Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

Yeah, he lives right in town as well iirc? That seems insane that they would send him that far.

don't blow it for the rest of us pic.twitter.com/S47gk9SGHl

— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) April 3, 2021

Horgan promised to loosen restrictions and said the govt strategy was working great exactly three weeks ago, while the case count was growing and had the risk of growing exponentially. I believe they opened places of worship for about two days before telling them to close again. BC is less transparent about outbreak data than those other provinces, not releasing any numbers on weekends and never or rarely releasing case by age, location, or workplace type, which made it especially galling when Horgan told 20-39 year olds not to "blow it for the rest of us" without releasing numbers showing young people were causing the increase. Schools have been open this entire year, without improvements made to ventilation of old buildings (I believe) and no mask requirements for younger children. Indoor dining has been open until last week. Whistler was kept open despite being a clear covid hotspot. People are frustrated because it feels like this third wave could have been averted with some proactive government interventions.

Is this a credible case that BC is handling it worse than Legault, Ford, or Kenney? Probably not, but there have been more serious restrictions attempted in Ontario and Quebec at least. I think the soft NDP supporters in my circles all expect BC to be doing better than those other guys. Newdeathparty is unfair, and not much of a pun to boot...BC has always done relatively well on the metric of deaths per capita, and the vaccination of the elderly and long-term care residents happened in time to keep death counts low even as we are reaching our highest case numbers:

For now, B.C. continues to be right near the bottom of the death chart often cited by @adriandix, as it does every week.

Big questions in the weeks ahead. Let's commit to the actions needed to keep it there. pic.twitter.com/uCWHwSq8tr

— Justin McElroy (@j_mcelroy) April 4, 2021

But the variants appear to be tearing through younger populations, our hockey team has the worst outbreak in pro sports, and too many people here have decided the pandemic is over. It's scary!

https://www.thestar.com/business/2021/04/06/warehouses-factories-construction-sites-responsible-for-far-more-workplace-outbreaks-than-retail-and-restaurants-data-shows.html

I thought this article, from a province (or city I guess?) that actually releases detailed data, was excellent and should be required reading for Canadians:

Since mid-February, Toronto Public Health has been publishing a list of active workplace outbreaks every Thursday. The agency’s data shows that since the pandemic began, food processing plants, offices, warehouses, shipping and distribution centres and construction sites have been responsible for 378 outbreaks as of March 30 — compared to 51 in bars, restaurants and nightclubs, and 53 in retail, grocery stores and malls. (An official outbreak is declared when there are two or more confirmed cases that could be reasonably linked to the workplace within 14 days.)

That’s 68 per cent of all workplace outbreaks, compared to just under 19 per cent if you combine bars, restaurants, nightclubs, retail, grocery and malls.

The province breaks its sector-specific data down by case, not by outbreak, but the effect is the same. Within the same time frame, Ontario reported 3,266 cases linked to food processing and “other” workplaces, which includes offices, warehouses, distribution centres and construction sites. By comparison, it reported 824 cases linked to bars, restaurants and nightclubs, and 1,339 cases linked to retail.

Since TPH began publishing workplace outbreaks, four of the city’s largest have been at food manufacturers or distributors: Belmont Meats (94 cases), Johnvince Foods (83 cases), Dimpflmeier Bakery (53 cases) and Maple Leaf Foods (25 cases). Union representatives told the Star in February that at least two of the employers — Belmont and Maple Leaf — do not offer paid sick leave.

Outbreaks at two separate Toronto police facilities involving 35 cases forced Toronto Police College to suspend in-person training in February. Other major Toronto workplace outbreaks in the past three months have included Alumicor Limited (20 cases), DECIEM skin care (18 cases), Sky Window Technologies (20 cases), Sweet Maple Candies (17 cases) and Ya Ya Foods (12 cases).

Thanks, that helps.

someone please strangle Doug Ford already i am sick of this bullshit

the news the past week: the ICUs are filling up with people under 50!

Ford gov't today: we've lowered the vaccine eligibility to 50 and up!!!

kill me

Meanwhile Montreal is making sure that leftover doses are going to cops. Not teachers, cops.

oh lol and they haven't even given a firm date for when they're lowering the eligibility so there's that

THIS FUCKING ASSHOLE

60 is still the cutoff point in Quebec...

71 in BC, I think

No surprise, Toronto schools have joined Peel in shutting down. Having one online and the other in-person didn't compute--Brampton and Mississauga are basically extensions of Toronto.

I have to wonder if the situation in schools is deteriorating faster than they're saying. ("They" meaning the government, I guess.) Erring on the side of caution hasn't exactly been the rule the past year; action is generally taken only when it has to be taken. Shutting down now, rather than holding on for three extra days, only makes sense in that context.

Is anyone taking this seriously?

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservatives-public-inquiry-covid19-response-1.5976456

If anything, I have more of a problem with our successive provincial governments' cavalier approach to healthcare than I do with the feds.

Just saw Biden give a summary of vaccination progress that makes it clear just how much of a free pass every politician here got for as long as Trump was in charge.

The most Canadian thing to do would be to focus on the one thing the Americans have done well for the past ten years at the expense of everything else.

I take your point, but at this juncture, won't speeded-up vaccinations make the everything else secondary? I know they're not the whole solution; you have to keep doing everything else. But without vaccinations, there seems to be early evidence that the everything else can't keep up with the variants.

Anyway, my main point was that everything is relative, and having Trump as your point of comparison did give Ford and the rest something of a free pass with the press (I'm sure I got lured into that too)--although the damage he did spilled over to us in many other ways.

the news the past week: the ICUs are filling up with people under 50!

Ford gov't today: we've lowered the vaccine eligibility to 50 and up!!!

seriously. I hate him/them so very much. the fact that his approval ratings are good (if declining, verrrry slowwwly) is enraging. this is from less than a month ago:

A new Angus Reid Institute poll this week pegged Ford’s approval rating at 50 per cent. That’s down from a high of 69-per-cent approval in the early summer, but still miles ahead of the dismal 31 per cent Ford had at the start of the pandemic. A Mainstreet Research poll in late February reported that 43 per cent of Ontarians were likely to vote for Ford if an election were held, and the PCs dominated in every age group.

Again, there is a direct connection there, I believe, to who he's being compared to--that decline may accelerate quickly.

I sure fuckin hope so, and I hope it happens without too much more death. The provincial opposition has been invisible, as well.

Biden said today that every American over the age of 18 will be vaccine-eligible by April 19.

1) Does that mean they'll actually get it? The vast majority, probably not.

2) Is a target like that even possible for us? With the vaccines we're getting delivered, probably not--which may be our fault, I don't know anymore.

But it will be hard to maintain that approval rating when you put the over/under-50 announcement next to that, unless the blame gets mostly deflected onto Trudeau.

All he had to do last spring was look gravely concerned at his press conferences (he did, and I do believe that was genuine), step aside and let doctors speak when it was a medical question, and shut down everything for the first month (or was it two months? I can't even remember anymore). Trump's daily horror show took care of everything else. We're a long way from all that.

https://thetyee.ca/News/2021/04/02/Canada-One-Big-Pandemic-Response-Experiment-Zero-COVID/

eh it's kind of relevant that the provinces that did zero covid are the maritimes, not really a perfectly controlled experiment

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-stay-at-home-order-covid-19-1.5977646

Richest postal codes in Toronto have highest vaccination rates, lowest deaths.
Poorest postal codes, low vaccination rates, high number of deaths.
Thread 👇👇👇 https://t.co/5Jhv06Ap3G

— Judy Trinh (@judyatrinh) April 7, 2021

I can understand a slight discrepancy based on average age, but those numbers are fucking wild.

Anyone care to explain why that is?

xps Not an experiment at all, that's a dumb way that they put it

Basing the rollout so strictly on age was probably a mistake. (Tbf, they couldn't have predicted the new variants when they made the original plans.) Ottawa did make a point of prioritizing high-risk neighbourhoods at each stage, although age etc is still the primary criterion - not sure what the numbers come out to.

xp without researching, I'm guessing these are factors: average age; accessibility of clinics (as mentioned above); populations getting left out bc of language skills or citizenship/residency status

Sigh @ people replying on that thread in defence of the situation by emphasizing that there are more old people in the richer and safer neighbourhood, rather than questioning whether age was the best criterion to use.

Makes sense. I was wondering whether we could add higher rates of vaccine hesitancy to that list, but the data I found doesn't really refer to income:

https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/45-28-0001/2021001/article/00011-eng.htm

questioning whether age was the best criterion to use

The assumption that vulnerable groups are 100% rational and will sign up for a shot as soon as a slot is available turned out to be off the mark in Quebec and I'm sure it's the same in Ontario.

Some of the communities in those neighbourhoods aren’t tuned into social media much at all, or regular media for that matter. Will need a localized approach.

As suggested by Warner upthread (and even Arlene Dickinson!), they should be bringing the vaccines into the factories and workplaces, into these neighbourhoods. It's fucking madness that people in our neighbourhood (which includes lots of immigrants and lower-income people, although there are far rougher) have to get themselves out to Canterbury.

Naheed Nenshi moves on: https://calgary.ctvnews.ca/calgary-mayor-naheed-nenshi-won-t-seek-re-election-in-october-vote-1.5376844

As much as I'm sickened by this new stay-at-home order, I do get it--3,200 cases today--and it was made clear to me yesterday, when I went into Stratford and found that thrift stores were open, how meaningless the red-zone move last week really was.

I have a UK visa appointment in Ottawa on Monday for dumb and complicated reasons I won't bore you with and if that falls through because of the stay-at-home order it'll set off an extremely unpleasant chain reaction. Fuuuuck.

Hopefully that would be deemed essential...I mean, staying or leaving seems kind of essential to me.

The rumour is that non-essential goods in the Ontario big box stores will actually be roped off this time, which I agree with if they are going to close the little stores.

It’s definitely time to prioritize vax for the teachers, despite the “schools are safe” rationale from Ford and Lecce. That same “99% have no cases” doesn’t hold when it comes to retail and everything else, and the thing is, in that small percentage where you do have cases, the teachers are at extreme risk because working with kids is always a higher than average germ exposure job.

I have a UK visa appointment in Ottawa on Monday for dumb and complicated reasons I won't bore you with and if that falls through because of the stay-at-home order it'll set off an extremely unpleasant chain reaction. Fuuuuck.

― pomenitul, Wednesday, April 7, 2021 12:08 PM (thirteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

Travel for immigration/visa appointments are supposed to be kosher iirc

That teachers weren’t the first vaccinated after the health professionals is so insulting.

Ok cool. It was definitely closed last spring though, at the height of the first wave. And why the hell don’t they have one in Montreal? Ugh.

xp

One = UK visa application centre, not covid wave lol (we already have that, alas).

They remember the FLQ.

And why the hell don’t they have one in Montreal Westmount?

Ok, stay at home order starting at midnight. If they follow through, some of this stuff is good - mobile vaccine clinics for 18+ in hot spots, special education and hot spot teachers to get priority, followed by teachers in general.

I think I'm eligible because I teach in Peel. I just hope it extends to supply teachers (it should; theoretically we move around, even though I think most are sticking to one school this year).

I might be eligible anyway, having been born in '61 (someone told me they go by year, not exact birthday).

Not sure about supply teachers, but hopefully - believe they did just say all Toronto and Peel teachers.

You should be able to book an astra Zeneca one at a pharmacy if any near you offering it? That’s 55+ right now