For fully vaccinated. Up here we have focussed mostly on first-dose coverage, and we even delayed second dose to get as many first doses out as possible. Ontario is now at 79% first dose coverage for those over 12 (93% of those over 60 years) and 60% fully vaccinated over 12. It looks like we may ultimately settle around 90% over the next few months?
I'm pleasantly surprised. I honestly expected it to drop off after about 70% and for us to start running out of volunteers not much after the USA. I guess people's hesitancy has dissipated. And the antivax spectre was overblown, at least here. Some local data for the curious: https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinatio...
They vaccinated a ton of people with Astra and then let them mix second doses and I know people who got Pfizer 1st dose and Moderna 2nd dose and just a complete shit show. I'm surprised they arn't injecting people with soup of the day at this point or some hybrid of all 3 (Astra/Pfizer/Moderna). What's funny is they find this worth bragging about while under the worlds longest lock downs and still not completely open. The whole thing is a disaster from start to finish but they have this huge inferiorty complex where they compare themselves to the USA in every way and then pat themselves on the back convincing themselves they're better in some way. Just cringe.....
In British Columbia I thought everyone did pretty well at navigating the different challenges. We had reasonable leadership and communication and I skied all winter. Would have sucked to be in Ontario.
The mix of vaccine shots doesn’t bother me.
Indeed comparing and following the USA is a problem.
Ontario did a terrible job at pretty much everything. I volunteered with a some other devs to build https://vaccine-ontario.ca because otherwise there was no single dashboard to find a vaccination clinic that had available appointments.
The Ontario covid experience has been Whose Line is it Anyway: everything is made up and and the points don't matter.
The rules changed all the time and with no explanation or justification. Government ministries didn't speak to one another or the regions. Multiple times the education minister said schools were opening while the premier said they were staying closed (or vice versa).
Vaccinations were delegated almost entirely to the regions and it was complete chaos, especially since the pharmacies were left to do all their own booking. I registered with the region and over 30 pharmacies to get my first dose. Then I got offers of first dose for more than a month after that I had to keep cancelling. 2nd dose was much more straight forward, but that was just luck since I know plenty of people who had to search and scramble.
The re-opening stages have minimal differences between them and don't offer any incentive to get vaccinated since there are no exceptions or enhancements for those fully vaccinated.
Astrazeneca was offered in pharmacies, and that part of the rollout was a total mess, I would certainly agree. It was also only a small fraction of the total doses offered, however, and was primarily aimed at individuals who wanted to get a shot earlier than was possible through the provincially administered system (which offered Pfizer, and once Moderna’s logistical issues were sorted out, Moderna)
My experiences with the provincial registration system in Ontario, were the complete opposite of yours. They were very good. Once my demographic became eligible, it was a single form to book an appointment. The actual vaccine clinics were quite efficient, and the followup (if you opted-in) was quick and easy.
The hardest part was waiting. Vaccines supply was the issue, but given Canada’s bargaining position (essentially none?) I’m shocked we got them as quickly as we did.
I just got my second dose on Friday. It was exactly 8 weeks from my first dose that I got the text message notification for my second. There were 2 lines at that clinic -- one for Pfizer and one for Moderna.
In Canada, Astrazeneca was available to anyone who wanted it if you wanted to skip the line for mRNA and be vaccinated immediately. Originally this was before the (likely overblown) health concerns with Astrazeneca.
As a Canadian, I found the roll out to be quite organized. The original promise was that all Canadians would have access to a vaccine by September and it looks like we will meet that goal handedly. I wouldn't call it a disaster at all. But then I don't live in Ontario.
Same sentiments. Stuff coming out when you follow the patents is quite brutal. And this quote from Peter Daszak in 2015, and reported in the National Academies Press on February 12, 2016, in which he declared: ‘We need to increase public understanding of the need for medical counter-measures such as a pan-coronavirus vaccine. A key driver is the media, and the economics will follow the hype. We need to use that hype to our advantage, to get to the real issues. Investors will respond if they see profit at the end of the process.’
We easily could have done deeper studies. This is a highly parallelisable problem. The issue is all the regulatory red tape and extremely overburdening costs associated with clinical trials.
After the initial safety trials showing that these vaccines have no significant adverse effects, we should have just gotten a dozen YOLO engineers and statisticians to run any permutation of dosage, duration, and vaccine candidate; much like how software companies run thousands of A/B tests at scale.
It's a frigging pandemic with millions of deaths, there's no time to waste jacking off bureaucrats.
Really, there's no good reason that clinical trials should cost $$$$-$$$$$ per participant. Here's how much it should cost:
~$20: targeted ads enrolling one participant
~$20: doses of the vaccine for one participant
~$30: distribution and logistics
~$100: human staffing and follow up
~$5: experiment analysis
Instead, everything gets ballooned up by 10x or 50x because of arcane legislation. In the middle of a global pandemic.
Every time I read these blanket unsubstantiated claims about the evils of regulation, I’m reminded of Chesterton’s Fence:
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
> we should have just gotten a dozen YOLO engineers and statisticians to run any permutation of dosage, duration, and vaccine candidate; much like how software companies run thousands of A/B tests at scale.
I, for one, would try to run clinical trials the total opposite from software companies.
"Fail fast, fail often" nor "Iterate fast, release often" really work for healthcare.
Source for that? Because the official Canadian government page on vaccine coverage clearly says the Janssen vaccine has yet to be administered in Canada and the only Canadians who got it got it outside the country.
Hey first of all be careful. Any complaints about canada are seen as dissent. Dont u dare critique canada. The blame is all on the catholic church.
second of all, be sure to promote the idea that all canadians are polite and genocides never occurred. its the catholics who did it.
finally, please pretend that canada has bought vaccines for every person on this planet and that it not only vaccinated 200% of canadas population, it also brought peace to cuba and conquered mars and brought peace to martians.
edit: also they are vaccinated. thanx to canada yeah!
What exactly do you mean by homogenous? More than one in five Canadians are foreign born. More than one in five Canadians are visible minorities. More than half of Torontonians are visible minorities.
The vaccine is free, even without insurance. Anyone can walk into a CVS and get it. I don't see what the health care system has to do with that. That's actually an instance where privatized health care should work better than a government controlled one - and it does compared to a lot of other countries. The US does much better than many European countries for example.
I don't think whether socialized vs private aspect of healthcare has much effect on vaccination rate one way or another. The highest vaccinated among big countries were for a long time US and UK, one with private healthcare and the other with a single-payer system. UK was actually ahead of US for most of the time. Current vaccination rates in European countries are within a few percentage points of each other, whether they have a private system (e.g. Switzerland and Germany) or socialized (e.g. France).
Quebec is primarily French-speaking and definitely see themselves as a different "nation" within Canada, apart from Anglo-Canadians. So calling Canada a homogenous Canada, while obviously discounting the large recent immigrant communities, also discounts the large Quebecois population who were there before Canada was even a thing.
Canadians love flattering comparisons to the US. As a Canadian, however, this pandemic mostly revealed how dangerously incompetent most levels of government are in this country.
Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada.
The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again.
Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country.
All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so.
The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!".
With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade.
The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.
Practically all of this happened in Spain. Recently one of the higher courts ruled our first lockdown, which was absolute, as unconstitutional. Over a year later! They will return all the money they stole from us in fines. But what about the time, and our rights? If I had known this I would've gone out...
And they have the media in their pockets so no one will complain. Until recently we were forced to wear a mask always, even if we were completely alone in the middle of the street. The police kicked doors down if they suspected there was a reunion going on in your private property. It was a nightmare.
If you are American, cherish your freedom! You don't know how valuable it is.
What’s funny is I’d have to go to random streamer accounts to find any evidence at all of anti-lockdown protests happening all over Europe at different times. I’ve seen people in France, Italy, the Netherlands, Germany, etc getting beat and firehosed… without a peep from the media here. They sure are selective about which causes are righteous. Covid completely broke my innocence regarding “trusted news sources”
Yeah, for me the US and Canadian media completely ignoring or dismissing anti-lockdown protests in Europe were pretty clear evidence of bias. If the event got any coverage at all they were dismissed as far-right (read: Neo-Nazis) and nothing even worth discussing.
I'm German (i.e. not primarily looking at US media) and have seen US media reports about the protests here online. from a quick google for just the pairing CNN/Germany there's at least a dozen articles?
Not sure if the facts agree with you here. Canada had, at one point, the largest number of vaccines on order per capita from a number of different companies. [0]
You seem to dismiss this news which contradicts your point - that Canada has better vaccination outcomes than those countries who DO produce vaccines, like the US and the UK, to say nothing of peer countries like Australia. [1]
Certainly many aspects of the pandemic response could have been massively improved on — but I’m not sure if there’s any citizen of any country that doesn’t feel that way today.
My suggestion: open your eyes a bit and take a moment to be thankful for the relatively good outcomes we’ve enjoyed vs the rest of the world. We’re not under anyone’s thumb yet.
Better outcomes as measured how? I received both vaccine doses while visiting Texas, months before my friends in Canada.
I was also going mask-free in Texas over 3 months before I was able to do so in Alberta. When I returned to Canada, I risked huge fines by refusing to stay in a government-mandated quarantine hotel (despite the fact that I was already fully vaccinated), and still had to quarantine at home for 2 weeks. Again, despite the fact that I was fully vaccinated.
No quarantine at all was required when I landed in Texas 6 weeks prior to that.
A lot of Canadians blindly point to mortality statistics without a) correcting for differences that predate covid, and b) consideration of fundamental freedoms. This is apparently a minority view in Canada, but I (and many others) value preservation of natural rights over safetyism.
Sounds like you are kind of playing fast and loose with the word “evidence”.
You understand Texas is literally the land of “hey, you need to winterize your infrastructure or people will die”, twice over, less than a decade apart?
It’s almost like they start with what they think should happen and find “facts” to match their ideals, not reality.
But sure, let’s say that our moron friends to the north in Alberta were a well run, functional democratic crew, and not a 30 year reign of clueless cronies, that still doesn’t say much about Canada as a whole, which mostly did better than Alberta. Noting that Alberta as a whole is as large as one of the suburbs shit out of a real city in the rest of Canada.
I can say that, as an Albertan living in the southern states.
But sure, we should all pay more attention to what you think should happen, smart guy.
> The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately.
There's a lot I disagree with in how you're framing your post, but I'll only address this:
What you describe is a good thing.
Borrowing lots of money during a crisis to avoid long-term damage is the best possible use of national debt (whereas compensating for a budget in deficit, the usual offender, is the worst).
We often forget that money is a virtual thing. It's a signal of where value should be distributed. During a crisis, firehosing money towards closed-down businesses is saying "this crisis is only temporary, these businesses should still be able to operate when the economy opens up again".
That's absurd. Money is not virtual to me, it directly translates to goods and services I can purchase to improve my life. Doubling the national debt in a year will lead to either a) inflation, b) higher taxes, or c) both, all of which are extremely undesirable given that Canada already has a high cost of living and a top marginal income tax rate > 50%.
Politicians spent irresponsibly in 2020 and continue to do so now. A cursory examination of even recent history (see: the 90s) is enough to show that we are in for a world of financial hurt within the next decade as interest rates rise to combat inflation.
Canada got lucky. A bad bet on a Chinese partnership delayed things. The govt was late to the game in terms of securing doses - insiders even admit this. They then rushed to order as much as possible in the Spring. Deliveries were ahead of schedule luckily.
Wasn't Canada the fourth country to sigba contract with Pfizer? I think other contracts were signed similarly early on, ahead of all but a few other countries.
What would have been a better vaccine acquisition strategy? Do you honestly think we could have built a brand new facility to manufacture something like mRNA vaccines, gotten licensing to do so, etc. in time? Because to me it looks like we did a considerably better job than Australia, a better job than New Zealand, France, Japan, etc. We placed bets on multiple vaccines, not just Moderna and Pfizer. We bought doses of the J&J, Astra Zeneca, Novavax, Medicago, GlaxoKlineSmith too.
And Section 6 of the charter says:
"Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right
a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and
b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province."
Even at the most locked down you could still move to one of the Atlantic provinces if you were taking up residence/starting a job there.
The limitations were IMO reasonable and a big part of the reason the Atlantic provinces did so much better at controlling spread was because they limited travelers.
This is the problem, isn't it - until Canadians feel the pain acutely, they will accept absolute appalling mediocrity without so much as a peep of complaint.
It's interesting to compare time-series graphs of doses/(100 persons) for various nations. The USA had an inflection point in mid-April, at about 60 doses per 100 persons. I don't know the ratio of single-dose vaccines to double-dose vaccines, but assuming the latter to be in the majority, this suggests that the eventual coverage will be in the range of 60%.
By contrast, Canada seems to have hit an inflection point in mid-June, at about 90 doses per 100 persons.
In Canada, about 13 percent of persons are under 12 years of age, and the vaccines are not permitted for them. Therefore, in rough terms, the pattern so far is indicating that essentially every eligible Canadian is likely to receive the vaccine. Linear extrapolation based on vaccination rates over the past 10 days suggests that this result may be achieved in under 2 months. Naturally, linear extrapolation is a problem in a system like this, but the Canadian data are not sufficiently past the inflection point to justify nonlinear regression.
The Canadian story is being played out in several other countries as well: inflection points occur somewhere above 80 doses per 100 persons.
As in so many things, the USA is exceptional.
Graphs, as of today, are at https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt, based on data from covid.ourworldindata.org. (I don't want to post my website where this graph is auto-updated daily, along with case data for various nations, plus provincial data in Canada and state data in the USA, simply because it is on a server in a research group that cannot withstand hackernews-scale traffic.)
I would love to know how they're tracking this because when I ask at the clinic they said all the proof I have of my vaccine is the paper they printed off and it's up to me to inform my doctor. I also mixed Pfizer and Moderna at the recommendation of the government and had a terrible reaction. I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing. In line with the top comment, I've lost all faith in Canada, it's government and its people.
Heath cards. You're welcome to attempt to get a third dose.
> I also mixed [] and had a terrible reaction
And I had the same and had a terrible reaction, including vomiting. Both our situations are anecdotal though. I haven't seen any research showing that the reactions to mixing mRNA vaccines is worse.
> I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing
Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
That statement applies to most medical interventions before testing. If a public health organization thinks they’ll need to mix doses, they should have the foresight to sponsor a trial. It’s very ethically questionable to foist untested interventions on your citizenry.
Did your province not give you an option to report followup symptoms? In Ontario, at the time of shot, we could opt-in to followup symptom reporting. Doing so got you a mail like this, which was followed by a pair of surveys, several months apart:
> The Canadian Immunization Research Network is performing active surveillance for adverse events after immunization against COVID-19. You are being invited to take part because you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and agreed to be contacted about vaccine studies. The purpose of the study is to see how often health events occur after COVID-19 vaccination. If you might be interested in helping with this surveillance, please visit https://CANVAS-COVID.ca for additional information on how to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
Hey, thanks for the reply! Honestly, I think that they would give me a third dose if I told them it was my second verbally when I went to the clinic. Infact, I had a discussion during my first dose when they asked me if they could store my information. I said "aren't you already tracking that via my health card" and was told no it was for OHIP. I don't know the distinction there or what that means but they told me I could not be vaccinated unless I agreed to the data collection. They also said not to lose my vaccination record that was printed off. This was a government mass vaccination site. You're right about it being anecdotal but I sometimes feel like anecdotal is what a lot of the government is going on with their vaccine program. Let's be honest, the broader effects of the vaccinations is yet to be known. It's probably nothing, I agree, but if I was anti vaxx the amount of contradicting and confusing information over the last 8 months would definitely solidify my belief.
> Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
This is literally fake news.[1]
“It’s a little bit of a dangerous trend here. We are in a data-free, evidence-free zone as far as mix and match,” Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing.[2]
The scientist in question is warning against INDIVIDUALS mixing and matching, and saying public health agencies should make the decision.
Which makes sense because while there is no evidence against mixing and matching, there is not very strong evidence in favor either.
So the mix and match should only be done at the guidance of a public health agency which might, for example, recognize that due to a constraint in the supply of Moderna doses, they may be better off taking the slight risk that mixing might cause some issues in a small number of people (again there is no evidence that this is the case), than the much greater risk caused by a large percentage of the population not being fully vaccinated.
The CDC therefore does not recommend mixing because over the past few months the US has acquired enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the country which is not the case for all but a handful of other countries.
Here are the current number of deaths per million from COVID for the G7 nations:
Japan - 119
Canada - 696
Germany - 1,093
France - 1,704
US - 1,876
UK - 1,886
Italy - 2,118
Judged by this metric, Canada came second among the major first-world democracies. We did well. To be sure, there were missteps. We should have done better. But we could also have done a whole lot worse.
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[ 2.8 ms ] story [ 13.8 ms ] threadI'm pleasantly surprised. I honestly expected it to drop off after about 70% and for us to start running out of volunteers not much after the USA. I guess people's hesitancy has dissipated. And the antivax spectre was overblown, at least here. Some local data for the curious: https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinatio...
That might be a different definition, though (e.g. full population vs those over 18) or data may be lagging for either source.
Disclaimer: Canadian
The mix of vaccine shots doesn’t bother me.
Indeed comparing and following the USA is a problem.
It did!
The rules changed all the time and with no explanation or justification. Government ministries didn't speak to one another or the regions. Multiple times the education minister said schools were opening while the premier said they were staying closed (or vice versa).
Vaccinations were delegated almost entirely to the regions and it was complete chaos, especially since the pharmacies were left to do all their own booking. I registered with the region and over 30 pharmacies to get my first dose. Then I got offers of first dose for more than a month after that I had to keep cancelling. 2nd dose was much more straight forward, but that was just luck since I know plenty of people who had to search and scramble.
The re-opening stages have minimal differences between them and don't offer any incentive to get vaccinated since there are no exceptions or enhancements for those fully vaccinated.
Government failed us pretty hard.
My experiences with the provincial registration system in Ontario, were the complete opposite of yours. They were very good. Once my demographic became eligible, it was a single form to book an appointment. The actual vaccine clinics were quite efficient, and the followup (if you opted-in) was quick and easy.
The hardest part was waiting. Vaccines supply was the issue, but given Canada’s bargaining position (essentially none?) I’m shocked we got them as quickly as we did.
In Canada, Astrazeneca was available to anyone who wanted it if you wanted to skip the line for mRNA and be vaccinated immediately. Originally this was before the (likely overblown) health concerns with Astrazeneca.
As a Canadian, I found the roll out to be quite organized. The original promise was that all Canadians would have access to a vaccine by September and it looks like we will meet that goal handedly. I wouldn't call it a disaster at all. But then I don't live in Ontario.
https://kamprint.com/realities/tag/daszak/
2) Mixing Ox/Az w/ mRNA vaccinations has been shown to be better than 2x Ox/Ax [1]
3) Pfizer, Moderna, AZ/Covishield, and J&J are the only approved vaccines. Certainly no "soup of the day" [2]
I hardly think any of this is "cringe".
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/201...
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/mixing-vaccines-pfizer-astraz...
[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/cor...
After the initial safety trials showing that these vaccines have no significant adverse effects, we should have just gotten a dozen YOLO engineers and statisticians to run any permutation of dosage, duration, and vaccine candidate; much like how software companies run thousands of A/B tests at scale.
It's a frigging pandemic with millions of deaths, there's no time to waste jacking off bureaucrats.
Really, there's no good reason that clinical trials should cost $$$$-$$$$$ per participant. Here's how much it should cost:
~$20: targeted ads enrolling one participant
~$20: doses of the vaccine for one participant
~$30: distribution and logistics
~$100: human staffing and follow up
~$5: experiment analysis
Instead, everything gets ballooned up by 10x or 50x because of arcane legislation. In the middle of a global pandemic.
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
I, for one, would try to run clinical trials the total opposite from software companies.
"Fail fast, fail often" nor "Iterate fast, release often" really work for healthcare.
Source: google it
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-cover...
second of all, be sure to promote the idea that all canadians are polite and genocides never occurred. its the catholics who did it.
finally, please pretend that canada has bought vaccines for every person on this planet and that it not only vaccinated 200% of canadas population, it also brought peace to cuba and conquered mars and brought peace to martians.
edit: also they are vaccinated. thanx to canada yeah!
edit: nk is a beacon of democracy tnx to canada.
- socialized, universal health care
- a relatively homogeneous, well-educated society (aside from Quebec, of course)
- virtually no illegal immigrants/future voters (D) outside the system.
So I'd expect Canada to rapidly pull ahead of the US with it's dystopian health care system, as long as it has enough vaccine doses.
Is Quebec not homogeneous or not well-educated? I believe vaccination rates there are similar to the rest of the country.
He meant politically. Canada is predominantly socialist.
What does that mean?
What else would it mean? Separatist movements are not very homogenous.
Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada.
The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again.
Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country.
All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so.
The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!".
With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade.
The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.
And they have the media in their pockets so no one will complain. Until recently we were forced to wear a mask always, even if we were completely alone in the middle of the street. The police kicked doors down if they suspected there was a reunion going on in your private property. It was a nightmare.
If you are American, cherish your freedom! You don't know how valuable it is.
Not sure if the facts agree with you here. Canada had, at one point, the largest number of vaccines on order per capita from a number of different companies. [0]
You seem to dismiss this news which contradicts your point - that Canada has better vaccination outcomes than those countries who DO produce vaccines, like the US and the UK, to say nothing of peer countries like Australia. [1]
Certainly many aspects of the pandemic response could have been massively improved on — but I’m not sure if there’s any citizen of any country that doesn’t feel that way today.
My suggestion: open your eyes a bit and take a moment to be thankful for the relatively good outcomes we’ve enjoyed vs the rest of the world. We’re not under anyone’s thumb yet.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/us/coronavirus-vaccine-do... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
I was also going mask-free in Texas over 3 months before I was able to do so in Alberta. When I returned to Canada, I risked huge fines by refusing to stay in a government-mandated quarantine hotel (despite the fact that I was already fully vaccinated), and still had to quarantine at home for 2 weeks. Again, despite the fact that I was fully vaccinated.
No quarantine at all was required when I landed in Texas 6 weeks prior to that.
A lot of Canadians blindly point to mortality statistics without a) correcting for differences that predate covid, and b) consideration of fundamental freedoms. This is apparently a minority view in Canada, but I (and many others) value preservation of natural rights over safetyism.
You understand Texas is literally the land of “hey, you need to winterize your infrastructure or people will die”, twice over, less than a decade apart?
It’s almost like they start with what they think should happen and find “facts” to match their ideals, not reality.
But sure, let’s say that our moron friends to the north in Alberta were a well run, functional democratic crew, and not a 30 year reign of clueless cronies, that still doesn’t say much about Canada as a whole, which mostly did better than Alberta. Noting that Alberta as a whole is as large as one of the suburbs shit out of a real city in the rest of Canada.
I can say that, as an Albertan living in the southern states.
But sure, we should all pay more attention to what you think should happen, smart guy.
There's a lot I disagree with in how you're framing your post, but I'll only address this:
What you describe is a good thing.
Borrowing lots of money during a crisis to avoid long-term damage is the best possible use of national debt (whereas compensating for a budget in deficit, the usual offender, is the worst).
We often forget that money is a virtual thing. It's a signal of where value should be distributed. During a crisis, firehosing money towards closed-down businesses is saying "this crisis is only temporary, these businesses should still be able to operate when the economy opens up again".
Politicians spent irresponsibly in 2020 and continue to do so now. A cursory examination of even recent history (see: the 90s) is enough to show that we are in for a world of financial hurt within the next decade as interest rates rise to combat inflation.
And Section 6 of the charter says:
"Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right
a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and
b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province."
Even at the most locked down you could still move to one of the Atlantic provinces if you were taking up residence/starting a job there.
The limitations were IMO reasonable and a big part of the reason the Atlantic provinces did so much better at controlling spread was because they limited travelers.
By contrast, Canada seems to have hit an inflection point in mid-June, at about 90 doses per 100 persons.
In Canada, about 13 percent of persons are under 12 years of age, and the vaccines are not permitted for them. Therefore, in rough terms, the pattern so far is indicating that essentially every eligible Canadian is likely to receive the vaccine. Linear extrapolation based on vaccination rates over the past 10 days suggests that this result may be achieved in under 2 months. Naturally, linear extrapolation is a problem in a system like this, but the Canadian data are not sufficiently past the inflection point to justify nonlinear regression.
The Canadian story is being played out in several other countries as well: inflection points occur somewhere above 80 doses per 100 persons.
As in so many things, the USA is exceptional.
Graphs, as of today, are at https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt, based on data from covid.ourworldindata.org. (I don't want to post my website where this graph is auto-updated daily, along with case data for various nations, plus provincial data in Canada and state data in the USA, simply because it is on a server in a research group that cannot withstand hackernews-scale traffic.)
Heath cards. You're welcome to attempt to get a third dose.
> I also mixed [] and had a terrible reaction
And I had the same and had a terrible reaction, including vomiting. Both our situations are anecdotal though. I haven't seen any research showing that the reactions to mixing mRNA vaccines is worse.
> I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing
Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
That statement applies to most medical interventions before testing. If a public health organization thinks they’ll need to mix doses, they should have the foresight to sponsor a trial. It’s very ethically questionable to foist untested interventions on your citizenry.
> The Canadian Immunization Research Network is performing active surveillance for adverse events after immunization against COVID-19. You are being invited to take part because you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and agreed to be contacted about vaccine studies. The purpose of the study is to see how often health events occur after COVID-19 vaccination. If you might be interested in helping with this surveillance, please visit https://CANVAS-COVID.ca for additional information on how to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
This is literally fake news.[1]
“It’s a little bit of a dangerous trend here. We are in a data-free, evidence-free zone as far as mix and match,” Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing.[2]
[1]https://globalnews.ca/news/8021692/mixing-covid-19-vaccines-... [2]https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
Which makes sense because while there is no evidence against mixing and matching, there is not very strong evidence in favor either.
So the mix and match should only be done at the guidance of a public health agency which might, for example, recognize that due to a constraint in the supply of Moderna doses, they may be better off taking the slight risk that mixing might cause some issues in a small number of people (again there is no evidence that this is the case), than the much greater risk caused by a large percentage of the population not being fully vaccinated.
The CDC therefore does not recommend mixing because over the past few months the US has acquired enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the country which is not the case for all but a handful of other countries.
I can understand that you may have to inform your practicioner as they may not have permission to automatically access your data.
Japan - 119
Canada - 696
Germany - 1,093
France - 1,704
US - 1,876
UK - 1,886
Italy - 2,118
Judged by this metric, Canada came second among the major first-world democracies. We did well. To be sure, there were missteps. We should have done better. But we could also have done a whole lot worse.