“China eats weird animals disease”

More than 500 air passengers fined for defying hotel quarantine rules after landing in Vancouver and Toronto

The federal government has doled out hundreds of fines since Feb. 22 — typically for $3,000 each — to air passengers who refused to quarantine in a designated hotel upon arrival in Canada.

Even so, the government couldn’t provide CBC News with a total number of people who’ve violated its rule that passengers entering Canada be tested for COVID-19, then quarantine in a hotel while waiting for their results.

And when CBC tried to track down the total number of hotel quarantine violators, it found no evidence of fines being issued to passengers who landed in Calgary or Montreal — two of the four cities, along with Vancouver and Toronto, where international flights are allowed to land during the pandemic.

Like golfers everywhere, I was cheered by my colleague Kelly McParland’s defence of our game against woke charges that it is elitist. “In defence of golf as a middle-class sport,” his piece was called, and, thanks to the miracle of the internet, it really was read by golfers everywhere. And there are golfers everywhere, even in Communist China, where an estimated 20 million play, despite an official ban on golf course development by that country’s wide-awoke authorities.

EDMONTON — The trial for an Alberta pastor accused of leading church services in violation of public-health orders entered its second day on Tuesday.

Lawyers for GraceLife Pastor James Coates, 41, continued their arguments this morning in Edmonton provincial court.

They argued the province’s public health rules restricting attendance at venues, including churches, violated charter rights around freedom of gathering, expression and religion.

Canada needs more help with COVID-19, prominent U.S. vaccine expert urges White House

Dr. Peter Hotez, a vaccine expert and a familiar face to cable news viewers in both countries, says the U.S. has more than enough capacity to expand its largely successful vaccination efforts beyond its borders, including in Canada.

In an interview Monday with The Canadian Press, Hotez said he had assumed — like a lot of Americans — that Canada had essentially been keeping pace with the U.S. in terms of getting its citizens the protection they need.

Then he looked at the numbers.

“I was really astonished — only about a third of the country has received a single dose, and essentially no one’s gotten fully vaccinated,” said Hotez, who is dean of the school of tropical medicine at Baylor University in Houston.

The National Advisory Committee on Immunization is coming under fire after contradicting the advice Canadians have been receiving for weeks to take the first vaccine against COVID-19 that they’re offered.

NACI said Monday that the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines are “preferred” and that Canadians should weigh the risks of waiting for one of them before deciding whether to take a more immediate jab of either of the other two approved for use in Canada.

Ontario is reporting 2,791 cases of #COVID19 and over 33,700 tests completed. Locally, there are 931 new cases in Toronto, 653 in Peel, 275 in York Region, 147 in Durham and 128 in Hamilton.

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) May 4, 2021

Group of Ontario police officers launches charter challenge of pandemic restrictions

A group of 19 Ontario police officers has launched a constitutional challenge against the provincial and federal governments and several police chiefs, claiming that enforcing sweeping pandemic health restrictions puts them at odds with their oath to uphold the charter.

Fifteen active and four retired members of law enforcement agencies — including the Toronto Police Service, York Regional Police Service, Ottawa Police Service, Niagara Regional Police Service, Hamilton Police Service and the RCMP — are behind the civil action.

It was filed in the Superior Court of Justice against the premier, the attorneys general of Canada and Ontario, as well as five police chiefs.

More than a quarter have been issued unlawfully. They must be scrapped.

What kind of cruel, Byzantine parallel universe have we entered, when two students can be fined £10,000 each for organising a snowball fight, as they were in January?

How did this come to pass?

In basketball, they would call this foul and send the player to the line for a free throw.

But in the weird COVID world, the nets are covered and people are technically not supposed to even go out of their house.

When Dr. Kate Greenaway entered Tendercare nursing home amid a COVID-19 outbreak in December she was stunned.

“We’ve been in a pandemic for quite a number of months, at that point, it was pretty shocking to me that it was possible to seem so unprepared for an outbreak,” she said.

A family physician, she had answered an urgent call on social media that the home was in dire need of help. When she arrived at the home she raced from one resident to the next in a desperate attempt to provide assistance.