As I Was Saying Before

Yes, well ... :

If, indeed, Ontario and Quebec should slow down their relaunches because the coronavirus is not going away in those provinces, the attitude seems to be that the rest of the country should stay in some kind of solidarity lockdown whether they need to or not.

A sort of “We’re all in this together!” gesture. No thanks.

On Friday, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs announced his province is moving to the third phase of it’s relaunch.

Effective immediately, New Brunswickers can expand social contact to include family and friends, although indoor socializing should be restricted to 10 or fewer people.

“Non-regulated health care professionals, including acupuncture and naturopath businesses, can reopen.” So can barbers, hairstylists, nail parlours, tattoo artists and spas.

Next Friday, gyms can reopen, as can swimming pools, yoga studios, saunas and water parks. And youth sports leagues can resume. All of those, though, with social distancing and sanitizing rules, of course.

Why not? New Brunswick only ever had a total of 121 cases of COVID-19, no deaths. And there is now just one active case.

If, as Higgs promises to do, the province continues widespread testing and contact tracing, why shouldn’t it reopen?

Why, it seems that sensible measures were taken and that is why the proverbial curve  has flattened.

Interesting.


Also:

Japan’s state of emergency is set to end with new cases of the coronavirus dwindling to mere dozens. It got there despite largely ignoring the default playbook.

No restrictions were placed on residents’ movements, and businesses from restaurants to hairdressers stayed open. No high-tech apps that tracked people’s movements were deployed. The country doesn’t have a centre for disease control. And even as nations were exhorted to “test, test, test,” Japan has tested just 0.2 per cent of its population — one of the lowest rates among developed countries.

Yet the curve has been flattened, with deaths well below 1,000, by far the fewest among the Group of Seven developed nations. In Tokyo, its dense centre, cases have dropped to single digits on most days. While the possibility of a more severe second wave of infection is ever-present, Japan has entered and is set to leave its emergency in just weeks, with the status lifted already for most of the country and Tokyo and the remaining four other regions set to exit Monday. ...

Experts consulted by Bloomberg News also suggested a myriad of factors that contributed to the outcome, and none could point to a singular policy package that could be replicated in other countries.

Nonetheless, these measures still offer long-term lessons for countries in the middle of pandemic that may yet last for years. ...

Although political leadership was criticized as lacking, that allowed doctors and medical experts to come to the fore — typically seen as a best practice in managing public health emergencies. “You could say that Japan has had an expert-led approach, unlike other countries,” Tanaka said. ...

If a deadlier second wave does follow, the risk factor in Japan, which has the world’s oldest population, remains high. The country has speedily approved Gilead Sciences Inc.’s remdesivir and is now scrambling to allow the use of still unproven Fujifilm Holdings Corp.’s antiviral Avigan. There are calls for the country to use the time it has bought itself to shore up its testing and learn in the way its neighbors did from SARS and MERS.

Why, it looks as though Japan was proactive and not stunted, timid or hesitant.

Unlike certain countries north of the United States one might be familiar with.