Prolonging the Pandemic

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We are nearing the end of the second year of the Coronavirus (SARS-CoV-2) pandemic. COVID-19 is the disease that is caused by this coronavirus. First identified in December of 2019, it has swept around the globe, leaving death and disruption in its wake.

In order to protect our communities from overwhelming COVID-19 infections we initiated protocols for individual isolation and quarantine; we asked our populations to wear masks, stay 2m apart, and wash up with hand sanitizer before and after we went out for groceries;  as communities we had slowdowns, partial shut-downs and total lockdowns. We waited for the CDC and Health Canada to issue emergency approval for newly developed vaccines.

Our national and local Medical Officers of Health, and politicians, kept us apprised of the necessary health measures and coronavirus case counts. The choice was simple: follow the guidelines and get the pandemic under control, or don’t and suffer the consequences. Politicians played Russian roulette with our public schools as stressed parents coped with online learning at home. Businesses began to shut down and frustrated owners and staff put pressure on their local elected officials to get things re-opened. So we rushed into “shopping mall therapy” as soon as infections hit a low point.

Every time we get a drop in infections we “open up the economy” again. In Doug Ford’s Ontario that means strip clubs, bars, restaurants, and packed sports stadiums. We do it “for the people” and inevitably see a spike in infections shortly thereafter. We call them “waves” but they are really just indicators of our collective consumptive stupidity.

Medical science told us that if we stayed masked, distanced, hand-washed and fully vaccinated that we would have a chance to hold this pandemic at bay. But we just couldn’t wait to get “back to normal” and now there is no normal. Once again we re-opened and our case count is rising. Thanks to the number of people now vaccinated this bump is not as severe as April of this year when we peaked at 4500 cases.

The rise to 711 cases on Thursday, November 18, 2021 pushed Ontario’s seven day average to 600 cases and talk of modifying the re-opening guidelines bubbled up from the Science Advisory Table cauldron once again. Dear Doug and friends, please try to get it right for once. 10,000 Ontarians have already died from this coronavirus, including 4,000 from Long Term Care facilities. You are acting like immediate gratification “one marshmallow” children. In 1972, Stanford University psychology professor Walter Mischel conducted a study on delayed gratification. In this study, a child was offered a choice between one small but immediate reward (either a marshmallow or a pretzel stick), or two small rewards if they waited for a period of time. During this time, the researcher left the room for about 15 minutes and then returned.

Some of the children had immediately gone for the one small reward, but a smaller group had waited to double their pleasure. In follow-up studies, the researchers found that the children who were able to wait longer for the preferred rewards tended to have better life outcomes in everything from educational attainment to healthy body mass index. Our politicians and their advisers are playing to the immediate gratification crew.  I would prefer to wait until we have this pandemic under control before asking for my second small reward. I suspect most Ontarians who prefer a healthy life over death from COVID-19 would want the same.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

UPDATE Friday, November 19,2021 – Ontario’s COVID-19 case count 793 : “Today’s case count comes after officials logged 711 new cases on Thursday, 512 new cases on Wednesday and 481 new cases on Tuesday. Ontario’s rolling seven-day average now stands at 625, up from 537 at this point last week.”  You do the graph.

Reported by Abby Neufeld, multi platform writer for CTV News Toronto

@abbyjneufeld

 

The Real Reason for Reopening Schools

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“The economy, stupid.” James Carville, 1992

Why is there such a push to re-open schools in the middle of a pandemic just as variant strains of the virus increase the possibility of transmission? Well, as James accurately noted, “it’s the economy, stupid.”

The family circle of the days of Leave it to Beaver are long gone, being replaced by two working parents or single parents leaving no one to look after the children while the parental unit is at work keeping the economy functionning. This is a trend that began in the seventies when more women entered the workforce and accelerated with increasing divorce rates and single parent families. In fact, by 2020, over 1/4 of children were living in lone parent families.

 Doug Ford, alleged high school dropout turned drug dealer turned Lingerie League cheerleader, doesn’t give a hoot about the value of education. He needs those adult bodies back in the factories and stores and services stimulating Ontario’s economy. What’s the motto? “A place to grow .., your business!”  or was it “Ontario: Open for Business”  or was it “Make Ontario Great Again” ….

Heck, you can’t get all those parental units to Build Our Ontario Back Better (BOOBB) if they can’t work because they can’t leave the younger children at home alone, and you don’t have enough provincial daycare spaces due to your lack of policy, so … reopen the schools!

The saddest part of this push is that we are all realizing that parents who grew used to depending on our high quality and professional public school safety net to protect and teach their children are now stuck in a Stay at Home Lockdown with rusty to non-existent parenting skills. The incidence of infants and young children being injured at home has increased dramatically. The incidence of family violence has increased dramatically.

And what does Doug do? He makes home deliver of alcohol easier. Brilliant. In fact, he considers it an essential service. You know the old saying, “Once a drug dealer, always a drug dealer.” Allegedly.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caledon

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Vaccine is no Miracle Cure

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 Yes, help is on the way, and vaccines from various companies may soon be available in countries around the world, but the return to “normal” is a long distance run, not a sprint. That is why Dr, Fauci, America’s top infectious disease specialist, expressed concern at the speed at which the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine was rush approved for use in the UK without a national health review of Pfizer’s data.

Dr, Fauci was criticized for his observations, but he was absolutely right, The safety and efficiency reports on the vaccine were issued by the company and accepted at face value by British authorities. There was no separate national health care service review and analysis of the data. That is like accepting Monsanto-Bayer’s claim that their glyphosate-based  Roundup® herbicide was perfectly safe – only to discover later after public health and safety reviews that it should be kept under lock and key.

I am NOT excited about getting the vaccine from any company before it goes through Health Canada approvals. The Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) will begin distribution once the efficacy of the vaccine has been checked and verified by our public health guardians, not by the private for-profit companies that produced the vaccines.

That is why it will be quite a while before the vaccine reaches the general public. After federal approval, it will no doubt be distributed to front-line health care workers first, and then in order of priority from the most vulnerable beginning with long-term care residents, city workers, teachers, and day-care staff, followed by the marginalized communities showing the greatest positivity rates.

Keep in mind the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine requires two doses twenty-one days apart and takes thirty days from the first shot until “immunity” is achieved. Yes, 30 days in total. One month. So let’s say you are one of those average Canadians who might get their first injection at the beginning of August 2021. Twenty-one days later you get your second dose of the vaccine. Then you wait 10 days more days for full immune-system response so that by Labour Day in September you may be back to following the normal coronavirus health protocols in public.

You may be immune from infection, but still able to transmit infection to others. No one knows yet, Herein lies the danger of the vaccine illusion. The same misinformed masses who hold “freedom rallies” and “hugs over masks” protests and travel cross-country to celebrate traditional seasonal holidays, are the same who think life is about to return to normal when the vaccine arrives. They are joined by ordinary citizens who are pandemic weary and worn-out by lockdown isolation, the realities of full time parenting, and a constricting economy.

The truth is that unless we stay socially distant, wear masks, wash hands, and follow all of the recommended health guidelines until the end of 2021, all of the hope and hard work that went into preparing these coronavirus vaccines will have been for naught. And unless we wait patiently for the appropriate federal public health agencies to give their approval, blind faith in premature for-profit praise of the vaccine could turn out to be more of a disaster than a miracle.

The way I see it.

***

Skid Crease, Caleon

  • image from euractiv.com