Ontario reports 8,825 new Covid cases, well those are the ones they could count … and Omicron wants your kids and your brains!

Ontario reports 8,825 new Covid cases, well those are the ones they could count … and Omicron wants your kids and your brains!

Ontario reports 8,825 new COVID-19 cases

Ontario is reporting more than 8,800 new COVID-19 cases as the Omicron variant continues to rapidly spread across the province.

Provincial health officials logged 8,825 new coronavirus cases on Tuesday compared to 3,453 a week ago, according to a tweet from Health Minister Christine Elliott.

They don’t really know the count as many people can’t get tested even if they want to.


Omicron variant fills up children’s hospitals in the U.S.

A five-fold increase in pediatric admissions in New York City this month. Close to double the numbers admitted in Washington, D.C. And nationwide, on average, pediatric hospitalizations in the U.S. are up 35 per cent in just the past week.

The highly transmissible Omicron variant is teaming up with the busy holiday season to infect more children across the United States than ever before, and children’s hospitals are bracing for it to get even worse.


COVID virus can spread to heart, brain days after infection, study says

The virus that causes COVID-19 can spread to a patient’s heart and brain days after infection — and survive for months in organs, according to a new study that may shed light on the so-called “long COVID.”

Scientists at the US National Institutes of Health in Maryland studied tissues taken from 44 people who had died after contracting the illness during the first year of the pandemic in the US, Bloomberg News reported.

They discovered SARS-CoV-2 RNA in various parts of the body — including the heart and brain — for as long as 230 days after the onset of symptoms, according to the news outlet.

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COVID Hysteria Latest Evidence—Left Authoritarianism Is A Thing

COVID-19 has notoriously exposed the inner authoritarian among a lot of people who ordinarily claim to be liberals, e.g., New York Legislation Provides for Indefinite Detention of Unvaccinated at Governor’s Whim, by Kay Smythe, NationalFile.com, December 18, 2021. You can tell that theirs is a characteristically Left Authoritarianism because of its irrational focus on equality rather than efficacy, e.g., its refusal to look at differential racial impact and its refusal to put restrictions on key at-risk populations (the elderly, obese) rather than socializing the suffering across the entire population—because that would be (aargh!) “discrimination.” But the existence of Left Authoritarianism should not be a surprise. There’s been gathering evidence for it in the technical literature.

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COVID-19 cases in Canada top two million as hospitals brace for Omicron wave’s unknowns

Canada marked Boxing Day by crossing another COVID-19 milestone, surpassing two million total cases despite many jurisdictions not reporting numbers over the holiday weekend, and as hospitals brace for the still unknown impact on admissions.

Health care staff and governments are on edge as they wait to see whether the sharp rise in case counts will have a domino effect on hospitals and intensive-care units. A steady number of international studies show that the new Omicron variant of COVID-19 leads to fewer severe cases, but with the sheer number of infections, even a smaller ratio of people getting very sick could swamp hospitals.

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Why are some people with Omicron testing negative for COVID?

Imagine attending a Christmas or New Year’s party, learning the next day that someone there had COVID, then waking up the day after that with a sore throat, sniffles, and achiness. It wouldn’t take a genius to piece together what happened. But you’d want to be sure, so you’d reach for that rapid test you wisely purchased last month after the news about Omicron first broke, knowing that the new variant would soon be on your doorstep.

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Ontario reports 9,418 new COVID-19 cases; death and testing data not released

Ontario reports 9,418 new COVID-19 cases; death and testing data not released

Ontario reported more than 9,400 new COVID-19 cases on Monday, as demand for diagnostic testing continues to outstrip available supply.

The seven-day rolling average of new cases now stands at 7,550, up from 2,863 one week ago.


Experts concerned about hospital capacity as Omicron spread continues

OTTAWA — A rise in COVID-19 cases driven by the highly infectious Omicron variant of the virus has renewed concerns among experts about the capacity of Canada’s hospitals and health-care workers to handle another wave of the pandemic.

Paul-Emile Cloutier, president of HealthCareCAN, said the latest wave could make the existing health-care worker shortage worse. HealthCareCAN represents research hospitals and regional health authorities.

Interesting observations by this ER doc

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‘You can’t open in January’: An infection-control epidemiologist on Omicron in schools

Natalie Philippe, a public health nurse for Public Health Sudbury and Districts, says that a school outbreak does not always involve transmission within the school. Instead, it is declared when two cases are reported in a single classroom. Often, she says, “outbreaks that occur in schools are actually from contact that occurred outside of school.” Her region has been a hotspot since the end of October — and the city’s schools have not been spared. “We know that with Omicron, we are going to be dealing with something even stronger,” Philippe says.

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What You Should Know About Ivermectin, Hydroxychloroquine, Monoclonal Antibodies, Paxlovid, Molnupiravir, and BioNTech and Pfizer’s Comirnaty Jab…And Why Democrats May Be Fresh Out of Monsters

You understand, of course, that Western Civ’s mass formation psychosis, like a horror movie franchise, requires the constant re-invention of its monsters and hobgoblins, and a constantly refreshed arsenal of weapons to defeat them. Covid is our mutating monster, but Big Pharma’s silver bullets and wooden stakes have proven quite lame. So, the resourceful superhero, Dr. Fauci (“The Science”), has induced his magic messenger, Santa Claus (a.k.a. the FDA), to deliver two brand-new light-sabers to humankind to keep millions of disordered minds churning with hope of slaying the object of their fear.

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A (statistical) journal of the plague year

As a Christmas present to statistics lovers, the Census Bureau has released its estimates of the population of the nation and the 50 states as of July 1, 2021. The Bureau admits up front that, due to COVID, its numbers are subject to more than usual uncertainty. But overall, they provide important clues as to how the public has coped with the pandemic and how COVID may have changed the trajectory of national growth — and contraction.

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