[afransen]

RNA vaccines are so new we really won't know until 2023 or so. It will be interesting if the vaccine, which as thus far been able to deal with mutations can work against other coronaviruses. The common cold is one for example, a virus with the same or similar spikes as Covid19. Perhaps we've cured the common cold and don't yet know it.

I saw on CBC that Canada is rushing to create a vaccine production and research facility. This will be useful in 2023 or whenever the next pandemic comes.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/vaccine-development-production-in-canada-1.5868398

We do know that the immune response seems to weaken over months. There have been documented reports of reinfection, and in some cases the second bout of disease was more severe. So it seems unlikely that immunity is very long lasting.

 

[afransen]

I saw on CBC that Canada is rushing to create a vaccine production and research facility. This will be useful in 2023 or whenever the next pandemic comes.

Don't worry, a future conservative government will 'common sense' it out of existence just in time for the next pandemic.

 

[Jonny5]

You can actually pick out the moment when kids were shuttled around to malls by their parents for Christmas shopping.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1349038307003535360

School isn't going back to physical classrooms this year unless we simply want grandma to die, which well .... some people might.

 

[zang]

The point is WE KNOW where the most issues and the most deaths are coming from and that's LTCs. Why are we worrying about spread in the general population when that isn't the biggest problem instead of diverting the majority of resources to protecting LTCs? Its not that difficult to do if you take the proper measures which is why some LTCs in Toronto suffered few infections and deaths during the 1st wave because they took early action BEFORE the Ford government told them to do so.

I guess hospitals aren't taking proper measures too? I personally know a nurse in her 30s who contracted it at work. You'd think of all places, a building literally designed to reduce transmission, where health care workers are given an inordinate amount of PPE, where already rigorous cleaning procedures have been amped up by magnitudes.

You're giving far too much credit to the idea that you can "easily" protect LTC homes. Early on, it wasn't spreading as fast or as easy as it is now. People were more afraid of the virus. That's what kept infections out of some homes; not the actions of nickel-and-diming for-profit LTC managers.

Even if we want to say the 1st wave caught the government off guard, there's absolutely NO EXCUSE that LTCs should be having such significant problems again in the 2nd wave when the lessons should've been learned and the so called 'iron ring' that Doug Ford promised to protect LTCs should've been in place before the 2nd wave hit.

No, and that's on Ford. Less than 60% (2,995 of 5,021) of deaths in Ontario have been in LTC. The other 40+% don't matter enough to warrant protection, too?

As you can see, many if not most people are wearing masks in public, BUT do you see ANY ATTEMPTS AT ALL by those people to social distance? Do you see those huge crowds everywhere? Apparently they're all very 'selfish' when no one is making any attempt at all to stay apart or stay home to not spread the virus I guess.

Yes, and they're (because you seemed to ignore this) considering a second lockdown in the Tokyo region. There were over 1,000 new cases a day in Tokyo prefecture this past week and that number is climbing. You're demonstrating a problem and lauding it as a solution.

 

[SunriseChampion]

School isn't going back to physical classrooms this year unless we simply want grandma to die, which well .... some people might.

What if grandma would prefer to put her health on the line if it meant that her grandchildren didn't have to have interruptions to their socialisation and education at critical points in their development?

As is the actual case with both my own mother and my half-sister's mother.



Interestingly, I think there could be a study done on the inter-generational disparity in opportunity and outcome that is often talked about in regards to Boomers and subsequent generations in the context of the plague restrictions.

It's maybe looking a bit like the Boomers want the best possible outcome for themselves, the future generations be damned. Sounds familiar.

 

[SunriseChampion]

I'm finally at home from my "essential" job because the vehicle is at the mechanic's. Finally get to watch one of these new conferences live for the first time since early April.

Are they for real with the music though?

I can't believe I'm sat here, listening to this crap whilst waiting for Ford. What has my life come to?

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Well that was an extremely depressing doctors’ briefing. They were quite clear about what we have to do. It’s now up to the government to legislate. I’m not convinced this government will actually follow thorough with the harder decisions until they absolutely have to. I’m also not convinced the public is interested in doing the right thing either.

I am not convinced this government will follow through with harder decisions until it is too late - the Thanksgiving and Christmas lapses are dead-giveaways.

Curfew isn't necessarily per se (the only thing I see beneficial is putting people in the right "frame of mind" - a restriction that in no uncertain terms communicate "business not as usual") - but inter-regional movement control definitely is. We have seen what happened pre-holidays.

I am not sure why we are still trying to re-invent the wheel when we already know what works - Melbourne/Victoria style of control worked; March/April style of control with March/April level of compliance worked.

---

And yes, I am not sure what that reduction in hours of services (but with Costco - a membership retail - and Walmart exempt) is all about. And where is sick leave?

AoD

 

[SunriseChampion]

Minister Elliott: "Our children's safety is paramount."

Ok, what about their wellbeing? Their safety is barely in question in terms of this plague as they have the best outcomes. Same can't be said about interrupting their education and socialisation.

They don't actually care about the children or they're wilfully ignorant of the facts in terms of the danger of the plague to said children.

It's clear.

 

[Northern Light]

Hmmm, how about we look at hard science, as opposed to conjecture.

Here's a study of the effectiveness of different measures world wide in controlling the spread of Covid.

Note the limitations, there are different ways to analyze the data this study used 4, and shows you the results for all 4, which sometimes conflict.

Seeing which measure produce meaningful improvements under all types of analysis (and which demonstrably fail is interesting)}

Also the data does not examine secondary negative effects such as delayed medical treatments, economic or mental health harm. Its simply a hard look at what at least does what it says it sets out to do; reduce spread.

Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions - Nature Human Behaviour

Analysing over 50,000 government interventions in more than 200 countries, Haug et al. find that combinations of softer measures, such as risk communication or those increasing healthcare capacity, can be almost as effective as disruptive lockdowns.

www.nature.com

From said study, the charts aforementioned:

Explanation to read the above:

The left-hand panel shows the combined 95% confidence intervals of ΔRt for the most effective interventions across all included territories. The heatmap in the right-hand panel shows the corresponding Z-scores of measure effectiveness as determined by the four different methods. Grey indicates no significantly positive effect. NPIs are ranked according to the number of methods agreeing on their impacts, from top (significant in all methods) to bottom (ineffective in all analyses). L1 themes are colour-coded as in Supplementary Fig. 1.

Study conclusions:

Among the six full-consensus NPI categories in the CCCSL, the largest impacts on Rt are shown by small gathering cancellations (83%, ΔRt between −0.22 and –0.35), the closure of educational institutions (73%, and estimates for ΔRt ranging from −0.15 to −0.21) and border restrictions (56%, ΔRt between −0.057 and –0.23).

The consensus measures also include NPIs aiming to increase healthcare and public health capacities (increased availability of personal protective equipment (PPE): 51%, ΔRt −0.062 to −0.13), individual movement restrictions (42%, ΔRt −0.08 to −0.13) and national lockdown (including stay-at-home order in US states) (25%, ΔRt −0.008 to −0.14).

Note that lock down produces the lowest positive score among 'effective measures'.

The Least effective measures were:

Among the least effective interventions we find: government actions to provide or receive international help, measures to enhance testing capacity or improve case detection strategy (which can be expected to lead to a short-term rise in cases), tracing and tracking measures as well as land border and airport health checks and environmental cleaning.

************

This is really useful, scientific information.

I have concluded reading the abstract but want to drill down into some of the details which also matter greatly.

 

[Northern Light]

From the study cited in my post above, some further conclusions by the authors:

However, such radical measures have adverse consequences. School closure interrupts learning and can lead to poor nutrition, stress and social isolation in children31,32,33. Home confinement has strongly increased the rate of domestic violence in many countries, with a huge impact on women and children34,35, while it has also limited the access to long-term care such as chemotherapy, with substantial impacts on patients’ health and survival chance36,37. Governments may have to look towards less stringent measures, encompassing maximum effective prevention but enabling an acceptable balance between benefits and drawbacks38.

******

Taken together, the social distancing and movement-restriction measures discussed above can therefore be seen as the ‘nuclear option’ of NPIs: highly effective but causing substantial collateral damages to society, the economy, trade and human rights4,39.

*****

Repeating study link here for full credit:

Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions - Nature Human Behaviour

Analysing over 50,000 government interventions in more than 200 countries, Haug et al. find that combinations of softer measures, such as risk communication or those increasing healthcare capacity, can be almost as effective as disruptive lockdowns.

www.nature.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Hmmm, how about we look at hard science, as opposed to conjecture.

Here's a study of the effectiveness of different measures world wide in controlling the spread of Covid.

Note the limitations, there are different ways to analyze the data this study used 4, and shows you the results for all 4, which sometimes conflict.

Seeing which measure produce meaningful improvements under all types of analysis (and which demonstrably fail is interesting)}

Also the data does not examine secondary negative effects such as delayed medical treatments, economic or mental health harm. Its simply a hard look at what at least does what it says it sets out to do; reduce spread.

Ranking the effectiveness of worldwide COVID-19 government interventions - Nature Human Behaviour

Analysing over 50,000 government interventions in more than 200 countries, Haug et al. find that combinations of softer measures, such as risk communication or those increasing healthcare capacity, can be almost as effective as disruptive lockdowns.

www.nature.com

From said study, the charts aforementioned:

View attachment 293748

Explanation to read the above:

The left-hand panel shows the combined 95% confidence intervals of ΔRt for the most effective interventions across all included territories. The heatmap in the right-hand panel shows the corresponding Z-scores of measure effectiveness as determined by the four different methods. Grey indicates no significantly positive effect. NPIs are ranked according to the number of methods agreeing on their impacts, from top (significant in all methods) to bottom (ineffective in all analyses). L1 themes are colour-coded as in Supplementary Fig. 1.

Study conclusions:

Among the six full-consensus NPI categories in the CCCSL, the largest impacts on Rt are shown by small gathering cancellations (83%, ΔRt between −0.22 and –0.35), the closure of educational institutions (73%, and estimates for ΔRt ranging from −0.15 to −0.21) and border restrictions (56%, ΔRt between −0.057 and –0.23).

The consensus measures also include NPIs aiming to increase healthcare and public health capacities (increased availability of personal protective equipment (PPE): 51%, ΔRt −0.062 to −0.13), individual movement restrictions (42%, ΔRt −0.08 to −0.13) and national lockdown (including stay-at-home order in US states) (25%, ΔRt −0.008 to −0.14).

Note that lock down produces the lowest positive score among 'effective measures'.

The Least effective measures were:

Among the least effective interventions we find: government actions to provide or receive international help, measures to enhance testing capacity or improve case detection strategy (which can be expected to lead to a short-term rise in cases), tracing and tracking measures as well as land border and airport health checks and environmental cleaning.

************

This is really useful, scientific information.

I have concluded reading the abstract but want to drill down into some of the details which also matter greatly.

The study comes with a serious caveat - in the discussion section:

By focusing on individual countries, the what-if experiments using artificial country-specific sequences of NPIs offer a way to quantify the importance of this local context with respect to measurement of effectiveness. Our main takeaway here is that the same NPI can have a drastically different impact if taken early or later, or in a different country

So not only is the effectiveness of interventions sensitive to national context - it is also phrase (sic time) dependent - and the meta-analysis is driven by studies and data in the Spring 2020 phase of the pandemic mostly.

AoD

 

[karledice]

Here's what you need to know about Ontario's new COVID-19 restrictions

OK, what does "Non-essential construction" include?

• Non-essential construction is further restricted, including below-grade construction, exempting survey.

 

[SunriseChampion]

I'm telling you.....it's the older generation seeking outcomes that benefit them the most whilst sabotaging the futures of subsequent generations. Clear as day.


Also, I can't find out what construction restrictions are in place because every source I've looked at has been more vague than the last.

I guess I'll just take a wee winter holiday...um, "out of an abundance of caution".

1/3 of our employees are already on EI.

I don't know what "permitted" construction is so I can only assume it's the construction of my leisure time into mass proportions.

 

[Northern Light]

The study comes with a serious caveat - in the discussion section:



AoD

A legitimate one to be sure.

The authors make that observation about testing capacity and contact tracing which they show to be effective if done very early when every person infected or at risk can be traced and possibly quarantined; but that there is considerably less evidence that this matters once the epidemic reaches a certain size, where there isn't as much useful to be gained by the data.

All measures effectiveness are also impacted by the willingness and ability of the population to adhere to different guidance.

This can be a general difference based on country/region; but also one that shifts with time. What people are willing to do will vary by the length of time such measures are in effect; by their proven effect; but also by the surrounding context.

 

[afransen]

What if grandma would prefer to put her health on the line if it meant that her grandchildren didn't have to have interruptions to their socialisation and education at critical points in their development?

As is the actual case with both my own mother and my half-sister's mother.



Interestingly, I think there could be a study done on the inter-generational disparity in opportunity and outcome that is often talked about in regards to Boomers and subsequent generations in the context of the plague restrictions.

It's maybe looking a bit like the Boomers want the best possible outcome for themselves, the future generations be damned. Sounds familiar.

Did granny sign a DNR?