Thursday November 26, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 26, 2020

‘We took our eye off the ball’: How Canada lost its vaccine production capacity

In the race to develop and produce a COVID-19 vaccine, Canada is on the sidelines despite its once notable status as a global source for life-saving injections.

December 8, 2017

Canada lost that standing long ago, as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau explained this week, which means even if the country had developed its own novel coronavirus vaccine, there would be no means to produce it on the scale required.

“We used to have [production capacity] decades ago but we no longer have it,” Trudeau said Tuesday in Ottawa.

How did it get to this point? Canadian administrations simply took their “eye off the ball,” said Earl Brown, an infectious disease expert and a former member of the H1N1 vaccine task group in Canada. After that pandemic, a review found that vaccine production capacity was “right at the top” of the list of problems, he said. It wasn’t always that way.

“We had great vaccine producers in Canada — world leaders essentially — 50 years ago,” he told CTV’s Your Morning on Wednesday. There was Connaught Laboratories in Toronto, which was known for producing insulin to treat diabetes and inoculants for diphtheria and polio, and Institut Armand Frappier in Montreal that produced vaccines, including one for tuberculosis, he noted.

December 17, 2014

“The problem was they had a poor business model,” said Brown. “These were vaccine companies spun off from universities, so there was indirect funding and they had a model of not making so much profit.”

So they were eventually sold, Montreal’s Frappier lab to British multinational GlaxoSmithKline and Connaught, through a series of mergers, to French multinational Sanofi Pasteur  after Brian Mulroney’s Progressive Conservative government’s program of privatization . The labs now have a “tighter production line and not so much capacity,” said Brown.

For those Canadian companies to mount production campaigns on their own will take time — and a lot of it, they have said. VIDO-InterVac said it has plans to build a facility in one year, but that it would take another still to get it in operating shape. “That’s not the time frame you like,” said Brown.

December 10, 2015

In the meantime, Canadians will have to rely on speedier countries with approved COVID-19 vaccines to provide doses, but Canadians won’t be prioritized ahead of their own people. “Countries like the United States, Germany and the U.K. do have domestic pharmaceutical facilities, which is why they’re obviously going to prioritize helping their citizens first,” Trudeau said on Tuesday in Ottawa.

The reliance on other countries and private companies is upsetting critics of Trudeau, who said Tuesday that his administration has begun funding domestic vaccine production capacity because “we never want to be caught short again.” 

Pandemic Times

“This is gross incompetence that’s going to cost Canadians their lives and their jobs,” said Conservative health critic Michelle Rempel Garner on Tuesday from Parliament Hill.

But criticism toward one government’s inaction may often easily be directed at another with hindsight, countered Brown on Your Morning. (CTV News) 

 

Wednesday November 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday November 24, 2020

Trump Administration Approves Start of Formal Transition to Biden

November 17, 2020

President Trump’s government on Monday authorized President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. to begin a formal transition process after Michigan certified Mr. Biden as its winner, a strong sign that the president’s last-ditch bid to overturn the results of the election was coming to an end.

Mr. Trump did not concede, and vowed to persist with efforts to change the vote, which have so far proved fruitless. But the president said on Twitter on Monday night that he accepted the decision by Emily W. Murphy, the administrator of the General Services Administration, to allow a transition to proceed.

In his tweet, Mr. Trump said that he had told his officials to begin “initial protocols” involving the handoff to Mr. Biden “in the best interest of our country,” even though he had spent weeks trying to subvert a free and fair election with false claims of fraud. Hours later, he tried to play down the significance of Ms. Murphy’s action, tweeting that it was simply “preliminarily work with the Dems” that would not stop efforts to change the election results.

Still, Ms. Murphy’s designation of Mr. Biden as the apparent victor provides the incoming administration with federal funds and resources and clears the way for the president-elect’s advisers to coordinate with Trump administration officials.

November 14, 2020

The decision from Ms. Murphy came after several additional senior Republican lawmakers, as well as leading figures from business and world affairs, denounced the delay in allowing the peaceful transfer of power to begin, a holdup that Mr. Biden and his top aides said was threatening national security and the ability of the incoming administration to effectively plan for combating the coronavirus pandemic.

And it followed a key court decision in Pennsylvania, where the state’s Supreme Court on Monday ruled against the Trump campaign and the president’s Republican allies, stating that roughly 8,000 ballots with signature or date irregularities must be counted.

November 6, 2020

In Michigan, the statewide canvassing board, with two Republicans and two Democrats, voted 3 to 0 to approve the results, with one Republican abstaining. It officially delivered to Mr. Biden a key battleground that Mr. Trump had wrested away from Democrats four years ago, and rebuffed the president’s legal and political efforts to overturn the results.

By Monday evening, as Mr. Biden moved ahead with plans to fill out his cabinet, broad sectors of the nation had delivered a blunt message to a defeated president: His campaign to stay in the White House and subvert the election, unrealistic from the start, was nearing the end. (New York Times) 

 

Tuesday November 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday November 24, 2020

Here’s a Colour coded map of Covid Ontario

November 5, 2020

The Ontario government released a brand new colour-coded framework last week that outlines rules, restrictions and zones for every region throughout the province based on its local COVID-19 situation. To help you keep track, we’ve created a map of each region and its current designated zone.

The framework includes five different zones, each with a specific colour attached: Prevent-Green, Protect-Yellow, Restrict-Orange, Control-Red and Lockdown-Grey. 

In the green zone, “restrictions reflect broadest allowance of activities in Stage 3,” according to the province, while the highest-risk settings remain closed. In the yellow zone, enhanced targeted enforcement, fines and enhanced education to limit further transmission are present, and public health measures for high-risk settings are also in place. 

November 12, 2020

The orange zone, meanwhile, includes enhanced measures, restrictions and enforcement while avoiding any closures, and the red zone includes broader-scale measures and restrictions across multiple sectors to control transmission (similar to modified Stage 2).

“Restrictions are the most severe available before widescale business or organizational closure,” says the province of the red zone. 

The grey zone can be compared to a modified Stage 1 or pre-Stage 1, according to the government, with widescale measures and restrictions, including closures, to halt or interrupt transmission.

Marvellous Maps

Regions have been placed in specific zones based on a number of indicators and thresholds, including case rates, per cent positivity, health system capacity and more. 

While no regions have been placed in the Lockdown-Grey zone just yet, the province’s COVID-19 hotspots — Toronto, Peel, Hamilton, York and Halton — are all currently in the red zone, and both Toronto and Peel have additional restrictions in place, introduced by their local public health authorities. 

The COVID-19 Pandemic

Provincial public health officials will be constantly reexamining the indicators and thresholds to determine whether regions should move forward or backwards through the zones. (BlogTO) 

 

Saturday November 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday November 21, 2020

Why Trump’s Operation Warp Speed is credited with helping race for COVID-19 vaccine

Operation Warp Speed, a Trump administration initiative to manufacture COVID-19 vaccines as fast as possible, should be lauded as a successful endeavour in what has otherwise been a poor effort to deal with the coronavirus, experts say.

September 10, 2020

“No doubt, Operation Warp Speed is a huge success,” said Tinglong Dai, associate professor of Operations Management and Business Analytics at Johns Hopkins University Carey Business School in Baltimore.

“You can like or hate the Trump administration, but no doubt, it’s a huge success — unprecedented success.”

Jesse Goodman, the former chief scientist of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, agreed that the U.S. government deserves credit for the high priority placed on Operation Warp Speed.

“This is a bright spot in the pandemic response. I mean, the rest of it has been dismal,” said Goodman, who is also director of Georgetown University’s Center on Medical Product Access, Safety and Stewardship.

Anthony Fauci, director of the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, also lauded Operation Warp Speed for being a “success — certainly in the arena of vaccines, it’s been a success” in his remarks at a recent virtual summit organized by the medical news site Stat.

November 14, 2020

Launched in May, Operation Warp Speed (OWS) is a government initiated private/public $10 billion US program to help provide support to companies in the development, manufacturing and distribution of 300 million doses of COVID-19 vaccine, with the aim of having initial doses ready by January 2021. 

Allison Winnike, president of the Texas-based Immunization Partnership, an organization providing advocacy and information about immunization initiatives, said that Moderna benefited tremendously from Operation Warp Speed, in part, by receiving close to $1 billion to support its vaccine development and clinical trials.

As for the role the funding played in the development of Pfizer’s vaccine, that’s a bit fuzzier. Last week, when the company announced it had developed a vaccine that was more than 90 per cent effective, U.S. President Donald Trump said that Pfizer was suggesting “it wasn’t part of Warp Speed, but that turned out to be an unfortunate misrepresentation.” (CBC News) 

 

Friday November 20, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday November 20, 2020

China’s meddling inside Canada must stop

The Chinese state is sending covert agents into Canada to intimidate Canadians. But the federal Liberal government is doing next to nothing to stop it.

January 30, 2020

Chinese tech giant Huawei is itching to get its fingers on Canada’s 5G wireless networks. But the federal government refuses to say it can’t — despite the undeniable risks such a partnership would carry for national security.

It is past time for Justin Trudeau’s Liberals to stand up to the bullies in Beijing and the threats they pose to Canada. And if it takes a firm push from the opposition parties in the House of Commons to make them show some backbone, so be it.

Led by the Conservatives, the opposition parties passed a motion Wednesday calling on the Liberal government to do two things within the next 30 days to protect Canada and Canadians from this increasingly aggressive superpower.

July 16, 2020

First, the Liberals are supposed to announce how they’ll prevent China from sending its operatives to this country to harass and threaten Canadians. While this outrageous and frightening behaviour has been long known, it acquired new urgency last week when the Canadian Security Intelligence Service spoke up to denounce it.

According to CSIS, undercover Chinese state security officials and others routinely attempt to silence China’s critics in Canada by using tactics that include threats of retribution against people’s families in China.

December 12, 2019

That assessment was consistent with an Amnesty International report earlier this year that said Hong Kong Canadians, Tibetan Canadians and Uighur Canadians are all being targeted by China. And it said Ottawa’s response to the rising number of complaints about China’s bullying of Canadians was ineffective.

June 24, 2020

The second part of the opposition parties’ motion is just as crucial to Canada’s future. It says the Liberals must finally announce whether equipment made by China’s Huawei Technologies Co. will be allowed in Canada’s 5G wireless network.

There are legitimate concerns that ceding vast power over a major piece of Canadian infrastructure to a company so closely tied to the Chinese state would pose a major threat to national security. The federal government knows this. Yet it continues to hem and haw over making a decision, despite spending two years supposedly studying the matter.

To be fair to the Liberals, China is a formidable opponent. It has illegally and immorally jailed Canadians Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor for the past 711 days in blatant retaliation for Canada’s entirely legal house arrest of a Huawei executive facing charges in the U.S. It blocked exports of Canadian canola, pork and beef, too, in an effort to bend Canada to its will. For Canada to take it on is like a featherweight jumping into the ring with a super-heavyweight.

June 17, 2017

But Canada does have friends to stand beside it and show it a way forward. The United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand and the United States — our Five Eyes intelligence allies — have all blocked Huawei from being part of their 5G wireless networks. In addition, Australia recently took effective action to stop the Chinese state from harassing people in Australia.

Canada can do the same — and remain secure. Although the opposition motion passed in Ottawa this week is not binding on the government, the Liberals should take it seriously. The opposition parties speak for a majority of Canadians, many of whom are convinced Canada must face down the Chinese bully.

No country that calls itself sovereign should tolerate the way China is interfering within Canadian borders. No country that values the rights and well-being of its citizens should refuse to defend them. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)