[Northern Light]

Over 70,000 tests done yesterday, that's pretty much capacity.

Growth of new cases at 1.08%

That's a positive given the high testing number.

Modest declines in Hospitalization and ICU, but not statistically significant.

From John Michael McGrath's Twitter; a series of graphics:

For more info:

https://twitter.com/x/status/1352640251941036032

 

[zang]

That would be a good thing.

What started out, largely, as a Track and Field Meet with a couple of add-on events...............has become profoundly unwieldy.

The Olympics are fine as an idea; but they need to trim the vast majority of team sports; events that are decided on 'artistic merit' or those that simply have not even the faintest link to the Olympics.

Those other things can and should have their world championships, but they don't need to all be bundled in one place.

Its a cost/logistical burden.

At about 1/4 the current size, (for the summer games); and maybe 1/2 for winter, the games would be workable and not near the financial burden of the current versions.

I don't think the number or style of the events are so much of the problem. It's the size requirements for hosting, and the unruly demands made by the olympic committee to support ticket sales. Bigger stadiums, improvements to airports, etc. Montreal's still probably paying for some of theirs.

Just about every major city has an olympic-sized ice rink, running track, swimming pool. It's the demand to be able to seat thousands of spectators at that location — and the infrastructure, transportation, etc. to support it — that's the problem. If someone's willing to spend thousands to fly to a city to watch the olympics, that person's probably more than willing to spend a couple of hundred for a two-week multi-camera streaming pass, etc. A switch to a shared TV/Web model would be a welcome change, with the hosting city getting a portion of streaming/tv revenue.

 

[Northern Light]

I don't think the number or style of the events are so much of the problem. It's the size requirements for hosting, and the unruly demands made by the olympic committee to support ticket sales. Bigger stadiums, improvements to airports, etc. Montreal's still probably paying for some of theirs.

Just about every major city has an olympic-sized ice rink, running track, swimming pool. It's the demand to be able to seat thousands of spectators at that location — and the infrastructure, transportation, etc. to support it — that's the problem. If someone's willing to spend thousands to fly to a city to watch the olympics, that person's probably more than willing to spend a couple of hundred for a two-week multi-camera streaming pass, etc. A switch to a shared TV/Web model would be a welcome change, with the hosting city getting a portion of streaming/tv revenue.

There are a fair few obscure facility types that have to be established due to the range of sports at Olympics.

In the summer........think Velodromes for an obvious one; those often don't last beyond the life of the Olympics.

In the Winter, speed skating ovals also tend to have a similarly short life span.

But a huge part of the cost of hosting is the sheer number of athletes (who then need to be housed); plus the attendant number of media (lots of sports have their own media teams), and in some cases additional venues are also built, because spaces
that can normally be multi-purposed cannot during an Olympics as there are competing demands for the space.

To be sure, the IOC has often required venues be new, or meet the very latest standards, as well as accommodate crowds at venues that normally might not do so, requiring alteration or replacement.

............

That said, we're wandering a bit from the core subject of the thread!

 

[Towered]

Seeing more and more examples of elite sports facilities sitting abandoned and decaying only a few years after the OG ravaged a host city for a couple of weeks really doesn't help their cause.

 

[picard102]

Most Olympic velodromes still exist, and only two Skating ovals have closed since hosting the Olympics.

 

[gabe]

Idiots.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1352475822016262144

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Not great news if proven true:

Boris Johnson says some evidence new Covid variant in the UK may be more deadly

There is "some evidence" a new Covid variant first identified in the U.K. could be more deadly than the original strain, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson said Friday.

www.cnbc.com

https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/uk-variant-covid-denmark/2021/01/22/ddfaf420-5453-11eb-acc5-92d2819a1ccb_story.html

Worried Danish leaders have tried to explain to their citizens why they need to stay in lockdown, when overall metrics are good enough to suggest the country should have started to reopen weeks ago.
In a long Facebook post last week, Prime Minister Mette Frederiksen told people to imagine sitting in the top row of Copenhagen’s Parken Stadium, a soccer arena with a capacity of 38,000 people. A dripping tap is filling it up, one drop the first minute, two drops the second, four drops the third. At that rate, Frederiksen said, the park will be filled in 44 minutes. But it will seem almost empty for the first 42 minutes, she said.
“The point is that one only discovers that the water has risen when it is almost too late,” she wrote.

AoD

 

[PinkLucy]

That's the first I've seen about it being more deadly, although of course we needed time to pass to know that. Definitely lots of info about it being more contagious

 

[gabe]

Some more bad news. More than 4000 people were reinfected with Covid in South Africa. The South African variant of Covid is suspected to be resistant against antibodies.

New COVID-19 variant can evade immunity, research suggests

Scientists have already warned that the new variants are about 50 per cent more transmissible than earlier variants

www.theglobeandmail.com

 

[AlvinofDiaspar]

Some more bad news. More than 4000 people were reinfected with Covid in South Africa. The South African variant of Covid is suspected to be resistant against antibodies.

New COVID-19 variant can evade immunity, research suggests

Scientists have already warned that the new variants are about 50 per cent more transmissible than earlier variants

www.theglobeandmail.com

They probably should start working on the vaccine for that variant - I would imagine the same technique could be used.

AoD

 

[gabe]

mobile hospital units are being deployed to the GTA.

Two mobile hospital units will be deployed to the Greater Toronto Area, Trudeau says

The federal government will deploy two mobile hospital units to the Greater Toronto Area in order to help free up space in a healthcare system that is struggling to handle an influx of COVID-19 patients.

toronto.ctvnews.ca

 

[SunriseChampion]

Idiots.

https://twitter.com/x/status/1352475822016262144

I <3 Chappelle and Joe "Have you tried DMT" Rogan but Elon and Grimes can send off on one of his rockets, bruh.

No idea who that next fellow is.

Dave smokes so hope that doesn't end him now. He's too good to die young.

 

[afransen]

Honestly, losing Chapelle would be a tragedy. I thought Joe was being pretty meticulous about COVID, so surprised he would have been fine with Grimes showing up while recently being positive.

 

[SunriseChampion]

Honestly, losing Chapelle would be a tragedy.

Defo a tragedy.

I thought Joe was being pretty meticulous about COVID, so surprised he would have been fine with Grimes showing up while recently being positive.

Maybe she was deemed to be non-infective/recovered. We don't know anything about her health status based on that retweet.
Elon's not a fool either.

Still don't know who that other bloke is though. Anyone?


hold up....I just realised Dave's not wearing a belt in that pic......that is only acceptable because it's him

 

[Max Sterling]

For what seems like the third time here, If we allow this virus to run rampant amongst the general population, it will spread until we hit herd immunity. 60% is on the low estimate of what's required. Some have said as much as 85%. Conservatively, it could take a year to get to that point. When we hit 60% of the population having had this disease, that's about 9,000,000 Ontarians. If the death rate remains at only 2.2%, that's over 190,000 Ontarians. By the time the spread is at its peak, it'll be nigh-impossible to keep it out of LTC homes, even with the best of resources.

If you truly believe that in some universe that in the absense of doing anything that its possible that ONTARIO ALONE could reach 190,000 virus deaths in single year then I don't know how you can debate against that kind of insanity. The US has a population of 328 million and currently has 414,000 virus deaths and you want people to believe that its in any way possible that Ontario with 22x less population can hit nearly half that number of covid deaths IN A SINGLE YEAR ON ITS OWN???!? Really?!

MAYBE if this virus hit people of all ages very hard and the death rate was much higher then it might be in the realm of remote possibility, but to think that could happen when it affects predominately the oldest and sickest? Yeah that's just pure insanity to even put that out there and think that would ever happen.

Didn't much of the world criticise Sweden for the bare minimum of rules that they implemented that didn't even include mask wearing or much social distancing and they're considered a 'disaster' at this point after their nation reached 11,000 covid deaths and yet somehow, someway Ontario ALONE is suppose to blow by that number doing nothing like the Swedes did? OK. Again pure insanity to even think that.

YOU especially are not one to speak to racism:

View attachment 294903View attachment 294904View attachment 294905

Lol nice stalking dude. Is that what you like to do with your time? And sure play that 'racism' card because someone has a different opinion from the usual narrative to explain/excuse everything away. OK.

Also good dodge on Trudeau not taking the virus seriously:

It's also funny that you acknowledge a half-assed early response yet ignore that later when comparing our situation versus Japan's.

Japan started off with less cases and were able to get things under control much faster than we were. That is why they were able to go with few restrictions. Did you not notice as our numbers went down restrictions loosened? I've noticed a pattern in your inability to pickup details and pertinent information, so I'm guessing no.

How do we know that Japan got things under control when they tested far fewer people than Canada did? They tested 5.3 million people for the virus while Canada tested almost 17 million despite having over 3 times LESS population?

Canada: COVID-19 cases, deaths, and tests | Statista

Canada has confirmed approximately 1.5 million coronavirus cases, while the country has performed more than 40 million tests.

www.statista.com

Japan: number of people undergoing coronavirus tests by type of patients 2022 | Statista

As of March 18, 2022, a total of around 41.7 million people in Japan underwent polymerase chain reaction (PCR) tests for coronavirus (COVID-19), of which about 40 million tests were for patients within the country.

www.statista.com

If you were to see a video mid-August of downtown Toronto, it would've looked about the same. Busy streets, people eating in restaurants and drinking in bars. Japan's per-capita caseload now is about equivalent to what ours was then. Except ours started rising slowly from the beginning of August and we pretty much ignored it until November.

Tell me at what point did our governments and experts ALLOW people to get together in large crowds without criticising them for doing so and have them constantly remind us that we needed to remain vigilant despite the low numbers of hospital cases and infections over the summer? Did you forget about the big crowds at Wasaga beach and how the government cracked down?

Video shows crowds gathering in Wasaga Beach, Ont., on Canada Day: ‘It was just crazy’ | Globalnews.ca

Swarms of people were seen gathering on a part of the beach in Wasaga Beach, Ont., on Canada Day, while ignoring physical distancing guidelines.

globalnews.ca

Or Niagara Falls:

'Very shocking': Video captures huge crowds, lineups in Niagara Falls

The City of Niagara Falls in Ontario is introducing a new plan to ensure visitors adhere to public health guidelines after video emerged showing the popular tourist destination teeming with crowds in apparent disregard for physical distancing amid the coronavirus pandemic.

www.ctvnews.ca

Or Cherry beach crowds:

Ontario premier shocked by packed Toronto beaches, warns COVID-19 fight is not over

Ontario Premier Doug Ford said he was shocked to see so many people flocking to Toronto beaches over the weekend, warning that the province could see a surge in COVID-19 cases if they aren’t careful.

toronto.ctvnews.ca

And the list goes on. So please tell me at which point from the gradual reopening until the province went into stage 3 for a while that our governments from provincial to local and all our medical experts didn't go insane over every story about large gatherings and parties? I don't think the Japanese government and their experts had anywhere near that kind of panicked reaction everytime they saw people gather in large numbers and you want to tell me Japan and Canada were 'the same' in how it reacted to seeing their populations living their lives as normally as they can?