When your refrigerator goes out under quarantine and your supplies begin to rot, do you really need another rant from Maxine Waters?
In all the gloom and doom, and media-driven nihilism, there is actually an array of good news. As many predicted, as testing spreads, and we get a better idea of the actual number and nature of cases, the death rate from coronavirus slowly but also seems to steadily decline.
Two things can be true at the same time about COVID-19.
For one, people can take the virus seriously, believe it’s an issue, and believe everyone needs to take the necessary precautions in order to limit the spread of the virus or avoid it altogether.
On the other end, the same person who takes the COVID-19 virus seriously can also be a person who recognizes that a societal collapse could do far more damage to the people than this virus can, and do what’s necessary to keep society afloat by living out their lives as normally as possible.
A florist in Alberta has done the unthinkable: she has kept her business open every single day in defiance of lockdown orders imposed.
Premier Doug Ford said he should have told finance minister Rod Phillips to return back to Ontario when he found out the minister travelled out of the country for a holiday vacation.
Ford made the comments Wednesday afternoon during a visit to Trillium Health where health officials are preparing to distribute the newly arrived Moderna COVID-19 vaccine to Peel Public Health.
Air passengers entering Canada will need to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test before arriving in the country, the federal government announced today.
Travellers must receive a negative polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test within a 72-hour period prior to boarding a plane — a requirement Intergovernmental Affairs Minister Dominic LeBlanc said will be in place “quickly,” though he did not provide an exact date.
The measure does not replace the federal government’s mandatory 14-day quarantine period, Public Safety Minister Bill Blair warned.
“This is not an alternative to quarantine. It’s an additional layer,” Blair said during a public health briefing.
After months of scolding Torontonians for not following COVID-19 public health measures, Toronto’s mayor says he stands by his friends.
One day after Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips admitted to shirking his government’s COVID-19 advice by jetting off to the Caribbean island of St. Barts, John Tory described the Ajax MPP’s decision to take a Christmas vacation in paradise as a ‘mistake’ — doing so no less than 12 times while responding to a reporter’s question during a press conference Wednesday.
… More than a year since the first known person was infected with the coronavirus, an AP investigation shows the Chinese government is strictly controlling all research into its origins, clamping down on some while actively promoting fringe theories that it could have come from outside China.
The government is handing out hundreds of thousands of dollars in grants to scientists researching the virus’ origins in southern China and affiliated with the military, the AP has found. But it is monitoring their findings and mandating that the publication of any data or research must be approved by a new task force managed by China’s cabinet, under direct orders from President Xi Jinping, according to internal documents obtained by The AP. A rare leak from within the government, the dozens of pages of unpublished documents confirm what many have long suspected: The clampdown comes from the top.
The U.K.-based Centre for Economics and Business Research believes that, due to China’s superior response to COVID-19, the Chinese economy will become the world’s largest by 2028, five years earlier than previously forecast.
“For some time, an overarching theme of global economics has been the economic and soft power struggle between the United States and China,” the Centre wrote in a December 26 report. “The COVID-19 pandemic and corresponding economic fallout have certainly tipped this rivalry in China’s favor.”
Ontario is reporting a new record number of COVID-19 cases for the second consecutive day and it comes despite a drop off in testing that has coincided with the holiday season.
The Ministry of Health says that there were 2,923 new cases of the disease caused by the novel coronavirus confirmed on Tuesday, pushing the rolling seven-day average up to 2,309.
It is a marked increase on the then record 2,553 cases that were reported one day prior.
WARMINGTON: Lockdown makes no sense without rapid COVID testing at Pearson
It’s obvious who the first two people tested for coronavirus at Pearson International should be: Ontario Finance Minister Rod Phillips and former federal finance minister Bill Morneau.
After all, both figured it was OK to travel during the pandemic while government and health officials urged the rest of us to stay at home to stop the spread of the deadly virus.
The current lockdown might slow the spread of the UK variant, but it won’t stop it. I suspect they’ll just lock us down again if it becomes dominant later. Just a little something to look forward to in 2021.
As a global pandemic began to take root in February, China held a series of backchannel conversations with Canada, lobbying the federal government to keep its borders open.
With the virus already taking a deadly toll in Asia, Heng Xiaojun, the Minister Counsellor for the Chinese embassy, requested a call with senior Transport Canada officials. Over the course of the conversation, the Chinese representatives communicated Beijing’s desire that flights between the two countries not be stopped because it was unnecessary.
“The Chinese position on the continuation of flights was reiterated,” say official notes taken from the call. “Mr. Heng conveyed that China is taking comprehensive measures to combat the coronavirus.”
Canadian officials seemed to agree, since no steps were taken to restrict or prohibit travel. To the federal government, China appeared to have the situation under control and the risk to Canada was low. Before ending the call, Mr. Heng thanked Ottawa for its “science and fact-based approach.”
Looks like the Globe released this from the paywall. Interesting but distressing read of our ruling class at work.
h/t CT
With the recent announcement that Health Canada has approved Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine, the second being made available to the public, Canadians are likely wondering when it will be their turn to get inoculated.
But with the country currently in the first phase of vaccine rollout, that’s still unclear, with much depending on what they do and where they live.
Over the Christmas break, Quebec police have been busy ticketing families for gathering to celebrate Christmas together.
At the start of the pandemic doctors and other Chinese citizens were reprimanded or legally punished for putting out any information on the pandemic that was not in line with the Chinese government’s narrative that it was under control.
This is a pattern of behaviour from the authoritarian Chinese government not likely to stop unless an outside force puts pressure on them to stop.
Of course, the UN Human Rights Office is not going to do anything substantial about China’s gross abuse of human rights seeing as they simply stated that they were “concerned” by the obvious move to silence those trying to get the truth about the virus to the public.
At the start of the year the Chinese government faced two major challenges; an unknown disease which threatened to tear through its population and a wave of voices online telling the world what was happening.
By the end of 2020, a glance at Chinese state-controlled media shows that both appear to be under control.
The BBC’s Kerry Allen and Zhaoyin Feng take a look back at the country’s online government censors who worked harder than ever to supress negative information, the citizens that managed to break through the Great Firewall, and how the propaganda machine re-wrote the narrative.
