variant

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.

Thursday December 2, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday December 2, 2021

Sweet vindication for Chapman’s Ice Cream

If you have the good fortune to visit Markdale, Ont., you will appreciate just how different Grey County is when compared to Ontario’s hectic urban environment overall. It’s a slower, gentle, more tranquil pace and place.

September 15, 2021

How odd, then, that the community — home to the admirably benevolent Chapman’s Ice Cream, purveyor of soothing frozen treats since 1973 — has emerged as an unlikely, though certainly flavourful, flashpoint of the COVID-19 civil war.

The family-run Chapman’s, one of Canada’s largest ice-cream producers, an employer of about 850 people, recently took the praiseworthy step of rewarding its vaccinated workers with a $1-an-hour pay raise.

This was not the first time the company had supported the local community in the battle against COVID-19.

At the end of 2020, when it became known that the first vaccines developed against coronavirus required sub-zero storage, Chapman’s was quick to offer up two medical-grade deep freezers.

It turns out the Markdale mainstay — which has donated millions of dollars to local hospitals, schools and sports facilities — had been approached decades earlier about emergency use of its cold-storage facilities in case of a public-health emergency and it was more than ready when the call came.

And grit? You want to see grit?

October 28, 2021

In 2009, the company’s century-old wooden creamery building was destroyed after a spark from welding work caught in the rafters.

Where some might have called it quits, Chapman’s built back, recovered and expanded to employ about twice the workers it once did.

This is not an age, however, in which decades of reputation, generosity, local history or context won’t be incinerated in a firestorm of toxic online recrimination.

After the raise became public, when a photo of the bulletin announcing it was posted online, Chapman’s became the target of chronically aggrieved anti-vaccine groups who were outraged at the very thought.

Local divisions of the small and tattered anti-vax army were inflamed at this outrageous assault by Chapman’s on their right to be fools and mounted an online campaign to boycott the company’s products.

The company said it received 1,000 or more emails and attacks on its Facebook group. Much of it was despicable. Inevitably, absurd analogies to Naziism were tossed about.

July 3, 2021

But, in addition to being rather stoutly anti-science, it appears the anti-vaxxers have no particular flair for numeracy or imagination.

A quick glance at public-opinion surveys or published vaccination rates should have made clear that in the boycott battle they would be hugely outnumbered and were charging off to near-certain defeat.

At Chapman’s itself, fewer than a dozen employees had chosen to remain unvaccinated and been required to go on unpaid leave.

Well, the entirely predictable result soon came to pass.

Voices of reason pushed back, lavishly praising and thanking the company, which saw sales jump and inquiries arrive from far and wide as to where its ice cream could be purchased.

The hashtag #IStandWithChapmans became the call to arms, and seldom was such a thing so delicious.

On its website, Chapman’s is now promoting its “Holiday Moments Collection,” urging the sweet-toothed to “Enjoy a taste of the holiday in each and every bite.”

So, let’s add a tip of the old double-scoop ice-cream cone — waffle, if you please — to Chapman’s for its good corporate citizenship, community-minded initiatives and delightful products.

Long may you prosper. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Tuesday November 30, 2021

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

Omicron: A variant born of vaccine inequity

The emergence of the Omicron variant of the COVID-19 virus is a giant I-told-you-so moment for the world.

May 11, 2021

It should strike home particularly hard in rich countries like Canada, which have lavished resources on vaccinating their own people while leaving poorer parts of the world to struggle along as best they can.

Now, the inevitable is happening: with the vast majority of people in most countries still unvaccinated, the virus has mutated yet again. Omicron is the result, and we can only hope it turns out not to be as formidable a foe as some experts fear.

Banning flights from a handful of countries where the variant was first detected may be a natural reaction, but it’s no real answer. Omicron has already been detected in a number of other countries, and we know by now that once these things start they can’t be effectively stopped. At best, restricting travel might slow the spread a bit and give scientists time to learn more.

April 28, 2021

The bigger lesson is one that the developed world already knows, but hasn’t really wanted to take on board. It’s summed up in the oft-repeated cliché that “none of us is safe until all of us are safe.” In practice, it means much more must be done to boost vaccination rates in all countries, not just the ones (including Canada) that have procured the lion’s share of doses for their own people.

By now the developed world is awash in vaccines. We have more doses than we have arms to put them in; the data analytics firm Airfinity estimates there will be more than a billion such doses stockpiled in developed countries by the end of the year, in addition to those earmarked for donations to poorer nations.

May 20, 2021

So while some countries have 70 per cent or more of their people protected, the World Health Organization estimates lower-income countries have on average only about 7.5 per cent. That leaves literally billions of people around the world unvaccinated, giving the COVID-19 virus ample opportunity to mutate — and bite us back in the form of Omicron.

Gordon Brown, the former British prime minister who is now the WHO’s ambassador for global health financing, notes that G20 countries have taken 89 per cent of COVID vaccines so far and 71 per cent of future production is still scheduled for them. “The problem is not now in production (two billion doses of vaccine are being manufactured every month),” he wrote over the weekend, “but in the unfairness of distribution.”

Of course, developed countries have pledged to deliver billions of doses to the rest of the world, but actual shipments have so far fallen far short of those promises. Canada has pledged to donate at least 200 million doses by the end of next year, but that doesn’t address the problems of here and now.

January 30, 2021

There’s a moral issue involved, but there’s also naked self-interest. Omicron is proof that focusing excessively on our own backyard leaves us vulnerable to dangers from elsewhere. We can’t wall ourselves off from COVID, much as we’d like to.

Canada and other developed countries need to work harder to accelerate their promised deliveries of vaccine doses to poorer nations. And they should support efforts through the WHO for a temporary waiver of patent protections for COVID vaccines to make it easier to ramp up production around the world.

If we fail on this, we’ll be grappling with yet more variants down the road. It’s not as if no one warned us this might happen. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial) 

 

Saturday July 3, 2021

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

‘The virus will infect them’: Vaccine hesitant Americans think variant risk exaggerated, poll shows

There are few things more normal than the sight of a crowded beach on the 4th of July weekend. However, even as Americans celebrate Independence Day with renewed verve this year, freedom from the virus may still be far off with a highly transmissible delta variant infecting unvaccinated communities.

April 27, 2021

“They are going to be fodder for the virus,” said Dr. Richard Novak, head of infectious diseases at UI Health. “The virus will infect them, it will mutate in them and the new variants will come from them and we’ll all be at risk.”

According to the latest ABC News/Washington Post Poll, three in 10 adults said they have not gotten a coronavirus vaccine, and definitely or probably will not get one.

Of this group, 73% believe U.S. officials are exaggerating the risk of the delta variant and 79% think they have little or no risk of getting sick.

“It’s almost heartbreaking that now the two populations that need this, the most are urban minority patients and rural white patients, are the ones that are saying no in the loudest numbers,” said Dr. Mark Loafman, with the Cook County Health Department. “That group of patients that were able to hear facts and be reassured, we got to them. It’s this group that the facts aren’t going to fix it for them.”

March 17, 2021

“It’s been long enough,” said Christina Brown, who got her first shot Monday. :I started seeing results. Everybody was doing it. I wasn’t hearing nobody having that bad of side effects. I said alright I’ll go get it, and see what happens.”

However, there are still others who feel their freedom to choose was taken away.

“I felt like I was forced into it. I had to have surgery and my doctor basically told me that in order for me to get the surgery I literally had to get the shot. So this is my only reason to get the shot,” said 23-year-old Tamarianna Tate. “Otherwise, I wouldn’t. I wouldn’t. I’m was a strong believer in not getting the shot. ”

The Delta variant now accounts for 25% of all cases in the United States. It’s estimated by the end of August that number will surpass 90%. (ABC)