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Canadiana

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This post is in: 

Looking at this morning’s COVID update, there’s this graph of what could have been:

It isn’t just vaccines. From what I can tell, the most populous provinces kept their mask mandates in place. But I wonder how long they’re going to be able to keep this up, because there’s no vaccination for being an asshole “conservative”:

But Alberta has repeatedly said it will not bring in vaccine passports and Premier Jason Kenney has outright dismissed the notion of mandatory vaccinations, even amending the province’s Public Health Act to remove a 100-year-old power allowing the government to force people to be vaccinated.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford also firmly rejected the possibility of vaccine passports last month, even for health-care workers, saying the province is “not going to have a split society.”

These guys say “no” to mandates today, but let’s just wait and see. I think this person is 100% right about vaccine mandates:

“They’re coming — one way or the other,” said Raywat Deonandan, a global health epidemiologist and associate professor at the University of Ottawa.

“Do you want to do it while we are calm in the water? Or do you want to do it when the storm is raging around us?” 

On Sept. 1, Quebecers will have to show a vaccine passport to enter bars, gyms and other non-essential venues. This is the sane and rational thing to do, so only expect a few places to do it. Alberta, for example, is not mandating masks in schools, because apparently their Education Minister lives in some fantasyland :

Education Minister Adriana LaGrange said that at this stage of the COVID-19 pandemic, those measures are “best left” to local authorities to decide for themselves.

“Thanks to the power of vaccines and the dedication of Albertans, parents, students and school staff can look forward to a normal school year this September, which includes a return to in-person classes, field trips, team sports, extracurricular clubs, school celebrations and reconnecting with friends and colleagues,” LaGrange said.

This is BC, not Alberta, but nothing is going to be “normal” in September with this kind of a curve:

Reader Interactions

105Comments

  1. 1.

    Ken

    Let’s see, how does that meme go…

    measures are “best left” to local authorities to decide for themselves.

    “Tell me you’re a cowardly politician who doesn’t want to be the one the lunatics are yelling at, without saying you’re a (etc.)“

  2. 2.

    dr. bloor

    It really is quite remarkable and plainly the result of sheer dumb luck that our species has lasted as long as it has.

  3. 3.

    germy

    lawyersgunsmoneyblog.com/2021/08/imagine-rupert-murdoch-owning-no-major-media-companies-in-your-coun…

    The fact that the reactionary death cult is just a minority faction of a minority faction nationally, however, makes up for a lot. Even Alberta and Saskatchewan, the provinces with the most wingnutty provincial governments, would rank #2 and #5, respectively, for first vaccination rates among American states. No similarly influential equivalent to Fox News and a more equitable healthcare system makes up for a lot, and here we are.

  4. 4.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @Ken: Yup.

    Another one that kills me:  I was listening to the superintendent of the Rochester City Schools, who has the absolutely daunting task of opening up our inner city schools during the Delta wave, and she couldn’t say that vaccination is an “individual choice” enough.   Why not just say “we encourage everyone to get vaccinated” and leave it at that?  Why use that right wing frame?  Because she, and a lot of other politicians, are pretty spineless.

    (Superintendent of a big urban school district is absolutely a politician’s position if you ask me, btw.)

  5. 5.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    Total vaccination numbers in the U.S. are at the highest they have been in more than a month as companies, organizations and, most recently, cities have begun announcing vaccine mandates. At the same time, Covid cases have also climbed around the country, driven by the highly contagious delta variant.
    White House chief of staff Ronald Klain said in a post on Twitter Friday that Covid vaccinations had reached their highest 24-hour total since before July 4, with 918,000 doses administered and 576,000 newly vaccinated, up from 821,000 and 565,000 respectively last Friday.[…]
    “Vaccine requirements and incentives are starting to pay off — as well as the tragedy of seeing so much needless illness and loss due to Delta’s impact on the unvaccinated,” Klain wrote.
    The 900,000-plus doses administered is the highest total reported in a day since 1.1 million doses in the U.S. were reported July 3, according to figures from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. That’s up from a low of about 243,000 doses administered July 20.

  6. 6.

    Anonymous At Work

    But I wonder how long they’re going to be able to keep this up, because there’s no vaccination for being an asshole “conservative”:

    Get forced into intensive care and then proceed to insult your doctors and nurses enough, there might be.

  7. 7.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    I try to avoid BIDEN NEEDS TO rhetoric, but I haven’t heard an explanation of why there isn’t a vaxx requirement for passenger air travel

  8. 8.

    Bluegirlfromwyo

    One way to not have a split society is for everyone to be vaccinated but insecure assholes gotta insecure asshole. It isn’t about individual choice. Individual choice would mean mask wearers wouldn’t get harassed. This is all about I’m better than you so don’t you dare show me otherwise. In other words, a split society where what our betters say goes.

  9. 9.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @germy:  Agree with that quote, but with an attitude like Doug Ford’s (saying he doesn’t want a “split society”, implying that Ontario will have a large unvaxxed minority), and that absolute gimbus Kenney in Alberta, they can still throw it all away.  Alberta is apparently where shit politicians appear out of the oil sands, kind of like Orcs out of mud, but dumber.  Stephen Harper being a prime example.

  11. 11.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ve been wondering why some studies of vaccine efficacy–particularly if they are from Israel, for some reason–seem to show so much lower efficacy than others. Israel started vaccinating very early, so a time effect makes sense… but they seem to show much lower efficacy even over the same time periods with the same exact vaccines.

    What I know is mostly gleaned in fragments from listening to the experts who actually know things, but I suspect from stuff they say that it’s the criterion for what constitutes infection. Take an unrealistically extreme case: I’m guessing that if you gave some study population a PCR test for COVID, say, every day, you’d find that the efficacy of the vaccines at preventing getting enough virus in your nose to test positive at some point would be very low, maybe close to zero. Combine that criterion with having the sniffles and you’ve got a low efficacy against “symptomatic infection”. But compare that to efficacy against getting sick enough that it motivates you as a non-study-participant to get tested for COVID, and the latter is probably considerably higher. (Just looking at recent raw American case numbers gives a rough efficacy of about 88% against becoming a case, which is consistent with numbers out of the UK.)

    But that is me spitballing.

  12. 12.

    Urza

    Canadian conservatives remind me that one of the few things consistent in Conservatism around the world, aside from racism and nationalism, is their unerring ability to look at data and science and ALWAYS choose the wrong thing, and not just wrong for themselves but wrong for everybody.

  13. 13.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @Matt McIrvin: What I’ve read is that the vax doesn’t fight COVID in the upper respiratory system but stops it on its way down to the lungs.  That would be consistent with lots of positive tests in asymptomatic and slightly symptomatic vaccinated individuals.

  15. 15.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @Dorothy A. Winsor:

    I’m hoping enough employers require vaccinations to make a difference.

    I was very disappointed that Delta, American and Southwest didn’t follow United’s lead in mandating vaccinations for all employees.  They will, soon enough, in the middle of the storm, to use that epidemiologist’s metaphor.

    @Matt McIrvin:   Yep.

  16. 16.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: …mostly I’m just tired of every single statement from a public-health authority about vaccine effectiveness being followed up by “no the vaccines are no good, I guess you haven’t seen the latest numbers out of Israel” (with some quoted statement the commenter probably doesn’t understand.)

  19. 19.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @Matt McIrvin: Imagine if last October/November the news came out that the vaccines were just a smidge more effective than the flu vaccine.  We’d still all take it and be grateful.  Instead, they’re a fucking miracle.  Incredibly effective.  But that’s not good enough. It’s this all or nothing black/white right wing mentality that I posted about the other day, as well as the media’s inherent “gotcha” mentality and lazy inability to understand what words like “effective” mean in this context..

    “Scientists said that the vaccine was over 90% effective but here we have people testing positive.  We asked Joe Doakes on the street how he felt about that.  ‘My facebook friends tell me that ivermectin is 100% effective so I think I’ll just stock up on horse dewormer instead.’  See — More evidence that people are conflicted about vaccines!”

  20. 20.

    OzarkHillbilly

    saying the province is “not going to have a split society.”

    Bullshit, he’s just putting the split between the living and the dead* instead of the vaxed and the unvaxed.

    *and those with long covid too

  24. 24.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: My favorite version is when they apply inconsistent standards in the same sentence: “I’m scared of the risks of bad long-term side effects from the vaccine–why are we taking that chance against a virus that’s 99% survivable?” Literally stating that you’re willing to take a 1-in-100 risk to avoid a sub-1-in-100,000 risk.

  25. 25.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    On the one hand:

    A vaccination center in southeastern France inundated with a fire hose, its walls vandalized with words equating vaccines with “genocide.”
    A piece of paper found in a vaccination center in Toulouse, France, with a message: “One day all this will blow up.”

    on the other:

    While the protests have been vocal, recent polls show that a majority of French people support the health pass policy, while a surge in the number of vaccinations also suggests that it has proved to be effective.

  26. 26.

    cope

    I will take advantage of the open status of this post to comment that the NHC missed the call by not naming this year’s “G” storm Ginger.

  27. 27.

    Just Chuck

    @Matt McIrvin: Your first mistake is in assuming they’re even thinking in logical terms rather than moving their word hole to produce logical sounds as cover for willful ignorance and/or assholery.

  29. 29.

    Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix

    @Just Chuck:

    @A Ghost to Most: I lived in Rochester for five years and never heard that term.  Canuck, Huskie, and Fucking Quebeccer.  The latter is never said without the f-bomb.

    Ditto, never heard the term, lived here for 20+ years.

  31. 31.

    Puddinhead

    @Matt McIrvin: sterilizing immunity (i.e. preventing infection altogether) is a very high bar that most vaccines don’t meet. Preventing disease is primarily what SARS CoV-2 vaccines do, although there is some data that suggests a lower rate of infection. For whatever reason, a much higher antibody timer is required to neutralize SARS CoV-2 in the upper airway than in the lungs, so you might test positive because you’ve been infected but be asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic because the infection never establishes itself in your lungs.

    Time is also a factor as the antibody titer for some of the current vaccines wanes after about 8 months.

  32. 32.

    Eunicecycle

    My daughter (an NP) took a shift in a hospital last night. She said there’s lots of Covid, but luckily the ICU was not overrun. They did have to intubate a 26 yo and a 44 yo. Another woman had been in Texas at a religious conference and said, “There must have been something wrong with the air conditioning because so many people were coughing.” She was a presumed positive.

  33. 33.

    Spanky

    @zhena gogolia:  The vaccine works on blood-borne virus. The virus in your upper respiratory tract lives on, well, snot. Once it’s inhaled into the lungs where there’s the air/blood interface, the vaccine can go to work. Up top the virus can be blown out to infect others.

    This is how this scientist understands it. Of course, astronomers aren’t great at biology, as a general rule.

  34. 34.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Puddinhead: What happens, though, is that some of the people who see the low efficacy numbers then put those together with small-N studies saying that some huge fraction of people with even “mild” cases come away with permanent damage, and conclude that, oh my God, everyone’s going to get maimed. And I can’t say definitively that they’re wrong aside from my general feeling that putting that particular 2 and 2 together is not warranted. Would like more solid confirmation though.

  35. 35.

    Jay

    BC opened up 3 or 4? weeks ago, so the spike is “normal”.

    Stupid though. All the Interior towns are blowing up with Covid because we can “travel”, “vacay”, party now. Of course the Interior is burning down as well, and now we have a flood of US and American tourists.

    So, at work, we are back to “masks required”, but of course, that three week summer has blown away mask protocols and social distancing. Skytrain was standing room only and while “masks are recommended” only 1/3rd are wearing masks properly or at all.

    We are going to blow well past 1,000 new cases a day, just in time for school, but there won’t be a shut down. Too much fatigue, little political will.

  40. 40.

    Fleeting Expletive

    You know how President Biden says he’s sending federal money that DeSantis is withholding to school districts which order mask mandates? Is there statutory authority to disburse funds directly, bypassing state elected officials/state law?  I can’t think of a precedent and it seems like an executive lightning-bolt superpower in the wrong hands (ahem). Can a school district take in direct federal dollars? Can DeathSantis get an injunction?

    If it works, it’s brilliant.

  41. 41.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Eunicecycle:

    Another woman had been in Texas at a religious conference and said, “There must have been something wrong with the air conditioning because so many people were coughing.”

    let me just say AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA AAAA AAAAAAAAA

  42. 42.

    Doug R

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:

     

    Alberta is apparently where shit politicians appear out of the oil sands, kind of like Orcs out of mud, but dumber. Stephen Harper being a prime example.

    Late former Premier Prentice, Harper, Scheer, Kenney-ALL born/raised in Ontario. Even current Con leader O’Toole was born in Quebec and raised in Ontario.
    It’s that colonizer exploit and rape the environment for $, I guess.

  43. 43.

    Ella in New Mexico

    We can’t compare ourselves to Canada. They’ve got, what–10 provinces and 3 territories to deal with?

    We have 50 mini-countries with even smaller little provinces inside each one determining our outcomes.

    It’s a miracle we’re not all dead already.

  46. 46.

    Matt McIrvin

    I’ve also noticed a big disagreement brewing between Eric Topol and a bunch of immunology/virology/vaccine experts about how big an overall problem breakthrough infections are. He’s insisting that public health experts have been seriously underestimating the threat and everything needs to lock down harder, but they seem somewhat more sanguine and increasingly annoyed at him for what they see as talking down vaccines, and I’m just.. watching with uncertain interest.

    The comic-relief version is them arguing with Eric Feigl-Ding.

    None of these people are antivaxxers or woo peddlers, but there are serious disagreements.

  47. 47.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    against stupidity, the gods themselves struggle in vain….

    WISCONSIN (CBS 58) — Four Republican lawmakers want to change Wisconsin’s unemployment rules.

    Right now, if you quit your job, state law says you’re not eligible for unemployment benefits.

    The GOP proposal would create an exemption if the workers leave in a dispute over Covid vaccine mandates. 

    A statement from the Republicans says a decision on vaccines should be made by “individuals, not government bureaucrats or employers.”

  50. 50.

    trollhattan

    The only county statistic lower than it was one year ago is the most important: deaths. Everything else is higher: positive tests, hospitalizations, ICU beds. (Fun fact: ventilators in use outnumber ICU beds in use.) The last distressing metric is vaccinations administered, which are a scant quarter of the peak back in April. Our fully vaccinated rate is listed at 49.8%.

    Be better.

  51. 51.

    Kay

    @Fleeting Expletive:

    I think it’s a bigger fight than “masks”:

    More than a year later, and now under President Joe Biden’s administration, the amount has spiked to some $15 billion — a largely unused stockpile of federal relief funds designated to pull Florida schools out of the COVID pandemic and mitigate its effects for this school year as well as the next few school years, according to data from the U.S. Department of Education. Most of the dollars have yet to be disbursed to school districts for this past school year and this coming school year, and the 2021-22 academic year is just a few weeks away.That means initiatives outlined by the federal government, such as tackling student learning losses during the pandemic, are stuck waiting to help vulnerable students.“Every minute these funds sit in Tallahassee is time that the funds are not being used to help Florida’s students,” wrote Andrew Spar, president of the Florida Education Association, a statewide teacher union, who sent a letter to Gov. Ron DeSantis on July 21.

    This is when Biden’s experience is really crucial. It’s complicated. The federal government knows enough by now not to let states just take the money and use it in place of state funding- they have to use it to “supplement, not suplant” – so DeSantis can’t just plug holes with it and make his budget look better, but he’s up to something. I think Biden chose “masks” for political reasons- he (rightly in my view) thinks the anti-mask campaign is a loser for them, but he wants the money released to schools.

  53. 53.

    Matt McIrvin

    @trollhattan:

    The only county statistic lower than it was one year ago is the most important: deaths. Everything else is higher: positive tests, hospitalizations, ICU beds.

    I think that’s the age profile at work. The difference between cases now and cases a year ago (or during the big winter wave!) is that now most old people are vaccinated. They’re far and away the most likely to die. But the cases now skew younger, and it’s mostly because the unvaccinated are younger. Give a million young people Delta and you’re going to get a lot of them in the hospital.

  55. 55.

    taumaturgo

    These are in my view, excellent and sensible recommendations for big businesses to move the needle towards vaccination.  From the Big Picture, ritholtz.com

    What can these individual companies do? Here are some suggestions:

    McDonald’s: Already under inflationary price pressures with a clientele that tends to be less well off and less vaccinated, a solution beckons: McDs should use allow inflation concerns to raise their prices across the board by 10% — but then offer a 15% discount for customers providing proof of vaccination. Other retail food establishments like Starbucks (whose upscale customers skew more vaxxed) can also do so. It is a win-win for everybody.

    Uber/Lyft: Both ride-hailing services are public, which means there are no more VC subsidized rides. But the App is a great public interactive device, and it should show whether drivers are vaccinated or not. Customers can cancel a non-Vaxxed driver without cost. It is safer, sends a message, and gets drivers vaxxed sooner.

    Walmart/Target: It is not fair to turn our frontline retail workers into enforcers; instead, companies can create an innovative program to reward the vaccinated. Proof of vaxx gets you additional bonus points on the company’s points/loyalty program. This works for all loyalty programs, from Credit Cards to Lowes/Home Depot.

    Live Nation/TicketMaster: The company originally implied that vaccines were going to be required to buy tickets + attend events, but they have since moved away from this: LISTEN TO ME YOU IDIOTS WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WHEN CONCERTS GET CANCELLED FOR ANOTHER YEAR? It’s so much in your own self-interest to take a leadership role here it’s practically malpractice they have yet to act. Use your mono0ploy power for good for a change.

    AirBnB: This one is easy: Get vaxxed if you want to rent one of our homes. The disgusting filthy boorish behavior of AirBnBN guests is bad enough; must you leave your disease-ridden aerosolized virus in the air to boot? Another good use of an app that can provide info for consumers to make safer choices.

    Disney: One of the few companies with tremendous ownership of their clients/audience. More than 400 children have died of Covid, it’s easy to position this as protecting the most vulnerable at their parks. They can bonus a free download of a first-run movie to new Disney+ subscribers who provide proof of vaxx.

    American Express: A leader in corporate travel, there is an opportunity to provide advice, exhort in email or written communications, and generally advise users it’s much safer to travel if Vaxxed. Alternatively, JPM Chase’s Jamie Dimon can do it, continuing his streak of eating Amex’ lunch at every opportunity.

    Delta: I flew Delta last week, and while the experience was good, it felt like a missed opportunity to require vaccines. The airline industry council should discuss and get everyone on board (sorry). It should be an industry-wide issue.

    Apple: Long a leader in social issues, the tech giant can use their platform of Apple stores to hasten more vaccinations of their locked-in user base. And it’s the sort of thing that Apple and Google can agree to publicly — maybe even the entire FAANMG contingent.

    USPS/Fed Ex/UPS.: The Postal service is not a private company, but it might as well be. It’s an opportunity to use their platform to encourage vaccinations — require all delivery people to be vaxxed and wear some patch or button along the lines of “I’m Vaxxed for your protection.”

  57. 57.

    MomSense

    @Eunicecycle:

    Can we send the stupid people to Guantanamo?  Let’s just promise them an all expense paid dream vacation for the unmasked and unvaxxed. Freedom fling!
    I just want them far away from me.

  61. 61.

    Eunicecycle

    @MomSense: I agree! My daughter is vaccinated, of course, but now she’s pregnant so I worry. Of course I don’t know if her patients were vaccinated; maybe they were. But still, the unvaccinated are the reason there is so much virus circulating.

  62. 62.

    Robert Sneddon

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: ​
     

    Imagine if last October/November the news came out that the vaccines were just a smidge more effective than the flu vaccine. We’d still all take it and be grateful. Instead, they’re a fucking miracle.

    I caught a part of a documentary about the vaccine development operation somewhere. It was a recorded Zoom call between the trials people and the vaccine developers just before the public announcement of the first of the mRNA vaccine efficacy figures (Pfizer, I think). The trials guy warned the developer lady to be prepared and then he said “96%”. She was visibly shocked, even the vaccine developers didn’t think it would be that effective on vanilla SARS-CoV-2 and they hadn’t seen even preliminary results. (The trials people and the developers stayed isolated from each other for good reason, to prevent bias and/or outright data corruption).

    I remember thinking to myself when the announcement was made, “96%? No way, they must have massaged the data to make it look better that it really is. 80% would be great, hell anything over 50% is a cause for celebration. Did they make a mistake somewhere?”

  64. 64.

    Geminid

    @Kay: The Virginia General Assemby has wrapped up it’s special session budgeting the state’s $4.2 billion received from Congress for covid recovery. $250 million was allocated for upgrading school HVAC systems. This is to be matched by $250 million more from localities out of their recovery money. Cleaner air for kids, and a lot of jobs too.

    The covid recovery act was passed under reconciliation in February. That sometimes seems like ages ago, but the program is happening now.

  65. 65.

    David Fud

    If you have not seen the simulation from UNC-Chapel Hill, NCState, & GT Health Analytics, please take a look at this, which predicts that a no-testing/no masking scenario will infect 80% of elementary students within 2 months. With optional masking it is hard to say, but somewhere between 48% and 77% infected within 2 months for elementary school students. There is almost no chance for any elementary students to complete this semester without infection. Middle schools and high schools are also simulated. t.co/dhgOq3EQzk

  66. 66.

    Just Chuck

    @craigie: Biden should send more federal aid than they normally receive from the state, entice more schools to tell Gov. DeathSentence to fuck off.

  69. 69.

    Jim, Foolish Literalist

    PIROT, SERBIA (AFP) – Almost 20 years ago, Mr Panta Petrovic made social distancing a lifestyle choice when he moved into a tiny Serbian mountain cave to avoid society.
    Last year, on one of his visits to town, the dreadlocked man with a long beard found out there was a pandemic raging. After vaccines against Covid-19 became available, he got jabbed and urges everyone to do the same.
    “It (the virus) does not pick. It will come here to my cave, too,” the 70-year-old told AFP in his cave on the forested Stara Planina mountain in southern Serbia.

    If this story isn’t true, I don’t want to know

    The animals include several goats, a flock of chickens, some thirty dogs and cats and his favourite – an adult wild boar named Mara. Mr Petrovic found her eight years ago as a helpless piglet entangled in the bushes, and bottle-fed her until she recovered.
    Now, the intimidating 200kg animal playfully rolls in the creek and eats apples from Mr Petrovic’s hand.
    “She means everything to me. I love her and she listens to me. There is no money that can buy such a thing. A true pet,” Mr Petrovic said.

  73. 73.

    Kent

    My theory is that Canada is more or less what the US would have looked like if we had just let the Confederacy go.

  74. 74.

    Another Scott

    Lots of good people in Canadia. They have their share of kooks in power, too. :-(

    Meanwhile, …

    On today’s episode of SCGOP looney toons… Lindsey gets censured for voting for an infrastructure bill that apparently goes against the GOP platform.

    1. Guess they like having bad roads & no broadband.

    2. There is no GOP platform- they refused to draft one in 2020.??‍♂️ #SMDH t.co/OwxrkT3JUD

    — Jaime Harrison, DNC Chair (@harrisonjaime) August 14, 2021

    Excellent. More GQP crab-bucket battles, please. They haven’t hit rock-bottom yet and sanity won’t return to the opposition until they do.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  75. 75.

    trollhattan

    Haiti cannot catch a break.

    A deadly earthquake has struck the Caribbean nation of Haiti.

    The 7.2-magnitude quake hit the west of the country on Saturday morning, according to the US Geological Survey (USGS). Images on social media showed buildings reduced to rubble.

    The prime minister said it had caused “several” deaths and “enormous damage”, though the exact toll remains unclear.

    Haiti is still recovering from a devastating 2010 earthquake, which killed more than 200,000 people.

    The epicentre of Saturday’s earthquake was about 12km (7.5 miles) from the town of Saint-Louis du Sud.

    The tremor was felt in the densely-populated capital of Port-au-Prince, some 125km away, and in neighbouring countries.

    “Lots of homes are destroyed, people are dead and some are at the hospital,” Christella Saint Hilaire, who lives near the epicentre, told AFP news agency.
    –BBC

  76. 76.

    Kent

    @Spanky:

    @zhena gogolia:  The vaccine works on blood-borne virus. The virus in your upper respiratory tract lives on, well, snot. Once it’s inhaled into the lungs where there’s the air/blood interface, the vaccine can go to work. Up top the virus can be blown out to infect others.

    This is how this scientist understands it. Of course, astronomers aren’t great at biology, as a general rule.

    I’m not sure this is true.   Viruses don’t technically “live.”  They replicate using human cells as hosts.  How are the viruses in your upper respiratory tract replicating?   Unlike blood, mucus doesn’t contain living cells.  What I think is actually happening is that the virus is replicating in the epithelial cells in your upper respiratory tract and then being shed out into the mucus where it gets transported and coughed/sneezed out.  But your bloodstream and anti-bodies in your bloodstream should be able to reach the epithelial cells in your upper respiratory tract just as easily as the cells in your lungs.  And should be able to combat the virus anywhere it is replicating in your body.

    I’m a biologist, but a marine fisheries biologist so I don’t know this stuff any better than you.  But that would be my understanding.

  77. 77.

    CaseyL

    @Kent:  The thought is always tempting – but we would have had to get the enslaved people out before “letting the Confederacy go.”

    That would have been an all out war, too.

  78. 78.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Phys.org:

    The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system as wildfires continue to break out across the U.S. West, threatening thousands of homes and entire towns.

    The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, and the agency is facing “critical resources limitations,” said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.

    An estimated 6,170 firefighters alone are battling the Dixie Fire in Northern California, the largest of 100 large fires burning in 14 states, with dozens more burning in western Canada.

    […]

    Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.

    More than 6,000 square miles (almost 16,000 square kilometers) have been burned in the U.S. so far this year. That’s well ahead of the amount burned by this point last year, but below the 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

    Parts of Europe also are burning, including in Greece, where where a massive wildfire has decimated forests and torched homes, and was still smoldering 10 days after it started.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  79. 79.

    Another Scott

    Meanwhile, … Phys.org:

    The U.S. Forest Service said Friday it’s operating in crisis mode, fully deploying firefighters and maxing out its support system as wildfires continue to break out across the U.S. West, threatening thousands of homes and entire towns.

    The roughly 21,000 federal firefighters working on the ground is more than double the number of firefighters sent to contain forest fires at this time a year ago, and the agency is facing “critical resources limitations,” said Anthony Scardina, a deputy forester for the agency’s Pacific Southwest region.

    An estimated 6,170 firefighters alone are battling the Dixie Fire in Northern California, the largest of 100 large fires burning in 14 states, with dozens more burning in western Canada.

    […]

    Climate change has made the U.S. West warmer and drier in the past 30 years and will continue to make the weather more extreme and wildfires more destructive, according to scientists.

    More than 6,000 square miles (almost 16,000 square kilometers) have been burned in the U.S. so far this year. That’s well ahead of the amount burned by this point last year, but below the 10-year average, according to the National Interagency Fire Center.

    Parts of Europe also are burning, including in Greece, where where a massive wildfire has decimated forests and torched homes, and was still smoldering 10 days after it started.

    :-(

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  80. 80.

    gene108

    @Kent: 

    The CSA wanted to expand slavery to every possible place in the USA, including free states.

    If they were content to keep slavery within their borders, as politically uneasy as slavery had made the USA until then, they would not have started the Civil War.

    I doubt they would have been peaceful neighbors, even if they were let go. They’d still drag the rest of the USA down somehow.

  81. 81.

    Snarki, child of Loki

    because there’s no vaccination for being an asshole “conservative”

    SURE there is. Just have to give them “the shot”.

    Two in the noggin.

  82. 82.

    Robby-D

    I’m in BC, and both BC and Alberta (3rd and 4th most populous provinces) ditched their mask mandate around July 1. Both had cases start to jump by mid-July, and both are in full-on deceive & deny mode, with BC in particular telling senior education leaders to expect literally no COVID safety measures in schools come Sept.

     

    Canada may be doing better than the USA on average, but there is still an awful lot of hubris and ego and terrible policy. The biggest difference, I believe, lies in the populations, where far higher percentages of people support vaccines and mask mandates while the leadership kowtows to the 10% idiots.

  85. 85.

    Kent

    @CaseyL:

    @Kent:  The thought is always tempting – but we would have had to get the enslaved people out before “letting the Confederacy go.”

    That would have been an all out war, too.

    I’m not saying it was an historical option.  But I think a government composed of just the north, upper midwest, and west coast would have wound up with a similar sort of social safety net and government as we see in Canada.  We would have had universal health care a long time ago.  We would likely have been much less interventionalist around the world.  And so forth.  We would still have our flaws, but they would be more on the scale of Canada’s flaws.

    As for what the Confederacy would have looked like in 2020 had they spent the past 150 years as an independent nation?  I shudder to think.  Venezuela comes to mind.

  86. 86.

    Kent

    @Chief Oshkosh:@Kent: Or if we had strung up the CSA ringleaders and stripped all remaining combatants of voting rights.

    You would have had to string up and strip of voting rights a majority of the white population.  Basically commit genocide.

  88. 88.

    smith

    @CaseyL: Every time I’m tempted by the idea that we should have just let the Confederacy go, I’m  reminded that it would have condemned another several generations of people to slavery. We could not have rescued them without the all-out war we did fight in the end.

    Avoiding the misery imposed on this country by the ongoing Confederate remnants might have been accomplished if Reconstruction hadn’t been compromised by nation-wide racism.

  89. 89.

    Fair Economist

    @Matt McIrvin: Measurements of vaccine effectiveness vary from one place to another. Israel says it’s down to 50 percent or so vs. infection. But San Diego still reports over 90%. My best bet is a very high proportion of minimally symptomatic infections among the vaxxed, which is very plausible given Delta’s strong tropism for nasal passages plus the absence of IgA immunity (secreted antibody for nasal passages and such) from the vaccine.

    I’m sticking to my estimate that COVID for the vaxxed is comparable to seasonal flu. So not a societal catastrophe, but justifying measures to protect the vulnerable and even for young healthy people who don’t want to be sick for a week.

    Long term that would be relatively good since actual infection will add IgA responses for the vaccinated so they will be even more protected next time, assuming boosters if needed.

  90. 90.

    steve g

    This is the sane and rational thing to do, so only expect a few places to do it.

    The history of 21st Century America in one sentence.

  91. 91.

    NorthLeft12

    Alberta has done a 180 on their COVID-19 plans as they see their cases skyrocket. Ontario has already announced a delay in any further reopening plans in the face of a large rise in new cases.
    There are vaccine mandates being ordered for healthcare workers in numerous provinces (BC, Quebec, Ontario as far as I know) and the feds are requiring all federal employees ( including the military) to be vaccinated too. More mandates will be coming for teachers, students, and numerous businesses.
    We are at 82% of eligible people with at least one dose, but that is not good enough to protect those who can’t, or won’t, be vaccinated. I haven’t heard any numbers mentioned, but any coverage of less than 90% is not going to cut it with the delta variant. IMO.

  92. 92.

    NorthLeft12

    @Steeplejack: Wow. Fuck you Mr. Stutts. As a tweet below noted, he is asking for prayers for himself only and did not give a thought to anyone else struggling with this virus which he mocked not so long ago.
    The world will be a better place without people like him in it.

  93. 93.

    PPCLI

    @Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix: Credit where it’s due. Unlike the western Conservative premiers, Ford has been excellent on COVID, which really surprised me. The remark about vaccine passports is out of character. Maybe he’s anticipating that the Federal government will do it for him.

  94. 94.

    Steeplejack

    The crazy is just spewing out all over the place.

    Some guy with an “evil face” squeezed MyPillow boss Mike Lindell’s armpit while taking a selfie, so now right-wing blogs are convinced an assassin tried to do a martial-arts pressure point attack on Lindell’s armpit.
    pic.twitter.com/zPb1wLo3kq

    — Will Sommer (@willsommer) August 14, 2021

  95. 95.

    Another Scott

    Saturday just in: +991K doses reported administered including 604K newly vaccinated. Up compared to 840K/582K last Saturday. ??????

    — Cyrus Shahpar (@cyrusshahpar46) August 14, 2021

    Good, good.

    The anti-vaxxers are losing, so they’re getting louder. But they’re losing. Keep pushing forward.

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  97. 97.

    NorthLeft12

    @PPCLI: I’ll assume you are from Ontario, but I disagree with your assessment of Mr. Ford and his party’s Covid performance.
    A few highlights;

    1. Encouraged people to go south in March 2020, when anyone could see that the southern US was going to be a transmission hotspot.
    2. His relaxation of restrictions before the second wave was really finished (we were still at one thousand new cases per day) kicked off the third wave.
    3. Constantly blamed others (feds, visitors, Quebec) for our problems in managing our response.

    4. Was always overstating the economic impact of restrictions and in my view was more concerned about business activity over people getting exposed and sick. He did care about deaths. The death projection numbers did have him scared, and he responded to them.

    Overall, I would give him a C minus.

    Note: he was not helped by the terrible performance of our Public Health leader. Dr. Williams was awful and should have been fired in the summer of 2020.

  99. 99.

    The Pale Scot

    @Kent:

    You would have had to string up and strip of voting rights a majority of the white population.  Basically commit genocide.

    Every other country of that time would have executed the officer ranks and asset owners, confiscated all RE and portable wealth, confiscated all modern firearms. You don’t need a mini ball to drop a deer. The imposition of race laws was caused by leaving the wealthy with coin in their pockets. Nathan Bedford should have died in a salt mine, not as a property owner

  100. 100.

    Kent

    @The Pale Scot:Every other country of that time would have executed the officer ranks and asset owners, confiscated all RE and portable wealth, confiscated all modern firearms. You don’t need a mini ball to drop a deer. The imposition of race laws was caused by leaving the wealthy with coin in their pockets. Nathan Bedford should have died in a salt mine, not as a property owner.

    To the contrary.  I’m not aware of ANY country, least of all a Democratic country, that did as you describe during the 19th Century.  You would have to point to examples like Stalin’s Gulags or the Khmer Rouge to find that sort of outcome.  The revolutions of 1848, the Austro-Prussian War, and the Franco-Prussian wars would have been contemporary examples.  And none of them ended as you describe.

  101. 101.

    Just One More Canuck

    @Urza: you’ve just described Doug Ford to a tee. The only reason Doug will do the right thing is either by accident or if he’s tried everything else. The only thing that may give a glimmer of hope is that there’s an election next year and people are watching really closely.

    Who knew that after everything that happened, Rob Ford was the smart one in the family

  102. 102.

    Another Scott

    @Kent:  There was a story on one of the weekend NPR networks a few days ago about the Confederados in Brazil. This is similar:

    PRI (from 2019):

    […]

    Brazil has a long, strange relationship with the United States Confederacy.

    After the Civil War ended in 1865, ending slavery in the United States, some 8,000 to 10,000 Southern soldiers and their families left the vanquished Confederacy and went to Brazil.

    Related: Amid 1619 anniversary, Virginia grapples with history of slavery in America

    There, slavery was still legal. Roughly 40% of the nearly 11 million Africans forcibly brought across the Atlantic between 1517 and 1867 went to work on sugarcane plantations in Brazil. It was the last country in the Western Hemisphere to formally abolish slavery, in 1888 — 23 years after the United States.

    Legal slavery may have been a draw for the Confederate soldiers who migrated to Brazil after abolition.

    Brazilian political economist Célio Antonio Alcântara Silva analyzed letters sent to Brazilian consulates and vice-consulates in the United States at the end of the Civil War and found that 74% of Southerners inquiring about emigration were slaveowners.

    […]

    There’s so much interesting history that we never had time to learn in school…

    Cheers,
    Scott.

  103. 103.

    Cermet

    @The Pale Scot:  But Bedford got wealthy re-introducing slavery; that is, State slavery via jails. He “bought” immates and paid the State $0.015 dollars a day (a penny and half) and would ‘farm them out to companies – coal mines, steel mills as forced labor. Torture was routinely used to force work. Large unmarked graves yards are near these old, abandon sites. The State got in on it via sheriffs and judges feeding young black men into that terrible gulag. Without immediate proof of work, anyone black man was arrested – then charges for the arrest and trial (even if they proved they had a job) meant a year in the Gulag to pay all the arrest & court costs. This was common in all the south and often in many Midwest areas till WWII; yes, road gangs existed but were a small part and also a similar result. Few young blacks ever escaped this new slavery – but most amerikans are ignorant of this history..

  104. 104.

    Matt McIrvin

    @Citizen Alan: The virus is gonna physically go down to your lungs no matter what, I mean, that’s what breathing is for. The question is whether it gets into the bloodstream and goes systemic.

  105. 105.

    LightCastle

    @Matt McIrvin: 

    I used to work with Topol decades ago. He loves being in the spotlight and being the smart guy in the room.

    Getting out over his skis on something wouldn’t surprise me. He used to do it on research papers. He was always willing to lean into the implications of a new piece of positive data for a drug or procedure.

    That said, he *is* very smart and even if he is off, he is likely to be “outer edge of plausible” off and not “batshit ridiculous” off.

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