(Thread IKs:
ZShakespeare)
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Gully Foyle posted:If this holds out, we are in a pretty good place - 80-90% uptake is probably the best you can hope for without some kind of method to force vaccination. And for the children side, we can generally force vaccination as a condition of in-person schooling (for the age ranges the vaccine is/will be approved for). I think coercion should be avoided at all costs. My main reasoning for this is that this isn't just a single jab, or even two that we're talking about. Covid is very likely going to continue to circulate and be re-introduced from outside for the foreseeable future. This will likely require booster shots, and maybe re-worked vaccines as variants develop resistance. Coercion could undermine trust that would be needed for a prolonged campaign against the virus.
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May 29, 2021 17:47
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Tippecanoe posted:Yeah I think the problem is when people see encampments and go "these things are unsightly, so better to sweep it under the rug where I don't have to see it"; advocates and homeless people have long been advocating for injection sites, affordable housing, more shelters, etc. and largely been ignored over the past few decades, so the encampments and needles lying around are the result of not taking action sooner. Get this: clearing out encampments is not going to get rid of drugs or homelessness. They're more than just unsightly, they're public health and safety nightmares. Cramped, filled with trash and excrement and are just waiting to go up in a blaze. At least the few I've come across-- they're not common where I am, and the few that exist are recent occurrences. Frankly the encampments don't seem very good for the people living in them, nor anyone else. I agree though that they can't just be swept under the rug. Lack of affordable housing is a serious issue that is unlikely to improve any time soon. And for those that are messed up due to substance/mental health issues, they don't disappear if they're out of sight, they'll need help wherever they end up. There was a small encampment fairly close to where I live a few months ago. I meant to take a walk down to that park and just sit there for a while, to observe the place and people and maybe strike up a conversation with someone that actually lived there. The police moved in before I got the chance however.
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Jul 22, 2021 17:37
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Capital Letdown posted:Hi everyone - I'm an outreach worker in Hamilton. I waltz on in to encampments and start talking to people 5 days a week, uh feel free to ask questions and I can answer any to the best of my ability/confidentiality also please dont dox me. Thanks for writing that. I have questions and comments about encampments! Its uhh maybe a lot so feel free to pick and choose what to answer. 1) Can you offer any demographic breakdowns, either based on official data or what you think you see day to day? I'm talking stuff like age, sex, race, disability, really anything. 2) How many people in these encampments are local vs come-from-aways? You may define these terms as you choose. 3) How long to people typically (whatever that means) stay in an encampment? Like, is this the sort of thing people bounce into and out of every few weeks? How seasonal is it? Are people moving from one encampment to another, maybe in another town? How much are people between encampments, shelters, and more secure housing? 4) How do people in encampments live? How are they getting their food and water? Their tents? Their drugs? How do they get money? 5) What % of the inhabitants of a camp have serious drug/mental health issues? I assume its high, but is it everyone? Or maybe its lower than I think. 6) Do people have kids in the encampments, or other dependents? 7) How much could encampments be "solved" by, say, taking care of people's needs for 6 months? Paying their rent and bills, giving money for food, helping them with paperwork or whatever to improve their lot, helping find a job of some sort. If these needs were met for that length of time, would most of these people be able to stay out of camps/out of shelters after that, do you think? Comment: I don't know if this is an accurate reading of your job, but I think its really good for the homeless to have a sort of advocate, most especially someone who is there on the ground actually talking to them and getting to know them. I think a well-spoken person like yourself as an interface could/should be a great help both for homeless people individually but also in systems that deal with them. If this poo poo is run correctly of course, and since you describe coworkers who seem to hug their desk and do poo poo all it probably isn't. Still a good idea.
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Jul 23, 2021 16:05
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Thanks again, that was informative. I'm a bit surprised that youths and come-from-aways are rare. Makes me think less of travelling vagrants and more of 50yo+ people getting hooked on opioids and their lives going dramatically downhill. Of course there are many ways into this sort of life, just trying to change my vague impressions into something a bit more accurate.
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Jul 23, 2021 18:50
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EvilJoven posted:Being concerned about the state of the world has been politicized to the point where people are literallychoking to death while pretending things are fine. Speaking of politicization. I don't follow this thread closely, but what are people's thoughts on federal proposals for mandatory vaccines for things like transportation? I seem to find myself in this odd zone where I'm mostly opposed to requiring vaccines (unless say you're a nurse at a hospital or old folk's home) and yet I have both doses myself and think the vaccines are beneficial. I find anti-vaxers to be morons but don't agree with those that think it should be mandatory which seems to be put me in this political no-mans land. Apologies if this has already been discussed to death.
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Aug 30, 2021 16:32
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:100% for all restrictions on non-essential activities for the unvaxxed. Out of curiosity what's your opposition to them being mandatory? Actual valid medical exemptions are miniscule (basically just a confirmed serious reaction to the first shot or a known PEG allergy). pokeyman posted:I'm confused, you said you're on board with mandates in hospitals and long-term care homes but "don't agree… it should be mandatory"? What principle guides your thoughts on which jobs should require vaccination? Basically I think the vaccines are good and people should get them, but making them mandatory will have marginal benefits in relation to the anger they cause, when other methods are available. First I’ll state again I have both shots. My gf is a healthcare worker who was required to get her shots early on as she works with vulnerable people. The mRNA technology is incredible stuff and promises to revolutionize medicine. Vaccines (like the one that rendered smallpox extinct) are some of the proudest accomplishments of humankind. So let it not be said I’m an antivaxxer. Let us also review the role of the state in health. Already mentioned were kids needing shots to get into school, or requiring seatbelts when driving. These are two good policies— their restriction on people’s choices is well worth the benefits to society. Trapick posted:Ontario, New Brunswick, and Manitoba have some requirement for vaccines to attend school, although they all have (easy to meet) exemption criteria. Religious exceptions exist not because they’re good public health policy but because some religious groups have been vehemently opposed to vaccinations since their inception. Religious freedom being a founding pillar of our society, they get an exception even though it harms not just that particular group but also maybe people around them. This is my philosophical reason for not liking mandates. It isn’t because I don’t think vaccines work, its because some people really, REALLY don’t want them. And even though that’s a poor choice to make, the freedom to make this choice has still been considered important for a very long time— courts legally remove this choice only occasionally. I think the freedom to make one’s own stupid choices is pretty important, and shouldn’t be readily curtailed. There’s a pandemic going on. Surely this is the time to make vaccines mandatory though, right? What if they infect other people? This is a valid concern and would make me ok with mandatory vaccines— if the vaccine prevented transmission of the virus. It does not. It lessens the likelihood, but delta in particular seems quite capable of spreading through fully vaccinated people. I think the most compelling argument in favour of mandatory vaccines is that it could prevent ICU units from getting backed up. Starks posted:how do you think we should handle a surge in covid hospitalizations that maxes out our healthcare system, which by all appearances is on the horizon? Would you support another lockdown instead of mandatory vaccination? Given the binary choice I’d choose mandatory vaccinations over another lockdown, easily. I guess my perspective here is different— I live in Atlantic Canada which has maintained a low caseload for most of the pandemic. There is no such looming threat here. Vaccination rates are already high. Lots of testing has made it possible to keep a very close eye on the pandemic and manage it better than many other areas. Which takes me to my alternative, and my practical testing for disliking mandatory vaccines. Testing. For people that don’t want to get a vaccine, have them get tested instead. They want to fly on a plane, or go to a movie or work that public sector job? Show a negative test from the past x number of days. As I mentioned above vaccinated people can still transmit the virus; a negative test result is a safer indicator when dealing with vulnerable people. For international travel many countries have required proof of vaccination or one or several negative tests. This system has worked pretty well. As a bonus it keeps testing rates reasonably high which can help spot fresh hot spots. It also works on kids under 12 who still cannot get a covid vaccine. If it comes down to mass death or mandatory vaccines, then sure, impose the mandate; I’m not going to die on this hill. But the mandate will get messier as effectiveness wanes with time, as boosters become available and new variants emerge. Testing (and enforced quarantine for positive tests!) is an effective way to track and limit the spread of the virus. Limiting ourselves to vaccines alone in determining who can do what is not only alienating but it is also less effective than a combined method.
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Aug 30, 2021 22:17
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Mr Luxury Yacht posted:I'm not sure testing is as feasible a solution here as you think. Testing, like vaccinations themselves in this regard, isn't going to totally stop the transmission of the virus on its own. To do that, yes, you'd basically have to test everyone every day and even that may not be enough to catch everything. The purpose isn't to halt the spread entirely, its to slow it down. I don't know how it works elsewhere, but in Nova Scotia you're supposed to get tested if you have covid symptoms or if you've been to an exposure site. These sites are published by the government and categorized depending on how "severe" its deemed to have been. For most people its totally voluntary, and yet its been effective. When case numbers go up people get spooked. The government sets up more testing locations and people readily use them. If you test positive you're supposed to self-isolate. It doesn't prevent someone from getting or spreading covid. But it reduces the number of people its gets spread to, which is very useful. What has really irked me, and is what has caused me to inquire about this here, is the attitude of "gently caress those guys, make them get their vaccine this would all be over". I don't like to see groups of people being so eager to curtail the freedom of a different group. More than that though, mandatory vaccines won't end covid. It will raise the vaccination rate (and save lives) but not to 100%. Even if it did, the virus will still be circulating in the population, still infecting and maiming and killing people. I worry that unvaccinated people are becoming a scapegoat for the disease itself, even though their participation would not end the pandemic. And as for unvaccinated people that get covid? Well, too bad. Let it be a lesson to others.
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Aug 31, 2021 00:15
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ChickenDoodle posted:So gently caress the unvaccinated, they should all be treated like pariahs. Yeah. Well, I kinda thought this would be the general consensus. Ah well, I said my bit. I think vaccines are indeed going to become mandatory in most or all of Canada. I genuinely hope the policy is as effective as you all think it will be because I sure am sick of all this. Perhaps my fears are misplaced.
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Aug 31, 2021 01:22
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eXXon posted:So uh how's that Green campaign going? I really wish they'd chosen a better time to implode. And oh good the giving PPC is still around and slightly more popular? Boooo.
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Aug 31, 2021 17:21
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MNIMWA posted:Anamie Paul's got a press conference this morning and is definitely stepping down. Where does the Green Party even go from here With an actually good leader they could make plenty of gains. Under May they were rising steadily and obviously climate change isn't an issue that's going away. If they make themselves just another progressive party they won't accomplish much though.
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Sep 27, 2021 14:29
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I think it's a bad idea to look at Nazis or other groups and simply say they're uniformly bad. This isn't really education. There were reasons Nazis and their policies were popular in the 30s, reasons why they were able to seize power, reasons why they were able to cause so much damage and suffering during the war. It's good to teach some of the "appealing" parts of the ideology because that poo poo is still around today and it's important to be able to recognize it. Know your enemy, and all that. I think if teachers had actually been saying Hitler wasn't that bad this would have gone to light before now.
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Nov 13, 2021 21:08
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Baronjutter posted:I think there's a critical mass of people who think covid is over, or at least they're done caring or worrying about it. I'm not talking anti-vaxxers or conspiracy folks, just people who have their 2 or 3 jabs and are going back to normal after 2 years of this poo poo. They'll mostly mask up if told they have to, but otherwise expect to return to normal pre-covid life and are not willing to deal with any more lockdowns or canceled activities. This is me. Lots of variation across friend groups though.
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Dec 14, 2021 02:42
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enki42 posted:Ontario basically doesn't have testing right now. Ottawa and London are saying "if you feel sick, just assume you have COVID and isolate, don't book a test" and everywhere else it's like 4-5 days before you can find an appointment (I checked Hamilton yesterday out of curiosity and it doesn't even let you look for test appointments, it just gives you a message that everything is booked and check back in a few days) Nova Scotia, until recently a paragon of testing, is also down to that. PCR tests only if you have symptoms AND are a vulnerable symptoms. If you have symptoms try and get a rapid test. If you're positive, notify personal contacts yourself. Honestly at this point testing matters less. We know the virus is spreading rapidly, knowing which individual person has it doesn't matter too much unless vulnerable populations are involved.
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Dec 24, 2021 00:34
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linoleum floors posted:It does actually matter because the entire economy has hinged on negative and positive test results for employment leaves for the last two years. People are all hosed without the ability to get a test I meant matters from an epidemiological perspective. But yeah it matters a lot because so much government and beauracratic guidance rests on testing alone. It's been clear since what, summer last year? that every person in the world was going to get covid sooner or later. Of course this wasn't planned for and only short-term zero-covid policies like vaccine mandates were used and now governments are for the nth time loving winging it.
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Dec 24, 2021 02:34
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Ron Paul Atreides posted:So we’re all going to get it, right? Testing can’t even keep pace with the levels that are actually out there, cant get rapid kits fast enough, evading vaccines everywhere and not a peep about lockdowns We'll all get some version of it, be it omicron, the one after that, the one after that etc. Which is fine. People who have had it before will be more resistant to it the next time around and hopefully less scared and inclined to panic the next time there's a spike in case numbers.
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Dec 29, 2021 21:11
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PT6A posted:Yeah, it's obvious to anyone who's paying attention. It's a very bad situation even if Omicron is not very severe, and even if vaccinations prevent severe illness and even if there's not a huge concern with long COVID. Any loving idiot can see the obvious problems, and that a de facto shutdown is about to occur in some sense no matter what. We are seeing the same things with airlines, probably with logistics and other essential industries, it's foolish to ignore it. It's not going to go away on its own, and even if the end plan is "we all get it" and we accept that, it's still loving dangerous and stupid to allow it all to happen at once. I'd very much like to know what the end plan is, because it doesn't seem like anyone, anywhere has such a plan. Instead we're all, still, simply reacting to whatever the virus throws at us. IMO the original strategy of "flatten the curve" was the way to go. Impose measures to smooth out big spikes, but otherwise let the virus circulate and work towards herd immunity. The second part of this plan was quickly dropped in favour of "as little covid as possible". That after 20 months we are still going into full lockdown suggests to me that this policy is not very effective. The virus is too good at circumventing our measures against it, and at this point there's no reason to think that spikes like this will not continue to happen as more variants emerge, especially in the colder months. The virus is going to impose herd immunity on us whether we like it or not-- trying to prevent this seems futile. Count Roland fucked around with this message at 14:37 on Dec 31, 2021 |
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Dec 31, 2021 14:34
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enki42 posted:If "beating your previous record for COVID cases in a day by 3x" isn't a big spike, what is? I'm not disagreeing. I'm saying that "flatten the curve" involves restrictions to flatten spikes AND generally letting covid move through the population. We've only been doing the first part.
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Dec 31, 2021 15:00
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PT6A posted:I want this poo poo to be done, and I don't see how we reach that place from here without the government telling everyone they need to be doing what most of us here have been doing this whole time. How does this action result in this poo poo being done? What about the next variant, and the one after that?
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Dec 31, 2021 21:45
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Another Bill posted:1) Therapeutics are coming, mass production starts in January This is absolutely preposterous. Omicron was not expected or planned for. Covid has shown it mutates readily. The common cold is partly caused by corona viruses that have continually adapted over the past hundred years. To assume we've seen the worst of covid is wishful thinking and nothing more. And this is exactly what I was initially talking about. Governments must plan for worst case scenarios, not ones where the problem just goes away. PS: forums poster Another Bill, please don't take this personally, I know this post is a bit intense but I'm disagreeing with the idea, not yourself.
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Jan 1, 2022 15:13
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Powershift posted:Speaking of loving up data. There's a significant delay between a positive test result and a death. So a single day's snapshot of numbers can't really tell you much.
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Jan 4, 2022 23:32
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quote:The association representing Ontario pharmacists says roughly half of all people who are offered the Moderna vaccine are refusing it. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/covid-19-moderna-vaccine-pfizer-booster-1.6306892
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Jan 7, 2022 18:30
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ZeeBoi posted:Erin O'Toole: accommodate the unvaccinated "Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos says vaccination remains the only way out of the pandemic" I fail to see how this can be said with a straight face. It took less than a year for a variant to emerge that largely escaped existing vaccines. There is nothing to stop this happening again. Existing vaccine mandates were a policy implemented to do exactly this, to get us out of the pandemic. This policy failed. Vaccines save lives but they are not going to stop the pandemic.
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Jan 8, 2022 13:22
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PT6A posted:I'll listen to the numerous doctors who are on the front lines and saying this is a crisis rather than listen to the drivel that drips out of pillocks who've decided to stop practicing medicine and start practice administration. This is like asking cops how to better fight crime
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Jan 11, 2022 00:17
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Does anyone posting in this thread have kids? e: might as well post this for some laughs  From here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COVID-19_pandemic_in_Canada#By_age Count Roland fucked around with this message at 02:25 on Jan 11, 2022 |
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Jan 11, 2022 02:21
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stab posted:Lol Legault just announced a tax for the unvaccinated in Quebec. I do not at all like the precedent this sets. Has anything like this been done before in Canada? Take a medicine or else pay a fine?
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Jan 11, 2022 22:05
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pokeyman posted:How important is the "crowding dozens into a small poorly-ventilated room in a respiratory disease pandemic with lovely/no masking" aspect? This got me wondering something, which I'll ask the thread generally: Is there a rate of spread in schools that is acceptable? Or is anything above zero unacceptable?
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Jan 13, 2022 20:23
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Tsyni posted:This thread is hard to gauge sometimes, but does anyone strongly think that covid won't just become endemic? I've thought this since reading a piece in the Economist sometime in mid-2020. Once the vaccines started to roll out I began to move my opinions more towards opening up, as a 95% effective vaccine was pretty darn close to victory.
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Jan 13, 2022 22:37
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infernal machines posted:
Yeah I was thinking of this lately too. Anecdotal Science is what I was calling it. Kinda like those news articles that say blueberries or whatever are a super food and fight cancer based on exciting new study! People love to share this stuff and think it the height of scientific understanding. Take this sort of anecdotal science, mix it with common sense, and apply it to life-changing events and boom, our current discussion meta.
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Jan 14, 2022 12:34
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Well I've got the 'rona.
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Jan 15, 2022 13:09
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Rust Martialis posted:Count Rona'd Yeah it's fine, a mild cold. My roomie got it first and he was hit harder, with fevers and aches and the like. I'm just bored at home.
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Jan 15, 2022 13:30
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pokeyman posted:Without wading into the probably pointless distinction between "admitted to hospital for covid" versus "with covid", the interesting bit to me of this summary Its an important distinction, especially since case numbers are no longer at all reliable indicators of how prevalent covid is. Instead lots of places look to hospitalization rates but these numbers can lie in new and interesting ways. Only recently did NS start reporting the data with this level of detail. It used to be they'd only list the people that were in hospital because of covid (testing positive and having breathing trouble *I think* is the definition). I don't know when someone is considered recovered in these cases.
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Jan 15, 2022 23:38
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PT6A posted:And the people who want to buy it are basically bored as gently caress 2/3s of the time, because of all the additional time it takes the teacher to sell their wares to the unwilling, so they hate it too! Yeah pretty much. Schooling should be separated more based on interest, engagement and ability instead of just age which means nothing.
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Jan 17, 2022 22:18
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Eej posted:The logical result of this would be a bunch of old kids with learning disabilities/poverty/parental neglect/failure to thrive in the school system stuck in like grade 6, how does this fix anything These are exactly the kids that shouldn't simply advance through the school system with age, they need different programs. My point is that age is currently almost the only variable that indicates how you receive education and I'm saying maybe other things should be considered, too.
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Jan 18, 2022 12:30
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mom and dad fight a lot posted:lol I had to research this and didn't know this was a thing I still don't get it, are the especially popular in Victoria?
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Jan 18, 2022 21:25
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mom and dad fight a lot posted:Didn't realize they even hit the news, and are popular at the coasts. This craze definitely flew right by me. Yeah they're massively popular on the east coast. Everyone wears them, especially women. Every shoe store has a whole shelf devoted to them. If they're popular in Victoria too I suspect people like them for winters that are wet and muddy vs the freezing cold of the interior of the country. edit: badly beaten Count Roland fucked around with this message at 23:10 on Jan 18, 2022 |
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Jan 18, 2022 23:07
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enki42 posted:lol Ontario is just going whole hog with the US right wing playbook How is this bad? Thousands and thousands of people are getting covid. Some are going to be hospitalized and die for reasons that aren't covid related. They should clearly be counted separately. I know at least Nova Scotia and Saskatchewan already do this.
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Jan 20, 2022 15:18
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Fried Watermelon posted:A person who dies from a heart attack because covid destroyed their lungs a few weeks ago will no longer be a covid death Pretty sure that would still count as causal death, especially if they were admitted because covid was destroying their lungs. In any case there's no single good way to define a covid death. Excess death numbers are much better, and the eventual studies that will go back and actually dig deeply into these numbers to determine the true toll, but that will take years. In the short term it is still a good idea to count these numbers separately since most people don't get seriously ill.
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Jan 20, 2022 15:39
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Bleck posted:"Died as a direct result of symptoms of covid infection or subsequent complications thereof" seems pretty simple actually? Lets look at some examples. A patient goes to the ER with breathing trouble, ends up on a ventilator, has a heart attack and dies. If this person was positive for covid, it's a safe bet covid was the cause. Covid brought them to the ER in the first place, and very likely caused the heart attack. Another covid positive person is in a bad car accident. They're brought to hospital but die a few days later, also of heart attack. You can argue that covid makes heart attacks more likely, but it seems a minor factor here so this one probably doesn't get covid listed as a cause. A trickier example is an 85 year old with advanced alzheimers, obesity and a history of heart problems. They were looking quite close to death, then tested positive for covid, then died a few days later, also of heart attack. Was covid the cause? How does one determine this? Is covid the cause if it takes a year off your life? What about a day off your life? Determining this is basically left to the judgement of the doctor that writes the death certificate. The last one may sound like an edge case but it isn't-- most covid deaths in North America occur in elderly people with multiple comorbidities. So if you start really digging in it gets very complicated very quickly. This is why when looking at population-level numbers its better to use excess deaths. ** Anyway, lets pull this back a bit. If that Ontario policy about reporting covid deaths is about changing what goes on the death certificate, then I oppose that. Doctors need to be free to fill those out using their own judgement without pushback from the peanut gallery. If its about reporting stats with more nuance then cool, go for it. As I mentioned other provinces are already doing this, including Nova Scotia which has a good track record for the pandemic.
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Jan 20, 2022 18:24
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Kraftwerk posted:Any attempt to actually remove them might trigger a violent backlash and kick off a civil war the country is horribly unprepared to fight. There's no good options here. Trudeau actively picked a fight with antivaxers and those opposed to mandates etc. Turns out that was a bad fight to pick. Anyway, does anyone have links to big photo galleries of the protests? I'm specifically looking for flags and other political symbols. I figure there's a lot of weird or obscure ones I'm not seeing in regular reporting.
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Feb 10, 2022 18:10
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MNIMWA posted:The online right started freaking out because Trudeau said some anti-vaxxers are anti-science, and so on Yes, this is when Trudeau picked a fight. I suspect he looked at polling numbers and saw 80 or 85% of people were vaccinated and figured the only people who would be pissed off is that 15 or 20%, much of whom already hates his guts. This assumes that everyone who is vaccinated has no issues with vaccine mandates, which is incorrect.
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Feb 10, 2022 22:12
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