Mid-Week Post

And it shall be to you as a sign on your hand and as a memorial between your eyes, that the law of the Lord may be in your mouth. For with a strong hand the Lord has brought you out of Egypt.

As of this writing, there have been 402 deaths in Canada.




No matter what the crisis is, one can always rely on the Canadian government to stand up for its Chinese bosses:

China did not just stop selling masks — it also bought up much of the rest of the world’s supply. According to official data, China imported 56 million respirators and masks in the first week after the January lockdown of the city of Wuhan, where the coronavirus emerged. 

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By directing the masks through Huawei, the CCP is clearly seeking to pressure Canada to give in on the 5G issue, allowing the dangerous CCP-controlled company to have control over our 5G networks.

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Chinese firms and overseas Chinese organizations are the main means to realize Beijing’s global sourcing, buying up stock from the United States, Europe, Australia, and other countries.

Sometimes, Chinese companies negotiated with major international manufacturers and asked them to sell or donate their stocks to China.

In recent weeks, countries around the world with severe outbreaks began running low on medical supplies.

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(source)

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“The W.H.O. really blew it,” Trump said in a Twitter post. “For some reason, funded largely by the United States, yet very China centric. We will be giving that a good look. Fortunately I rejected their advice on keeping our borders open to China early on. Why did they give us such a faulty recommendation?”

However, Dr. Bruce Aylward, senior advisor to the WHO Director-General, defended the U.N. agency’s relationship with China, explaining that its work with Beijing authorities was important to understand the outbreak which began in Wuhan.

“It was absolutely critical in the early part of this outbreak to have full access to everything possible, to get on the ground and work with the Chinese to understand this,” he told reporters. “This is what we did with every other hard hit country like Spain and had nothing to do with China specifically.”

When is the flattening of the curve supposed to happen?:

Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe says there's a kernel of good news in the province's latest COVID-19 figures.

Saskatchewan reported four new cases on Monday for a total of 253.

Four people were in hospital and two of those patients were in intensive care. So far, three people have died.

Moe said the province will be changing the way it reports the spread of the novel coronavirus by also discussing active cases — with the number of people who have recovered from the illness removed from the overall total.

"So active cases are down by 10 today from 179 yesterday — now 169 active cases today," Moe said at a news conference.

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The city of Toronto is recalling $200,000 worth of surgical masks that were distributed to long-term care homes.

In a press release, the city says it got reports of ripping and tearing, and discovered the masks don’t meet its specifications for such equipment.

More than 62,000 masks — out of an order of 200,000 — were distributed to the city’s long-term care homes on March 28.

The city is trying to figure out how many long-term care home staff were caring for patients while wearing the masks and if there was any exposure to COVID-19. 

Also - by clearing out all of the old people and the disabled, illegal migrants can take their places:

An Ontario nursing home besieged by COVID-19 didn't separate healthy from sick residents or staff until after 16 people had died, and two weeks after the home declared a respiratory outbreak, CBC News has learned.

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A battle is breaking out in southwestern Ontario between three long-term care facilities and local public health, with health officials refusing to test elderly patients for COVID-19 if they don’t have any symptoms.

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The Clinical Triage Protocol for Major Surge in COVID Pandemic – a copy obtained by the Toronto Sun dated March 28 is not stamped with the word “draft” – sets out guidelines for health-care professionals as a “last resort” when allocating life-saving resources during a shortage.

Advocates say the document makes unfair value judgments about the quality of lives lived by those in the disabled community in violation of their human rights, and has left many of them fearful that they won’t be entitled to the same level of care as everybody else.

(Sidebar: I guess those 30,000 ventilators won't be needed then.)

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Major supermarket chains are beginning to report their first coronavirus-related employee deaths, leading to store closures and increasing anxiety among grocery workers as the pandemic intensifies across the country.

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Mandatory coronavirus quarantines of seasonal foreign workers in Canada could hurt that country’s fruit and vegetable output this year, and travel problems related to the pandemic could also leave U.S. farmers with fewer workers than usual. 

(Sidebar: there are perfectly good Americans and Canadians who might want to picks some fruit.  Hhhmmm ...?)




To be filed under - "TOTAL BULLSH--":

Federal health officials appear to have warned in early February, as the novel coronavirus spread globally, that Canada did not have the resources to enforce a quarantine order on travellers returning from China’s Hubei province.

But you can close down an entire country.

Right ...

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... said no one ever:

The majority of Canadians support government bailouts for media organizations that are facing a collapse in advertising revenue since the COVID-19 pandemic shut down businesses across the country, according to a new poll.

Ahem ....


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Canadians are giving their political leaders high marks for their handling of the novel coronavirus pandemic, according to an exclusive Ipsos poll conducted for Global News.

Nearly three out of four Canadians (74 per cent) approve of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau‘s handling of the crisis, according to the poll.

Is that so?

Well, let's take a look at the numbers:

These are some of the findings of an Ipsos poll conducted between April 3 and 7, 2020, on behalf of Global News. For this survey, a sample of 1006 Canadians aged 18+ was interviewed online. Quotas and weighting were employed to ensure that the sample’s composition reflects that of the Canadian population according to census parameters. The precision of Ipsos online polls is measured using a credibility interval. In this case, the poll is accurate to within ± 3.5 percentage points, 19 times out of 20, had all Canadians aged 18+ been polled. The credibility interval will be wider among subsets of the population. All sample surveys and polls may be subject to other sources of error, including, but not limited to coverage error, and measurement error.

Online? Where anyone can simply respond to this poll as often as he or she likes?

Nearly all (97%) Liberal voters say they approve of the Prime Minister’s response to COVID-19, but a majority of NDP (71%) and Bloc (54%) supporters also approve. 

Oh, quelle surprise! I did not see that coming.

Now, about that:

Canadians are more satisfied with the actions taken by their provincial governments (79%) than by the federal government (65%).

The above was a poll conducted by Leger on March 24th of this year. The poll actually includes the questions asked by the polling group. The Ipsos poll does not. For a respected polling company that insists that this poll is an accurate reflection of how the majority of Canadians feel, that is a curious way to validate their claims.

Could Ipsos or the respondents to the poll expand on their conclusions? Has Justin stepped out of the taxpayer-funded cottage in the past twenty-seven days? Has he appeared in public picking up much needed supplies as Doug Ford has? Has he followed Ford's lead and spoken truthfully to the public as Jason Kenney has?

Justin has done none of these things.

Indeed, Justin has done the opposite of anything a leader might do in a time of crisis:

Let’s take a look at what Justin Trudeau said in late January:

“Our health system is very well prepared to deal with the coronavirus in Canada. We are taking all necessary precautions to prevent it from spreading. We are collaborating with our partners abroad, and Dr. Tam, who is the head of our Public Health Agency, is working as an expert at the WHO to ensure international coordination. Our best practices are in place at hospitals and we have put preventive measures in place at airports. The risk to Canadians remains low and our health care system is prepared to prevent the virus from spreading.”

If this was true, why is Canada desperately ordering millions of masks from foreign countries?

Why are we running short on personal protective equipment?

Why was our stockpile so depleted?

Why did we ship supplies to China?

Why are we unable to build the masks & supplies here?

Why are our hospitals warning of being overwhelmed?

Why are we now reliant on desperately buying a huge amount of supplies from China, something which wouldn’t have been necessary if we were ‘prepared’ as the government claimed?

 
Well, that wasn't helpful.


Do we need to rehash the business about the masks?

I guess we do:

These masks:

In regards to delayed shipments from the Americans, Trudeau said he expects shipments of medical supplies to be delivered.

When asked specifically if the US had blocked the shipment, Trudeau refused to provide more information, saying that productive conversations were have been had.

(Sidebar: oh, that's not the only question he refused to answer. Or this one, either.)

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Late on Monday, 3M issued a statement saying a deal had now been reached that would protect the sending of respirators — face masks — to Canada and elsewhere. 3M said they would import 166.5 million respirators over the next three months primarily from its manufacturing facility in China, starting in April.

This China:

Canada’s department of Global Affairs shipped 16 tonnes of personal protective equipment to China last month to help Beijing fight the novel coronavirus, an effort that it undertook even after the World Health Organization had warned countries to prepare for possible cases.

Critics are questioning the wisdom of exporting gear overseas just weeks before it was sorely needed in Canada. The Canadian government, however, says the shipment was an effort to collaborate with China in the fight against COVID-19, the disease caused by the coronavirus.

So, Canada was well-prepared in January but wasn't. Canada had supplies until they were sent to China.

How is this leadership? Who would be satisfied if their local grocery store sent away tonnes of cleaning supplies, toilet paper and even beer to China, leaving local consumers without?

At this point, one would see a riot.

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But who is to say that one cannot buy favour?

For Canadians, it works every time:

It took less than two hours for the first user reviews to arrive after the federal government’s Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) online portal opened Monday morning. 

“Successfully applied for the #CERB at 6.01am … Fully expected it to crash. It didn’t. Easy as pie,” tweeted one applicant at 7:26 a.m. who goes by the moniker Suburban Voyeur on Twitter.

YAY! Borrowed money that you will pay tax on and have to re-pay one day.

 

If you get it at all, that is. 

 

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As many as 63 per cent of businesses say they will have to let their staff go over the next three months, with only five per expecting to add to their workforce.

But ... but ... borrowed money!

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Hope faded yesterday that Parliament will pass a $71 billion wage subsidy bill before Easter. Rebates are already too late for more than a third of small employers surveyed, said the Canadian Federation of Independent Business: “They will not be able to access it.”

It must be all that leadership one keeps hearing about.

But at least the proles are happy and will continue being so until the money and supplies run out.

Happy days ahead.




Not guilty on the charge of being Catholic:

Pope Francis, speaking just a few hours after Australia’s highest court acquitted Cardinal George Pell of sexual abuse, on Tuesday offered his morning Mass for those who suffer today from unjust sentences.

Oh, the fresh hell!:

Local authorities in Ukraine have dismissed residents’ concerns that forest fires near the Chernobyl nuclear power station have led to unsafe radiation levels.

The radiation levels in the capital Kiev and the exclusion zone established around the plant in 1986, after an explosion there that caused the world’s worst nuclear accident, “did not exceed natural background levels,” the zone’s authorities said.

They said that the last time, though, so ...