Alex Lytwyn was in the Christmas spirit. He wanted to head out to Walmart in Dauphin, Manitoba, to buy a friend a box of chocolates as a Christmas gift. But not long after entering, he was accosted by security for not wearing a mask.
Alex suffers from fairly advanced cerebral palsy. As per the mask mandate set out by the Province of Manitoba, anyone who is unable to safely put on or remove his or her mask on their own is exempt from the mandate. Alex visibly falls into this category.
This blog was published on RT-com, after much discussion and a few changes. It can be seen here It took a few days. The editors were concerned about the fact-checkers having a go at it and demanding retraction.
We went back and forward. I assured them that all my quoted facts were correct, so the fact-checkers could only attack the ‘opinion’ stated. Which they may well do. If so, fact checkers are no longer checking facts, they are decreeing which scientific opinions are correct, and which are wrong.
h/t RM
In both lives and livelihoods, the poorest have borne the brunt of our disastrous response to the pandemic.
Coronavirus might discriminate by age but lockdown discriminates by class. From the moment this disastrous policy was instigated, it became immediately apparent that we were not all in it together. In every single aspect of life, the working class has suffered most during lockdown. Worse still, over the course of the past year, class inequalities have grown wider and have become more entrenched. And yet, at each turn, left-wing lockdown lovers have demanded ever-more severe restrictions on people’s lives.
When the going gets tough, Justin Trudeau goes into hiding.
For the second week in a row, the Prime Minister allowed Maj.-Gen. Dany Fortin to deliver the bad news on reduced vaccine shipments.
A highly-contagious coronavirus mutation first found in Britain will become the dominant strain in Ontario sometime in March, provincial modellers predict, narrowing the room for error as the province enters a period of sustained case decline.
Ontario Science Table Co-Chair Dr. Adalsteinn Brown told reporters it is now only a matter of time before the B.1.1.7 coronavirus variant becomes the dominant strain.
“Perhaps most worryingly the new variants of concern of the mutate SARS-COVID-2 virus are clearly spreading in the community and will likely be the dominant version of the virus in March,” he said on Thursday afternoon.
Canada falls to 20th in the world for vaccine doses administered
Canada has fallen behind other developed nations in the number of shots administered per capita as supply disruptions derail planned vaccinations.
According to data collated by the University of Oxford-based Our World in Data, Canada now ranks 20th globally, well behind allies like the United States and the United Kingdom but also middle-income countries like Poland and Serbia.
Finally, the World Health Organization has sent investigators to Wuhan, China, ground zero for COVID-19, to begin the belated search for the origins of the coronavirus pandemic.
Today they will emerge from 14 days of quarantine. They should go straight to the Wuhan Institute of Virology, where high-risk research, funded by US taxpayers, was being conducted into animal-to-human transmission of bat coronaviruses, a few miles from where the first COVID-19 cases were discovered.
Ontario is reporting 2,093 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 64,700 tests completed. Locally, there are 700 new cases in Toronto, 331 in Peel, 228 in York Region and 123 in Niagara.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 317,240 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) January 28, 2021
German authorities recommend blocking use of AstraZeneca vaccine for over-65s
The independent commission advising the German government on vaccination policy has recommended that the AstraZeneca vaccine not be used for people aged over 65, in a move likely to complicate the acrimonious rollout of the jab in the EU.
A statement by the Standing Vaccine Commission at the Robert Koch Institute, Germany’s main public health agency, said there were “insufficient data currently available to ascertain how effective the vaccination is above 65 years”.
Oops… Completed Ontario vaccinations only half what was reported
COVID-19 scrutiny has stopped some women headed to Canada to give birth, documents allege
Greater scrutiny of travellers, prompted by COVID-19, has yielded new instances of women from other countries coming to Canada with what officials say is an unspoken plan to deliver their baby here, documents obtained by the Star show.
Some observers have repeatedly cautioned that the practice controversially dubbed “birth tourism” — which is legal — is being overblown and that focus on it has been driven as much by racism as real concern.
The federal government, meanwhile, has said it is studying the issue in an effort to understand the scope of what is happening.
Canada is so fecked up.
Weeks after the federal government ordered all travellers flying into Canada to provide a negative test before boarding, authorities continue to report flights into Montreal that carried passengers with COVID-19.
BRUSSELS (AP) — The European Union’s dispute with AstraZeneca over vaccine supplies intensified Wednesday as the drugmaker defended itself against claims that it had reneged on contractual commitments and the two sides sparred over plans for further talks.
AstraZeneca Chief Executive Pascal Soriot addressed the dispute for the first time, rejecting the EU’s assertion that the company was failing to honor its commitments to deliver coronavirus vaccines. Soriot said delivery figures in AstraZeneca’s contract with the 27-nation bloc were targets, not firm commitments, and they couldn’t be met because of problems in rapidly expanding production capacity.
Ontario is reporting 1,670 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 55,200 tests completed. Locally, there are 450 new cases in Toronto, 342 in Peel, 171 in York Region and 128 in Niagara.
As of 8:00 p.m. yesterday, 305,330 doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered.
— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) January 27, 2021
WARMINGTON: Why allow flights to land from COVID hotspots?
The big question is why?
When everybody is worrying about the U.K. variant of the coronavirus, why were there two flights from Heathrow landing at Pearson International on Tuesday? Why were passengers arriving from Pakistan, the Netherlands, India, Tanzania, China and Germany?
A prominent member of Ontario’s science table, which advises the government on pandemic restrictions including school closures, was paid by a teachers’ union for offering an argument against the government’s school reopening plans at a provincial labour board hearing, the Toronto Sun has learned.
The EU is poised to impose export controls on vaccines leaving the 27-member bloc to ensure supply on the continent. The proposal would require companies to seek approval before shipping vaccines to countries like Canada.
The riots are wrong and heartbreaking. But many people feel desperate in this lockdown.
We in the UK say we are turning a blind eye to something. In the Netherlands, they say, ‘we zullen het door de vingers zien’, which means, we’ll see it through the fingers. It is how the Dutch communicate that they are letting something slide.
