Omicron

Thursday January 27, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 27, 2022

Despite record high inflation, Bank of Canada holds interest rate steady — for now

May 2, 2020

The Bank of Canada has decided not to raise its benchmark interest rate just yet.

Like many other central banks around the world, the bank slashed its core lending rate — known as the target for the overnight rate — at the onset of the pandemic in March 2020, to ensure that consumers and businesses had access to cheap lending in order to keep the economy afloat.

But two years of rock-bottom lending rates have been a major contributor to inflation, which rose to almost five per cent in Canada last month — its highest level in more than 30 years.

Saturday January 8, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday January 8, 2022

Ontario schools reopen (maybe) in two weeks. What can be done to make them safer from COVID-19?

August 31, 2021

Ontario has delayed reopening elementary and secondary schools for at least two weeks in response to a meteoric rise in COVID-19 cases.

What are the chances that in-person classes can resume as tentatively scheduled on Jan. 17?

The provincial government says it’s adding new layers of protection from N95 masks for teachers to extra HEPA air filters. At the same time, key elements of the infection-control trio of “test, trace and isolate” have been dismantled in the face of the skyrocketing case counts.

The government is under pressure from all sides: pandemic-weary parents scrambling to work themselves while dealing with another round of online classes at home; pediatricians warning of the harm to children caused by school closures; teachers, principals and school staff and some scientists and doctors calling for additional safety measures.

Everyone agrees students need to resume in-person classes as soon as possible. The debate is over what is required to make schools safe enough to send students back and keep them there.

Friday January 7, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday January 7, 2022

We are playing whack-a-mole with variants – and the virus is winning

As we begin year three of the Covid-19 pandemic, hunkering down again to survive the viral blizzard that Omicron has brought, it is painfully clear that we are failing to learn from the past. 

April 28, 2021

Predictably, rich nations have made boosters and border controls their primary response to the Omicron crisis, while vaccine apartheid, the 800-pound gorilla in the room, is completely unaddressed. If we do not vaccinate the world, the pandemic won’t end, more variants will emerge, and the world will continue to lose millions of lives, along with trillions in economic losses.

While some political leaders might claim that they “didn’t see Omicron coming,” health experts have been shouting from the rooftops about this. For months.

In April 2021, as the delta variant devastated India, causing millions of excess deaths, we had this warning in the Washington Post: “We cannot just vaccinate rich countries and hope that we will be safe. The only way to end this pandemic is to end it everywhere. Otherwise, we will forever play whack-a-mole with a constantly mutating virus.”

Wednesday December 29, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday December 29, 2021

As Omicron Spreads and Cases Soar, the Unvaccinated Remain Defiant

As a fast-spreading new strain of the coronavirus swarms across the country, hospitals in Ohio running low on beds and staff recently took out a full-page newspaper advertisement pleading with unvaccinated Americans to finally get the shot. It read, simply: “Help.”

December 2, 2021

But in a suburban Ohio café, Jackie Rogers, 58, an accountant, offered an equally succinct response on behalf of unvaccinated America: “Never.”

In the year since the first shots began going into arms, opposition to vaccines has hardened from skepticism and wariness into something approaching an article of faith for the approximately 39 million American adults who have yet to get a single dose.

Now, health experts say the roughly 15 percent of the adult population that remains stubbornly unvaccinated is at the greatest risk of severe illness and death from the Omicron variant, and could overwhelm hospitals that are already brimming with Covid patients. In Cleveland, where Omicron cases are soaring, a hospital unit at the Cleveland Clinic that provides life support to the sickest patients is already completely full.

Friday December 24, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 24, 2021

The ghosts of a pandemic Christmas

A lot of Canadians will empathize with Ebenezer Scrooge on this second COVID-19 Christmas Eve.

December 24, 2016

It’s not that they share the opinion of Charles Dickens’ infamous miser that the holiday is nothing but “humbug.” It’s simply that as they take stock of life at the end of 2021 they will, like the hero of “A Christmas Carol,” be haunted by three phantoms: the ghosts of Christmas past, present and future.

The Ghost of Christmas Past: The first spirit will be the most amiable, but unfortunately in ways that make the other pair seem even more worrisome. Somehow those childhood Yuletides are always gold-plated.

We might remember nervously sitting on the knee of a shopping-mall Santa, listing our heart’s desires for Christmas Day. Or we’ll recall laying a stocking by our bedside on Christmas Eve, secure in the knowledge it will magically be filled to the brim next morning. Helped by the Ghost of Christmas Past, we’ll hear the songs of carolers and, perhaps, of a church choir singing “Silent Night.” And we’ll laugh, perhaps even blush, at the antics of bygone Christmas office parties

Was it only two Christmases ago that people still came together in large gatherings, where a card table would be set up in the dining room and lawn chairs hauled in from the garage to handle the mob of relatives and friends cramming our homes to the rafters? People still shook hands and hugged in those days. Imagine that.

November 28, 2020

The Ghost of Christmas Yet to Come: The smiles inspired by the Ghost of Christmas Past might turn upside down when this grim reaper drops by. What will Christmas 2022, 2023 or 2024 be like? We might shudder to think, as Scrooge did when his phantom of the future finally led him to a graveyard.

What variant might we face in a Christmas or two? What pandemic wave might engulf us then? Will the antivirals coming our way cure us if we catch COVID? Will the vaccines we have now still work? Christmas or not, there’s no denying that two years into COVID the situation is still disastrous and there are no guarantees it won’t be this bad next year. Which brings us to the ghost that matters most.

The Ghost of Christmas Present: Whatever rose-coloured glasses we put on to view the past, it is gone and unrecoverable. As for the future, despite our valid trepidation, it nonetheless remains within our power — as it did with Scrooge — to determine what it will be. We should reach out and grasp that power.

If we’re responsible and respect the new provincial guidelines set down just days ago, many of our gatherings with families and friends will be smaller this year — or even cancelled. Loved ones who’ve tested positive — a growing trend with the emergence of the Omicron variant — will be absent. The latest advisories against nonessential travel will keep others somewhere else, far away. So yes, a lot of people won’t be home for this Christmas.

March 26, 2020

But there is still this stubborn, resilient holiday waiting for us. Though we may not be able to mark it as we once did, we need it more than ever as 2021 staggers to a close. We need its peace, its joy and its unquenchable spirit of giving — especially to the sick, the homeless and all those living in great want. Even wearing a protective mask, we can celebrate the hope found not only in all the wondrous Christmas stories but in what we have done together to survive nearly two years of pandemic. We should never forget that those game-changing, life-saving vaccines developed in record time are themselves veritable miracles worthy of continual thanks.

And finally, whether we celebrate the special day in a church, around the tree in our living room, or even if this holiday is not part of our own tradition, we should all be able to perceive the inestimable value of human love wrapped up in the gift it leaves for us. In the darkest time of year, the days are finally lengthening again. So, when the Ghost of Christmas Present comes knocking at your door, let him in. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)