On Tuesday’s broadcast of the Fox News Channel’s “Ingraham Angle,” World Health Organization adviser Jamie Metzl criticized the organization’s investigation into the origins of the coronavirus for not taking a serious enough look at the possibility of an accidental lab leak and saying that “the actual investigation was done by Chinese authorities. And so, the W.H.O. investigators were basically receiving reports from the Chinese officials.”
In each warm body it infects, the virus behind Covid-19 has the potential to change. It can become more deadly, more transmissible or more resistant to the vaccines on which we are all pinning so much hope. Mercifully, the biology of Sars-CoV-2 means that such changes happen slowly and almost always fail to catch on.
But mutations, like pandemics, are a numbers game. Every new person infected provides another opportunity for the virus to adopt a new form. So far, Sars-CoV-2 has infected at least 106 million people worldwide and taken on many thousands of mutations. Most of those changes are slow and inconsequential – evolutionary dead ends that nobody will ever realise existed. But, in some people, the virus hits the jackpot.
It is now clear that Canada is dramatically behind the rest of the developed world in immunizing its citizens against COVID-19.
One quarter of Israel is now fully vaccinated, and the U.K. has administered 13 million doses. But in Canada, procurement issues and late deliveries have effectively stalled our vaccination program after only one million doses; roughly the amount of shots that the United States administers every 16 hours. It’s now estimated that Canada will not achieve widespread vaccine coverage until mid-2022, nearly six months after the same goal will have been met by the United States, the U.K. and the E.U.
Ontario is reporting 1,072 cases of #COVID19 and over 52,500 tests completed. Locally, there are 393 new cases in Toronto, 196 in Peel and 125 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 412,119 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 10, 2021
Majority of Canadians say governments should have acted faster amid COVID-19: Ipsos poll
A majority of Canadians believe that governments should have acted sooner to reduce the number of coronavirus cases in the country, according to new polling from Ipsos.
Roughly 63 per cent of Canadians, or just shy of two-thirds, said that governments should have put the hammer down sooner with stricter measures including travel bans, curfews and lockdowns, in a bid to slow the spread of the virus.
Nearly 1,000 Quebecers received a fines last week because they didn’t respect the province-wide COVID-19 curfew.
The Canadian government will soon require all travellers into the country to present a negative Covid-19(84) test whether that be by air or land! The new rules are expected to begin on February 15th. Are Canadians truly free if they can’t leave or come home without being forced to do something they may not want to do? In this video Dan Dicks of Press For Truth covers the latest travel restriction news as the Canadian government continues its incremental moves towards all out tyranny.
The Issues Manager for Trudeau’s Procurement Minister, Anita Anand, contacted other Liberal press secretaries for their opinion on how to finesse the government’s “unattractive delivery numbers” for PPE and masks.
Periods of society-wide threats are danger-times for rights. Anxious populations tend to accept restrictions on liberty which would be strongly resisted at other, more peaceful, moments. During the “War on Terror” which followed the 9/11 attacks, detention without trial, mass surveillance and torture were authorised by liberal democracies. We may be seeing that dynamic repeated today, as the legally enforced social-distancing restrictions put in place to slow the spread of Covid-19 raise some of the most difficult questions in modern times about life, liberty and the basic tenets of democracy.
Coronavirus has changed the way we travel and many countries now demand proof of a negative Covid test before letting you in – with tests often costing hundreds of pounds. BBC reporter Joice Etutu has been speaking to two women who admit using and selling fake certificates.
“I was kind of nervous because I didn’t know what to expect.
“When I got to the counter where they check in your passport before you board the plane, the man asked me for my [Covid-19 test certificate]
“He literally read through it for no more than 10 to 20 seconds, and then he smiled and asked me where I was going and said, ‘have a safe flight.’
Justin Trudeau is facing growing pressure to speed up Canada’s sluggish distribution of the coronavirus vaccine, as the country fends off accusations that it is taking supplies of the drug meant for developing countries.
The federal government drew sharp criticism last week when it announced that it would draw on Covax, a mechanism created to fairly distribute Covid-19 around the world, for its supply of the AstraZeneca vaccine.
Canada is entitled to receive shots through the Covax program, which uses advance purchases by wealthy nations to subsidise doses for poorer countries. But it had already completed a series of direct deals with pharmaceutical companies to secure its own supply, prompting accusations of “double-dipping”.
WHO scientists sent on a coronavirus fact-finding mission to China have today thrown their weight behind Beijing – dismissing theories the virus leaked from a lab wile backing theories that the virus was imported on frozen meat.
Peter Embarek, leader of the WHO team, said that ‘further research’ into the imported meat theory – which is being pushed by Beijing – is needed, along with studies looking at early cases of Covid reported outside of China.
At the same time, he dismissed theories that the virus leaked from a lab in Wuhan, saying the possibility is ‘extremely unlikely’ and does not need to be investigated further – despite US government officials calling it ‘the most credible’ theory just a few weeks ago.
Ontario is reporting 1,022 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 30,800 tests completed. Locally, there are 343 new cases in Toronto, 250 in Peel and 128 in York Region.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 398,633 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) February 9, 2021
FUREY: Ontario fear-mongered we’d face 20,000 cases — we’re at 1,200
Last Wednesday, the Boston Museum of Fine Arts re-opened. Massachusetts art lovers no longer have to worry that they’ll miss their chance to see the gallery’s current exhibitions of Monet, Cezanne, and Jean-Michel Basquiat.
While it’s already a cavernous space, the gallery has a number of COVID-19 protocols in place, including time-reserved tickets, limited capacity, and mandatory mask-wearing.
More good news… Eviction enforcement resumes in three eastern Ontario regions Wednesday. Toronto set to follow on Feb. 22
On last Friday’s episode of Rebel Roundup, host David Menzies was joined by Alberta-based Rebel reporter Keean Bexte to discuss his story about a woman in Calgary who was forced into quarantine in one of the federal government’s COVID-19 hotel/jails.
No matter what you call it, Canadians are being held against their will by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s federal government — ironic, coming from a government that touts itself as being transparent.
It’s quite something to look back and see what Canada’s response to a pandemic was supposed to be and then compare it to what we’ve actually being doing to deal with COVID-19.
There’s one recurring theme that comes across when you study the various pandemic preparedness documents that have been put together by different levels of governments in recent years: It’s that they all anticipate a situation worse than the one that is currently unfolding, but they call for less restrictive measures than the ones that have now been enacted.
Top officials at the World Health Organization (WHO) secretly criticised China for not providing information about the novel coronavirus in the early days of the pandemic, leaked audio files have revealed.
The recordings, published by Indian TV channel WION, purportedly showed how WHO executives complained about Beijing’s refusal to release critical data in January last year.
But in the same month, the WHO’s Director-General publicly lauded Chinese President Xi and his government for their effort to battle against the disease.
Their silence makes the WHO complicit.
