Plenty of Blame to Go Around

Ford isn't the only idiot:

A picture of Ontario’s iron curtain is emerging at our border with Manitoba. We are seeing the permanent pandemic taking root, as 3 U.S. states and Atlantic Canada have made the loss of freedom a permanent fixture. #onpoli #wearelivingalie pic.twitter.com/coQ3PacYcZ

— Randy Hillier (@randyhillier) April 19, 2021

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Several Ontario highways and bridges bordering Quebec were heavily backed up early Monday morning due to Premier Doug Ford’s new inter-provincial COVID-19 checkpoints. 

Traffic reports showed blockages as long as 10 kilometres long near Montée Paiement as well as hundreds of motorists struggling to cross the Macdonald-Cartier Bridge between Gatineau and Ottawa. 

Stuff costs money:

The Ontario government has voted against a series of Opposition motions aimed at supporting essential workers, including one that sought to create a provincial paid sick-leave program.

NDP Leader Andrea Horwath presented the motions – which required unanimous consent of the legislature to pass – during a session today.

She called on Premier Doug Ford’s Progressive Conservatives to pass the sick-leave motion, but the government voted against the measure.

Government House Leader Paul Calandra says he anticipates the federal government will announce further enhancements to their sick-day program today.

The province has thus far rejected calls for a provincial program saying it would be needless overlap of the federal supports.

If Ontarians really thought the government went too far, they would not follow floor stickers:

The backlash was deep, wide, righteous and heartening — not least among folks who generally prefer harsher lockdowns to gentler ones. “He’s got the science absolutely upside-down,” University of Toronto epidemiologist Dr. David Fisman, chair of the province’s COVID-19 “science table,” told Global News. “We know in Ontario that the huge drivers right now of transmission are workplaces, particularly industrial workplaces, warehouses, Amazon distribution centres, post offices.” ...

That’s most travellers crossing the border nowadays, surely. There is no testing, no quarantine. You can still fly to Ontario. It makes no more sense than the federal government’s border-security theatre, though it’s at least less of an imposition.

It hardly even seems noting at this point on how bewildering this situation has become. Clearly Ford and Jones thought they had some idea of what Ontarians wouldn’t put up with. They declined to invoke a curfew, for example, or to restrict people travelling within the province. If they were hewing to some vestigial libertarian principle, presumably they wouldn’t have proposed implementing a police state. Surely there must have been people in cabinet, in caucus, who could have told Ford he was yet again courting disaster. Instead he blundered straight into it. Baffling.

Observe his federal counterparts:

NDP Leader Jagmeet Singh wants Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to consider invoking the federal Emergencies Act given the dire pandemic outlook in Ontario.

Justin's little b!#ch speaks!

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Health Minister Patricia Hajdu told the Commons health committee she is grateful for employees “doing their absolute best” this pandemic, but stopped short of an apology for mismanagement cited by auditors. “Are you the minister responsible for the Public Health Agency?” asked New Democrat MP Don Davies (Vancouver Kingsway). “Yes I am,” replied Hajdu.

And this is what she is responsible for:

Flights from Delhi continue to land in Canada despite India’s daily tally of COVID-19 infections surging to a record over the weekend — and amid the emergence of a new “double mutant” variant in the country. 

A federal government website that lists flights where someone has been confirmed to have been infected with COVID-19shows that from April 4 to April 16, there were 120 flights with a COVID-positive passenger or passengers.

It never occurred to anyone to stop flights from hot zones coming in.

What? Lockdowns don't work?!:

Alexander said he feels the new provincial lockdown — announced on Friday — might be the thing that “breaks the backs of Ontarians” because there’s “no credible” basis for it based on the data accumulated over the past 14 months.

He added that the lockdowns prevent low-risk individuals in society — children, teenagers, and healthy middle-aged people — from going about their normal lives freely with sensible precautions.

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“By locking down, you’re preventing natural immunity or some reasonable level close to it,” said Alexander.

Risch said that what we’ve faced is a “massive epidemic of stupidity.”

Tenenbaum, a periodontist based at the University of Toronto with a PhD in cell biology, added early on in the pandemic, they knew that an antibiotic called doxycycline could be a “very effective agent” to inhibit enzymes and the hyper inflammation that destroys lung tissue after COVID gets a hold of a patient.

When he tried to present it to his university colleagues, he said he was met with “stone silence” and incredulity because no one believed an antibiotic could work.

But at least there were comforting fictions!:

The Prime Minister’s Office in internal emails directed staff to “use the success stories” in public announcements on pandemic management. Staff recommended skewing information to emphasize positive news over factual reporting: “Use the success stories rather than specific delivery numbers.”