Wow, Canada Certainly Has A Handle On Being the Global COVID Screw-Up, Doesn't It?

If all else fails, blame the Orange Man:

Deep in the throes of a severe third wave, Canada, once praised for its pandemic response, is now one of the only countries in the world simultaneously fighting outbreaks of three highly contagious and deadly COVID-19 variants.

Variants make up about two-thirds of all new infections across the country, and as of Thursday, nearly 17,000 COVID-19 cases were caused by mutant strains. To make matters worse, their spread is far outpacing Canada’s slow and uneven vaccine rollout and young and middle-aged adults are getting sicker than ever. 

One ICU patient under age 50 is dying every 2.8 days, said Dr. Michael Warner, medical director of critical care at Toronto’s Michael Garron Hospital. In British Columbia, the median age for people who’ve contracted a variant is 35. On Wednesday, Quebec logged the death of a 16-year-old—the province’s youngest pandemic victim yet. And SickKids in Toronto, one of the world’s leading hospitals for children, is going to accept adult ICU patients for the first time.

(Sidebar: about that third wave ...)

But still:

The Ontario government's health agency is telling hospitals across most of the province to stop performing all but emergency and life-saving surgeries because of the growing caseload of COVID-19 patients, CBC News has learned.

A memo was sent to hospitals Thursday night telling them to postpone their non-emergency surgeries, effective Monday, everywhere but in northern Ontario. Pediatric specialty hospitals are excluded from the order. 

Ontario has not ordered such an across-the-board postponement of non-emergency surgeries since the first wave of the pandemic hit the province in March 2020.

Now, about that:

I suspect it will be like January when we did something similar. The wave won’t happen, hospital will sit partially empty, we’ll send staff home, much needed surgeries and diagnostics will get added to the backlog, Ford and Co will announce they ‘saved the hospitals’.

Amazingly… or not amazingly at all depending on your level of cynicism…during the last year I have yet to receive a directive to increase ICU beds.

Hhhhmmmm ....

How's that vaccine thing coming along?:

Right now, Trudeau is playing an ‘experimental” game with it, but the virus and its variants are winning, Over a year in, and we’re in another lockdown and stay-at-home order. Infections have spiked dramatically, and ICUs are filling up with younger patients.

“The virus is going to evolve in response to antibodies, irrespective of how we administer vaccines,” Paul Bieniasz, a retro-virologist at the Rockefeller University told Scientific American. “The question is: would we be accelerating that evolution by creating country-sized populations of individuals with only partial immunity?”.

Remember - the snowboard instructor banked on China coming through for him.

Also - aside from blood clots, what else could go wrong?

But we already know who is responsible:

A joint China-World Health Organization (WHO) study into COVID-19 has provided no credible answers about how the pandemic began, and more rigorous investigations are required — with or without Beijing’s involvement, a group of international scientists and researchers said on Wednesday.

The joint study, released last week, said the likeliest transmission route for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, involved bats and other wildlife. It all but ruled out the possibility it had leaked from a laboratory.

In an open letter, 24 scientists and researchers from Europe, the United States, Australia and Japan said the study was tainted by politics.

“Their starting point was, let’s have as much compromise as is required to get some minimal cooperation from China,” said Jamie Metzl, senior fellow at the Atlantic Council think tank, who led the drafting process for the letter.

The study’s conclusions were based on unpublished Chinese research, while critical records and biological samples “remain inaccessible,” the letter said. ...

The joint China-WHO study said the lab leak theory was “extremely unlikely,” saying there was “no record” that any laboratory had kept SARS-CoV-2-related viruses. Tedros said more research was required to “reach more robust conclusions.”

But Metzl said China should disclose information that would allow the lab-leak hypothesis to be disproved.

“China has databases of what viruses were being held … there are lab notes of the work that was being done,” he said.

Responding to the letter on Thursday, foreign ministry spokesman Zhao Lijian said its “purpose was self-evident” and that countries like the United States, not China, were guilty of politicizing the inquiry into COVID-19’s origins.

“They insist on politicizing the issue of traceability, damaging and disrupting China’s cooperation with the WHO, discrediting China and publicly challenging the independence and scientific conclusions of scientists,” he said.

Well, thank God someone isn't going hungry during this pandemic:

Despite the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, the total number of billionaires in the world grew by an “unprecedented” amount in the last year, and the richest are getting richer.

That’s according to the latest list compiled by business magazine Forbes analyzing the world’s wealthiest people.

The magazine uses stock prices and exchange rates from March 5 to calculate the net worths of billionaires.

The Forbes report found the total number of billionaires grew to 2,755, with 660 more than a year ago.

A total of 493 were newly added to the list, Forbes reported.

Further, the report said 250 people who had fallen off the list in the past were re-added, and 86 per cent of the billionaires are more wealthy now than they were just 12 months ago.

At the top of the list, for a fourth year in a row is Amazon founder Jeff Bezos who is worth a reported $177 billion.

Elon Musk is now the second-richest billionaire, with a net worth of $151 billion.