Your middle-of-the-week knowledge-smoothie ...
After plans to tax the unvaxxed were revealed on Tuesday by Quebec Health Minister Christian Dubé, more than 7,000 people registered to receive their first COVID-19 vaccine dose since the announcement 24 hours ago.
“About 5K appointments were taken on January 10 and 7K yesterday, our record for several days,” Dubé tweeted this morning.
“107K doses administered yesterday,” he adds. “It’s encouraging!”
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says provinces are “right” to consider ways to encourage and incentivize COVID-19 vaccination.
His comments come just one day after Quebec Premier Francois Legault announced plans to impose a tax on any unvaccinated Quebecers who don’t have a valid medical exemption.
“Different jurisdictions are making different decisions about how to encourage people to get vaccinated, and as a federal government, we will be continuing to be there to support them in those decisions and to make sure that everyone gets vaccinated,” Trudeau said.
“Vaccines are about keeping Canadians safe, continuing to get through this pandemic the best possible way, and various orders of government are right to look at different ways of encouraging and incentivizing people to get vaccinated.”
Students and staff in Ontario schools and child-care settings will each get two rapid COVID-19 tests after schools return to in-person learning.Tests will be distributed starting next week first to staff, then to children in daycares and students in public elementary schools, followed by high school students.
Provincial officials say more tests will be provided when supply allows.
People with symptoms are to use two tests 24 to 48 hours apart and can return to school after negative results once their symptoms improve.
Ontario school boards can rotate between in-person and remote days or combine classes, if needed, to minimize school closures driven by virus-related staff absences when schools reopen next Monday.
Schools will now have to report daily data on staff absences to local public health units to monitor disruptions in schools now that the province has limited access to tests.
What a farce!
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The urgent care centre at Peel Memorial Centre for Integrated Health and Wellness in Brampton, Ont. will be closed due to “extreme capacity and staffing shortages,” according to a statement by William Osler Health System on Monday.
“Due to increasing volumes in our emergency departments, further compounded by our extreme capacity and staffing pressures, Osler has made the very difficult decision to temporarily close its urgent care centre at Peel Memorial until at least Feb. 1, 2022,” said the health authority.
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Radiologists are warning that Canadian hospitals are in serious need of more equipment and staff to deal with medical imaging backlogs that the country was already facing before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Dr. Gilles Soulez, president of the Canadian Association of Radiologists, said wait times for medical imaging that is critical for diagnoses was already more than the recommended one month when the pandemic began in March 2020. On average, he said, Canadians were waiting 50 to 82 days for a CT scan and 89 days for an MRI.
You should tax people for not getting their results.
That's what Quebec would do.
It's just an economy:
Half of businesses surveyed that were shuttered in 2021 lockdowns remained closed five months later, says a Bank of Canada study. Researchers said it was critical to calculate the scope of insolvencies and so-called “zombie” businesses: ‘They are essentially dead but haven’t finalized the closure process altogether.’**
But there are plenty of Canadians to hire:
The latest wave of COVID-19 infections has exacerbated a chronic labour shortage in food manufacturing reportedly hovering around 15 to 20 per cent of total positions, due in part to an aging workforce.
In response, a coalition of lobby groups representing the sector has banded together to push the federal government to approve an emergency expansion of the Temporary Foreign Worker (TFW) program to bridge the labour gap in the short term.
I'll just leave this here:
When applying for permanent residence in Canada, applicants must provide an immigration medical exam or identifier number from a previous medical exam.
According to CanadaVisa Media, “in-Canada immigration applicants may not need to do an additional medical exam for their permanent residency application.”
Introduced in June, 2021, the policy announcement came at a peak moment within the pandemic trajectory. The policy has been extended as of the beginning of 2022.
Big Government and its wing of brownshirts is watching you:
Opposition MPs yesterday ordered Commons ethics committee hearings into federal monitoring of cellphone users. It follows admissions by the Public Health Agency it tracked 33 million mobile devices using cell tower locators to monitor compliance with lockdown orders: “This was done in secret.”
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RCMP Commissioner Brenda Lucki yesterday urged Canadians to report suspicious internet activity including comments by people who express “anti-government, anti-law enforcement” opinions. The Mounties earlier praised federal proposals to censor legal web content deemed offensive: “When in doubt, report it.”
This doesn't suit the Narrative:
New data indicates that 46 per cent of people currently in Ontario hospitals with COVID-19 were admitted for reasons other than the virus.
The Ontario government released the data after indicating for some time that it would begin differentiating between those who were admitted for COVID-19-related illness and incidental admissions.
“We are updating Ontario’s public reporting to distinguish patients hospitalized due to #COVID19 from those admitted for other reasons with COVID-19,” Health Minister Christine Elliott tweeted Tuesday morning.
Also:
During a news conference on Monday, Alberta Chief Health Officer Deena Hinshaw admitted that Alberta Health Services (AHS) reported non-ICU patients as ICU patients throughout the pandemic.
“As we have been doing continual quality assurance work with our data, it was identified over time some units in some hospitals have shifted back and forth between being available for use as an ICU unit or a non-ICU unit,” Hinshaw said.
“In some of our historical data, patients admitted for COVID treatment were categorized as being in ICU when the unit they were on, in fact, had been changed back to a non-ICU unit at that time.”
In other words, the figures were wrong.
It's for the Earth.
Or something:
A deputy minister who called climate change a “massive issue facing humanity” billed nearly $11,000 in first-class airfare to attend a climate conference, records show. Cabinet has yet to detail all expenses for Canada’s 277-member delegation to the October 31 United Nations Conference on Climate Change in Glasgow: “It is important to make a positive contribution to what I think is a massive issue facing humanity, climate change.”
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Cabinet within 18 months will begin “phasing out fossil fuels,” says Environment Minister Steven Guilbeault. Opposition MPs yesterday demanded an explanation of Guilbeault’s remarks to a subsidized environmental advocacy website: “Phasing out fossil fuels, all of these things must be in place in the coming eighteen months.”
Why doesn't Goebbels walk anywhere?
We don't need the government regulating what people see online.
If parents are concerned, they can do their job as parents and monitor their kids:
But as parents like Nickerson lay down rules for online engagement, he says it lays bare a problem when it comes to the ever-growing online world: a lack of action from the Canadian government in regulating it.
“We haven’t really done anything yet,” said Natasha Tusikov, an assistant professor at York University and author of Chokepoints: Global Private Regulation on the Internet.
Canada has yet to pass substantive legislation that reins in the powerful tech giants behind the world of social media. The few proposals the government has brought forward fail to tackle what Tusikov says is the heart of the problem: the business model.
A ringing endorsement from the bribed press for censorship.
The North Korean Trudeau wants to amass a starving army:
North Korean leader Kim Jong Un called for boosting the country’s strategic military forces as he observed the test of a hypersonic missile, state media said on Wednesday, officially attending a missile launch for the first time in nearly two years.
On Tuesday authorities in South Korea and Japan detected the suspected launch, which drew condemnation by authorities around the world and prompted an expression of concern from the U.N. secretary-general.
The second test of a “hypersonic missile” in less than a week underscored Kim’s New Year’s vow to bolster the military with cutting-edge technology at a time when talks with South Korea and the United States have stalled.
After watching the test, Kim urged military scientists to “further accelerate the efforts to steadily build up the country’s strategic military muscle both in quality and quantity and further modernize the army,” KCNA news agency reported.
Israel refuses to be "bound" by Iran:
Prime Minister Naftali Bennett said on Monday that Israel would not be bound by any nuclear deal with Iran and would continue to consider itself free to act "with no constraints" against its arch-foe if necessary.
Indirect talks between Iran and the United States on salvaging the 2015 Iran nuclear deal resumed a week ago in Vienna. France's foreign minister said on Friday that progress had been made, although time is running out.
"In regard to the nuclear talks in Vienna, we are definitely concerned ... Israel is not a party to the agreements," Bennett said in public remarks, in a briefing to a parliamentary committee.
"Israel is not bound by what will be written in the agreements, if they are signed, and Israel will continue to maintain full freedom of action anywhere any time, with no constraints," he said.
Israel has called on world powers to maintain a credible military option against Iran while they pursue an agreement.
Lithuania cuts off route from Belarus over potash dispute:
Transport Minister Marius Skuodis said Wednesday that Lithuania will terminate its contract between Lithuanian Railways and state-run Belaruskali OAO from Feb. 1. Any future intermediary for the potash producer, seeking transit via Lithuania’s rail system, would need approval from the country’s national security commission, he said.
China further spreads itself thin:
China has accelerated settlement-building along its disputed border with Bhutan, with more than 200 structures, including two-storey buildings, under construction in six locations, according to satellite image analysis conducted for Reuters.
It reflects even more on Saint Teresa of Calcutta's legacy that the very people she came to help are doing their utmost to ensure that the poorest of the poor remain that way because reasons:
India has allowed Mother Teresa's charity to receive foreign funds, weeks after it refused to renew its licence.
On Christmas Day, India's home ministry announced it had not renewed the registration due to "adverse inputs".
Hindu hardliners have long accused the charity of using its programmes to convert people to Christianity. The charity has denied these allegations.
But the Missionaries of Charity is now back on the list of associations approved to receive foreign funds.
Consider this when the sectarian make-up the country changes.
Every single criticism against Pope Francis' recent comments just proves how right he is:
Alistair Currie, writing for CNN , erupted, “The Pope’s suggestion that failing to have children is selfish is far from the truth. Especially for those of us living in countries with a large environmental footprint, the choice to have a small family, or no human family at all, is one that helps everyone — particularly children.”
To say it helps children not to exist recalls Pope John Paul II’s “culture of death.” And apparently removing himself from the planet instead isn’t on Currie’s agenda.
He also didn’t balk at “fatherhood” and “motherhood” when we’re meant to call gender a social construct. Though not pethood yet, despite court rulings about the personhood of non-persons to accompany the non-personhood of persons. ...
Dawson likewise wrote that “since there’s no evidence to suggest people are happier with or without kids, the fewer children born to parents who don’t want them would have a net positive effect on human happiness.” As if nobody with a rough start ever ended up grateful for life, or cold calculations of various people’s impact on net happiness didn’t end darkly.
Dawson spoke of vets’ bills and skipping parties because his dog has “separation anxiety.” But “All of these sacrifices have been worth it.… There are challenges, but, as, I imagine, with some children — surely not all! — (pets) bring considerable joy.” Whereas the non-utilitarian asks whether you bring them joy. Or kids. (In fact parenthood brings great joy. But it’s not why we do it.)
Pope Francis is touring the grounds of Castel Santangelo, convinced of rightness he didn't have to work to prove.
Depriving students of the knowledge they need to compete in the marketplace and enrich their lives is itself racist and serves the discriminatory purposes of those so powerful that they can set public policy behind the scenes:
I am a math professor at an historically black college. I’m the son of an historian who chaired the Department of African and Afro-American Studies at a State University of New York college. I’m someone who has received 800 hate messages from supporters of the founder of the Ku Klux Klan. Racism is not merely an academic matter to me.
But Bill Gates’s initiative is itself racist, in that it calls quite good pedagogical practices “white supremacist.”
I won Oxford University’s top math awards for graduate students and I graduated summa cum laude with a degree in mathematics from Harvard University with the second-highest GPA in my graduating class. So I suppose I have some credibility when it comes to knowing how to train students in math.
Gates’s “anti-racist” curriculum claims that having students raise their hands before speaking promotes “white supremacy.” His surrogates are therefore declaring that being orderly is something only whites do.
The document presenting this curriculum makes the weird claim that having only a few students answer questions represents “power hoarding.” Besides the fact that, outside of law school, teachers usually don’t limit who can answer a question, apparently the authors of the curriculum have never heard of Mansa Musa.
Gates’ authors also say the idea that someone could be “good” at math is “white supremacy.” Tell that to the Egyptian mathematician Euclid!
One of the craziest parts of the document claims the fact that the “focus is on getting the ‘right’ answer” somehow represents “white supremacy.” A surefire way to produce NASA engineers is to tell students that getting the “right” answer (in quotation marks!) is optional. The contempt the authors of this report have for non-whites is palpable.
Or are Gates’s authors exceedingly clever? They write, “Teachers are teachers and students are learners.” No one can disagree with this tautology. Oh, wait, Gates’ authors do.
They also criticize the idea that “teachers or other experts can and should correct mistakes.” I won’t say anything more about that.
Gates’ guidelines propose to “[e]xpose students to mathematicians of color, particularly women of color and queer mathematicans [sic] of color.” What does this have to do with racism? Same-sex liaisons are illegal in some 35 African countries. One can hardly claim that such attitudes are unique to “white supremacists.”
The document also states, “This thinking creates meritocracy in the classroom.” This is the first time we’ve ever seen someone suggest that “meritocracy” is bad!
Bizarrely, Gates’ authors advise teachers to “[c]hallenge the notion that if a student did not pass one course they will not be ‘successful’ in the next course.” That is, in fact, how math works: if you fail Calculus II, you won’t pass Calculus III.
I guess Saint George's exploits weren't merely stories:
Scientists are celebrating one of the “greatest finds” in British paleontological history after the skeleton of a 180-million-year-old sea dragon was discovered in Rutland.
Measuring 10 metres in length, and with a skull weighing about one tonne, the ichthyosaur is the largest and most complete fossil of any marine reptile found in Britain. The discovery was made by Joe Davis, an employee of the Leicestershire and Rutland Wildlife Trust during a routine draining of a lagoon island at Rutland Water in February 2021.
Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles that lived in Britain 250 million years ago and became extinct 90 million years ago.
The animal was characterized by its large teeth and eyes and ranged in size from one to more than 25 metres. It was first identified in the 19th century by the paleontologist Mary Anning.
Dr. Dean Lomax, a paleontologist who has studied the species, said: “Despite the many ichthyosaur fossils found in Britain, it is remarkable to think that the Rutland ichthyosaur is the largest skeleton ever found in the U.K. It is a truly unprecedented discovery and one of the greatest finds in British paleontological history.”
“Not only is it the largest ichthyosaur skeleton ever found in Britain, but it is also the most complete skeleton of a large prehistoric reptile ever discovered in the U.K.”
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