26251 replies to this topic

[TFord]

I think old Boris is toast, he's on borrowed time. I don't see anyone in the background good enough to replace him though.

 

It's a shame he couldn't show a little humility, apologize for some errors and move on. He failed to do that.

 

 

TFord 

[Victoria Watcher]

NHL to stop testing asymptomatic players post-All-Star break

Testing of asymptomatic individuals still needed for crossing the U.S.-Canada border


https://www.vicnews....all-star-break/

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 18 January 2022 - 03:49 PM.

[Mike K.]

It's not like the BoC has a huge vault of gold or something.

@Dasmo, that’s what I was referring to.

[dasmo]

Canadian banks also have reserve requirements. They also comply with the international Basel 111 bank  requirements.

Interesting. So what is required under those standards? 

[dasmo]

@Dasmo, that’s what I was referring to.

Ah sorry. Top of the head example. I'm no gold head. See investment ideas for proof of that.... 

[Mike K.]

Gotcha. All good.

[Victoria Watcher]

British Columbia continues to record the highest number of people in hospitals since the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, with another 35 admitted in the past 24 hours.

 

There are now 854 people in hospitals with the virus and 112 patients in intensive care — a jump of 13 people.

 

 

https://globalnews.c...anuary-18-2022/

 

 

Another 1,975 cases have been recorded in the past 24 hours bringing the active caseload to 37,167.

 

 

 

 

 

Good news, cases by day:

 

January 11th - 2239

January 12th - 2612

January 14th - 2275

January 18th - 1975

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 18 January 2022 - 05:05 PM.

[dasmo]

Do they clarify if they were admitted because of it?

Also this time of year traditionally overloads hospitals. 

Just sayin....

 

https://torontosun.c...being-stretched
https://www.thestar....nal-spaces.html
https://toronto.city...o-hospital-flu/
https://www.cbc.ca/n...-care-1.5339511

[Victoria Watcher]

Do they clarify if they were admitted because of it?

Also this time of year traditionally overloads hospitals. 

Just sayin....

 

https://torontosun.c...being-stretched
https://www.thestar....nal-spaces.html
https://toronto.city...o-hospital-flu/
https://www.cbc.ca/n...-care-1.5339511

 

Alberta said today it was 51% because of, 49% with.  ICU was 75/25%.

 

Ontario is 54/47% hospital and 82/15% ICU today.

 

Ontario cases (note y axis does not start at 0):

 

https://covid-19.ont...bers-and-spread

 

 

 

Edited by Victoria Watcher, 18 January 2022 - 05:13 PM.

[dasmo]

I think old Boris is toast, he's on borrowed time. I don't see anyone in the background good enough to replace him though.

 

It's a shame he couldn't show a little humility, apologize for some errors and move on. He failed to do that.

 

 

TFord 

Classic rules for thee.... 

[dasmo]

Alberta said today it was 51% because of, 49% with.  ICU was 75/25%.

 

Ontario is 54/47% hospital and 82/15% ICU today.

 

Ontario cases (note y axis does not start at 0):

 

https://covid-19.ont...bers-and-spread

 

screenshot-covid-19.ontario.ca-2022.01.18-20_12_51.png

How many ICU beds did Alberta add over the last two years? They have tended to operate at near 100% capacity for at least a decade now by past reporting. 

[Mike K.]

Video of a man on a Victoria transit bus has gone viral after he refused to wear a mask and got into a verbal altercation with the driver and passengers: https://www.facebook...59885621644362/

[dasmo]

[LJ]

https://www.axios.co...osam&stream=top

[LJ]

[Spy Black]

It's kind of interesting how the anti-vax brigade run the gamut from obviously simple minded to quite intelligent.

Some of the simple minded folks who advance the anti-vax argument display (what can politely be called) an outright conspiracy mindset, along with the inability to convey a single original thought.

 

And yet other (quite obviously intelligent) folks put forth quite a detailed, and very original argument ... albeit one that is based on a mindset the rejects the norms of society that include willingness to engage for the greater good of society, and a strong belief in the benefits of modern medicine and science.

 

The vaccination numbers do continue to make apparent that the anti-vax crowd is but a tiny (but very vocal) minority of the Canadian population, but that small minority is the group that the virus will continue to swirl around in, and continue to mutate into further variants ... some of which may be minor, and some of which could potentially return us to March/April of 2020.

 

While the simple minded crowd is easy to understand and explain (it's the same mindset that allows for "chemtrail" enthusiasts) ... the obviously intelligent anti-vaxers are far more difficult to understand, especially when the benefits of the vaccination/isolation regimen are so clearly understood, and so clearly well established in modern society.

 

Both the simple minded and the intelligent however, share one common trait ... and that's an incredibly selfish view of the world, one which see's them not remotely feeling obliged to self-sacrifice in order to protect the elderly, folks who have other medical conditions, and those who are unable to access modern medicine easily.

[amor de cosmos]

Video of a man on a Victoria transit bus has gone viral after he refused to wear a mask and got into a verbal altercation with the driver and passengers: https://www.facebook...59885621644362/

& surprisingly, some people, maybe even on this forum, think that guys like him would do a better job running this pandemic than MDs like bonnie henry

[todd]

Historically social distancing was an issue long before coronavirus, I posted this in a different thread weeks before the first cases of COVID were even reported.

 

 

I try to leave a two stair difference in front and behind(usually doesn’t work out from behind) because of germs and most of the time the smells is unbearable with the water reduction fad. I’m serious.

 

[amor de cosmos]

Ogden Point will be used by Island Health as a COVID-19 rapid test pickup location
https://www.victoria...ickup-location/

Manitoba officials looking into NDP gathering over the weekend in Winnipeg
Celebration of life brought people together to remember musician Vince Fontaine.
https://www.aptnnews...nd-in-winnipeg/
 

Public Services and Procurement Canada has terminated two supply contracts with Supermax Healthcare Canada following allegations that the nitrile gloves it manufactured in Malaysia for use by Canadian health care workers were made with forced labour.
 
These contracts for synthetic rubber medical gloves, worth over $222 million, were part of the $8 billion push led by former procurement minister Anita Anand to equip Canadian health care workers with the personal protective equipment they needed during the COVID-19 pandemic.
 
In November, the department announced that deliveries from this company were being held until the government could review the results of an independent audit of Supermax's operations.
 
"Based on the seriousness of the allegations and expected timelines for the final audit results, the Government of Canada has decided, and Supermax Healthcare Canada has agreed, to terminate by mutual consent the two existing contracts for the supply of nitrile gloves," the department told CBC News in an email Tuesday, confirming an earlier report from Reuters that Canada's contract with the Malaysian supplier had ended.

https://www.cbc.ca/n...nated-1.6319190
 

Violent crime in Vancouver, Canada rose in the city’s poorer regions during the first year of the pandemic while wealthier neighbourhoods saw thefts rise, according to a new study published in the Journal of Experimental Criminology. 

The study of the city’s crime patterns during the pandemic’s first year suggests that in poorer regions, a greater focus on social assistance, rather than increased policing, is a critical during trying times like pandemics.

“During the pandemic we found that overall, crime tends to increase more in marginalized areas within the city,” says study lead Martin Andresen, a professor in the School of Criminology at Simon Fraser University.

https://www.eurekale...releases/940496
 

A single blood sample from a critically ill COVID-19 patient can be analyzed by a machine learning model which uses blood plasma proteins to predict survival, weeks before the outcome, according to a new study published this week in the open-access journal PLOS Digital Health by Florian Kurth and Markus Ralser of the Charité – Universitätsmedizin Berlin, Germany, and colleagues.
 
Healthcare systems around the world are struggling to accommodate high numbers of severely ill COVID-19 patients who need special medical attention, especially if they are identified as being at high risk. Clinically established risk assessments in intensive care medicine, such as the SOFA or APACHE II, show only limited reliability in predicting future disease outcomes for COVID-19.
 
In the new study, researchers studied the levels of 321 proteins in blood samples taken at 349 timepoints from 50 critically ill COVID-19 patients being treated in two independent health care centers in Germany and Austria. A machine learning approach was used to find associations between the measured proteins and patient survival.

https://www.eurekale...releases/939800

Cerebrospinal fluid offers clues to post-covid 'brain fog'
Over-stimulated immune system may be impetus to cognitive symptoms, UCSF-led study shows
https://www.eurekale...releases/940303

Groundbreaking AI technology diagnoses COVID-19 'in minutes'
https://medicalxpres...id-minutes.html
 

When the pandemic hit, technology companies pledged to do their part by cracking open their secretive datasets and letting public health researchers mine it for clues about how to bring Covid-19 under control. Two years in, it’s clear that big data isn’t the panacea they’d hoped for.
 
“Early on, when everyone was freaking out, there was a perception that there would be almost like a magic moment where the data would materialize and it would answer our questions, and we would adapt and control the pandemic and things would be great,” said Andrew Schroeder, a co-leader of the Covid-19 Mobility Data Network, a group of academic researchers and nonprofit partners that pulled in smartphone location data shared by tech companies so that public health officials could analyze it for insights into lockdown and distancing measures.
 
“And then this moment never came,” said Schroeder, also the vice president of research and analysis at Direct Relief, a disaster relief nonprofit.

In part, that’s because the pandemic has stretched far longer than most anticipated. But as Schroeder and his co-leaders lay out in an opinion published Tuesday in PLOS Digital Health, it’s also because public health goals ran headlong into the business interests of the companies that provided their data for analysis, including Facebook and a cluster of ad-tech firms that tie clicks to location data.
 
“You have this really, really large, opaque ecosystem of companies which generate, buy, sell, and modify these datasets,” said Nishant Kishore, who worked in the lab of Caroline Buckee, another of the network’s leaders. Kishore, who worked closely with public health authorities using the network’s data, said that while it’s useful to researchers to have that data available, “unfortunately, what is collected is decided by entities whose priorities are different than that of the general public health.”

https://www.statnews...-public-health/
 
The doctors established that the painful symptoms their patient suffered from were produced by a blood clotting in a vein that runs along the entire length of the penis.
A man in Iran ended up suffering agonizing pain in his genital area apparently due to complications caused by COVID, The Sun reports.
https://sputniknews....1092367121.html
 
Chinese health authorities have adopted faster-pooled tests for the coronavirus that allow professional labs to process 20 samples at a time.
http://www.ecns.cn/n...ie2089003.shtml
 

Internet users worldwide criticized a New York Times article that compare China's COVID-19 control measures to the Holocaust, saying "it diminishes the Holocaust and demeans all health workers."
 
While attacking COVID control measures in Xi'an, the article used the term "banality of evil", a term coined by philosopher Hannah Arendt to describe Adolf Eichmann, one of the chief architects of the Holocaust.
 
Such comparison drew anger from internet users worldwide. Netizens shared their condemnation on Twitter.
 
"It is grossly inappropriate to refer to the efforts of health care workers, in China or anywhere else, as the ‘banality of evil' reminiscent of the holocaust and Adolf Eichmann. It diminishes the Holocaust and demeans all health workers," retweeted an internet users under the name Andre Damon, a writer and editor.

http://www.ecns.cn/n...ie2089055.shtml
 

After the latest outbreak in Xi'an, the local authorities decisively locked down the city considering the possible dire consequences the outbreak could bring. There was disorder and some people had different opinions on this decision. But in most circumstances, the lockdown measures and people's dissatisfaction are not antithetical to each other, but rather small frictions under the common goal of putting the virus under control. The miscarriage was an accident. Criticism by any means of those people in charge is not unreasonable. But what is clear is that the case was not created on purpose, and our society is not indifferent to it. To avoid a similar tragedy, adjustment was taken immediately. 

All these have nothing to do with the so-called "banality of evil" of Nazis who killed Jews. The New York Times attempts to portray China as an inhumane country like Nazi Germany - it is cursing China while trying to whitewash the humanitarian catastrophe in the US. 

Think about it. More than 800,000 Americans died from COVID-19 in the US. Behind these numbers, how many sad and desperate stories are there? How many people died alone without any terminal care? And how policies have been implemented and promoted because they are favorable to capitalists, but ignore the fact they may cause more infections and deaths? These are the real "banality of evil."

I don't understand this: Why have so many American journalists and writers been reluctant to thoroughly tell the stories of Americans' losses and pains? Some of them even hype that Americans' sufferings are their own choice, and the US is democratic and free even if people constantly die. I have to say, their consciences have been eaten by dogs.

https://www.globalti...1/1245979.shtml
 
the nyt story

The Army of Millions Who Enforce China’s Zero-Covid Policy, at All Costs
As the troubled lockdown in Xi’an has shown, many Chinese people remain willing to work diligently toward the government’s goal of eliminating the virus, no matter the consequences.
https://www.nytimes....olicy-xian.html
 

The Florida Department of Health on Tuesday placed a top official on administrative leave after he allegedly encouraged employees to get vaccinated against coronavirus.
 
Raul Pino, director of the Florida Department of Health in Orange County, sent an email to employees earlier this month that was critical of the agency’s vaccination rate. Pino, a leading figure in the public response to the pandemic in the Orlando area, noted that only 77 of the 568 staffers had received booster shots and 219 employees had gotten two doses of coronavirus vaccines, according to WFTV, which first reported the story.

“I am sorry but in the absence of reasonable and real reasons it is irresponsible not to be vaccinated,” he wrote on Jan. 4. “We have been at this for two years, we were the first to give vaccines to the masses, we have done more than 300,000 and we are not even at 50 percent, pathetic,” he wrote, apparently referring to the 219 employees who have had two vaccine doses and not those who have also had boosters.

He added: “I have a hard time understanding how we can be in public health and not practice it.”

Weesam Khoury, a spokesman for the Florida Department of Health, confirmed to The Washington Post that Pino was placed on administrative leave. He did not offer details on what led to the decision or how long Pino would be on leave, but suggested that state officials are investigating whether the Orange County official violated state law. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis ® signed into law in the fall a measure that prohibits state government agencies from implementing vaccine mandates.
 
As the decision to get vaccinated is a personal medical choice that should be made free from coercion and mandates from employers, the employee in question has been placed on administrative leave, and the Florida Department of Health is conducting an inquiry to determine if any laws were broken in this case,” Khoury said in a statement. “The Department is committed to upholding all laws, including the ban on vaccine mandates for government employees and will take appropriate action once additional information is known.”

https://www.washingt...leave-desantis/

[spanky123]

& surprisingly, some people, maybe even on this forum, think that guys like him would do a better job running this pandemic than MDs like bonnie henry

 

Well when Dr BH tells you that you can go back to work as soon as your symptoms are gone because you are not infectious anymore, yet Dr. Tam on the same day says that there is no evidence Omicron is less infectious so you should remain home for 10 days it is not a surprise that nobody trusts our 'MDs'.