“China eats weird animals disease”

It is embarrassing at this point that Canada’s government persists with the charade that its hotel quarantine program for international travellers is in any way mandatory, serious or science-based.

It is not, and has never been, compulsory or universal. International travellers can fly into border cities in the U.S. and enter Canada by land, rendering them exempt from the hotel requirement – a loophole the government hasn’t remedied in the more than three months since it first announced the program.

The UK has one of the fastest vaccine rollouts in the world. But the emergence of a highly infectious variant first discovered in India has caused concern.

UK – Indian variant: Second jabs could be brought forward to tackle rise

Second vaccine doses could be brought forward and local restrictions introduced to help tackle the Indian variant in the worst-affected areas, the UK government has said.

Minister Nadhim Zahawi said steps could also include vaccinating younger people in multi-generational households.

Meanwhile, a top scientist has warned lifting restrictions on 21 June is in doubt because of the Indian variant.

Cases in the UK have more than doubled to 1,313, Public Health England said.

A global study involving more than 540,000 people shows that vaccine hesitancy and concerns about safety have declined steadily over the past year, but people in many countries, including Canada, have become more unhappy with how their governments have handled the COVID-19 pandemic.

Researchers at Imperial College London have been tracking people in 29 countries since April, 2020, to gauge how the public has responded to the virus. The latest findings, released Friday, showed polling results from 14 countries, including Canada, that have been surveyed most regularly.

Canadians who have been vaccinated with one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine can socialize with close family and friends outdoors over the summer months, Canada’s chief public health officer said today.

With the vaccine supply ramping up, virtually all Canadians will have access to at least one vaccine dose by June. Dr. Theresa Tam said that extra layer of protection will allow some of the more stringent social distancing measures to be relaxed — but Canadians must continue to avoid indoor gatherings altogether until more people are fully vaccinated.

This is a story about Rebekah Jones, a former dashboard manager at the Florida Department of Health (FDOH), who has single-handedly managed to convince millions of Americans that Gov. Ron DeSantis has been fudging the state’s COVID-19 data.

When I write “single-handedly,” I mean it, for Jones is not one of the people who have advanced this conspiracy theory but rather is the person who has advanced this conspiracy theory. It has been repeated by others, sure: by partisans across the internet, by unscrupulous Florida Democrats such as Nikki Fried and Charlie Crist, and on television, by MSNBC in particular. But it flows from a single place: Rebekah Jones. To understand that is to understand the whole game. This is about Jones, and Jones alone. If she falls, it falls.

TORONTO — Ontario Premier Doug Ford has announced that the provincewide stay-home-order will be extended for an additional two weeks to control the spread of COVID-19.

“Make no mistake, we’re not out of the woods yet,” Ford said during a news conference Thursday.

“Our hospitals are still under immense pressure. The spread of variants remains a major concern.”