gladiator

Saturday January 30, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 30, 2021

Fauci calls South Africa-based variant’s resilience a ‘wake-up call.’

Dr. Anthony S. Fauci warned Friday that new clinical trial results from Johnson & Johnson, showing that its vaccine is less effective against a highly infectious variant of the coronavirus circulating in South Africa, were a “wake-up call.” He said the virus will continue to mutate, and vaccine manufacturers will have to be “nimble to be able to adjust readily” to reformulating the vaccines if needed.

March 26, 2020

Dr. Fauci’s warning, at the White House briefing on the virus, comes amid increasing concern about new and more infectious variants of the virus that are emerging overseas and turning up in the United States. This week, officials in South Carolina reported identifying two cases of the variant circulating in South Africa, and officials in Minnesota announced they had found a case of the variant that was first detected in Brazil.

Dr. Rochelle Walensky, the new director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, who was also at the briefing, said another variant, first identified in Britain, has now been confirmed in 379 cases in 29 states. 

She said officials remained concerned about the variants and were “rapidly ramping up surveillance and sequencing activities” to closely monitor them. Unlike Britain, the United States has been conducting little of the genomic sequencing necessary to track the spread of the variants.

August 6, 2020

Dr. Walensky also issued a plea to Americans to continue wearing masks and practice social distancing, and to avoid travel. Earlier this month, the C.D.C. warned that the variant circulating in Britain could become the dominant source of infection in the United States and would likely lead to a surge in cases and deaths that could overwhelm hospitals. And given the speed at which the variant swept through that country, it is conceivable that by April it could make up a large fraction of infections in the United States.

December 11, 2020

“By the time someone has symptoms, gets a test, has a positive result and we get the sequence, our opportunity for doing real case control and contact tracing is largely gone,” she said. “We should be treating every case as if it’s a variant during this pandemic right now.”

Friday’s briefing, the second in what the Biden White House has promised will be thrice-weekly updates on the pandemic, came just hours after Johnson & Johnson reported that while its vaccine was 72 percent effective in the United States, the efficacy rate was just 57 percent in South Africa, where a variant has been spreading. (New York Times) 

 

Friday February 24, 2017

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday February 24, 2017

Behind on your hydro bill? Don’t fear being disconnected in the winter

Electricity consumers behind on their bills need no longer fear being disconnected in the winter now that the Ontario government has banned utilities from pulling the plug on them.

“I’m hoping to have all of this done by the end of this week,” Energy Minister Glenn Thibeault told reporters after all three parties supported the passage of the Protecting Vulnerable Energy Consumers Act.

The bill got royal assent later in the day and gives the Ontario Energy Board power to order utilities to stop disconnections during cold weather months through changes to their licences, which could take until Monday.

Most utilities had already agreed to voluntarily end winter disconnects, but Thibeault said some could not do so in time for a midnight Tuesday deadline, prompting the new law.

Progressive Conservative Leader Patrick Brown said he was pleased the legislation passed, but added the government should have put the ban in place before winter.

“Unfortunately, this comes after far too many families and seniors were forced to suffer in the cold without power because the Wynne Liberals dragged their feet and played political games.”

Both the Conservatives and NDP said the government erred by putting the winter disconnection ban into a larger piece of omnibus legislation, the Burden Reduction Act, introduced last June.

The PCs supported it, but the New Democrats did not, citing objections to provisions on the sale of Ontario Place and weaker workplace protections in it.

That it took until late February to pass a winter disconnection bill shows the Liberals are “out of touch,” Brown charged.

The energy board does not have statistics on how many customers were disconnected from hydro for non-payment so far this winter.

Under the new legislation, which does not contain dates, the energy board will work with local utilities on a definition of winter, which technically ends Mar. 21, the first day of spring, Thibeault noted.

The bill does not contain any deadlines for reconnecting customers who were cut off. NDP Leader Andrea Horwath said she hopes utilities will abide by “the spirit” of the legislation. (Source: Hamilton Spectator)