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Read in the news a few weeks ago that the Aussies were hoarding up supplies and TP again when their numbers went up. I reckon we'll start seeing such patterns in a month or two.
 
AlbertC said:
The one thing I haven't done is gotten a haircut in public yet. Still been getting a family member to do so for me. But that is also to do with us already having a set of clippers and the haircut being of reasonable quality after all.
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A lot of people are doing the same as you. My dad now gets my mom to cut his hair. I have been to the barber once since they opened. And i have to get a new babrber now. He quit and got a job at a factory. He's isn't making enough money cutting hair now a days. i got my hair cut really short. So i won't need to see a barber for another few months. I feel bad for all those barbers and stylists that are losing money. A few friends of mine work at higher end salons, they are losing their shirts right now. not too many women going in for $200 haircuts these days.
 
gabe said:
A lot of people are doing the same as you. My dad now gets my mom to cut his hair. I have been to the barber once since they opened. And i have to get a new babrber now. He quit and got a job at a factory. He's isn't making enough money cutting hair now a days. i got my hair cut really short. So i won't need to see a barber for another few months. I feel bad for all those barbers and stylists that are losing money. A few friends of mine work at higher end salons, they are losing their shirts right now. not too many women going in for $200 haircuts these days.
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Unfortunately, just a reality of the current times. Impacted by more WFH, no major weddings, events/functions, and people going more casual and pragmatic for now. Also corresponds with the lesser demand for other high end things like fancier restaurant dining experiences.

I used to go to this salon in Koreatown on Bloor West, and costed around $30 after tipping. I do miss going there, but for comfort level reasons and saving a few bucks here and there, I've been playing it safe for the time being. I've passed by a few times lately and it's positive to at least see them sustaining somewhat regular customer numbers.
 
Ontario woman kicked out of bingo hall for not using mask to cover breathing hole in her neck

From link.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1300241237044273157

An Ontario woman battling lung cancer, who breathes through a hole in her neck, was kicked out of her local bingo hall because her breathing hole wasn't covered with a mask, her son says.

Whitby, Ont. woman Elaine Arbeau doesn't go out much anymore, her son says, unless it's to play at a casino or bingo hall with her friends.

According to her son, the 67-year-old was excited to see her friends again when Delta Bingo in Pickering, Ont. reopened following the COVID-19 shutdown.
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But things didn't go as planned when she arrived earlier this month. When she got inside, management asked her to leave.

"She was told to leave by management if she didn't cover up the hole on her neck," her son, Joe Gilbert, told CTV News Toronto on Sunday. "She explained that was impossible to do. That's how she breathes."

Gilbert said his mother was embarrassed and didn't want to create a scene so she voluntarily left. He says when she got to the parking lot she started crying.

"My mom was beside herself and floored," Gilbert said, adding that his mom felt humiliated by the situation.

Gilbert said when the manager saw Arbeau crying in the parking lot, she decided to allow her back in but at that point she refused.

"My mom left," Gilbert said. "She was too embarrassed."

Gilbert said his mom went home and did some research on the rules around mandatory masks and felt she was treated wrongly. She decided to go back to the bingo hall this Saturday to try and enter again but didn't make it past the front door before being stopped.
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"They told her 'You can't come in here unless you cover the hole on your neck,'" Gilbert said.

Arbeau, who recorded the interaction with the Delta Bingo employee, was given the company's head office phone number and told to leave.

In the video, the employee tells Arbeau the bingo hall is private property and they can "mandate any rules that they want." She struggles to tell the employee that she believes she has a right to be there but is still denied entry.

Gilbert said her mom went home in tears and feels strongly that she is being discriminated against.

"What they did was wrong," Gilbert said. "The hole can’t be covered because that's how she breathes, she doesn't breathe through her mouth or nose."

"If you cover it, you might as well take away someone's life support."

Non-medical masks are mandatory in Durham Region within commercial establishments but there are some exceptions.

If a mask "inhibits a person's ability to breath in any way" they are not required.

"My poor mom has no voice so I'm hoping by getting this out there many people will join me to give her one," Gilbert said. "This should never happen to anyone in my mom's position."

Speaking over the phone to CTV News Toronto on Sunday, Delta Bingo CEO Cam Johnston said he will take a "hard look" over the case but said people who can't wear masks shouldn't be visiting their establishment at this time.

"I'll make a judgement shortly," Johnston said. "But we would prefer that people who are unable to wear masks do not attend. I think it's best for them."

Johnston said he empathizes with Arbeau but said safety has to be his "number one priority at this time."

"We're trying to protect everyone but my first concern and first obligation is the health and safety of all our customers and staff."
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You can call them ‘cynical spreaders.’ But the COVID-19 flouters are following a trail blazed in debates over vaccines, milk safety and seatbelts

From link.

Some flout social-distancing advice at Cherry Beach dance parties and others cheer passing cars at protests, waving signs comparing masks to mind control.

As the back-to-school season looms with fears of a second wave of the pandemic, a recent Angus Reid survey indicates that while most Canadians are following all or most advice to help prevent the spread of COVID-19, there is a skeptical cohort that defies guidance on group size, bubbles, handwashing, distancing and masks.

The polling company labelled them “cynical spreaders.” They are more likely to be young, more likely to live in the western part of the country, more likely to believe that current restrictions go too far.

While “cynical spreaders” are in the minority, their reaction to public-health advice and rules is far from original.

The annals of Canadian public-health history are filled with stories of skeptics, cynics and people who value individual freedom above all. A 1931 editorial in the Canadian Public Health Journal noted that resistance was practically tradition: “It has always been” that bitterly opposed ideas are “ultimately accepted as being in the best interests of all concerned,” it read, citing fiercely contested changes like compulsory school attendance, child labour laws and vaccination.

The author, Dr. John T. Phair, who would later become the chief medical officer of health for Ontario, wrote his editorial during the debate about milk pasteurization in the 1930s. Many people opposed the plan to make milk safer, and Phair was frustrated by what he saw as political unwillingness to act on good public-health advice. While he reasoned that much of the opposition could be chalked up to ignorance, selfishness or misinformation, it seemed to him that it mostly came down to the “inherent dislike of the Anglo-Saxon to all measures which are designed to restrict his right to personal choice.”

In the midst of the Great Depression, Ontario Premier Mitch Hepburn visited a tuberculosis ward at Toronto’s Hospital for Sick Children, where many children were sick because of milk. (The children were from regions outside Toronto, where milk wasn’t pasteurized.) Hepburn was told that if pasteurization was enforced across Ontario the spread of tuberculosis could be “drastically checked.” It seemed like a worthy goal, so Hepburn set out to regulate milk across the province.
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How hard could it be?

Hepburn was a farmer from St. Thomas, Ont., before he entered politics so he likely knew the mess he was walking into. Hepburn was a populist — charismatic, bombastic, controversial. Soon after he entered politics as a federal backbencher, he became one to watch in Ottawa. By 1934, he was elected the Liberal premier of Ontario, at 37 years old.

The province he oversaw was going through major changes. The influenza pandemic of 1918, which killed around 50,000 Canadians, had led to the creation of the federal department of health in 1919. With more statistics being gathered, alarming trends were emerging. Infant mortality was “going through the roof” by the end of the 1920s and into the 1930s, says Dr. Aleck Ostry, a professor emeritus at the University of Victoria who also served as the Canada Research Chair in social determinants of health.

With significant population losses in the Great War and the 1918 pandemic, this was a big worry, Ostry says. There was an anti-immigration thrust to the concern, he says — fears that if “native-born Canadians” couldn’t safely produce children, then the country would need more immigration. Meanwhile, more Canadians were continuing to move to the city, and farmers were working hard to feed crowded urban centres, shipping large volumes of milk by train.

Many dairies pasteurized their milk, but not all. Regulations came from the municipal level, and there was a patchwork across the province. In his biography of Hepburn, historian John T. Saywell writes that while around 85 per cent of milk in Ontario was pasteurized by 1937, smaller-scale dairy farmers made “noisy opposition.” Making sure milk could be safely transported on a large scale was a key concern, Ostry says.
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“If you don’t pasteurize you’re going to kill people in the cities with this poisonous milk you’re sending,” he says. “So a lot of governments, marketing boards and producers were in favour of pasteurization, but the small farmers, sure, they saw this as kind of a plot by the big boys to shake them out of the market.”

By the 1930s, Toronto already required pasteurization, thanks to the work of crusading medical officer of health Charles Hastings during the war.

According to the Museum of Health Care at Kingston, by 1900, 15 per cent of tuberculosis cases could be traced to dairy products, and doctors were trying to find ways to reduce that.

Through the late 1920s and early 1930s, there were a series of typhoid epidemics traced to milk-borne infection in different Canadian communities. In 1927, a typhoid outbreak caused by milk killed more than 500 in Montreal and caused thousands more to be sick. Montreal had a pasteurization bylaw, but it wasn’t enforced, according to the Canadian Public Health Association. At the height of the scare, the U.S. government imposed an embargo on milk and cream originating anywhere close to that city.

Pasteurization was heralded as the safeguard. If you heated and cooled the milk to a certain temperature, you could kill any germs with the heat to prevent milk-borne illness.

It sounded like the ideal fix, but it rankled many.

Some farmers and consumers thought that raw milk was simply healthier. Many bristled with the government interference in their operations, calling it “an unwarranted invasion of personal liberties.” Some forecasted economic ruin in the purchase of equipment, which was no small expense during the Depression.

As Hepburn was building toward the pasteurization vote at Queen’s Park in 1938, he was due to give a speech at the Ontario Agricultural Council winter meeting. Tension was high.

The premier told the crowd that prejudice against science would not stand. No matter how much they were against it, he promised that pasteurization would be a reality.

“We don’t like to do anything because we must,” one farmer told the Globe and Mail.

But by the end of the meeting, the council voted to supported Hepburn’s effort by a narrow margin.

It was a “hard and sometimes lonely road,” for the premier, the Globe would later write. “Men who were his friends became his enemies. He was assailed and reviled.”

At Queen’s Park, wearing his wide-lapelled suits and pocket squares, he gave fiery speeches about death and disease and name-dropped the Dionne quintuplets as exclusive consumers of pasteurized milk. He asked his allies to hold firm. He knew they were being chewed out on street corners back home.

“Why people are notifying me verbally or by letter every day that they will never vote for me again unless we change the law,” Hepburn said. “Well I don’t mind that sort of talk. The government is going to stand pat … in two or three years we’ll have far fewer deaths than we unfortunately are having at the present time.”

By the end of 1938, the bill had passed. Pasteurization was mandatory, but would be phased in for rural areas over the coming years. Anger lingered. After the bill passed, Hepburn was at an Elgin County Liberal association meeting, defending his actions by telling “horrifying” stories of children infected with bovine tuberculosis.

Hepburn recognized a farmer who opposed the change in the back of the room. Since he was from the riding, the premier knew the crowd and remembered that two of the man’s seven children had died.

“They died of bovine tuberculosis, didn’t they? They drank milk from your own cows and died?”

The Globe noted that the premier was incredulous. His voice rose as he asked his next question.

“What kind of man are you?”

In the aftermath of mandatory pasteurization, ministry health statistics showed the changes Hepburn had hoped for — major declines in typhoid fever mortality and other milk-borne illness.

Despite this, a poll in the 1940s reported that 42 per cent of Canadians didn’t have any issues with raw milk. One man wrote a letter to the editor in 1941 calling pasteurization Ontario’s contribution toward “the destruction of the rights of man.”

Doctors at the Hospital for Sick Children just shook their heads: “Those who object to pasteurization or do not appreciate its values are without scientific information,” said Dr. Alan Brown.
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Viewed from a systems level, high risk spreaders are just doing their job. They’re catalyzing the spread of infection in the short-term but insulating the population in the longer term.

The problem in our society today is that technological and organizational solutions favour a patient approach to give time for solutions to be rolled out.

It’s not that impulsiveness isn’t a winning biological trait it’s just that our society today is favourable to those with impulse control.
 
Arguably this goes in the 'out and about' section, but I'll stick it here, as I think its obviously relevant to Covid.

I got out to my first movie today in more than six months. I'm normally (pre-Covid) a weekly movie goer.

I went and saw Tenet.

Was prepared to walk away if it was even remotely crowded.

It was not.

I was one of 4 people in a 350 seat auditorium for mid-day show.

I was quite pleased, nobody within 20M of me.

Cineplex must be taking a bath....... the cinema had 3 staff + manager working.

If attendance was comparable in other screens, there were no more than 24 customers in the complex.

At $7.50 a ticket, That's $180 gross for a 3-hour slot w/Tenet; 1/2 goes to the distributor...........so $90 was their take on tickets.

A manager would be ~$85 including benefits for the same period, give or take (managers vary in pay, but its reasonable guess), and the 3 staff another $126 + payroll tax.

So $211+ before overheads.

I doubt they sold enough concessions to break even.

Anyways, glad to get out and enjoy a film.

PS, its utterly preposterous, but still quite watchable if you can get past that.
 
Just to add to my movie story, walked over to an LCBO after, and talked to a product consultant about the appropriate wine for dinner......

Described my meal plans.............the woman at cash.......asked if she could come over for dinner............LOL.

So it was a good day.

For the record.

Bone-in Pork Chop, dry-rubbed w/Smoked Paprika, Ancho pepper, Cumin, Oregano, Garlic Salt, Chile Powder, and Chipotle........pan-seared, in olive oil and butter.......

With a pan-sauce w/the same blend, but caramelized onion, roasted fresh garlic, aged balsamic vinegar and finished with whipping cream.

Along side caramelized leek and smoked Persian Rice; roasted purple and white peppers w/onion, freshly cracked black pepper, sea salt, and fennel seed.

The rice and sauce were heavenly together.
 
New Study suggests it will take 19 months for Ontario to clear its surgical backlog related to Covid.


This, yet again, reinforces the need for Ontario to fund 7-day per week Operating Rooms (weekends are generally emergencies only); and 7-day per week full-service in hospitals more broadly.

Relatively few people are discharged on weekends, because many specialists aren't available excepting emergencies; and many tests aren't performed on weekends. This means beds are needless occupied til as late as Tuesdays which in turn impacts capacity of the E/R and O/Rs.

Also more people in hospitals die on the weekends than weekdays.

This is generally attributed to less experienced (and fewer) doctors and nurses on staff on weekends.
 
Yeshiva In Toronto To Remain Closed Due To COVID-19 Cases

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A Toronto Yeshiva that was supposed to reopen is now staying closed indefinitely.

Sources tell YWN that two staff members at Yeshiva Yesodei Hatorah tested positive for COVID-19, prompting the decision to remain closed

The Yeshiva, located near Bathurst & Lawrence, was set to be one of the first schools in the city to begin classes.
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