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Admiral Beez said:
At (per Wikipedia) 67 million people and a GDP of US$2.979 trillion, the UK isn’t massively larger than Canada (38 million, GDP $1.808 trillion). If Oxford University and Astra-Zeneca, both headquartered in the UK can make a vaccine, I’d like to see Canada give it a shot.
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Literally, give Canada a shot.
 

As we watched flailing America‘s Covid response under Trump, IMO Canadians felt we were doing it better. Our deaths and cases per pop were lower, and our PM was on the TV telling us we’d be fine, that things were under control. Well, that was then. Now Biden appears to have a firm hand on the tiller, is promising Americans they’ll be vaccinated by July. Now Americans, looking northward are noticing the approaching sh#tshow that is Canada.​


Delays Turn Canada’s Vaccination Optimism Into Anxiety​

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/...coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare​

 
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You guys want to do silly nation-to-nation comparisons?

Australia are just starting vaccinations this week. Since we're comparing ourselves to like nations.

Oh, no, we're not....we're just freaking out about nothing again.

The vaccines are coming in large number. Soon enough you too can get your much sought-after injection.

It's a like a bunch of k-tards or junkies clamouring for their next shot. 😅
 
Admiral Beez said:

As we watched flailing America‘s Covid response under Trump, IMO Canadians felt we were doing it better. Our deaths and cases per pop were lower, and our PM was on the TV telling us we’d be fine, that things were under control. Well, that was then. Now Biden appears to have a firm hand on the tiller, is promising Americans they’ll be vaccinated by July. Now Americans, looking northward are noticing the approaching sh#tshow that is Canada.​


Delays Turn Canada’s Vaccination Optimism Into Anxiety​

https://www.nytimes.com/2021/02/18/...coronavirus.html?referringSource=articleShare​

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It's a stretch to describe Canada as a shitshow. Canada is paying the price for not being big enough to bully big pharma companies or having domestic vaccine production capacity.
 

Founder of SanRemo Bakery dies of COVID-19, family says​

From link.

image.jpeg

Natale Bozzo, the founder of SanRemo Bakery and Cafe in Toronto's west end, has died after contracting COVID-19, his family says. (Instagram:mad:sanremobakery)

The patriarch of a family-run bakery in Toronto’s west end is dead following an ongoing battle with COVID-19.

In a post to SanRemo Bakery and Café’s Instagram page Thursday, the Bozzo family confirmed that Natale Bozzo had died after six weeks in hospital.

“He fought very hard, he was in good health prior to this, and we learned of his failing health through very difficult phone calls from the hospital and thankfully we were able to say goodbye,” the post reads.

Born in 1945, Bozzo immigrated to Canada from Italy at the age of 15.

He started working in Toronto’s Little Italy neighbourhood at Sicilia Bakery on College Street before opening SanRemo Bakery with his brothers in Etobicoke in 1969.
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Bozzo would become the sole owner of the bakery located at Royal York Road and Simpson Avenue in the 90s with his three sons.

He would later retire, but the family said Bozzo would often “help out around the bakery as it was his passion.”

“He was an incredible baker, and most hardworking man we know. He was resilient and resourceful. He was kind and a friend to all,” the family said in the post.
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Well-known for its Italian-inspired dishes and over-the-top desserts, the Etobicoke staple was forced to close its doors on Jan. 22 after several employees tested positive for COVID-19. They reopened for business on Feb. 6.

The bakery said at the time that it was working with Toronto Public Health and following their advice on how to move forward.

The family said that Bozzo’s death will be followed by what they describe as an “inexplicable time of grieving.”
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“He said the secret of baking was to put a pinch of love into everything, and we’ll be missing that pinch in ways we can’t describe.”

On Thursday night, Premier Doug Ford expressed his condolences.

"My condolences go out to Rob, Nick, Ed, and the entire family of Natale Bozzo, a true local champion who followed his passions," Ford wrote. "A family-owned business, the SanRemo Bakery and Café has been a staple in Etobicoke for many years. God bless the Bozzo family."

Bozzo was 75.
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Bozzo had COVID-19 for 6 weeks, family says​

 
That place is always bumping out of control....yet I didn't go once in the year and a half I lived in Mimico.
 
afransen said:
It's a stretch to describe Canada as a shitshow. Canada is paying the price for not being big enough to bully big pharma companies or having domestic vaccine production capacity.
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Agreed, not a sh#tshow..... but Canadians will begin to think it is if Trudeau fails in his September commitment, and we get to November or December 2021 and still we‘re not vaccinated, whilst we watch the USA returning to normal.
 
As expected....

Feb. 19: Eighty more cases of COVID-19 were found in Ontario schools. Sixty-four of the cases were found among students and 16 were found among staff.

There are currently 255 schools with a reported case of the novel coronavirus across the province, five of which are closed.

As well, 14 more cases of the disease were found in child-care centres in Ontario. Six of those cases were found among children and eight were found among staff.

At least 134 centres have a confirmed case of COVID-19 and 14 are closed.

toronto.ctvnews.ca

COVID-19 cases in Ontario schools and child-care centres as of April 19

Since September 2020, there have been a total of 14,909 lab-confirmed positive cases of COVID-19 in Ontario schools and 4,287 in licensed child-care facilities.
toronto.ctvnews.ca
 
Meanwhile...

From link.

  • As of February 18, 2021 at 8:00 p.m., over 518,000 vaccine doses have been administered across the province, including over 114,000 doses administered to long-term care staff and retirement home staff, over 186,000 doses administered to health care workers and over 167,000 doses administered to long-term care and retirement home residents.
  • Ontario has capacity to vaccinate nearly 40,000 people per day and is building capacity to triple or quadruple that capacity pending vaccine supply from the federal government.
  • To protect access to second doses of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine for those who have already received their first dose, Ontario will maintain the maximum interval of 21-27 days for long-term care, retirement and First Nations elder care home resident groups. All other second dose appointments will be administered 35 days after the administration of the first dose, and no later than 42 days. These intervals are aligned with guidance provided by the National Advisory Committee on Immunization (NACI).
However, it should be remembered that...

Ontario's population reached 14,745,040 on April 1, 2020, with an increase of 33,213 people during the first quarter of 2020. This compares to an increase of 42,548 in the same quarter of the previous year.

The metro area population of Toronto in 2020 was 6,197,000, a 0.94% increase from 2019.
 

The public lab that could have helped fight COVID-19 pandemic​

From link.

Canada once had a publicly owned pharmaceutical company that could have made a difference in the current coronavirus crisis — except that we sold it.

Connaught Labs was a superstar in global medicine. For seven decades, this publicly owned Canadian company performed brilliantly on the national and international stage, contributing to medical breakthroughs and developing affordable treatments and vaccines for deadly diseases.

Hated by its corporate competitors, Connaught was unique among pharmaceutical companies in that its focus was on human need, not profit.

It would have come in handy today.

In fact, Connaught got its start amid a diphtheria outbreak in 1913. Toronto doctor John Gerald FitzGerald was outraged that children were dying in large numbers even though there was a diphtheria treatment available from a U.S. manufacturer. But, at $25 a dose, it was unaffordable to all but the rich. FitzGerald set out to change that — and did.

After experimenting on a horse in a downtown Toronto stable, FitzGerald developed an antitoxin that proved effective in treating diphtheria, and made it available to public health outlets across the country. Then, with lab space provided by the University of Toronto, he and his team went on to produce low-cost treatments and vaccines for other common killers, including tetanus, typhoid and meningitis.

Connaught developed an impressive research capacity, with its scientists contributing to some of the biggest medical breakthroughs of the 20th century — including penicillin and the Salk and Sabin polio vaccines. It also played a central role in the global eradication of smallpox.

“It was a pioneer in a lot of ways,” says Colleen Fuller, a research associate of the Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives. “It did things commercial companies wouldn’t do because they weren’t willing to take the financial risks.”

Fuller argues that if a publicly owned Connaught were still operating today, it could be contributing to the development of the coronavirus vaccine — and ensuring a Canadian supply if there was a global shortage.

Yet, tragically it isn’t.

Succumbing to corporate pressure and a misguided belief that the private sector always does things better, Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government privatized Connaught Labs in the 1980s. Today, what remains of this once-dazzling Canadian public enterprise has been taken over by a giant French pharmaceutical company.

The coronavirus outbreak may finally help expose the fallacy of the notion that the private marketplace is innately superior — which has been the guiding principle in Anglo-American countries (including Canada) for the past four decades, leading to the constant denigration of government and its functions.

Fortunately, Canada’s public health care system, established in the 1960s, has been so popular that it has survived, despite attacks of “socialized medicine” — although our political leaders have quietly whittled away funding for the system in recent decades.

If the foolishness of cutting funding for public health care wasn’t already abundantly clear, the coronavirus has driven it home with a sledgehammer — as we’ve witnessed the extra struggles the U.S. faces in containing the virus with its lack of public health care.

Still, our willingness to go along with the privatization cult in recent decades has left us weaker and less protected than we could be.
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Not only do we no longer have Connaught Labs, but Canada spends $1 billion a year funding basic medical research at Canadian universities, yet relies on the private marketplace to produce, control — and profit from — the resulting medical innovations.

For instance, the crucial work in developing a vaccine to treat Ebola was done by Canadian scientists at the National Microbiology Laboratory in Winnipeg — and financed by Canadian taxpayer money. But sole licensing rights to the vaccine were granted to a small U.S. company, which then sublicensed it to pharmaceutical giant Merck for $50 million.
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Although Merck is now producing the vaccine, critics have charged that the company did “next to nothing” to rush the vaccine into production during the deadly Ebola outbreak in West Africa, according to a recent paper published in the Journal of Law and Biosciences.

With a surge in future global pandemics expected, it might well be time to rethink Canada’s foolhardy attachment to the notion “the private sector always does things better.”

Always unproven, that theory is looking increasingly far-fetched.
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