News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 02, 2020
A Message to Our Readers
 9.7K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
EarthCam Time-Lapse Documents Rafael Viñoly-Designed New Stanford Hospital Construction
 41K     0 
News   GLOBAL  |  Apr 01, 2020
Resort Town
 5.5K     0 

Yeah, something like this happens one every 100 years. The last time, it was the 1918 Spanish Flu and I think we all learned some lessons from that!
 
The lack of domestic vaccine production capacity, as well as the retention/protection of other capacity that one might consider strategic, cannot be laid at the feet of the current government. One could blame the sale of Connaught Labs on the PC government, but that might be considered partisan.

According the federal government website, we have agreements with several suppliers (at various stages of Health Canada approval) for up 404Mn doses. When you don't have domestic production capacity, you are a buyer, along with all other buyers.
 
karledice said:
I am critical of all our leaders when they're not up to par, regardless of their political party
I think Trudeau is inexperienced leading our country through a global pandemic and posted articles indicating so
Click to expand...
He's been PM for 5 years - I'd say he's pretty experienced at this point.
 
DSC said:
Yes, many countries are ahead of Canada in obtaining and injecting vaccines but many are also well behind us There are probably many reasons but a major one is that Canada does not currently have the capacity to produce vaccines and all is imported from countries which also want as much as they can get for their own population: (Italy just stopped a shipment destined for Australia). IMO, the Federal government really did VERY well to place a huge number of orders from a variety of sources at a time when it was unclear whether any (or which) and when any vaccines would actually be approved. Now that we appear to have a fairly large flow of vaccines arriving it is up to the Provinces to get them into arms and the fact that the Ontario reservation portal will not open until 17th of March is hardly a good sign. Has it all been (or will it all be) perfect? No but .....
Click to expand...
Seems like Canada should start imposing 300% tariffs on vaccines not produced in Canada--just to properly incentivize drug makers to maintain presence and capacity in Canada.

If other countries squawk our answer can be 'national security'.
 
Last edited:
afransen said:
Seems like Canada should start imposing 300% tariffs on vaccines not produced in Canada--just to properly incentivize drug makers to maintain presence and capacity in Canada.

If other countries squawk our answer can be 'national security'.
Click to expand...

That's cutting off your nose to spite your face - you are assuming you have a market large enough for anyone with the IP to care (hint - we aren't). Nobody is going to give a damn about not being able to sell 40M doses when it's a buyer's market. So you are going to end up with no vaccine early on, and since whatever you buy is going to be applied to your own citizens (and paid for by yourself as the government) - you are in essence taxing yourself to get what you can. Not sure what's the gain here.

Now if you want to, you can threaten to break their IPs - but that's pretty much a nuclear option that would greatly displease your trading partners (not to mention violate multilateral agreements). And you still don't have anything to show for it.

lenaitch said:
The lack of domestic vaccine production capacity, as well as the retention/protection of other capacity that one might consider strategic, cannot be laid at the feet of the current government. One could blame the sale of Connaught Labs on the PC government, but that might be considered partisan.

According the federal government website, we have agreements with several suppliers (at various stages of Health Canada approval) for up 404Mn doses. When you don't have domestic production capacity, you are a buyer, along with all other buyers.
Click to expand...

Even if we had retained Connaught it won't be a guarantee that whatever it works on will be effective (we might have a better shot). Failure is a real possibility that doesn't even escape some of the largest pharma (e.g. the less than stellar effectiveness of the Sanofi/GSK vaccine candidate). And you can't ask umpteen pharmaceutical companies to all set up shop to produce vaccines here in Canada just because you don't know which company will be working on a product that ultimately comes out on top.

AoD
 
Last edited:
AlvinofDiaspar said:
That's cutting off your nose to spite your face - you are assuming you are a market large enough for anyone with the IP to care (hint - we aren't). Nobody is going to give a damn about not being able to sell 40M doses when it's a buyer's market. So you are going to end up with no vaccine early on, and since whatever you buy is going to be applied to your own citizens (and paid for by yourself as the government) - you are in essence taxing yourself to get what you can. Not sure what's the gain here.

Now if you want to, you can threaten to break their IPs - but that's pretty much a nuclear option that would greatly displease your trading partners (not to mention violate multilateral agreements). And you still don't have anything to show for it.
Click to expand...
It's a sellers market now. But after the pandemic, we should make it clear that we expect vaccines to be produced domestically and we will prefer makers who have that capability. The milk is spilt with this pandemic, it will be over before we can address this problem, but we can start rebuilding domestic capability for the future. One thing has been made clear: we can't rely on international partners for pandemic preparedness. To ensure we retain domestic capacity in critical materiel, we need to start taking a 'buy Canadian' approach. And we definitely can't trust the US, as their election of Trump has demonstrated. I think his breaking the norm of the US being willing to sacrifice for its sphere of influence (the West) is going to stick with his successors, Democrat and Republican alike. We can allow ourselves to be suckers or we can ensure our own strategic interests.
 
PinkLucy said:
I hate to break it to you, but that statement is true of every single leader today because this is the first global pandemic in rather a long time.
Click to expand...

As per previous post, the proof is in the pudding. With our wonderful competent government and PM, here we are at the bottom of the list

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations

1615359688583.png


Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
 
Northern Light said:
What's wrong with your creativity is that there are rules around syntax and formatting implicit to all written/typed speech.

This is so that everyone has a common understanding of implied tone. All capital letters for a word indicates 'shouting' in contemporary parlance.

How would you feel if someone shouted every other paragraph? I presume you would view it unfavourably. The rest of us are no different.

****

There is nothing wrong with making a factual statement about the vaccination rate in Canada.

However, in order to assert any blame, you would have to first show an error, and an alternative.

"Its wrong because its slow; the PM is an @#$# cause its slow" does not follow logically without supplementary evidence.

What precise action could the Prime Minister have taken to make this go faster? Evidence.

That's the basis of a credible argument.

For the record, there are actions that could have been taken; whether they would have made a material difference; or whether they would have been worth the fall-out and cost is a different question.

But irrespective of that, you haven't touched on what actions you would have liked to see; or which of those, if any, were endorsed by any other political leader.

Absent that your argument is fairly weak.

No amount of capital letters or bolding improves its quality any either.
Click to expand...
You are very eloquent and that's great.
This is an internet forum so I'm not treating this as an official thesis to submit for my post graduate degree. I have already done that.
If there are options in a forum to make fonts big, small, colours, bold, italics, etc. etc. it means that it is made so users can use those features and I will continue to do so.
There are no rules on this forum on what can be bolded and what cannot be bolded, it is only a preference. I also like Almond milk over soy milk but if someone likes soy milk it is their Preference and that is fine
Anyways, your point is taken and valid and I will ease off on the All Caps and my point is I will continue to use my creativity in a forum as that is how I speak in real life.

Trudeau could do MANY things differently to manage things better. People who keep saying that it's because we don't produce vaccines in Canada should look at other countries in the chart that do not produce vaccines such as Brazil, Turkey, UAE. They're in the top countries that vaccinates people per my previous post. So what gives? Of course it comes to procurement, management and administration of the vaccines, which our Government and PM doesn't do well.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
 
Last edited:
karledice said:
Trudeau could do MANY things differently to manage things better. People who keep saying that it's because we don't produce vaccines in Canada should look at other countries in the chart that do not produce vaccines such as Brazil, Turkey, UAE. They're in the top countries that vaccinates people per my previous post. So what gives? Of course it comes to procurement, management and administration of the vaccines, which our Government and PM doesn't do well.

Source: https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Click to expand...

Call me if you want to be using Chinese vaccines or Russia's Sputnik-V, because that's what Brazil, Turkey and UAE is doing.

AoD
 
lenaitch said:
Perhaps I'm missing something. The table in the link shows Canada slightly ahead of Brazil in 'doses/100 ppl'. Behind the US for sure.

US - .064
Canada - 0.2
Brazil - 0.17
Click to expand...
The table as posted and cited in the original post is raw total. That's why the Chinese total looks good - until you take into account it's out of a population of 1.4B.

Richard White said:
I have no qualms using Sputnik. My family got it in Hungary and they seem to be ok.
Click to expand...
Both Chinese and Russian vaccines are geopolitical non-starters for Canada - and besides, these are given out by said two nation states as favours for the sake of "influence". Wouldn't want it even if it is free.

AoD
 
lenaitch said:
Perhaps I'm missing something. The table in the link shows Canada slightly ahead of Brazil in 'doses/100 ppl'. Behind the US for sure.

US - .064
Canada - 0.2
Brazil - 0.17
Click to expand...

You're not missing anything other than blind hatred of the PM.
 
You must log in or register to post here.

Back
Top