SEE: Coronavirus, Handle, People, Totally

Yep:

More than three dozen workers at a Chatham-Kent greenhouse operation have tested positive for COVID-19, making the facility the site of the community’s biggest outbreak so far.

There are 41 ill employees from Greenhill Produce in Kent Bridge. Of those, 39 are migrant workers, according to the region’s top public health official, Dr. David Colby. None is hospitalized and all 250 of its staff have been tested.

**

Federal failure to stock up on vital medical supplies has cost taxpayers some half-billion dollars, according to figures submitted to the Commons government operations committee. The Department of Public Works said it’s now forced to pay a 380 percent pandemic price mark-up for masks needed by doctors, nurses and paramedics: “If the stockpile had been stocked up we would have saved a lot of money.”

**

Canada’s potato industry joins a growing number of food sectors that finds itself in crisis, a crisis sparked by the near elimination of demand for french fries.

**

But for a group of civil engineers at the University of Alberta, the finding was no surprise. In their world, they say, it’s well known that building ventilation systems are efficient disseminators of viruses and other pathogens, and they believe the COVID-19 bug is no exception.

Aided by a $440,000 federal-government grant, they’re now working on ways that buildings could change their HVAC set-ups to curb the risk of infection, what the researchers call a “non-pharmaceutical” intervention against the disease.

Also - Russians picked a bad week to not seal themselves off from their Chinese neighbours:

Russia overtook China in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases on Monday, when its tally climbed above 87,000, as pressure rose on the government to consider easing lockdown restrictions for businesses to help shore up the rattled economy.

Russia, the world’s largest country by territory, has been on lockdown since President Vladimir Putin announced the closure of most public spaces in late March. These measures are due to expire on April 30 and Putin has not yet said if he plans to extend them.

Anna Popova, the head of Russia’s safety watchdog Rospotrebnadzor, told state television on Monday that, in her view, restrictions should be in place until May 12.

(Sidebar: and why would anyone believe China's statistics?)


And - say it again, Rex!:

So let us ask again, can it be true that our Canadian government, finding itself without the most basic medical protective devices, would (a) go to the source of the plague for them, (b) have any confidence that what came under the consent of its Communist government could be relied upon, and (c) should be in some state of surprise that what was sent, over one million were — this is a soft word — defective?

And should this cake want icing, recall that this Canadian government had earlier sent 16 tonnes of our own medical masks (which were not defective) to China. Our flawless government created the shortage by sending good devices to China. Then in its boundless wisdom it attempted to remedy the self-inflicted shortage by importing defective devices — from China. There should be an award for this kind of thinking.

I beg your indulgence for a small thought experiment. Just imagine if Canada had a Parliament! I know this is a strain. A parliament is a place where the people elected to make choices for all Canadians (let us call this a government) are daily interrogated by other people, also elected (let us call them the opposition), about their heart-breakingly ludicrous decisions?

Such as, for example, going to China for medical devices during a pandemic originating from (and then denied by the Chinese government as originating from) there.

It would be really great to have a “counter-voice,” a democratic “check” during so anxious a time, and a designated venue for public challenge on matters of deepest consequence to all Canadians. 

Ideally, it would be a hallowed, historic, national institution, whose purpose was to express the national will and perform oversight and accountability on the government.

Canadians don't want accountability. They want beer.




Fine. Don't go to Australia. Don't trade with it. See if Australia cares if it never trades with China ever again. Who wants crappy products made in a country that abuses its own people and has its tentacles in every facet of Western life? Who needs it? Why not court the Taiwanese, the Japanese, the Koreans? You know - people who don't release a virus onto the world and then lie about it:

A leading Chinese official has urged Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison to discontinue an independent inquiry into the beginnings of the coronavirus, warning that Chinese students and tourists may boycott visiting the country, as well as sales of key agricultural exports such as beef and wine.  

Chinese Ambassador Cheng Jingye was the one who issued the statement, labelling a push for an independent COVID-19 inquiry by the federal government as “dangerous.” Jingye warned that if Australia continued to be “unfriendly” to China, that Chinese citizens would have second thoughts about visiting the country. 

Admitting that the Chinese government had not handled the coronavirus debacle perfectly, he said that the Chinese people had been “dismayed” by the negative response by countries around the world, including Australia, according to The Daily Mail.

“I think in the long term… if the mood is going from bad to worse, people would think, ‘Why should we go to such a country that is not so unfriendly to China? The tourists may have second thoughts," Jingye told The Australian Review.

Waltz this!

Also - somewhere, Derek Sloan is is luxuriating in a sun-shower of his own rightness:

Today I was going to ask Trudeau about how China managed to convince 8 members of the WHO committee to vote in favour of the Xi Jinping's virus coverup. Tam was on the committee. How did she vote?
I wasn't chosen, so you have to settle for 5 Qs begging for more gov. spending.

— Keean Bexte (@TheRealKeean) April 27, 2020

No, we shouldn't replace US funding to the WHO.

Here is why:

Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus pointed out that the WHO warned the COVID-19 outbreak constituted a 'Public Health Emergency of International Concern' on January 30, when there were only 82 cases registered outside China.

"The world should have listened to WHO then carefully," he told a virtual press briefing.

Oh, they listened, you liar:

A prominent physician and key member of Canada's COVID-19 Immunity Task Force says the World Health Organization (WHO) placed too much confidence in Chinese data on the outbreak and set back the world's response by as much as three weeks.

"I think they were a little too deferential. They knew from SARS-1 that there had been problems with incomplete reporting," Dr. David Naylor told CBC News Network's Power & Politics Thursday.

"I think we lost two to three weeks and I think that's regrettable, and I think that will come to light when a review is done."

Throwing borrowed money around doesn't fix anything:

Initiatives such as commercial rent relief and the Canada Emergency Response Benefit (CERB) discourage people from working — or businesses keeping their doors open — in order to meet eligibility requirements that are too strict, he said.

“These massive programs will be like a gigantic experiment in freakonomics because in many cases they are having the opposite of their intended effect,” he told reporters.

Quebec refused to battle Kaiser Bill (the non-de Blasio one) over "national service":

The Department of Employment acknowledges pandemic relief programs have been announced without details or even definitions on how benefits will be paid. MPs in the Commons human resources committee questioned the Prime Minister’s offer of $5,000 grants to students “who choose to do national service”.

Speaking of world wars, did we lose one? Because this looks like we lost one to a pack of officious little fascists:

A church in Aylmer, Ontario may face charges after ignoring rules on social distancing and instead holding services on Sunday morning.

Police had warned the Church of God about hosting the outdoor service, but the warning fell on deaf ears. Now, police say “people will be held accountable” after officers showed up and took video of the scene. Though officers took no immediate action on the day, it seems imminent, with police saying they are readying a file for prosecutors.

On Sunday, some 70 cars were seen arriving to the church’s parking lot. The local pastor, Henry Hildebrandt, spoke from a raised platform as those who gathered to hear his words remained in their vehicles. His celebration went out over a radio signal; the congregants tuned into it from their cars.

In their cars. 

That's more than one could say about people who sneak into Canada.

And the cops even help them with their bags.