Mid-Week Post

Your mid-week jog around the block ...




Why don't politicians trust their walking ATMS voters?

Well ... :

They support a methodical approach like premier Ford has promised but unlike other premiers, Ford has yet to give any details.

Instead, he asks for patience.

That’s easy if you are lucky like me, still working and still getting paid. It’s harder to have patience when you are laid off, your business is closed, you are being asked to pay rent or your mortgage on Friday with no income or a much-reduced income.

The “Framework” that Ford and his team released earlier this week didn’t offer any hope to those people. In fact, for those who have been without income for the last six weeks due to this shutdown, it was a truly frightening document.

Other provinces have already released outlines for the lifting of lockdown restrictions much to Justin's great consternation.

The lockdown would have had to happen had the government - you know - not been stupid:

It’s shockingly sensible to read: A document from 2014 on how Canada would deal with the Ebola outbreak that was ravaging parts of West Africa.

It seems from reading this document that we were better prepared for this than we were for the arrival of the coronavirus.

I wonder how many deaths we are now dealing with that could have been avoided if we had simply dusted off the old plans.

In 2014, Ebola thankfully did not come to Canada but had it arrived, we were infinitely more ready. There were 28 hospitals across the country designated as “Ebola Hospitals” specifically to treat any cases that appeared.

There were plans on how to transport cases to these hospitals, plans on how to ensure these hospitals were properly equipped and plans for travellers who might be of concern. Anyone who appeared at a Canadian airport after visiting a region where Ebola was present was subject to already defined rules.

“Travellers with a history of travel to an Ebola-affected country who are presenting symptoms will be immediately isolated (distancing the individual from crowds or using a quarantine assessment room, if available, at major Canadian airports) and sent to hospital for a medical examination,” the document reads. ...

Speaking of Canada’s very first case of COVID-19, Canada’s chief medical officer said that the man was provided with information on what to do if he became ill. A pamphlet.

Had we followed the 2014 rules, he would have been quarantined.

As this is Canada and no one will ever suggest that we need a federal level (at least this federal level) of the government like we need a hole in the head, the overfed Hose of Commons will continue making grotesque errors in judgment until Canada finally hits that fiduciary wall and will get no more money to throw around.




The rightness! It continues!:

Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, takes questions from selected media at press conferences most days but since the World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic 48 days ago, she has failed to appear before the parliamentary health committee, even as it has met six times.

This committee has been crucial to Canada’s effort to stop the virus. For three months now, its determined group of NDP, Conservative, Bloc and Liberal MPs have dug into the pandemic like no one else, pushing officials like Tam on whether they have the right policies in place.

But twice, on March 11 and March 31, Tam has said she’s going to show at the committee but then cancelled at the last minute, say Conservative MP Matt Jeneroux of Edmonton and NDP MP Don Davies of Vancouver.

Tam is at the top of the Conservatives’ list to question, Jeneroux says, and he’s frustrated by her no-shows.

She appears to be dodging the committee, Davies says, noting that two late cancellations doesn’t seem like a coincidence. “I don’t think she should be too busy to come to health committee and answer questions, which is basically the only accountability mechanism in the country.”

Tam did find time recently for a lengthy chat with the CBC’s Rosie Barton, where she answered a series of soft-hitting questions.

On the issue of Canada’s slow move to border closure and quarantines, which only happened two months into the crisis, Tam said: “Could we have done more at the time? You can retrospectively say yes, absolutely, you could screen more, or you could change your stance. But at the time we had very, very few cases globally and in Canada.”

The problem with Tam’s answer? Numerous world health officials understood in late January 2020 — not retrospectively — that strict measures were needed. The Chinese, for example, were so alarmed they completely shut down Wuhan, a city of 11 million, on Jan. 23. By Jan. 26, Taiwan medical officials had closed and quarantined all travel from China.

To wit, public health documents reveal that Theresa Tam knew as of mid-January that person-to-person transmission of the coronavirus was possible:

Did anyone, including Theresa Tam, think that these documents would never be seen?

**

A clip has resurfaced of Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam suggesting the use of virus tracking “bracelets” and using police to enforce quarantine measures in a 2010 documentary. 

Tam was included in a segment in the film Outbreak: Anatomy of a Plague, which has recently been shared on social media. 

Indeed, there is a lot of very sympathetic behaviour going on and it's troubling:

China's puppet, the WHO, "accidentally" published negative (and presumably untrue) data about remdesivir while China was actively stealing Gilead's IP by trying to patent it in China. #DecouplefromChina https://t.co/93fNfc1tU7

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) April 29, 2020

 

**

Even doctors seemed bemused by the CBC's Pravda-esque questions: "Many frontline doctors are quietly questioning decisions of the Trudeau government," said Dr. David Jacobs. 

"There were ways to prevent COVID-19 from spreading to Canada, they just weren't taken," he added.

** 

We are failing seniors? 

(Sidebar: these seniors.)

Excuse me? "We" didn't close several strategic medical supply depots in 2018 that are meant to house the necessary personal protective equipment our front line health workers need in exactly times like this.

"We" didn't send hundreds of thousands of medical masks and gloves to landfills last year, and let hundreds of tons of other medical supplies expire without replenishing them like Justin Trudeau's government did last year.

"We" didn't ship hundreds of thousands of pounds of other critically needed medical supplies overseas to China, just as the pandemic was coming here.

"We" didn't fail to enact travel bans or even properly screen travellers who were arriving at airports from global hotspots like Wuhan or Milan. Not only did the government fail to take sensible precautions like this, that other nations like Taiwan and New Zealand did, but Justin Trudeau scolded Canadians for even suggesting it.

These are just the latest examples where "we" are being blamed for something that Justin Trudeau has done. Last year "we" were taken to task by him because someone (who can remember who?) had been caught wearing blackface several times, so many times in fact that that special someone couldn't even put a number on the amount of times they wore blackface. (author's note: I can tell you exactly how many times I've worn blackface—zero).

Before blackface, "we" didn't fire a woman from our Cabinet (and force another to resign) for standing up to us on a principle of prosecutorial independence & government interference, rather than just go along with a scheme that allowed other privileged friends evade responsibility.

“We” didn’t break Canadian law by taking private jets to the private Bahamian island of a billionaire who regularly lobbies our own government.

And in the now-infamous "Kokanee grope" incident, Justin Trudeau had to give us Canadians a sermon on sexual harassment. Again, "we" didn't sexually harass a female reporter at a local newspaper, then try to laugh it off by saying "if I knew you were a reporter I wouldn't have been so forward."

How embarrassing for Justin but blaming others for his weaknesses is his specialty.

So, what is it that Derek Sloan should apologise for?


Also - wearing masks, sealing borders and just general preparedness was folly, really, eh, Theresa?:

Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children says it now has two patients with unrelated cases of COVID-19 — and one of them is linked to an outbreak that infected their parents and a member of the clinical team.

**

Ontario is reporting 525 new COVID-19 cases today and 59 more deaths.

That ends three consecutive days of declining numbers of new cases.

**

The University Health Network estimates that approximately 35 people have died from cardiac issues as a result of delayed procedures due to coronavirus healthcare restrictions in Ontario. 

Ontario’s Minister of Health Christine Elliot revealed the estimated deaths when questioned about whether she had any knowledge of “collateral damage” resulting from restrictions to elective procedures. 

“I understand that a report has been released today by UHN with respect to cardiac deaths and it has been estimated that approximately 35 people may have passed away because their surgeries were not performed,” said Elliot during Tuesday’s daily coronavirus briefing.  

**

The Public Health Agency yesterday acknowledged it underestimated deaths from Covid-19 in Canada. The Commons health committee earlier heard testimony that actual infection rates will be five times Agency estimates: “It’s kind of hard to look at predictions.”

It's just money:

Federal executives billed thousands in commercial flights for routine business even after the Department of Health advised Canadians to stay home where possible. Records show managers booked unnecessary travel the very day Prime Minister Justin Trudeau asked the public to “figure out how to stay home from work and work from home”.

**

Full-time pandemic relief work for military reservists will cost taxpayers nearly half a billion dollars, the Parliamentary Budget Office said yesterday. Expenses are double the cost of the navy’s last aircraft carrier: “The front line is everywhere.”

** 

Parliament has now guaranteed some $16 billion worth of interest-free loans for small business, according to the Department of Finance. MPs said small operators disqualified on technicalities are becoming desperate as competitors reap a windfall: “There are so many holes in these programs.”

(Sidebar: where is this money coming from and how will it be paid back?)

**

Statistics Canada reports nearly one-third of Canadian businesses who responded in a newly released survey they have seen their revenues plummet by 40 per cent as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic.

A further one-fifth of businesses reported a revenue drop of between 20 per cent and 40 per cent, suggesting that more than half of Canadian companies have watched earnings drop since the crisis began in March.

Make no mistake - no one cares about justice anymore than they care about order:

As police closed in on a killer who had already murdered more than a dozen people in a rural corner of Nova Scotia, the suspect narrowly escaped by driving a replica police car through a field under cover of darkness, the RCMP revealed Tuesday.

**

Now Global News has learned the RCMP has no national protocol for when an emergency alert should be used, even in cases involving an active shooter.

“There is currently no national RCMP policy on the use of the national Alert Ready system,” said RCMP national spokesperson Cpl. Caroline Duval.

**

The Tuesday decision that granted Marco Muzzo, the heir to a billion-dollar family contracting firm, day release was not made public. The mother of the children killed posted the decision on her Facebook page.

Why, if we didn't have a border, this wouldn't be a problem:

More than half of the individuals being held in Canadian immigration detention centres have been freed during the coronavirus pandemic, according to Global News. 

Between March 17 and April 19, 206 people who were being held for immigration violations or other reasons were freed by the Immigration and Refugee Board of Canada. 

During this period, the number of detainees being held in various immigration holding facilities, including provincial jails, fell from 353 to 147 people.

I can appreciate that not many have contingency plans for every crisis. What I cannot appreciate is that a system that richly rewards its loud and tiresome unions cannot muster even a vaguely effective effort to fill in any gap:

Joanne’s story:
Shutdown was announced on a Friday. By Monday morning both girls’ entire schedules were posted and they were told to be online by 8:30 a.m. Noa spends five hours a day on Zoom. In addition to her regular learning, she can choose amongst art, math, “mindfulness” and other clubs to attend. Toby is online six hours a day, continuing with group projects, taking quizzes and submitting assignments. Zoom class discipline is as rigorously monitored as in the classroom (Joanne sometimes hears the teachers chiding the kids when their focus strays.) ...

Lara’s story:
“At first we were given no direction and just told to relax, which seemed kind of fun for the kids, but terrifying for me as a parent.” For two weeks, Lara heard nothing from the school or the school board. In the third week she was notified that she would receive links to resources. The links were “generic,” Lara said, and not related to her children’s specific curricula. Looking through them was like “wandering in a maze.” Some offered programs you could register for, but demanded a fee. Others were program “teases” that were not yet available. They “really did not help at all.”

Where is Kim Jong-Un?

It's still up in the air:

South Korea’s minister for North Korean affairs, Kim Yeon-chul, said on Tuesday that Kim Jong-un may have stayed out of the public eye to protect himself from COVID-19, not because he is ill. An authoritative source familiar with U.S. intelligence reporting said on Monday that it was entirely possible Kim Jong-un had disappeared from public view to avoid exposure to COVID-19, adding that the sighting of his presidential train in the coastal resort area of Wonsan did suggest he may be there or have been there recently. 

**

Kim Pyong Il, 65, is the last known surviving son of North Korea’s founder, Kim Il Sung. After losing out in the 1970s to his half-brother, Kim Jong Il -- who ended up running the country from 1994 to 2011 -- Kim Pyong Il spent about four decades overseas in diplomatic posts including in Hungary, Bulgaria, Finland, Poland and the Czech Republic before returning to Pyongyang last year.

Although Kim Pyong Il has been effectively sidelined -- he was largely purged from state media and never developed enough power back home to mount a serious challenge for leadership -- some North Korea watchers say he could end up taking over from the 36-year-old Kim Jong Un, who hasn’t named a successor. This is mainly because he has Kim blood, and he’s a man.

**

Two defectors told Reuters their relatives in North Korea did not know that Kim has been missing from public view for almost two weeks, said they didn't want to discuss the issue, or abruptly hung up when the supreme leader was mentioned.

Kim's health is a state secret in insular North Korea and speculation about him or his family can invite swift retribution.

And now, it's like 101 Dalmatians but with eighty fewer pups!:

Shadow, a Neopolitan mastiff, gave birth to a litter of a whopping 21 puppies on April 20, breaking the current Australian record of 19.

Typically, the average litter for this breed is six to 10 puppies.

(Merci)