Just One More Thing ...

A few more things, really ...

 

Some people are "special":

Former Ontario finance minister Rod Phillips resigned from his cabinet posting on Thursday, offering one final example in 2020 of politicians asking the public ‘to do as I say, not as I do’ during the global pandemic.

**

CBC News has learned that Alberta Municipal Affairs Minister Tracy Allard spent time in Hawaii this month on a family vacation, despite direction from both the federal and provincial governments to avoid non-essential travel during the COVID-19 pandemic.

No word on Pierre Arcand as of this writing (or possibly Justin).

In case one forgot:

Despite repeatedly urging Canadians to stay home for Easter amid the coronavirus pandemic, even if it meant not seeing their families, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is defending the decision to go see his.

** 

It cost taxpayers just over $73,000 for Health Minister Patty Hajdu to travel from Ottawa to Thunder Bay, even as she advised against non-essential travel during the pandemic lockdown.

 

Why?

Because, f--- you, Canada. That's why. It will always be that way until the populace reminds the public servants who they work for, how replaceable they are and what mine-shafts look like from the inside.

Instead of demanding that these politicians be as equally miserable as the rest of us and remain in their homes, we should demand the loss of their pensions and jobs and the repeal of this enormously ridiculous decision to lockdown entire economies knowing damn well that they don't work to contain any viral threat. Our political "betters" clearly don't believe so.

Also - God bless you, Rex Murphy!:

Why do we listen to them?

Why do we sit under the rain of their incessant, sanctimonious spiels about flattening curves and slowing the virus and caring for “your fellow citizens,” while they jet off to sunshine, beaches and island resorts for “vacations they had planned?

** 

Oh, that's bad for the narrative:

A nurse in California tested positive for COVID-19 more than a week after receiving Pfizer Inc's vaccine, an ABC News affiliate reported on Tuesday, but a medical expert and the U.S. drug maker said the body needs more time to build up protection.

 

Sure, it does. 

Why? Because Justin and the Liberal Party work for the Chinese. That's why:

The Liberal government fell woefully short in its timid response to the incarceration earlier this week of a Chinese citizen journalist who chronicled the country’s pandemic’s response, diplomatic and human rights experts say.

The criticism comes after the official twitter account for Global Affairs Canada stated briefly on Tuesday that it was “very concerned” about the incarceration of Chinese citizen journalist Zhang Zhan earlier this week. GAC has not yet issued an official statement on the matter, while the U.S., U.K. and European Union all offered full-throated and official condemnation of the conviction.

 

On the Korean front:

Koreans' most fervent wish for the post-coronavirus period is for schools to reopen, big data shows. 

 

**

 

You and me both:

Cheong Wa Dae said Tuesday that President Moon Jae-in struck a deal with Moderna to purchase another 10 million doses of coronavirus vaccines after speaking by video call with the CEO of the biotech giant. The presidential office explained that Moon not only doubled the order volume, but also pushed forward the supply date of the vaccines. Cheong Wa Dae took credit for the feat and said Moon "stepped up to take a leading role." To be fair, the Korea Disease Control and Prevention Agency had made a hash of the purchase of vaccines, but it held regular meetings with Prime Minister Chung Sye-kyun to brief him on progress and discuss further measures. If the president had taken part earlier in the most urgent matter facing the country, he would not have had to resort to this stunt.

Instead he was nowhere to be seen, preferring to fritter away his time on a personal vendetta against the prosecutor general. The government repeatedly said KDCA chief Jeong Eun-kyeong was in charge of vaccine-purchase deals. It was only when the public outcry became deafening that the president belatedly stepped in, like a knight on a shining horse. 

 

 

 

I will not make any claim that the coming year will be a much better one, only that we may have the strength to rise above whatever comes our way.

 

 

 

Mid-Week Post

 

What are you doing New Year's Eve?

 

No, really?

Probably not travelling anywhere:

Quebec Liberal member Pierre Arcand is vacationing with his wife in the Caribbean despite warnings from the federal and provincial governments to stay home during the pandemic.

** 

Toronto Mayor John Tory came to the defence of Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips, who was found to be vacationing in the Caribbean while the rest of the province remained in lockdown.

News broke of Phillips' vacation on Monday, resulting in Premier Doug Ford asking Phillips to return to Canada immediately. Phillips also issued an apology saying he "deeply regrets" travelling "over the holidays."

 

(Sidebar: @$$holes of a feather ...)

Some people are "special".

Also:

Today, Dec. 30, 2020, is the one-year anniversary of the first major official communication by Chinese officials. Doctors had begun receiving patients sick with something new and aggressive at the start of the month, and one year ago today was the day that the local public health officials in Wuhan sent a memo to everyone in their unit, warning them to be alert and report additional cases of an aggressive pneumonia with an unknown cause. Symptoms were described. Links among patients to the Wuhan seafood market are noted.

 

This China and this virus: 

Deep in the lush mountain valleys of southern China lies the entrance to a mine shaft that once harbored bats with the closest known relative of the COVID-19 virus.

The area is of intense scientific interest because it may hold clues to the origins of the coronavirus that has killed more than 1.7 million people worldwide. Yet for scientists and journalists, it has become a black hole of no information because of political sensitivity and secrecy.

A bat research team visiting recently managed to take samples but had them confiscated, two people familiar with the matter said. Specialists in coronaviruses have been ordered not to speak to the press. And a team of Associated Press journalists was tailed by plainclothes police in multiple cars who blocked access to roads and sites in late November.

More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China. 

** 

On December 21, Dr. Hinshaw tweeted that "there are currently 760 people in hospital with 149 people in ICU" but she omits the highly relevant facts that Alberta has over 8,300 hospital beds, and that Alberta's total ICU capacity is more than 1,000. Failing to include these relevant facts in her tweets is misleading.

More significantly, Dr. Hinshaw's tweets suggest that it's unusual for hospitals to be overrun by patients, when in fact "hallway medicine" has been a sad-but-common feature of Canadian health care for many years. Politicians have refused for decades to address the gross mismanagement of health care dollars by an unresponsive and utterly unaccountable government monopoly. Pretending that hospital over-crowding is a new phenomenon caused by COVID-19 is misleading.

** 

There is no way this could have been done this past February because reasons:

The federal government says it plans to require air travellers to test negative for COVID-19 before landing in Canada.

 

I'll believe it when I see it. 

Happy New Year, Canada. Enjoy the decline:

Come Jan. 1, Canada Pension Plan contributions are going up again, although higher than originally planned. The reason is largely because of the pandemic’s effect on the labour market, which has some groups noting the impact will be felt by some workers more than others.

** 

The Trudeau government has been unacceptably opaque in its handling of the national purse, several former senior Finance officials say, a concern that reflects deeper disagreements in Ottawa between the public service and the Liberal government’s lofty spending plans.

People knew what Harper and his government were going to do.

And he certainly didn't dish out money to his family and friends like some families named Trudeau that one could mention.

How could this go wrong?:

Canadian Immigration Minister Marco Mendicino this month exempted five of those asylum seekers from the border restrictions, according to Kate Webster, their Toronto-based lawyer. Another application is pending. That means they will be allowed to enter Canada, if the United States releases them.

 

Someone has to replace all of those old people the government is letting die of the coronavirus. 

This must be embarrassing:

Donald Trump has ended Barack Obama’s 12-year run as most admired man in Gallup’s annual poll, having tied with the former president in 2019.

 

Did Americans like being unemployed under Obama? 

Curiouser and curiouser, as was said:

Sixteen months before Anthony Quinn Warner's RV exploded in downtown Nashville on Christmas morning, officers visited his Tennessee home after his girlfriend reported he was making bombs in the vehicle, according to documents obtained by The Tennessean, part of the USA TODAY Network.

 

 

Japan, why on Earth would you want to trade with a country that hates you? Why?: 

Over 40% of Japanese companies the government recognizes as possessing sensitive technology linked to security are considering, or have already started, shifting their manufacturing bases and sources of parts supplies from China in a bid to diversify their supply chains, a Kyodo News survey found Tuesday.

The move to reduce their reliance on Beijing and mitigate security risks comes in response to rising U.S.-China competition over technological supremacy and concerns about potential concentration of medical production in China amid a shortage of medical supplies propelled by the novel coronavirus pandemic.

Forty-two companies, or 44%, of 96 respondents said they have diversified or are considering diversifying their supply chains by moving to India and Southeast Asian countries, according to the survey.

Kyodo recently surveyed some 150 major listed companies, of which 96 responded. The respondents include Canon Inc., Toyota Motor Corp., KDDI Corp., NEC Corp., Kobe Steel Ltd. and Mitsubishi Heavy Industries Ltd.

Only three respondents said they have or will downsize operations or withdraw from China, signaling the importance of the world’s second-largest economy to many Japanese companies.

 

 

Arm Nigerian Christians. What choice does anyone have?:

Bishop Chikwe, the auxiliary bishop of Owerri archdiocese, was kidnapped by unidentified gunmen on the evening of Sunday, Dec. 27, in Owerri, the capital of Imo State in southeastern Nigeria.

The website of the Nigerian newspaper The Sun reported that the bishop was kidnapped “alongside his driver in his official car” and that the vehicle “was later returned to Assumpta roundabout, while the occupants were believed to have been taken to an unknown destination.”

Archbishop Obinna told Vatican News Dec. 29 that the 53-year-old bishop was kidnapped as he was returning from a visit to his residence.

“Kidnapping has, of course, been going on in Nigeria, in different parts of Nigeria. That it has happened to my auxiliary bishop shows that the security situation in Nigeria is very bad,” he said.

 

At some point, countries will have to face others and justify their actions.

Some actions may be lamentable but necessary while some may be wholly benign. Others are unconscionable and ultimately disastrous.

This will be no different:

According to a November 2020 survey carried by independent pollster Giacobbe & Asociados, 60% of Argentinians opposed the law, while only 26.7% were in favor. But the law, one of the most permissive in the world and with no parallel in the region, was strongly supported by the media, TV personalities, and influencers.

“This law that has been voted will further deepen the divisions in our country”, said the Bishops‘ statement. “We deeply regret the remoteness of the leadership from the people’s feelings, which has been expressed in various ways in favor of life throughout our country.” Argentina saw indeed the largest pro-life peaceful marches in its history, but were mostly ignored by the local press.

 

And the Rest of It

Wow, people totally have a handle on this coronavirus:

A new poll suggests the premiers of Canada’s three Prairie provinces are lagging counterparts from the rest of the country when it comes to how local residents feel they are managing the COVID-19 pandemic.

The poll from Leger and the Association for Canadian Studies found 30 per cent of respondents in Alberta were satisfied with the job Premier Jason Kenney was doing when it comes to COVID-19 – the lowest level of satisfaction for Canada’s 10 provincial leaders.

Kenney has faced criticism in recent weeks for resisting calls to impose lockdowns even as Alberta contended with a surge of new infections, which at one point saw it have more active cases than Ontario.

Manitoba Premier Brian Pallister, whose province has also been battered by new infections during the second wave of COVID-19, fared slightly better than Kenney with 31 per cent of provincial respondents approving of his management of the pandemic.

Pallister’s government faced heavy criticism after testing capacity and contact tracing initially failed to keep up with demand as case numbers spiked. For much of the fall, Manitoba led all other provinces in new infections per capita.

The only other premier with less than 50 per cent satisfaction was Saskatchewan’s Scott Moe at 39 per cent. Moe’s government has also been criticized for not responding sooner to a steady increase in infections in the province.

Meanwhile, just over half of respondents from Ontario approved of the job that Premier Doug Ford was doing.

In neighbouring Quebec, 55 per cent of respondents in that province felt the same about Francois Legault.

 

Ontario and Quebec have the highest infection rates and their lockdowns have destroyed thousands of businesses.

But don't let facts get in the way.

** 

Self-proclaimed Harvard epidemiologist Eric Feigl-Ding waged an anti-science disinformation campaign—disguised as medical advice—against American scientists working on the COVID-19 vaccine to advance his own career.

** 

Scientists in the U.K. have recruited their first participants as part of a study of a new long-acting antibody treatment that they say could be an alternative to the COVID-19 vaccine.

If successful, the antibody-treatment could prevent anyone who has been exposed to COVID-19 from developing the infection as it could ‘neutralize the virus’, according to Dr. Catherine Houlihan, a University College London Hospital virologist.

 

 

All of this sounds so strange:

A parked motor home exploded on a tree-lined street in downtown Nashville at dawn on Friday morning minutes after a recorded announcement emanating from the vehicle warned of a bomb, in what police said was an “intentional act” that injured at least three people.

** 

This attack doesn’t look like a symbolic attack. It appears that the RV was parked where it wanted to be — the middle of 2nd Ave in Nashville in front of an AT&T network switch/data center and across from some not-particularly-notable bars and restaurants. 

Interesting:

After seven months of studying relics and historical texts, Israeli archaeologists and masons unveiled their recreation of the sacred flooring that Jesus’ feet once touched.

They replicated tiles from Jerusalem’s Second Temple, where the New Testament says Jesus went for pilgrimage and study as a boy and, as an older preacher, cast out its money-changers in anger.

Is It Cheating If Unmonitored Students Find Another Way of Doing Things When Their "Educators" Aren't Watching?

There is a reason why schools should not be shut down willy-nilly and why tried-and-true methods still work:

Olivia Meleta, a high school math teacher in Thornhill, Ont., said she realized something was amiss in late September when several students learning virtually submitted tests with matching solutions - using a method she and her colleagues don't teach.

 

(Sidebar: did you ever change the format of the tests or try teaching a method that still works?)

 

"It was a very convoluted way of doing things,” she said. “Their solution was about 20 steps ... The process in class would have been around five or six.”

A colleague explained what was likely going on, she said. The students had apparently downloaded an app called Photomath, ostensibly meant to be a teaching tool.

The app - one of several - scans a photo of a math problem and offers a step-by-step guide on how to solve it.

Photomath, which was founded in Croatia in 2014, claims to have more than 150 million downloads globally, at least a million of them from teachers.

The company has created a “best practices” guide in collaboration with teachers to show how it can be incorporated into the classroom, a company spokeswoman said.

“The guide focuses on three core principles: reinforcing concepts learned in the classroom, providing a way to check homework assignments, and accelerating individual learning,” Jennifer Lui said.

Mathway, a similar app, also boasts about “millions of users and billions of problems solved.” Its purpose, it says, is to “make quality on-demand math assistance accessible to all students.”

And while experts say the software can be a legitimate teaching tool for students doing homework, teachers have had to find ways to safeguard tests against it.

 

A really good way is to monitor students, you know, in a classroom.

 

From "Exotic" to "Cancelled" In Ten Seconds

She lied about a crafted identity from which she could obtain fame and privilege (as well as money). If the "cancel culture" has gone too far, so has the "noble savage" identity, the Totem Pole of the Oppressed and other tribal affections that were tiresome before and tiresome now:

I’d signed up for AncestryDNA as an impulse buy, with no particular agenda. But in retrospect, it turns out Kim and I were ahead of our time. As Canadian filmmaker Michelle Latimer recently found out, this kind of information can now make or break your career.

Last week, Latimer announced her resignation as director of “Trickster,” a CBC drama based on an Eden Robinson novel about an Indigenous teenager who channels supernatural figures from Haisla mythology. When Latimer originally secured National Film Board (NFB) funding, she’d indicated she was of “Algonquin, Métis and French heritage” — information she’d sourced to her own family lore. But a CBC investigation found that Latimer’s Indigenous heritage is limited to two 17th-century ancestors. Nowhere in the annals of the Canadian arts establishment is it definitively specified what DNA fraction one must possess to claim Indigenous status — a quarter, an eighth, a sixteenth. But whatever that standard may be, Latimer apparently doesn’t meet it, which is why this former darling of Indigenous film and television has been well and truly cancelled. ...

Latimer isn’t alone. If you look down cancel culture’s Canadian victim roster, you’ll find a surprising number of card-carrying progressives who’ve dedicated much of their careers to Indigenous storytelling. Joseph Boyden supplies the most well-known example. But there’s also cancelled Governor General’s Award winning writer Gwen Benaway (who may or may not be Indigenous, depending on who you ask); vocalist Connie LeGrande (who is Cree, but got targeted for intra-Indigenous cancellation in 2019 anyway, on the innovative theory that First Nations shouldn’t be allowed to apply Inuit throat-singing techniques); and partly Mi’kmaq poet Shannon Webb Campbell (whose book was pulped in 2018 when relatives of the Indigenous women she’d written about complained to her publisher). And then there’s Steven Galloway, who was originally cancelled on the basis of false accusations of sexual assault at the University of British Columbia, but then was further targeted with the (equally false) claim that he’d cynically weaponized his Indigenous roots to claim victim status. At Canadian Art magazine, meanwhile, an Indigenous writer tried to cancel Cree artist Kent Monkman, on the basis that his blockbuster success with a white international audience constitutes proof that he’s betrayed his ancestry. Even long-time CBC contributor Jesse Wente, who just became the Canada Council for the Arts’ first Indigenous chairperson, is under fire for failing to snuff out Latimer’s race deception when he was warned of it back in August — or as one angry Twitter user put it last week, “ass-kissing and gate-keeping on behalf of the white man’s Indian princess, aka Michelle Latimer.” ...

This is hardly the first time that our cultural institutions have been captured by an unrepresentative clique of ideologically incestuous cultural grandees. For most of my life, in fact, Canadian cultural life was dominated by small cliques of Ontario WASPs whose antiquated conception of Canada centred on men in red serge, rugged Arctic landscapes, long canoe trips, big furry animals, sentimental hockey reveries, the cod fishery, the Plains of Abraham, socialized medicine and the monarchy. Even by the late 20th century, this had become a dull and dated vision of our country — a sentimental pastiche with little relevance to an increasingly urban and multicultural country. And so it shouldn’t have surprised us that when progressives made a dedicated push to redefine our national soul, they encountered little resistance.

The alternative vision of our country that has now become ascendant within progressive circles (the arts, in particular) has little to do with Group of Seven paintings or the Canadian Pacific Railroad. Instead, it casts Canada as a genocidal colonial state existing in an ongoing condition of original sin. This national vision is nihilistic and bleak, and has little support among ordinary Canadians. But it does at least offer its adherents a heroic subplot, by which Indigenous peoples (artists and writers, in particular) are celebrated as a priestly caste of moral savants who shall confer grace upon the rest of us. And even a boring old settler like me has to admit that’s a lot more exciting than a CBC documentary about Lawren Harris freezing his ass off on Mount Robson.

 

Why?

Because fanciful delusions are a lot more uplifting and ingratiating than cold, hard or even mundane truths.

Typically Canadian. Pretense is a diversion from comforting but now toxic dullness.

 

An Obligatory Post-Christmas Day Round-Up

 

The big day may be over but the season is not yet finished.

 

 

Scroll through thread and observe how smallness and pettiness are substitutions for general good will and common sense (with some niceness interspersed). 

Soft times produce morons like this:

This is your annual reminder that not everyond celebrated Christmas! The default to 'Merry Christmas' as a normal greeing is also white supremacy culture at work. If someone celebrates, by all means. But so many people don't."

 

(Sidebar: but so many other people do because Christmas is fun and no one likes a finger-wagging scold who does nothing for humanity.) 

When the world goes to crap, she will be used for meat but not by humans but by things like this:

A broadcast from a Cuban government outlet urged its citizens to eat rodent meat ahead of the Christmas holiday, claiming that the rodent meat is more sustainable and nutritious than other options, Cubanet reports.

Food shortages have ravaged Cuba for decades. The Castro regime repeatedly blamed the United States for the economic hardships the communist state has faced due to economic sanctions leveled against the communist country.

SEE! Communism does work!

"Peace on Earth" means nothing to some people:

Boko Haram jihadists killed at least 11 people, burnt a church and seized a priest on Christmas Eve in Nigeria's restive northeast, local sources claimed today.

Security agencies had in recent days warned of an increased risk of attack during the holiday season.

And What Is It That You Voted For Again?

You wanted the "hip" and "cool" snowboard instructor who has never run a business, held any significant political position, has never had to work his way out of meager circumstances and obscurity and prove his mettle.

What you got was an arrogant frat-boy whose ability to answer direct and easy-to-understand questions simply doesn't exist without the help from from lackey's whispering in an ear piece pre-written answers on a sheet.

Canada has the highest unemployment rate of any G7 country, a country that cannot afford to throw around the money it is currently throwing around. Justin is not only phenomenally stupid but arrogant, as well. He does not care about whatever money spent for whatever reason. He does not care how his actions affect anyone. He does not care (and neither do Canadians, apparently) if he rules autocratically. He has never offered his loyalty to Canada (SEE: China, admire, basic dictatorship of). It's not his money, he still gets a pension and he never has to answer for his outrageous stupidity.

You, however, are left holding the bag.

Enjoy the decline. You did, after all, vote for it:

While some may have found their biggest work-related inconvenience of 2020 took the form of a cat running across their keyboard as they adjusted to their new home offices, for many people the pandemic ripped away their paycheck and shattered their finances. The latter was the reality for the nine per cent of Canadians who reported losing their jobs in the last year -- and they are far more likely to be young adults, according to the new poll from Ipsos.

Seventeen per cent of Canadians aged 18 to 34 say they’ve lost their job, according to Ipsos. That number dips to 10 per cent for those aged 35-54 and three per cent for those over the age of 55.

Uh-Oh

Croatia suffered its strongest earthquake in 140 years — for the second time in 2020 — with the tremor devastating the city at its epicenter, killing at least one person and rattling Europeans as far away as Rome and Vienna.

The temblor, measured at 6.3 by the European-Mediterranean Seismological Centre on Tuesday, was larger than both a 5.2 quake on Monday and a 5.3 tremor that caused $6 billion in damage when it hit the the capital, Zagreb, in March.

 

 

No, This Does Not Sound Suspicious At All

Nope:

A Chinese court on Monday handed down a four-year jail term to a citizen-journalist who reported from the central city of Wuhan at the peak of last year’s coronavirus outbreak on the grounds of “picking quarrels and provoking trouble,” her lawyer said.

Zhang Zhan, 37, the first such person known to have been tried, was among a handful of people whose firsthand accounts from crowded hospitals and empty streets painted a more dire picture of the pandemic epicenter than the official narrative.

 

I'll just leave this right here: 

In an interview with The West Block‘s Mercedes Stephenson, Hajdu was asked about her comments earlier in the year when she dismissed as a conspiracy theory a question about whether China had underreported their cases and the severity of the new, highly contagious disease.

“You had dismissed that as a conspiracy theory. In retrospect, do you think that China was honest and was forthcoming in the intelligence it shared with the global community and with Canada about the risks?” Stephenson asked.

“Look, very early on China alerted the World Health Organization to the emergence of a novel coronavirus and also shared the sequencing of the gene which allowed countries to be able to rapidly produce tests to be able to detect it in their own countries,” Hajdu said.

 

They alerted people after they got caught but whatever. 

Also:

Fifty doctors, scientists and healthcare entrepreneurs earned billionaire status this year — the majority of whom are from China, where the virus first emerged in December 2019, Forbes reported.

Of the new cohort, there were 28 “pandemic billionaires” who hailed from China, the outlet reported.

**

Merry Xmas folks!
Here's a searchable data base of every organization in Canada that received the CEWS wage subsidy benefit all 368,240 businesses, charities and non-profits. https://t.co/UUPiLseK1p
Like the $30 billion Rogers media empire where Mayor @JohnTOry has senior roles pic.twitter.com/URiFwzcUPr

— not inklessPW 💎 (@inklessPW) December 25, 2020

 

More here.

**

Canadian officials seemed to agree, since no steps were taken to restrict or prohibit travel. To the federal government, China appeared to have the situation under control and the risk to Canada was low. Before ending the call, Mr. Heng thanked Ottawa for its “science and fact-based approach.”

Around the same time, with the death toll rising and the virus spreading internationally, preparations were made for a phone call between Minister of Foreign Affairs François-Philippe Champagne and his Chinese counterpart. According to speaking notes prepared in advance of that discussion, Canada’s key messages were to “express sympathy” and to convey how “impressed” Ottawa was with “efforts deployed to contain the outbreak, and the transparent approach taken by China thus far.”

The government had “full confidence” in China’s ability to contain the virus. ...

By late February, Ottawa seemed to be taking the official reports from China at their word, stating often in its own internal risk assessments that the threat to Canada remained low. But inside the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC), rank-and-file doctors and epidemiologists were growing increasingly alarmed at how the department and the government were responding.

“The team was outraged,” one public-health scientist told a colleague in early April, in an internal e-mail obtained by The Globe and Mail, criticizing the lack of urgency shown by Canada’s response during January, February and early March. “We knew this was going to be around for a long time, and it’s serious.”

China had locked down cities and restricted travel within its borders. Staff inside the Public Health Agency believed Beijing wasn’t disclosing the whole truth about the danger of the virus and how easily it was transmitted. “The agency was just too slow to respond,” the scientist said. “A sane person would know China was lying.”

It would later be revealed that China’s infection and mortality rates were played down in official records, along with key details about how the virus was spreading.

But the Public Health Agency, which was created after the 2003 SARS crisis to bolster the country against emerging disease threats, had been stripped of much of its capacity to gather outbreak intelligence and provide advance warning by the time the pandemic hit.

The Global Public Health Intelligence Network, an early warning system known as GPHIN that was once considered a cornerstone of Canada’s preparedness strategy, had been scaled back over the past several years, with resources shifted into projects that didn’t involve outbreak surveillance.

However, a series of documents obtained by The Globe during the past four months, from inside the department and through numerous Access to Information requests, show the problems that weakened Canada’s pandemic readiness run deeper than originally thought. Pleas from the international health community for Canada to take outbreak detection and surveillance much more seriously were ignored by mid-level managers inside the department. A new federal pandemic preparedness plan – key to gauging the country’s readiness for an emergency – was never fully tested. And on the global stage, the agency stopped sending experts to international meetings on pandemic preparedness, instead choosing senior civil servants with little or no public-health background to represent Canada at high-level talks, The Globe found.

An internal study obtained by The Globe suggests people inside the department were aware of some of these issues. Meanwhile, documents and interviews with current and former employees who have come forward in recent months indicate the mishandling of the pandemic early warning system was a symptom of broader problems affecting the agency. A cascade of decisions over the past decade, each critically important in their own right, left Canada struggling to effectively process what was happening in China in real time early this year, which hampered its ability to respond quickly.

** 

A doctor in Boston with a shellfish allergy developed a severe allergic reaction after receiving Moderna's coronavirus vaccine on Thursday, the New York Times reported on Friday, citing the doctor.

Dr. Hossein Sadrzadeh, a geriatric oncology fellow at Boston Medical Center, said he had a severe reaction almost immediately after being vaccinated, feeling dizzy and with a racing heart, the NYT reported.

** 

But ... but ... lockdowns:

Tenant after tenant addressed the virtual meeting, describing how COVID-19 has wreaked havoc on their lives and finances over the last year.

A Toronto mother said she struggled to keep up with bills after losing work in the restaurant industry. A Hamilton man behind on rent payments said he was staying in touch with his landlord about his financial situation after being laid off.

“It’s COVID, people struggle,” he appealed to Landlord and Tenant Board member John Mazzilli during the Dec. 18 block of hearings — all of which involved non-payment of rent.

Similar scenes playing out over the last several weeks have raised concern among Ontario advocates who say the pickup of evictions in the pandemic’s second wave coincides with a shift to online-only hearings that stack the deck against tenants.

** 

They should have torn down a statue:

Police have laid charges after they say large gatherings were held two days in a row in a Wheatley, Ont., church this weekend.

 

 

Feast of the Holy Innocents

 

“A voice is heard in Ramah,
    weeping and great mourning,
Rachel weeping for her children
    and refusing to be comforted,
    because they are no more.”

 

"Fear Not, For Behold, I Bring You Tidings of Great Joy!"

 

Christe Maesse

 The reason for the season, as they say ...

 

Only in Canada can a Jewish carpenter who not only redeemed the world but helped shape it be seen as negative:

As some Canadians celebrate the birth of the Christ Child on Dec. 25, polling shows that across the country, even in more secular areas, most Canadians have a favourable view of Jesus.

According to polling from Leger-Association for Canadian Studies, about 73 per cent of Canadians have a positive view of Jesus, whereas 27 per cent have a negative view of the son of God.

Jesus is most popular in Alberta, where 78 per cent of people say they have a positive view, and the most unpopular in British Columbia and Quebec, were 32 and 33 per cent, respectively, have a negative view of him.

Jesus is less popular among younger Canadians, with 18 per cent of those between the ages of 18 and 24 saying they have a “somewhat negative” view of Jesus and nearly nine per cent reporting a “very negative” view of him. Among those aged 24 to 35, nearly a quarter, or 24 per cent, say they have a “somewhat negative” view and 16 per cent have a “very negative” view. Compare that to those 75 and older, where just 13.7 per cent have a somewhat or very negative view of Christ.

Francophones are also less likely to look favourably upon Jesus: 36 per cent of French speakers have negative views of him, compared with just shy of 25 per cent of anglophones.

As well, Protestants like Jesus more than Catholics, with 61.8 per cent of Protestants having a “very positive” view of Jesus, and about 45 per cent of Catholics having a very positive view. Fifty-seven per cent of Muslims also have a very positive view of Jesus.

 

(Sidebar: what does that tell one when Muslims have a better view of Jesus than Catholics do? Clearly, the bishops, the schools and, above all, the parents are not doing their jobs. Step it up, guys!)

 

And before anyone blathers on about how they are independent thinkers and don't need religion, consider that Western civilisation was founded on Judeo-Christian ethics and the opposition between religion, which explains cosmological purpose, and science, which explains how the physical world works, was manufactured by people who don't understand religion or science but like to adhere to the latter to feign erudition.

Also, this:

Yes, obey that snowboard instructor, "independent thinker"! Show everyone how free from guilt you are by not wearing a cloth mask that does not keep out any for of the flu. Not brave enough? Then stand in line at Wal-Mart and walk where stickers on the floor tell you to. Those people who realise that they cannot find or understand their existential purpose in consumerism or junk science are the total tools around here, right?!

And who is this guy Canadians don't like?

Here:

Why, then, did Christians in the West come to celebrate Christmas on 25 December? The answer seems to lie, not in paganism, but — as one might expect — in the great seedbed of Jewish tradition. Rabbis and Church Fathers in the early centuries of the Christian century shared a conviction that the great events of creation and salvation were framed by an essential symmetry. Jewish scholars, tracing this symmetry, could argue that both the creation of the world and the birth of Abraham and his immediate heirs had occurred on the same day of the year that Israel was destined to obtain redemption.

Christian scholars, drawing on similar traditions, came to believe that Jesus had died on the anniversary of his incarnation. And the date of that anniversary? First in Carthage, and then in Rome, it came to be identified with what, according to the Roman calendar, was 25 March. Then, once that particular date had bedded down — and operating on the assumption that Christ had been born nine months after his conception — it required only a simple calculation to arrive at the date of his birth. By the 4^th century, 25 December was coming to be enshrined across the western half of the empire as the anniversary of Christ’s birth.

By 597, when missionaries from Rome arrived in Kent to attempt the conversion of the pagan Angles and Saxons, it had become an irrevocable part of the calendar of the Latin Church. As Bede, a hundred years later and more, would teach his countrymen, the rhythms of time were not random, but structured by the purposes of God. The birthday of Christ was joined by a fateful and divinely-ordained patterning to the day of his death. Athelstan, celebrating Christmas at Amesbury, would have known, contemplating the birth of his Saviour, to remember as well His death. ...

The foundational story of Christmas, that of the birth of the Son of God amid poverty and danger, gives to the festival its own very particular flavour. The feasting, the gifts, the brief liberation from their sufferings of those ground down by poverty, or oppression or war: all, in the case of Christmas, are endowed with a very culturally distinctive resonance. It is a resonance that derives, not from timeless and universal archetypes, but rather from a specifically Christian narrative. All the other myths and narratives that, over the course of the centuries, have become a part of the festive fabric, from Santa Claus to Scrooge, from football matches in no mans land to the Grinch, endure because they go with its grain.

This year of all years  — with a clarity denied us in happier times — it is possible to recognise in Christmas its fundamentally Christian character. The light shining in the darkness proclaimed by the festival is a very theological light, one that promises redemption from the miseries of a fallen world. In a time of pandemic, when the festive season is haunted by the shadows of sickness and bereavement, of loneliness and disappointment, of poverty and dread, the power of this theology, one that has fuelled the celebration of Christmas for century after century, becomes easier, perhaps, to recognise than in a time of prosperity. The similarities shared by the feast day of Christ’s birth with other celebrations that, over the course of history, have been held in the dead of winter should not delude us into denying a truth so evident as to verge on the tautologous: Christmas is a thoroughly Christian festival.

 

So there's that.

 

 

And now, something uplifting: