[Northern Light]

Don't give a free pass to non-conservative governments. It was Peterson and Rae's Liberals and NDP that closed all the supportive and institutional housing for mentally ill. Mulroney made the mistake of allowing our vaccines to leave, but while the two vaccine suppliers were affiliated with universities, they were never state owned enterprises.

Not correct.

Connaught was wholly owned by a Federal Crown Corporation from 1972 onward, Canada Development Corporation

Connaught Laboratories - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Northern Light]

New cases under 3,000 today for the first time in a bit.

That's on just over 50,000 tests, so its a credible result (though peak-testing has been upwards of 18,000 higher)

Active cases declined by over 500

Hospitalizations down just a hair.

ICU Flat

Vents up a bit.

Somewhat irksome, only 11, 231 vaccinated yesterday, that's well off our highs of late last week, and too low.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1349378531122405378

 

[PinkLucy]

Second day in a row under 3000 actually -- yesterday was 2903.

 

[Northern Light]

Second day in a row under 3000 actually -- yesterday was 2903.

I stand corrected.

 

[DSC]

The updated rules in Scotland sound quite sensible and much clearer than anything here! (From BBC @ https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-scotland-55646778 )

Covid restrictions around takeaway and click and collect services in Scotland are to tighten.
Only shops selling essential items - such as clothing, footwear, baby equipment, homeware and books - will be allowed to offer click and collect.
Collections must also be outdoors, with appointments staggered to avoid queuing.
And takeaways can no longer allow customers indoors, and must instead operate from a hatch or doorway.

Rules around work carried out in private properties will also be tightened - with only work for "maintenance, upkeep and functioning" to be allowed, rather than for example painting and decorating.
Finally, the first minister said the wording of the stay at home law will be altered to "close an apparent loophole" by preventing people from leaving home for an essential purpose and then remaining outdoors for non-essential reasons.

Ms Sturgeon said: "We believe that both individually and collectively these additional measures, in further reducing the interactions that allow the virus to spread, will help our essential efforts to suppress it."
And she urged people to stick to the spirit, not just the letter, of the lockdown rules, saying: "Don't think in terms of the maximum interactions you can have without breaking the rules.
"Think instead about how you minimise your interactions to the bare essentials to remove as many opportunities as possible for the virus to spread.
"In everything you do, assume that the virus is there with you - that either you have it or any person you are in contact with has it - and act in a way that prevents it passing between you.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Not correct.

Connaught was wholly owned by a Federal Crown Corporation from 1972 onward, Canada Development Corporation

Connaught Laboratories - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

I agree with having a state-owned vaccine producer as a part of our biosecurity strategy - but it is important to understand that it isn't the panacea in fast-moving scenarios like COVID - there is nothing guaranteeing that whatever the government worked on will be the fastest and most effective vaccine, and the government will probably have to license IP from the companies that made them should they want to produce it (nevermind the practical issue of facilities required to produce different types of vaccine - say the current crop of mRNA vaccines, which is pretty bleeding edge).

AoD

 

[Northern Light]

I agree with having a state-owned vaccine producer as a part of our biosecurity strategy - but it is important to understand that it isn't the panacea in fast-moving scenarios like COVID - there is nothing guaranteeing that whatever the government worked on will be the fastest and most effective vaccine, and the government will probably have to license IP from the companies that made them should they want to produce it (nevermind the practical issue of facilities required to produce different types of vaccine - say the current crop of mRNA vaccines, which is pretty bleeding edge).

AoD

No disagreement.

Was simply making sure the facts are correct as to how things went down in the past.

 

[marcus_a_j]

How many doses of the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines has Ontario received? The province's Covid-19 Vaccine Webpage says approximately 140,000 does (combined) will be allocated to Ontario between December to early January. Today's update states almost 145,000 does have been administered, slightly more than what's been allocated. The province must have received additional doses otherwise we've run out.

 

[Max Sterling]

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.

I'm not saying you can 100% keep the virus completely out of all LTCs, but the government certainly could've taken simple steps to significantly reduce the number of cases and deaths in LTC patients though. Things like not allowing any outsiders other than workers into the homes early on or at least only allowing only a couple of people close to those patients so that they can visit and help take care of them, making sure workers only work at a single facility the whole time, immediately isolating patients and workers away from everyone else as soon they test positive among other things.

My mother told me about her friend who had her father in an LTC back in February and she was appalled at how little care her dad was getting from the workers and she had to do alot of the work herself in taking care of him in his final few weeks of life. Also during this time when the virus wasn't such an issue, the workers at that home would actually STOP HER from letting her dad wear a mask that she bought herself because they thought it would cause panic among other patients if they saw her dad wearing one.

Its crap like that that helped spread the virus among LTCs during the 1st wave and these are lessons that should've been learned so that in the 2nd wave LTCs would be better prepared, protected and be impacted less, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to have happened.

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 I said during the ENTIRE pandemic so far, only about 1,400 seniors over 70 years old have died in Ontario outside of LTCs out of ALMOST 3 MILLION seniors in the province. Probably at least a couple of hundred seniors die daily of various causes in Ontario, but apparently THOSE grandpas and grandmas don't matter to you because they didn't die to covid so no care right?

How odd is it that the reason a person dies matters more than the actual fact that they died? Again in any given year almost 300 people die daily in the province and no one bats an eye and every one goes on living their lives. However if almost 300 people were dying of covid everyday our government would be going insane and the entire province would be in permanent lockdown until everyone got vaccinated. Funny how different the reaction would be even though the same number of people died daily, just to different causes.

Also if the government REALLY wanted to 'flatten the curve' and not overburden hospitals with patients, they would get people to eat healthier and exercise more or maybe even mandate it. People eating right and exercising equals a more healthier population which means less ailments and less people needing hospital care. That would have a MASSIVE effect on Ontario's hospitals and it would have a much more long term benefit of keeping beds free for other things than people in hospitals for bad lifestyle choices.

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.

So Japan has a relatively brief regional shutdown back in April during the 1st wave, before opening things back up and allowed people to live mostly a normal life before just now declaring a 2nd state of emergency that involves:

'The new announcement expands the order to Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Aichi, Gifu, Tochigi and Fukuoka, covering much of Japan's main island of Honshu. Eleven prefectures in total are now under emergency measures.

The state of emergency orders companies to encourage their staff to work from home and reduce office populations by 70%. Residents of the affected areas are also urged to avoid non-essential outings and restaurants have to stop serving alcohol by 7 p.m. and close by 8 p.m.'

Japan expands state of emergency and bans entry of foreign nationals as coronavirus as infections climb | CNN

Japan will expand its state of emergency to seven more prefectures and ban all foreign nationals from entering the country, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday.

www.cnn.com

Yeah I think I'd MUCH rather live with the Japanses government's response to the pandemic than with Ontario's. Allowing businesses to stay open even with reduced hours would've been a godsend for many owners in the province, but unfortnately no our government just had to punish everyone because of their messed up response to the pandemic. Gotta double down on their mistakes and make people's lives even more miserable and cause even more debt to the province that we'll be paying for who knows how many generations.

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

I'm not saying you can 100% keep the virus completely out of all LTCs, but the government certainly could've taken simple steps to significantly reduce the number of cases and deaths in LTC patients though. Things like not allowing any outsiders other than workers into the homes early on or at least only allowing only a couple of people close to those patients so that they can visit and help take care of them, making sure workers only work at a single facility the whole time, immediately isolating patients and workers away from everyone else as soon they test positive among other things.

My mother told me about her friend who had her father in an LTC back in February and she was appalled at how little care her dad was getting from the workers and she had to do alot of the work herself in taking care of him in his final few weeks of life. Also during this time when the virus wasn't such an issue, the workers at that home would actually STOP HER from letting her dad wear a mask that she bought herself because they thought it would cause panic among other patients if they saw her dad wearing one.

Its crap like that that helped spread the virus among LTCs during the 1st wave and these are lessons that should've been learned so that in the 2nd wave LTCs would be better prepared, protected and be impacted less, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to have happened.



As I said during the ENTIRE pandemic so far, only about 1,400 seniors over 70 years old have died in Ontario outside of LTCs out of ALMOST 3 MILLION seniors in the province. Probably at least a couple of hundred seniors die daily of various causes in Ontario, but apparently THOSE grandpas and grandmas don't matter to you because they didn't die to covid so no care right?

How odd is it that the reason a person dies matters more than the actual fact that they died? Again in any given year almost 300 people die daily in the province and no one bats an eye and every one goes on living their lives. However if almost 300 people were dying of covid everyday our government would be going insane and the entire province would be in permanent lockdown until everyone got vaccinated. Funny how different the reaction would be even though the same number of people died daily, just to different causes.

Also if the government REALLY wanted to 'flatten the curve' and not overburden hospitals with patients, they would get people to eat healthier and exercise more or maybe even mandate it. People eating right and exercising equals a more healthier population which means less ailments and less people needing hospital care. That would have a MASSIVE effect on Ontario's hospitals and it would have a much more long term benefit of keeping beds free for other things than people in hospitals for bad lifestyle choices.



So Japan has a relatively brief regional shutdown back in April during the 1st wave, before opening things back up and allowed people to live mostly a normal life before just now declaring a 2nd state of emergency that involves:

'The new announcement expands the order to Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Aichi, Gifu, Tochigi and Fukuoka, covering much of Japan's main island of Honshu. Eleven prefectures in total are now under emergency measures.

The state of emergency orders companies to encourage their staff to work from home and reduce office populations by 70%. Residents of the affected areas are also urged to avoid non-essential outings and restaurants have to stop serving alcohol by 7 p.m. and close by 8 p.m.'

Japan expands state of emergency and bans entry of foreign nationals as coronavirus as infections climb | CNN

Japan will expand its state of emergency to seven more prefectures and ban all foreign nationals from entering the country, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday.

www.cnn.com

Yeah I think I'd MUCH rather live with the Japanses government's response to the pandemic than with Ontario's. Allowing businesses to stay open even with reduced hours would've been a godsend for many owners in the province, but unfortnately no our government just had to punish everyone because of their messed up response to the pandemic. Gotta double down on their mistakes and make people's lives even more miserable and cause even more debt to the province that we'll be paying for who knows how many generations.

Do you have *any* idea the degree of cultural conformity and rule following in Japan vs. Canada? And you want to conflate a fast spreading infectious disease to unhealthy diets? You can't change the latter fast enough to free up capacity for the health system to matter - chronic conditions from bad diets and the impact on the health system is baked in at decadal time-scales.

AoD

 

[Johnny Au]

I'm not saying you can 100% keep the virus completely out of all LTCs, but the government certainly could've taken simple steps to significantly reduce the number of cases and deaths in LTC patients though. Things like not allowing any outsiders other than workers into the homes early on or at least only allowing only a couple of people close to those patients so that they can visit and help take care of them, making sure workers only work at a single facility the whole time, immediately isolating patients and workers away from everyone else as soon they test positive among other things.

My mother told me about her friend who had her father in an LTC back in February and she was appalled at how little care her dad was getting from the workers and she had to do alot of the work herself in taking care of him in his final few weeks of life. Also during this time when the virus wasn't such an issue, the workers at that home would actually STOP HER from letting her dad wear a mask that she bought herself because they thought it would cause panic among other patients if they saw her dad wearing one.

Its crap like that that helped spread the virus among LTCs during the 1st wave and these are lessons that should've been learned so that in the 2nd wave LTCs would be better prepared, protected and be impacted less, but unfortunately that doesn't seem to have happened.



As I said during the ENTIRE pandemic so far, only about 1,400 seniors over 70 years old have died in Ontario outside of LTCs out of ALMOST 3 MILLION seniors in the province. Probably at least a couple of hundred seniors die daily of various causes in Ontario, but apparently THOSE grandpas and grandmas don't matter to you because they didn't die to covid so no care right?

How odd is it that the reason a person dies matters more than the actual fact that they died? Again in any given year almost 300 people die daily in the province and no one bats an eye and every one goes on living their lives. However if almost 300 people were dying of covid everyday our government would be going insane and the entire province would be in permanent lockdown until everyone got vaccinated. Funny how different the reaction would be even though the same number of people died daily, just to different causes.

Also if the government REALLY wanted to 'flatten the curve' and not overburden hospitals with patients, they would get people to eat healthier and exercise more or maybe even mandate it. People eating right and exercising equals a more healthier population which means less ailments and less people needing hospital care. That would have a MASSIVE effect on Ontario's hospitals and it would have a much more long term benefit of keeping beds free for other things than people in hospitals for bad lifestyle choices.



So Japan has a relatively brief regional shutdown back in April during the 1st wave, before opening things back up and allowed people to live mostly a normal life before just now declaring a 2nd state of emergency that involves:

'The new announcement expands the order to Osaka, Kyoto, Hyogo, Aichi, Gifu, Tochigi and Fukuoka, covering much of Japan's main island of Honshu. Eleven prefectures in total are now under emergency measures.

The state of emergency orders companies to encourage their staff to work from home and reduce office populations by 70%. Residents of the affected areas are also urged to avoid non-essential outings and restaurants have to stop serving alcohol by 7 p.m. and close by 8 p.m.'

Japan expands state of emergency and bans entry of foreign nationals as coronavirus as infections climb | CNN

Japan will expand its state of emergency to seven more prefectures and ban all foreign nationals from entering the country, Prime Minister Yoshihide Suga said Wednesday.

www.cnn.com

Yeah I think I'd MUCH rather live with the Japanses government's response to the pandemic than with Ontario's. Allowing businesses to stay open even with reduced hours would've been a godsend for many owners in the province, but unfortnately no our government just had to punish everyone because of their messed up response to the pandemic. Gotta double down on their mistakes and make people's lives even more miserable and cause even more debt to the province that we'll be paying for who knows how many generations.

One way we can fund COVID-19-related expenses is to have a modest junk food tax and a junk food advertising tax.

 

[Johnny Au]

Do you have *any* idea the degree of cultural conformity and rule following in Japan vs. Canada? And you want to conflate a fast spreading infectious disease to unhealthy diets?

AoD

It would be very difficult to emulate Japanese success here, primarily because Japanese culture is very communitarian as compared with the more individualistic Canada, though Canada is more communitarian than the very individualistic United States.

 

[W. K. Lis]

More of Doug Ford's "efficiencies" in health care making its appearance. Now with home care...

Senior presumed to have COVID-19 left soiled in bed for days after home care visits cancelled​

From link.

A Mississauga, Ont., senior who relies on provincially funded home care was left soiled in his bed for days after he and his wife became ill with COVID-19 nearly two weeks ago and care workers stopped showing up.

Simon David, 74, a former mechanical engineer, suffers from late-stage dementia and the effects of a stroke that left him bedridden and unable to feed himself.

It takes two trained health-care professionals to secure Simon in a lift so he can use the washroom and be cleaned.

For six days, starting on Dec. 31, his publicly funded pair of personal care workers didn't visit. Instead, his wife, Cristina David, who was feeling sick, had to try to care for Simon herself.

"It's inhumane.... This shouldn't be happening," she said. "This was our greatest time of need."

On New Year's Eve, the day Cristina tested positive for COVID-19, her husband started to show symptoms as well. Health authorities told her that Simon was presumed to be infected, too.

Cristina said she immediately alerted the two agencies that provide care for her husband, the Mississauga Halton Local Health Integration Network (LHIN) and the Victorian Order of Nurses (VON). That afternoon, she said, the two agencies held a conference call with her and advised that her husband's home care would be stopped.

"They told me immediately that they will cancel the services when I disclosed that I was infected," she told CBC News.

Cristina said she's filed a formal complaint with the LHIN and her representative at Queen's Park over the agencies' handling of the situation.

Agencies face challenges providing care during pandemic

Both agencies told CBC News they can't comment on the couple's situation directly due to privacy regulations.

The Mississauga Halton LHIN is a publicly funded agency that contracts nursing and personal support work to VON.

In an emailed statement to CBC News, VON spokesperson Rosie Michel said staff are well trained in the use of personal protective equipment, but that sometimes staffing issues arise.

"There are sometimes circumstances in which either clients and their families/caregivers, or VON, or both, conclude that care cannot continue to be provided by the VON care team," Michel said.

"Generally speaking, if a member of a client's main VON care team isn't available for any reason, VON works with clients and families/caregivers to ensure a contingency plan is in place and that care can continue to be delivered."

Trying to make it work

Last April, Cristina moved her husband out of a long-term care home because she was so concerned about the quality of care and the spread of COVID-19.

Prior to Dec. 31, two personal support workers from VON would arrive at the Davids' home twice a day. In addition to securing Simon in the lift so he could go to the washroom and be cleaned, they would also help feed him and give him his medications.

Cristina said when VON workers stopped showing up, she was too weak from COVID-19 to take care of her husband.

Simon was left in bed, soiled, for three days, she said.

Cristina said a VON case worker told her to take Simon to hospital if he became very sick, but he never did.

After three days without care workers, Cristina said she called her stepdaughter, Donnie David, for help to lift, clean and feed Simon.

"All I had were gloves and a mask. Feeding and changing him is a lot of close contact," Donnie told CBC News.

Days later, the 26-year-old started feeling unwell. On Friday, Peel health officials told her she tested positive for COVID-19.

"They just assumed that since this was a house with an outbreak, that's where I got it from," Donnie said.

Cristina said she feels terrible about her stepdaughter's illness.

"This should not have happened," she said.

On Jan. 5, a lone care worker showed up and was unable to lift Simon out of the bed, Cristina said. Since then, care has been sporadic, she said, often with a single worker visiting the home.

She said she's been told full care for her husband will resume on Jan. 14, two weeks after the COVID-19 diagnosis.

Not a patient's responsibility to ensure care is coming

Alison Thompson, an associate professor at the University of Toronto specializing in ethical issues in health care, said the provincially funded Mississauga Halton LHIN and VON appear to have failed a family in crisis.

"The obligation is on the part of the home care provider to make sure the patients are being cared for," said Thompson.

"It's not the responsibility of the people who are very, very ill at the time to be filling the holes in their care. It's too much to ask, and it's really a failure on the part of the provider to meet the needs, and [they] are contractually obligated to do that."

Mississauga Halton LHIN spokesperson Laura Zilke said the agency has reached out to other health-care suppliers to help meet the needs of clients during the pandemic.

"Care providers continue to provide essential nursing, therapies and personal support services to individuals who require these home care services to remain in their home, regardless of whether the client is [COVID-19] positive or negative," she said in an emailed statement.

Donnie said it's been heartbreaking watching her stepmother struggle to provide care.

"I honestly feel like they abandoned [my parents]," she said.

 

[W. K. Lis]

From November 6, 2012

Former premier Mike Harris and wife to start home-care service​

From link.

Fifteen years after famously comparing laid-off nurses to workers in hula-hoop factories, former Progressive Conservative premier Mike Harris is back in the nursing business.

Harris and his wife, Laura, announced Tuesday they are starting a home-care franchise called “Nurse Next Door” to help seniors — pointing out the over-65 crowd comprises 15 per cent of Toronto’s population.

“It’s about helping our seniors celebrate aging and getting them back to doing the things they love,” Harris said in a statement, noting his wife was a registered nurse before joining the business world.

Laura Harris, who will run the day-to-day operations, promised everything from “a few hours of friendly companionship through to round-the-clock nursing care.”

After the Conservatives took power in 1995 and slashed hospital budgets by $800 million in efforts to slay annual government deficits, Harris was blamed for layoffs of nurses and other hospital workers that followed.

“Just as hula hoops went out and those workers had to have a factory and a company that would manufacture something else that’s in, it’s the same for government,” Harris told reporters in 1997.

“Governments have put off these decisions for so many years that restructuring sometimes is painful,” he added, explaining the cuts.

 

[Northern Light]

Ontario's vaccination plans are out; here ya go:

Info from the Ontario Vaccination Plan, VIA John Michael McGrath of TVO:

TVO Today | Current Affairs Journalism, Documentaries and Podcasts

www.tvo.org

Sum up: Approximately 80% vaccination rate by August Holiday Weekend.