Enough about the Constitution already, shut Canada down!

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NorthReport
Enough about the Constitution already, shut Canada down!

We could have been largely free of the pandemic by now https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/03/25/We-Could-Have-Been-Largely-Free-P...

NorthReport

Horgan

"Don't blow this for the rest of us"

NorthReport
NorthReport

It could become a lot worse for the unvaccinated

https://www.usatoday.com/story/opinion/2021/03/28/vaccinated-unvaccinate...

melovesproles

NorthReport wrote:
Horgan "Don't blow this for the rest of us"

So tone deaf, blaming the demographic that includes most of our front-line workers. 

I get that the NDP thinks younger voters don't vote in high enough percentages to matter but this is gross and not going to help the party brand longterm. Maybe Horgan and Ford have hired the same consulting firm?

kropotkin1951

Horgan runs the best liberal government that this country has seen in two generations. He is not tone deaf he is aiming his message at middle class voters and beating down on more marginal groups is a good way to divert from the fact that it is his government calling the shots and if the pandemic is worsening they are to blame for not taking proper measures.

Instead of taking accountability for its own choices, the B.C. government has scapegoated us. It says the blame doesn’t lie with Horgan’s own government, which may have waited too long to implement new restrictions, like putting an end to indoor dining, indoor gym sessions and indoor faith gatherings — it was reckless young hooligans.

COVID cases were rising in B.C. last fall when Horgan called a snap election. Back then, young people weren’t to blame for new cases, because Horgan wanted their votes. He campaigned on issues that matter to us, like housing and subsidized university. An Ipsos poll released ahead of the election, on Oct. 23, showed the NDP winning just under 49 per cent of the vote share among British Columbians aged 18 to 34. It worked: Horgan got his majority government

Now that the BC NDP has a firmer grip on power, Horgan doesn’t need the support of young people anymore. There is no cost for him to cast us aside — there won’t be another provincial election for years.

A group of renters saddled with enormous levels of student debt has no real voice in politics. We have no real student lobby, and no resources to create one. Though we’re the ones most often working on the frontlines — making and delivering food, asking people to please wear masks at our retail jobs — we’re an easy target for politicians like Horgan, and we always will be.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/03/31/Youth-Easy-Scapegoat-Horgan/

Every time the numbers start to spike, I hope we go into a full lockdown, but when we don’t, I always come up with an excuse for the government. I thought we stayed open over Christmas because people needed to buy gifts and then we’d close. I thought we stayed open over Valentine’s Day because people needed to buy gifts and then we’d close. Easter is next week so maybe that’s why we’re staying open.

I know that stores aren’t staying open because of the holidays but using these as milestones gives me something to use as a goal post. As we move past these milestones into a fog, I wonder when we get to stop.

When I’m standing behind my plexiglass, saying hello and goodbye to every single customer that comes in, a woman looks me dead in the eye and tells me to “stay safe.” It lasts with me the rest of my shift, and the shift after that. Who does she think is making me unsafe, and how can I be doing better staying?

I’m not sure how much longer I can be nice or patient, so forgive me if I’m blowing this for you.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/03/31/Young-People-Blowing-This-Retail-...

NorthReport

Horgan should have kicked their collective selfish asses a long time ago!

NorthReport

South Korea, Taiwan, Vietnam,
New Zealand, China, etc know the drill. It's time we stopped taking those stupid pills every morning in North America and started following science as opposed to the lunatic fringe.

NorthReport

Always the whiner, eh!

Criticism is is the lazy person's approach, and also boring without constructive alternative suggestions

Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen.

NorthReport
NorthReport

The best book written about the pandemic so far

Fighting the first wave

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/03/30/Best-Book-Written-About-COVID-Pan...

NorthReport
NorthReport
melovesproles

NorthReport wrote:
Always the whiner, eh! Criticism is is the lazy person's approach, and also boring without constructive alternative suggestions Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen.

Do you read the articles you post? From the article in your original post:

British Columbia, one of the last provinces to adopt a mask mandate, is not far behind Saskatchewan. In the absence of bold action, its caseload will likely lead the nation next week on a per capita basis. Imagine, it is even reporting more cases than Washington State. “The variants are like a thoroughbred and our vaccines are like a workhorse,” noted UBC evolutionary biologist Sally Otto to CTV News. But spotty data, insufficient testing and an incoherent strategy have underestimated the risks posed by variants as cases explode in the Lower Mainland. Congratulations, Mr. Horgan.

So yeah let's blame the demographic that makes up most of our frontline workers. I would expect that kind of anti-labour worker-bashing from Conservatives and Liberals. It's disappointing to see it from the NDP and it's indicative of the party moving to the right.

kropotkin1951

NorthReport wrote:

Always the whiner, eh! Criticism is is the lazy person's approach, and also boring without constructive alternative suggestions Armchair quarterbacks are a dime a dozen.

Here is the closing line from your original article. Horgan's response was to tell ALL young people that they are the problem. Heaven forbid our politicians, of any stripe, would take responsibility for their own decisions.

"There will be no normal in B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec and Ontario — until they change course, get real and go for zero."

kropotkin1951

I think that if Horgan wanted to vilify a group going into this weekend he should have said;

“The Christians are not paying as much attention to these broadcasts and, quite frankly, are putting the rest of us in a challenging situation,” he said. “Do not blow this.”

“I’m asking, I’m appealing to Christians to curtail your social activity.”

However unlike young people who are mostly following the advise I suspect a large plurality of Christians will be saying fuck the rest of you it is my right to meet with others who share my faith that a man rose from the dead two thousand years ago. This delusion will result in a spike of deaths but he didn't go after that demographic.

Horgan however went after my grandchildren who are cleaning rooms in hotels for all the "essential" travelers on their high Christian holiday, few of whom will be youth.

kropotkin1951

The BC government allowed BC Ferries to put on extra sailings when only emergency travel is advised. WTF kind of government action is that? Why didn't they institute real travel restrictions? I live in the Comox Valley and they WestJet just reopened up flights to Toronto, because you know those old people on the flights don't spread COVID only young people partying do.

melovesproles

The BC government allowed BC Ferries to put on extra sailings when only emergency travel is advised. WTF kind of government action is that? 

Pretty insane. The market for BC Ferries on Easter weekend is being prioritized by the BC government over their own public health orders. 

NorthReport

Finally Canada has a Premier that tells it like it is. Those 20 to 40 year olds should have had their selfesh collective asses kicked a long time ago.

Good on you John Horgan.

"If the glove fits...."

NorthReport
NorthReport

Talking about pathetic attempts trying to defend the undefendable

https://www.cbc.ca/player/play/1879703619680

cco

NorthReport wrote:
Finally Canada has a Premier that tells it like it is. Those 20 to 40 year olds should have had their selfesh collective asses kicked a long time ago.

Please, let this be the BCNDP campaign slogan next time.

kropotkin1951

cco wrote:

NorthReport wrote:

Finally Canada has a Premier that tells it like it is. Those 20 to 40 year olds should have had their selfesh collective asses kicked a long time ago.

Please, let this be the BCNDP campaign slogan next time.

The pathetic part is that North Report thinks he is helping his party with this kind of nasty attack. I think the twenty to forty year old should just agree with Horgan and all stay home to stay safe. A mass strike against the government and all the retailers and other businesses that rely on their labour.

NorthReport

These retailers need to be fined so severely it will put them out of business

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/mask-filtration-standards-marketplace-1.5...

NorthReport

Party on morons and put yourselves and others at risk

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/bc-big-white-covid-19-pa...

NorthReport

Over 4 million jabs in one day. Not too shabby!

https://www.rawstory.com/biden-vaccines-2651352874/

Pondering

NR is right. 20 to 40 year olds are being scapegoated. This was a failure of almost all the governments of Canada including NDP, Liberal and Conservative. The only governments to have done a passable job are the maritimes. BC has only been great in comparison to the massive failure of other provinces. 

I am happy to have recieved my first vaccination but I am in a position in which I have the choice to self-isolate unlike people in their 20s and 30s who have jobs that require them to be exposed.  There has been much talk on how hard this is on the mental health of kids and of those who are in isolation but the mental health of people just reaching the age of majority, dating, starting careers, is also at risk. "Failure to launch" could become endemic. 

Essential workers are being forced to work without sufficient protection then being blamed for catching Covid on the assumption that they are partying privately in large numbers. The outbreaks I am hearing most about are through schools and large workplaces like Amazon warehouses as well as religious communities and families. 

It is unfair to single them out for blame. 

NorthReport

dp

NorthReport

Finally some intelligent comments on the P.1 variant from Brazil and why John Horgan is staying awake at nite with concern about it

Why the P.1 Variant Poses So Great a Threat to BC

The virus mutation emerged in Brazil. It spreads explosively and slams the young.

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/04/05/P1-Variant-Poses-Threat-BC/

NorthReport
NorthReport
NorthReport

Satisfaction with Covid-19 management falls across Canada

https://researchco.ca/2021/04/05/covid19-management-canada/

NorthReport
NorthReport
NorthReport
NorthReport
NorthReport
NorthReport

Who else is tired of the bellyaching by the hospitality sector. You want to slow covid -19 down, stay home, stay away from restaurants, hotels, airplanes, cruises and practice social distancing

NorthReport

Who else is tired of the bellyaching by the super spreader hospitality sector. You want to slow covid -19 down, stay home, stay away from restaurants, hotels, airplanes, cruises and practice social distancing

contrarianna

Pondering wrote:

NR is right. 20 to 40 year olds are being scapegoated. ...

Glad you got your vaccine. but I'm guessing you do not really intend to say NR is right, along with Horgan, to scapegoat 20-40 year olds?

 NorthReport wrote:
Finally Canada has a Premier that tells it like it is. Those 20 to 40 year olds should have had their selfesh collective asses kicked a long time ago.

I see NR has now silently edited the above unhinged post, though the spammer's incoherent rage at any criticism of Horgan can be seen elsewhere in the thread.

Now NR is using his/her favourite tactic of distancing an embarrassing topic s/he started with off-topic spam when called out.

Part of the problem is spamming links before bothering to read them--as with the topic story--but I guess reading and thinking takes up time used for narcissistically spamming the North Report name.

Now as part of the mindless distancing spamming he/she has posted a link to scientists even more critical of BC and Horgan's flawed scapegoatng:

How BC Fumbled the Third Wave:  Four experts say leaders were warned of the variant threat but misread key data and failed to respond fast enough

....The modeller believes that Premier John Horgan showed his lack of understanding of the exponential dynamic when last week he singled out social young people for causing the rising wave in cases.

“Oh, it must be due to young people partying. But’s that not what’s happening. The variants are accounting for a larger share of the cases.”

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/04/07/How-BC-Fumbled-Third-Wave/?fbclid=IwA...

NorthReport

Yea right, it's all those seniors partying at Whistler up to all hours that forced the resort to shut down. Talk about denial!

And talking about denial, it is way past the due date for the Greens to look in the mirror and start addressing the racism within their ranks.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/04/08/Greens-Blast-COVID-Response-Urge-BC-G...

Can the Green party recover?

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/04/07/can-green-par...

NorthReport

Yes, No, Maybe There is Racism Within the Green Party

https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/04/08/green-officials-deny...

NorthReport

Vaccinate the teachers right after the essential workers

Vaccinate the teachers or close the damn schools

https://www.straight.com/education/patti-bacchus-vaccinate-teachers-or-c...

NorthReport
kropotkin1951

NorthReport wrote:

Yea right, it's all those seniors partying at Whistler up to all hours that forced the resort to shut down. Talk about denial! And talking about denial, it is way past the due date for the Greens to look in the mirror and start addressing the racism within their ranks.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/04/08/Greens-Blast-COVID-Response-Urge-BC-G... Can the Green party recover?

https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2021/04/07/can-green-par...

The first link is to an excellent article setting out the BC Green calls for a proper response to COVID from our provincial government. North Report then tries to bury it by posting an article about the federal Green party that isn't about COVID.

North Report you are getting worse and worse. This post is trolling and only serves to convince people that NDP supporters are low life assholes who love the gutter.

A year ago there was a sense of unity and a common goal, she said. “But pretty much since the election, instead of a proactive approach from the government, we are seeing an increasingly reactive approach.”

“It has been really disappointing that instead of anticipating and being prepared for this third wave, we have just let it arrive in this province.”

Rather than simply trying to prevent the virus from overwhelming hospitals, the COVID Zero approach sets out to eliminate the virus completely through short-term lockdowns, border controls, travel restrictions and relentless testing and contact-tracing to drive transmission to zero.

Even if we don’t succeed, Furstenau said, aiming for zero “will still save lives.”

The Greens’ call echoes criticism from epidemiologists, doctors and modellers that the approach could have prevented variants from taking hold in B.C. And it comes on the same day the province announced a record 1,293 COVID-19 cases in the province.*

Pondering

NorthReport wrote:
Yes, No, Maybe There is Racism Within the Green Party https://www.thestar.com/politics/federal/2021/04/08/green-officials-deny...

I never ever read an article about Paul that does not highlight her race, gender and religion. 

Sean Yo, who was Paul’s campaign manager when she ran in a federal byelection in Toronto Centre last October, told the Star this week that the party leader is facing “significant resistance” from a group of top-ranking officials. He also said “it is very hard not to see the process through the lens of race, gender and religion.”

I am getting the message that were it not for Paul's race, gender and religion she would be the Empress of the World as race, gender and religion are the sole reason she is ever opposed. 

 

Pondering

contrarianna wrote:

Pondering wrote:

NR is right. 20 to 40 year olds are being scapegoated. ...

Glad you got your vaccine. but I'm guessing you do not really intend to say NR is right, along with Horgan, to scapegoat 20-40 year olds.

Your guess is correct. "Scapegoating" means unfairly blaming someone for something. So I agree that Horgan is scapegoating young people, meaning, blaming them unfairly. 

NorthReport

Finally and thank goodness for BC to have healthy leadership in NDP Premier John Horgan to call it like it is. 

83.2% of Whistler cases are young adults; main sources of transmission are household, social gatherings

 

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/83-2-of-whistler-cases-are-young-adults-main-sourc...

 

 

 

 

NorthReport

How BC Led the Way in Saving Lives by Spacing Vaccine Doses Longer

Creative thinking triggered the early safeguarding of millions across the nation.

 

 

Andrew Nikiforuk Today | TheTyee.ca

Tyee contributing editor Andrew Nikiforuk is an award-winning journalist whose books and articles focus on epidemics, the energy industry, nature and more.​

 

BonnieHenryBCFlagsStage.jpg

Dr. Bonnie Henry drew on research by the BC CDC and others in delaying vaccination second doses four months later than manufacturers prescribed. The decision was effective and imitated. Photo: Joshua Berson.

Plenty of headlines lately note how far Canada lags behind the United States in vaccinations. But guess what? We now are outpacing Germany even though the Pfizer vaccine is actually made there.

 

  •  

How could that be? After all, we don’t manufacture any vaccine in this country and depend on multinational corporations to determine our supply.

To date 20 per cent of the Canadian population has now been jabbed, and that number is growing steeply.

But that figure would be much lower — say 10 per cent — if it hadn’t been for some out of the box thinking spearheaded by British Columbia’s Centre for Disease Control.

Some call it “off label vaccine dosing.” It all started at the beginning of March. That’s when Dr. Bonnie Henry, B.C.’s provincial health officer, made a critical public health decision that has had both national and international implications.

To cover more ground with limited vaccines, and to save more lives, she endorsed a policy of delaying the second dose by four months. (Three of the four vaccines currently approved in Canada are based on two-dose regimens between 21 and 28 days.)

A couple of days later the National Advisory Committee on Immunization strongly recommended that the rest of the country follow suit. Surprisingly, they did.

As researchers at B.C.’s Royal Columbian Hospital later put it: “While there are no large clinical trial published data to guide prolonged delays of the second dose, there are data to suggest that delaying the second dose likely preserves the long-term boost in immunity without an unacceptable decrease in immunity in the intervening period between doses.”

The delayed second dose strategy shows what can happen when public health officials act fast and imaginatively in pursuit of the public good, and deserves notice amidst the fair criticism Canada’s overall pandemic response has drawn.

Here is how B.C.’s CDC explained Henry’s big decision: “At this point in the epidemic, when we have only protected a small proportion of the population, providing a first dose to as many people as possible will save more lives and avoid more cases and hospitalisations than providing a second dose to a smaller number of people.”

The province based its controversial move on several prongs of imperfect evidence.

First, early vaccine effectiveness results from B.C. showed that the first mRNA vaccine dose (that’s Pfizer and Moderna) reduced the risk of COVID-19 in long-term care residents and health-care workers by 80 per cent within two to three weeks of receiving the shot. Eight weeks of followup data showed that vaccine effectiveness wasn’t waning or declining.

In other words one shot delivered a wallop of protection. Similar data from Quebec confirmed B.C.’s results. Studies from Israel and the U.K. reached the same conclusions.

Second, Dr. Danuta Skowronski, B.C. Centre for Disease Control epidemiologist and expert on vaccine effectiveness, made an interesting discovery. Both Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech structured their clinical trials on three to four week intervals between doses in order to get the vaccines to market as fast as possible.

But while parsing the data on vaccine efficacy submitted to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Skowronski found that both companies had underestimated the effectiveness of their mRNA vaccines after the first dose.

Skowronski’s analysis found that both vaccines were nearly 90 per cent effective at stopping infection with just one dose.

“With such a highly protective first dose, the benefits derived from a scarce supply of vaccine could be maximized by deferring second doses until all priority group members are offered at least one dose,” she wrote in The New England Journal of Medicine on Feb. 17.

 

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/04/12/BC-Saving-Lives-Spacing-Vaccine-D...

NorthReport

Why Doesn’t BC Get Tougher on Stopping Travel?

How New Zealand and some Canadian regions blocked a proven factor in virus spread.

 

https://thetyee.ca/Analysis/2021/04/12/BC-Tougher-Stopping-Travel/

NorthReport

 

Stay home folks!

COVID-19: Henry pleads with B.C. residents to stay close to home as pandemic worsens

Dr. Henry reports record numbers of patients in intensive care with COVID-19 as average daily case count soars

 

https://vancouversun.com/news/local-news/covid-19-b-c-reports-18-deaths-...

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