it before Christmas. 

You're listen to us, so we're going to lock you down after you gather indoors en masse so you can't spread the disease more afterwards. 

And I'm guilty, I plan to see family on Christmas as well. Might as well if I'm going to get shutdown afterwards. 

There is an old military axiom which says you should not give an order you know won't be obeyed. It causes nothing but problems, including a sense of disrespect for authority.

Besides, most of the spread outside LTC homes is among immigrants, few of whom are Christian anyway.

Edited December 21, 2020 by Argus

[Shady]

Nearly all deaths in Ontario are from long term care facilities and/or retirement homes.  Perhaps it's time to just quarantine those places until they're fully vaccinated.

[Boges]

1 hour ago, Shady said:

Nearly all deaths in Ontario are from long term care facilities and/or retirement homes.  Perhaps it's time to just quarantine those places until they're fully vaccinated.

That's not actually true. 

CP24 (owned by Rogers) does a pretty good job breaking down the numbers. 

From today's 41 deaths. 

https://www.cp24.com/news/ontario-reports-more-than-2-400-new-cases-of-covid-19-41-more-deaths-1.5242822

Quote

Forty-one more virus-related deaths were confirmed today, including 16 residents of long-term care homes. There are now 173 active outbreaks of COVID-19 in Ontario long-term care homes, 38 more outbreaks than the number recorded one week ago.

A sizeable percentage are from LTC homes, but most aren't. 

[Shady]

9 minutes ago, Boges said:

That's not actually true. 

CP24 (owned by Rogers) does a pretty good job breaking down the numbers. 

From today's 41 deaths. 

https://www.cp24.com/news/ontario-reports-more-than-2-400-new-cases-of-covid-19-41-more-deaths-1.5242822

A sizeable percentage are from LTC homes, but most aren't. 

In Ontario, something like 70% of all covid deaths are from long term care facilities.  

[OftenWrong]

1 hour ago, Shady said:

In Ontario, something like 70% of all covid deaths are from long term care facilities.  

As well, these figures usually only represent public LTC's. Not private ones, and not those in home-care.

Yes clearly that idea to safeguard those who need it most is the better one. We are doing the complete opposite.

[OftenWrong]

Now that it's all closing again, no more gym no more pool no more ice hockey.

Ironically we understand that the best way to survive the virus is to be healthy in the first place. Yet we are doing the complete opposite.

Back into the abyss we go for "at least" a month. You people know what "at least" means, right? Not until we get everybody vaccinated. That will be Doug's idea.

And then the virus will mutate, and the vaccine will be no good anymore... And we already paid for it, so we go even deeper in the financial hole...

And then we shut down and wait for the next vaccine to come out...

Too late though, it mutated again...

[Zeitgeist]

11 hours ago, OftenWrong said:

Now that it's all closing again, no more gym no more pool no more ice hockey.

Ironically we understand that the best way to survive the virus is to be healthy in the first place. Yet we are doing the complete opposite.

Back into the abyss we go for "at least" a month. You people know what "at least" means, right? Not until we get everybody vaccinated. That will be Doug's idea.

And then the virus will mutate, and the vaccine will be no good anymore... And we already paid for it, so we go even deeper in the financial hole...

And then we shut down and wait for the next vaccine to come out...

Too late though, it mutated again...

I think we vaccinate until we get to over 70 percent of the population, which is required for herd immunity.  At that point it's time to lift restrictions.  Provide all of the necessary support, protection, and education for the most vulnerable that it is reasonable to provide.  Certainly once you've had the vaccine, provided it gives reasonable protection against any identified new strains, you resume the old normal, obeying mask and distancing rules until herd immunity makes it possible to lift them province-wide.  They will need to be lifted and we'll need to move on from this massive disruption, certainly the largest disruption to society that I've ever seen. Travel will need to resume and borders will have to reopen or kiss whole economic sectors goodbye    

Let's make sure that the pandemic doesn't provide an excuse to impose permanent government overreach, excessive restrictions on freedoms, and harsher working conditions.  I fear those things in the longer term.  I can already see how the pandemic is being used to justify changes that certain ideologues have long wanted.  

This is underway in education for sure when it comes to distance learning, a somewhat failed form of education that doesn't allow for healthy socialization, physical activity, privacy protection, and the level of feedback necessary to really fill learning gaps.  It's fine for certain courses/porograms and age groups, particularly as part-time learning for working adults, but it's not the way to educate children in a publicly funded school system, except as an emergency measure.

We always have to ensure that our laws and public institutions meet human needs rather than crush them.  

Edited December 24, 2020 by Zeitgeist

[oops]

11 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

I think we vaccinate until we get to over 70 percent of the population, which is required for herd immunity.  At that point it's time to lift restrictions.

If we could test everyone, and isolate those that have covid19, and their close contacts, we could end restrictions in two weeks. After 9 months, why is there so little testing? I am sure that providing tests would cost less than $300 billion.

[Zeitgeist]

10 hours ago, oops said:

If we could test everyone, and isolate those that have covid19, and their close contacts, we could end restrictions in two weeks. After 9 months, why is there so little testing? I am sure that providing tests would cost less than $300 billion.

Our deficit in western democracies from the start has been the lack of testing and surveillance of spread, but we have aggressively developed some of that infrastructure.  Be careful what you wish for, because many of these eastern societies that have managed testing and contact tracing so well require the population to assent to more government surveillance and control.  We could've done better with testing and tracing without compromising privacy and freedom, but relative to other liberal democracies, Ontario has done quite well.

Isolated places with low populations and densities like Newfoundland and New Zealand can't be compared to Southern Ontario, which has done well compared to similar jurisdictions. Ford has performed pretty well in that regard. He mostly depoliticized Covid policy and found a reasonable balance between public health and the economy in 2020.  

Edited December 25, 2020 by Zeitgeist

[oops]

More testing means finding out where the problem is. You wouldn't want to do cancer surgery without finding where the tumor is. We need a more focused and informed use of our resources, not a scorched earth approach.

[Zeitgeist]

5 hours ago, oops said:

More testing means finding out where the problem is. You wouldn't want to do cancer surgery without finding where the tumor is. We need a more focused and informed use of our resources, not a scorched earth approach.

Yes, but that requires a massive scaling up of a certain kind of health infrastructure.  Also, that would've been great to have when we were down to a few hundred cases countrywide. The problem is that ultimately you have to test everyone in a very short time frame.  Otherwise by the time you test the last people, it may have spread to the first people you tested weeks ago.  Yes testing limits the spread, but it won't eliminate the virus or too many restrictions.  I think the vaccine is the best chance for returning to normal for most liberal democracies except the remote ones with relatively low density and small populations. People may hold up some Asian countries as shining examples of how to manage Covid, but many people here wouldn't like the more confined and controlled lifestyles of those countries, so it's a trade off to some extent.  

Edited December 25, 2020 by Zeitgeist

[oops]

19 hours ago, Zeitgeist said:

The problem is that ultimately you have to test everyone in a very short time frame.

We should try.

 

At home testing has not been authorized in Canada.

A post on Health Canada’s website says the agency has “authorized the sale and importation of COVID-19 tests only for use by health care professionals or trained operators.”

“However, we are open to reviewing all testing solutions,” the website reads. “This includes approaches that use self-testing kits, to enable individuals with or without symptoms to assess and monitor their own infections status.”
 

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/11/26/rapid-at-home-covid-testing-remains-a-dream-for-canadians.html

 

“I believe that Canada would have the capacity to make home tests if the government pointed its focus that way in regards to funding them,” said Dr. Funmi Okunola, president of Kojala Medical Enterprises Ltd, and a Vancouver-based family physician and COVID-19 medical adviser.

[Zeitgeist]

4 hours ago, oops said:

We should try.

 

At home testing has not been authorized in Canada.

A post on Health Canada’s website says the agency has “authorized the sale and importation of COVID-19 tests only for use by health care professionals or trained operators.”

“However, we are open to reviewing all testing solutions,” the website reads. “This includes approaches that use self-testing kits, to enable individuals with or without symptoms to assess and monitor their own infections status.”
 

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2020/11/26/rapid-at-home-covid-testing-remains-a-dream-for-canadians.html

 

“I believe that Canada would have the capacity to make home tests if the government pointed its focus that way in regards to funding them,” said Dr. Funmi Okunola, president of Kojala Medical Enterprises Ltd, and a Vancouver-based family physician and COVID-19 medical adviser.

Well we should have them, and ideally no one should return to a shared workplace without a negative test result in order to ensure asymptotic positives are captured.  That testing should then be repeated every few weeks for all non-isolated workers who haven't received the vaccine.  Again though, there are costs and commitments associated with this regimen.  The vaccine has been prioritized over tracing and testing, for better or worse.  I think it's better if the vaccines come quickly, worse as vaccination drags on.  

[oops]

26 minutes ago, Zeitgeist said:

Again though, there are costs and commitments associated with this regimen.

There are costs to not testing. There is of course the human suffering, but also financial costs.  The federal deficit is estimated at $381billion for this year. Thar means that each of the 18 million federal taxpayers are on average accumulating $1,763, per month of debt. The Ontario government is also running a massive deficit, making it well over $2000 per taxpayer per month. If you think that waiting six months for  most of the the population to be vaccinated won't hurt, then you should think again.  I believe that we deserve better from those elected to serve our best interests.  They need to do better.

[Zeitgeist]

2 hours ago, oops said:

There are costs to not testing. There is of course the human suffering, but also financial costs.  The federal deficit is estimated at $381billion for this year. Thar means that each of the 18 million federal taxpayers are on average accumulating $1,763, per month of debt. The Ontario government is also running a massive deficit, making it well over $2000 per taxpayer per month. If you think that waiting six months for  most of the the population to be vaccinated won't hurt, then you should think again.  I believe that we deserve better from those elected to serve our best interests.  They need to do better.

Trudeau overspends unlike any PM I've seen in my lifetime.  So many dubious international and ideological expenditures make a mockery of the old adage, "Keep your powder dry".  We need to budget carefully in case of crises.  Instead, frivolous overspending in good economic times has saddled Canada with big debt.  Our only assurance is that the US has done much the same and must keep interest rates low.  Our central bank is following suit.

[OftenWrong]

Fatso Ford went and shut down the province, although they told us a while back they were not gonna do that again. It just shows they dont know. Living a completely sedentary lifestyle is clearly not an issue for him, as he is notably a man of large girth, and apparently getting larger. But it's no problem as long as his mouth also inflates at the same proportion.

Or higher, as it were. He was so quick to criticize his finance minister when he "heard" about it, and today we find out he already knew that Rod Phillips was going to Jamaica. Ahh, jet setter. You get to eat on the plane, too.

We are adrift, in Ontario. There is no captain. I'm the captain!

 

[oops]

On 11/19/2020 at 10:16 AM, Boges said:

They're doing it because they're overwhelmed with people who are sick from COVID-19! 

Why do you keep saying that when you know that it isn't true? Do you have memory problems, or just like to tell stories? There are 384 hospitals in Ontario, and 1235 hospitalizations for covid19. 3.3 per hospital on average, of these 337 are in intensive care, slightly less than one per hospital on average. I know that we have visited this before, so I must assume that you are deficient in some capacity. If a hospital can't provide the necessary beds, perhaps they could treat cut fingers, or sprained ankles in an area set aside in a community center, or temporary shelter, and make space available in the hospital. I don't know how to make that simpler for you.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/440923/total-number-of-hospital-establishments-in-canada-by-province/

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

 

Edited December 31, 2020 by oops

[Shady]

36 minutes ago, oops said:

Why do you keep saying that when you know that it isn't true? Do you have memory problems, or just like to tell stories? There are 384 hospitals in Ontario, and 1235 hospitalizations for covid19. 3.3 per hospital on average, of these 337 are in intensive care, slightly less than one per hospital on average. I know that we have visited this before, so I must assume that you are deficient in some capacity. If a hospital can't provide the necessary beds, perhaps they could treat cut fingers, or sprained ankles in an area set aside in a community center, or temporary shelter, and make space available in the hospital. I don't know how to make that simpler for you.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/440923/total-number-of-hospital-establishments-in-canada-by-province/

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

 

Facts don't matter is seems.  

[OftenWrong]

9 hours ago, oops said:

of these 337 are in intensive care, slightly less than one per hospital on average. I know that we have visited this before, so I must assume that you are deficient in some capacity.

I have attested to it myself, twas before I was labelled a member  of the NSDAP. 

Indeed, I have informed the member numerous times... with citations. By repeating the same untruth over and over, their mind makes it the truth.

The self-loathing left seeks to kill itself. It wants to die because it feels only shame, guilt, and hate.

”I Hate you all!” - Greta Thumberg, messiah of the covid death cult. And a child shall lead them. 

Edited January 1, 2021 by OftenWrong

[OftenWrong]

Quote

"I did call him shortly after he arrived and I asked him and he said he was away," Ford told reporters Wednesday.

"My mistake, and I take full responsibility. At that time, I should have said get your backside back into Ontario and I didn't do that." 

The premier now says a "very tough conversation" is in store when Phillips returns from his trip

These people are standing in front of a microphone telling Ontarians to stay home. They look like a bunch of phony used car sales-persons.

We coudn't visit Grandma, and she's 84 and living in a condo in Peel. The front desk Chivatos issued a directive, no visitors per the provincial shutdown.

He takes full responsibility, my eye.

[OftenWrong]

And look, he's not wearing his facemask right. Didn't pinch the bar along the nose so that it is more conformal to his face.
He looks like his mommy just put it on for him for the picture.

Someone get this man a size triple-E.

[Cannucklehead]

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/former-finance-ministers-trip-to-caribbean-caps-off-year-of-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-from-political-leaders/wcm/e977cd20-c09f-492f-8632-6a9b7722ef1b/amp/

 

I remember a time when people would throw tomatoes at guys like that.

[Shady]

2 hours ago, Cannucklehead said:

https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/former-finance-ministers-trip-to-caribbean-caps-off-year-of-do-as-i-say-not-as-i-do-from-political-leaders/wcm/e977cd20-c09f-492f-8632-6a9b7722ef1b/amp/

 

I remember a time when people would throw tomatoes at guys like that.

Agreed.  I’m glad he resigned.  It’s too bad mother politicians didn’t do the same for equal or more egregious covid hypocrisy.

[Shady]

But small businesses can’t be open.