You can’t blame Biden for the emergence of new variants. But you can blame him for his hubris in celebrating “independence from the virus” this summer as Delta was taking off across the U.S.
And you can most definitely blame him for being shortsighted about preparing countermeasures ahead of an inevitable winter wave.
Nearly $100 billion at minimum has been stolen from COVID-19 relief programs set up to help businesses and people who lost their jobs due to the pandemic, the U.S. Secret Service said Tuesday.
The estimate is based on Secret Service cases and data from the Labor Department and the Small Business Administration, said Roy Dotson, the agency’s national pandemic fraud recovery coordinator, in an interview. The Secret Service didn’t include COVID-19 fraud cases prosecuted by the Justice Department.
While roughly 3% of the $3.4 trillion dispersed, the amount stolen from pandemic benefits programs shows “the sheer size of the pot is enticing to the criminals,” Dotson said.
JOHANNESBURG (AP) — South Africa’s noticeable drop in new COVID-19 cases in recent days may signal that the country’s dramatic omicron-driven surge has passed its peak, medical experts say.
Daily virus case counts are notoriously unreliable, as they can be affected by uneven testing, reporting delays and other fluctuations. But they are offering one tantalizing hint — far from conclusive yet — that omicron infections may recede quickly after a ferocious spike.
South Africa has been at the forefront of the omicron wave and the world is watching for any signs of how it may play out there to try to understand what may be in store.
The pseudo-medical geniuses at Facebook partner Lead Stories tried to fact-check the British Medical Journal. Then they somehow claimed those actions weren’t censorship.
The British Medical Journal (BMJ) responded to a bizarre “fact-check” by Lead Stories of its bombshell report headlined: “Covid-19: Researcher blows the whistle on data integrity issues in Pfizer’s vaccine trial.” The report in question revealed how “Revelations of poor practices at a contract research company helping to carry out Pfizer’s pivotal covid-19 vaccine trial raise questions about data integrity and regulatory oversight.” But Lead Stories Managing Editor Dean Miller, who isn’t a medical professional, wrote a blaring headline in response: “Fact Check: The British Medical Journal Did NOT Reveal Disqualifying And Ignored Reports Of Flaws In Pfizer COVID-19 Vaccine Trials.”
It’s OK to be furious right now. In fact, you should be. It becomes clearer by the day just how badly everyone from the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI) to provincial premiers and public health officials bungled our pandemic response just when something resembling an end to this madness and tragedy was in sight. It didn’t have to be this way.
Canada’s federal health agency has been using cellphone data to track the anonymized movements of Canadians since the onset of the pandemic in order to inform policy and public messaging, and it intends to continue the practice after the COVID-19 crisis is over.
Reported by Blacklock’s on Dec. 21, the news was confirmed by the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times.
Not a surprise. We are wired for control.
h/t Jaedo Drax
Ont. reports 4,383 new COVID-19 cases today; highest single-day total since April
Of the news cases confirmed today, 176 involve those who are partially vaccinated, 222 involve people with an unknown vaccination status, 746 involve those who are unvaccinated, and 3,243 involve people who are considered fully vaccinated with two doses of an approved COVID-19 vaccine.
Omicron is blurring true picture of COVID-19 cases. But experts say there are other ways to capture it
As demand drastically increases for COVID-19 testing across the country, experts say it will quickly become harder to get an exact picture of Omicron case counts in Canada.
And that means health authorities are likely soon going to have to rely more on hospitalization numbers as the main indicator of the extent of the impact of the new coronavirus variant.
“This is such a hyper-contagious disease that it was completely foreseeable … that the rate of spread would overwhelm the testing capacity that we have, as is already happening,” said Raywat Deonandan, an epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.
Despite new COVID-19 restrictions, no one is eligible for the new federal benefit
As new restrictions sweep the country just days before Christmas, a new benefit meant to help workers is locking them out of receiving support because of its specific wording.
Last week, parliament passed Bill C-2, which created the Canada Worker Lockdown Benefit (CWLB), a program intended to give $300 a week to anyone who can’t work because of a COVID-19 lockdown.
When it comes to reporting on COVID in Canada, the legacy media are failing Canadians.
Journalists don’t report the facts, they only push a narrative – even if it means burying important facts. The result is that journalists sound like government propagandists and their reports look like vaccine infomercials.
The Canadian Trucking Alliance (CTA) says it estimates that up to 22 thousand Canadian drivers will decide to leave the Canada-U.S. market when the Canadian government’s planned cross-border vaccination mandate takes effect on January 15, 2022. (The U.S. government is also planning to implement a vaccination requirement for Canadian truckers on January 22.)
The burden for enforcing the fines unjabbed Austrians will have to pay as part of their punishment will fall to their employers, necessitating a new army of ‘inspectors’ to ensure that process is running smoothly.
There was also widespread concern expressed about gathering with unvaccinated individuals. Only about 25 per cent of respondents said that they would be comfortable doing so.
A surge of Omicron cases will push European health systems towards the brink, the World Health Organization’s top official in the continent has warned.
Hans Kluge said “another storm” was coming and governments should brace for significant increases in cases.
His warning came as several countries re-imposed social distancing restrictions.
Ontario may soon have to “put some limitations” on PCR testing in order to ensure there are sufficient resources on hand to respond to outbreaks and protect long-term care facilities, the province’s top public health official says.
Chief Medical Officer of Health Dr. Kieran Moore made the comment during a briefing on Tuesday afternoon, as Ontarians continued to report days-long waits to access a PCR test.
… Ontario’s positivity rate has risen from approximately three per cent at the beginning of the month to a recent high of 9.9 per cent over the last 24 hours, something that Moore said is a “clear signal” that we are “under testing” and that COVID-19 is spreading more widely in the community than we might realized.
But it is unlikely that Ontario will be able to significantly increase its testing capacity, given staffing constraints in its labs.
Otherwise they were quite happy with the ChiCom slave state…
NHL players won’t go to Beijing Olympics amid COVID-19 concerns: reports
The National Hockey League and National Hockey League Players’ Association have reached an agreement to not send its players to participate in the Beijing 2022 Winter Olympics in February, according to reports from The Toronto Star’s Chris Johnston and Daily Faceoff’s Frank Seravalli.
This was inevitable.
Canada will miss COVID-19 cases as testing systems become overwhelmed: experts
Daniel Bear would like to get a COVID-19 test. “I know I have COVID,” the father from Toronto told Global News on Tuesday.
He’s taken five rapid tests since his nose started running nearly a week ago. At first, they were negative, he said. But on Sunday when his symptoms got worse, he took another, and it was positive. He’s had two more positive tests since.
Public health chiefs and the media are working overtime to gin up hysteria
In March 2020, a profile of the typical Covid victim emerged from Italy. The average decedent was eighty years old, with approximately three comorbidities such as heart disease, obesity or diabetes. The young had little to worry about; the survival rate for the vast majority of the population was well over 99 percent.
That portrait never significantly changed. The early assessments of Covid out of Italy have remained valid through today. And so it will prove with the Omicron variant.
