Saturday April 3, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 3, 2021

Ontario’s COVID-19 ’emergency brake’ shutdown takes effect on Saturday

January 13, 2021

An Ontariowide “shutdown” will be put in place to combat an “alarming” surge in COVID-19 infections, Premier Doug Ford said Thursday as intensive care admissions related to the virus surpassed those of the second wave of the pandemic.

Citing the need for drastic action, Ford said the change will take effect Saturday and continue for at least four weeks.

The government is asking Ontarians to limit trips outside the home to necessities such as food, medication and other essential services, but stopped short of imposing a stay-at-home order like it did in January.

Retail stores will see limits on capacity while restaurants will be restricted to takeout, delivery and drive-through service, the premier said.

April 11, 2020

The government has said schools will also remain open because they are crucial to students’ mental health.

“The decision was not made lightly,” Ford said in announcing the new measures. “I know the toll these restrictions continue to take on people’s mental health and well-being.”

The announcement came hours after the province’s science advisers said stay-at-home orders are needed to control the third wave driven by more contagious and deadly COVID-19 variants.

The Ontario Science Advisory Table said that otherwise, the province could see up to 6,000 new infection cases by mid-April. With the restrictions in place, the modelling data shows there will still be about 800 people in ICUs by the end of April.

December 1, 2007

“The decision was not made lightly,” Ford said in announcing the new measures. “I know the toll these restrictions continue to take on people’s mental health and well-being.”

The announcement came hours after the province’s science advisers said stay-at-home orders are needed to control the third wave driven by more contagious and deadly COVID-19 variants.

The Ontario Science Advisory Table said that otherwise, the province could see up to 6,000 new infection cases by mid-April. With the restrictions in place, the modelling data shows there will still be about 800 people in ICUs by the end of April. (Global News)

Every cartoon starts as a scrappy sketch

 

Thursday April 1, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 1, 2021

Ontario reports more than 2300 new COVID-19 cases as ICU numbers reach record high

Ontario health officials reported more than 2,300 new cases of COVID-19 as the province reached a record high number of people battling the disease in its intensive care units.

January 16, 2021

The province confirmed 2,333 new cases of the novel coronavirus on Wednesday. Daily case numbers have remained above the 2,000 mark for seven straight days.

The province’s seven-day average for number of cases recorded is now 2,316, up from 1,676 one week ago.

With 52,532 tests processed in the last 24 hours, the province says its COVID-19 positivity rate dropped to 4.8 per cent after two days above the six per cent mark.

The latest Critical Care Services Ontario report, obtained by CTV News Toronto on Wednesday morning, shows there are currently 421 patients in intensive care units (ICUs) across the province with COVID-19.

The total marks the highest number of COVID-19 patients in critical care at one time since the pandemic began. The last time the ICU admission total surpassed 400 was in January during the height of the pandemic’s second wave.

July 27, 2019

“We’re in a critical spot today,” Dr. Michael Warner, medical director of critical care at Michael Garron Hospital, said on Wednesday.

“This is a train heading down the tracks and it’s going to take a while to slow it down. So even if we implement significant public health measures today, we could see ICU numbers hit 500, but if we don’t, that’s when things could really get bad.”

Meanwhile, CTV News Toronto has learned the Ontario government will announce Thursday that it will force the province into a month-long shutdown.

November 5, 2020

According to the government’s guidelines, a shutdown—indicated as a sixth tier in the government’s framework—is similar to the old grey zone rules in which retail is allowed to open with strict capacity limits, indoor dining remains closed and gyms are shuttered.

Ontario Premier Doug Ford told reporters at a news conference on Wednesday that he was prepared to act swiftly.

“I’m very, very concerned to see the cases go up. I’m very concerned to see the ICU capacity and we all have to be vigilant,” he said. “I’m just asking people don’t gather in large groups, don’t have big, big gatherings and follow the protocols.”

Warner said the province must focus on implementing public health restrictions as the COVID-19 vaccine rollout continues.

“We need to protect the health and safety of people, set economic interests aside for now, and get some control over what’s happening to all of us right now,” he said. (CTV) 

 

Wednesday March 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday March 30, 2021

We need a blueprint for the next pandemic

It’s a damning indictment. On Thursday, Canada’s auditor general released a report that finds Canada’s public health and border control authorities did a poor job at the outset of the COVID-19 pandemic.

March 4, 2021

Systems didn’t work as planned. Updates and monitoring were not carried out in spite of ample warnings being given, particularly to the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC). There were recommended changes that were ignored, literally for decades. The country’s vaunted pandemic early-warning system didn’t work properly. There were shortcomings in how the Canada Border Services Agency (CBSA) and PHAC responded, so border restrictions were not applied consistently, which hindered attempts to stop the virus from spreading.

Auditor general Karen Hogan pulled no punches as she assessed weaknesses in the government’s early responses to COVID in the first six months of the pandemic. 

January 7, 2021I 

None of this should come as a surprise to anyone who has been paying attention. Canada’s federal public health bureaucracy was slow and inept to begin with, and didn’t find its feet until the pandemic was already well underway. To be fair, that was the case in many other countries around the world. Almost without exception, the ones that were better prepared fared better in terms.

Does the fact that Canada was in good company make a difference? Arguably, yes. Scientists have been warning the world about the next pandemic since the last pandemic. And collectively, the world paid lip service to the warnings, for the most part. 

August 15, 2008

For those who like to see heads roll and blame assigned, who should we be pointing at? Presumably, public health and border service leadership at the time. The buck always stops at the government, so the Trudeau Liberals get some of the blame, too. 

January 31, 2014

There is an election coming soon, and those who want to send a message can vote for a different party if that helps. But keep in mind that the most likely alternative, the Conservatives, were in power for much of the time the warnings were being sounded, and they did little or nothing, like the Liberal government before them.

The auditor general’s mission is not a witch hunt. Her criticism and observation are of critical importance, not so we can assign blame, but so we can make sure we do this a lot better the next time a pandemic comes knocking, as we know it will.

And there is another aspect of accountability and blame to consider. Governments don’t tend to do things in the face of overwhelming public opposition. Had there been tremendous pushback when the Mulroney government privatized Canada’s largest domestic vaccine manufacturing lab, or when cuts to research and development by the Harper government led to other pharmaceutical companies packing up and moving to friendlier climates, those things would not have happened. Those things were not big priorities to the average Canadian at the time, otherwise they would not have happened.

Now, with hindsight, we know how much better off Canada would have been had those things not happened. And now, if we want different outcomes, we can demand different things. We must have a domestic vaccine industry. We must have unfettered access to all sorts of PPE. We must have proactive policy and bureaucratic measures in place so all the things that went wrong this time don’t go wrong the next time.

It will not be cheap or easy. It will not work with a small government that wants the market to drive everything. Preparing for future pandemics demands government, industry and business buy-in and collaboration. We can have that if we want it, or we can take our chances. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

Octopus sketching is such a joy!

 

Tuesday March 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday March 30, 2021

Canada falls behind on barcode technology for COVID-19 vaccine tracking

Millions of COVID-19 vaccines set to pour into Canada will carry a tiny barcode that would allow the package to be tracked all along the supply chain, and could even help to connect a patient’s digital vaccination record to a specific dose. That level of tracking is taking place in other countries such as the United States – but won’t happen in Canada because the country lacks the technology to scan those barcodes.

February 25, 2021

It’s a frustrating gap for those who have been pushing for such an ability since the 1990s. As a recent Deloitte report on the COVID-19 vaccination campaign pointed out, these barcodes can go a long way to “reduce errors and improve efficiency and safety.”

The technology is available – cellphones and tablets can scan these barcodes with the right software. But the barcode issue reveals larger problems with Canada’s fragmented and outdated health infrastructure – it involves 14 jurisdictions doing 14 different things, sacrificing efficiency for independence.

December 21, 2016

Currently, some provinces are tracking supplies by manually updating spreadsheets and logging by hand the lot number of administered vaccines. Ontario and Quebec have devised a more advanced database of their available vaccines, but it still relies on someone manually entering the serial numbers of vaccine shipments.

Other countries have figured this out: Vaccinators in the U.S. are scanning COVID-19 vaccine shipments and individual doses, allowing states to build accurate and timely databases of who has been vaccinated. Ireland and Turkey are also relying on these barcodes. The World Health Organization is encouraging every country to use them to promote efficiency and fight counterfeiting.

June 13, 2019

n Canada “should have been written in the pandemic plan.”

There was a plan to make these barcodes central to Canada’s public-health system, and there was a time when Canada was ahead in digitizing its health system “by a decade,” Dr. Van Exan said. Canada’s 1998 vaccine strategy first proposed barcoding vaccines to promote efficiency and accuracy. The 2003 SARS epidemic, and the creation of the Public Health Agency of Canada, hastened that work.

In normal times, Canada administers millions of vaccines a year for diseases such as mumps and influenza. Provinces slowly adopted digitized immunization records in the early 2000s, but continued entering all the data manually: Audits of some provincial systems found fully 15 per cent of immunization records were incomplete, nearly a quarter had inaccurate information, and crucial data was missing from one in five adverse-reaction reports. (Continued: Globe & Mail) https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-canada-falls-behind-on-barcode-technology-for-covid-19-vaccine/#comments

 

Saturday March 27, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday March 27, 2021

Week in Review: Stuck things

Crews are working to clear a traffic jam at Egypt’s Suez Canal, the world’s busiest trade route, after the massive container ship “Ever Given” ran aground. Global News explains what this could mean for oil prices. 

March 23, 2021

Meanwhile, Conservative Leader Erin O’Toole is sticking with his long-standing view that a federal carbon price is not the way to tackle the growing threat of climate change across the country, following a decision by the Supreme Court of Canada authorizing its constitutionality.

In an interview on CTV News Channel’s Power Play on Thursday, O’Toole said his approach would focus instead on partnering with provinces and bolstering the economy to get emissions down, though he didn’t provide exact details about how doing so would achieve his stated goal.

“The court said what we all know — that climate change is real and it’s important for us to have a serious approach,” he said.

May 14, 2019

“I want to have a plan that Canada can meet its targets. I’ve also said I’d like to see a net-zero approach plan, a made-in-Canada net-zero approach plan over the longer term, which is the 2050 timeline, but to do it without taxing people. As I said the carbon tax impacts our competitiveness and it hurts people in the margins the most. I think it’s backwards to be honest.”

In a 6-3 decision, the top court decided on Thursday that a price on pollution is entirely constitutional and that Ottawa has a right to set minimum pricing standards for greenhouse gas emissions in the provinces.

May 27, 2017

“The undisputed existence of a threat to the future of humanity cannot be ignored,” wrote Chief Justice Richard Wagner.

The case brings a legal end to a years-long battle between Ottawa and many provinces over the carbon price, and prompted Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe to start looking at a homegrown carbon-pricing mechanism and Alberta Premier Jason Kenney to nudge open the door to doing so too.

Saskatchewan, Ontario and Alberta challenged the Liberal government’s 2018 Greenhouse Gas Pollution Pricing Act in court, arguing it was a federal overreach into provincial jurisdiction over everything from taxes and the environment to natural-resource development.

O’Toole said his party would target large emitters of greenhouse gas emissions and respect the individual carbon reducing frameworks already in place in some provinces.

During the party’s policy convention over the weekend, delegates notably voted against a resolution that would have included the line “climate change is real” in the party’s official policy document.

Environment Minister Jonathan Wilkinson said the Supreme Court’s decision on carbon pricing is a “good day for Canada.”

“Read the academic literature, go talk to an economist. They will tell you it’s the most efficient and effective way to reduce emissions and to incentivize innovation,” he told Power Play. (CTV)