In Canada, screwing up royally is a group effort.
It starts at the federal level and works its way down:
As deadly new variants of COVID-19 wreak havoc around the world, two countries of great concern are Brazil and India, each of which is reeling from a huge spike in infections and deaths from new variants, the P.1 variant in Brazil and the B.1.617 in India. The Indian variant — the “double mutant” strain — has two mutations, the E484Q and the L452R. The L452R is especially problematic, as it has 20 per cent greater transmissibility and leads to a greater than 50 per cent reduction in antibody efficacy. ...
Meanwhile, Canada has done nothing to address this most recent serious threat emanating from the mutants in Brazil and India and being transmitted by returning passengers. Canada briefly introduced additional screening for passengers from Brazil but then dropped the additional measures. Health Minister Patty Hajdu had to admit that restricting flights from Brazil would make no difference as the variant was already in circulation in Canada, a comment reiterated by Dr. Bonnie Henry, chief provincial health officer of British Columbia.
(Sidebar: this Bonnie Henry.)
Tests are delayed. Medical oxygen is scarce. Hospitals are understaffed and overflowing. Intensive care units are full. Nearly all ventilators are in use, and the dead are piling up at crematoriums and graveyards. India recorded over 250,000 new infections and over 1,700 deaths in the past 24 hours alone, and the U.K. announced a travel ban on most visitors from the country this week. Overall, India has reported more than 15 million cases and some 180,000 deaths — and experts say these numbers are likely undercounted.
I'll just leave this right here:
Under the Aeronautics Act, the Minister of Transport requires air carriers on flights to deny boarding to any passenger who is not a Canadian citizen or permanent resident and certain foreign nationals.
With the exception of the pointless closing of the US-Canada border, no flights have been completely restricted.
The federal government can restrict flights from hot zones but hasn't and won't.
On the supply side, the public system cannot be reasonably expected to expand capacity by spending more money since provincial governments already devote about 40 per cent of their budgets to health care. At the same time, private options (which may act as a pressure valve and also stimulate competition) are few and far between, are generally unavailable to the majority of the population, and are usually discouraged by government policy. This means that when the public system is saturated, patients must either endure lengthy waits or leave Canada to receive treatment. In a departure from the norm, Saskatchewan is one of the few provinces that has recently recognized how third-party private clinics can complement public resources and reduce wait times.
Meanwhile, on the demand side, individuals face few incentives to use services responsibly. Notably, and unlike most other universal health-care systems in the world, cost-sharing is effectively prohibited in Canada by federal regulations that govern transfer payments to the provinces. In the absence of any cost-sharing incentives (however small), it’s inevitable that our health-care system will be overused and potentially abused.
You see, the single payer system has always rationed healthcare (and misused it) but this time, it's doing it to ramp up paranoia:
Hospitals are shifting critically ill patients around, looking for any empty bed. Nurses and doctors are putting in exhaustion-defying amounts of overtime. Some provinces are opening new intensive care unit capacity.
But it may not be enough to stave off a point no one wants to reach in the pandemic — when only a handful of ICU beds remain but a greater number of patients need those spots.
That point is drawing perilously close in Ontario and possibly parts of Saskatchewan, even as some other provinces don't have a single hospitalized COVID-19 patient.
It means some of the hardest decisions health-care providers ever face will have to be made: who gets potentially life-saving care and who doesn't.
It's easy. Just put these patients into nursing homes. That way, they can be forgotten.
Take your saline, you flat-earther anti-vaxxer!:
Six people at an immunization clinic in Ontario were mistakenly injected with saline solution instead of the Pfizer vaccine.
A statement from Mackenzie Health on Monday said the incident happened on March 28 at its COVID-19 vaccine clinic located at Cortellucci Vaughan Hospital north of Toronto.
Also - putting aside the fitness of any of the available (HA!) flu shots - whether they will work or fell one with a fatal blood clot - consider that the federal government has such contempt for the Canadian national that not even personal protective equipment, let alone medicine, was worth investing in:
Here in southern Ontario’s Niagara region, some 26 per cent of residents have received at least one dose of a vaccine and 2 per cent are fully vaccinated, according to government data. In neighbouring Erie and Niagara counties on the U.S. side, roughly 44 per cent of people have been given at least one dose; 30 per cent have been fully vaccinated.
Canada is like that fat girl who stays with the abusive Liberal boyfriend because she doesn't think she can do any better.
Riding on one's scooter will kill one's grandmother:
The video appears to show a boy on a scooter being knocked down during a conversation with an OPP officer. The audio of the incident offers some insight.
“Don’t touch me,” a youth can be heard saying. “What are you doing?”
Another young person can be heard saying “he’s 12 years old” and “we are trying to leave, man.”
The audio is believed to be one of the officers saying, “He failed to identify” and “You don’t talk to an adult like this.”
It has not been confirmed if the boy is 12, but in the video, it is clear this is a youth that is much smaller than the police officer. Whether the boy was thrown from the scooter or there is another explanation will be part of the investigation. A fair probe to gain all context from all sides of this is necessary.
It was never about one's safety, if one was still wondering.
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