We Still Have a Government, Right?: Canadian Politics 2020

Never will get used to the beauty of a Canadian child being born. pic.twitter.com/OudHSpAXOB

— Lloyd Legalist (@LloydLegalist) November 23, 2020

https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/we-took-our-eye-off-the-ball-how-canada-lost-its-vaccine-production-capacity-1.5204040

Vaccines are even being developed here, apparently, but even if they are successful, they would have to be mass produced elsewhere.

Why does it matter that we don’t produce vaccines here if we can just buy them from places that do?

Because it means we would get them later, at least that's the case being made: https://www.theglobeandmail.com/amp/politics/article-canada-will-get-covid-19-vaccines-after-other-countries-due-to-lack-of/

seems like a fake scandal. not every country has a big pharmaceutical industry. and if the astrazeneca vaccine works out, it sounds like that montreal facility will start cranking them out (although the recent news about that one hasn't been great). canada bought a shit load of vaccines, actually more than any other country in per capita terms and we diversified across most treatments:

Canada is leading the world in vaccination readinesshttps://t.co/ai7PiHsKgc pic.twitter.com/A5pl3uV5MP

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) November 13, 2020

And the most diverse portfolio pic.twitter.com/Js4h0YY13m

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) November 13, 2020

my friend works in vancouver general hospital, he got an email today saying they were preparing freezer space for some vaccines that would arrive in 2 weeks

Why would Trudeau say that then?

to temper expectations, maybe? countries that produce vaccines will vaccinate their own vulnerable populations “first“ and so well go through a news cycle or two of mass vaccinations in the UK. but it would be very strange if despite contracts countries with production capacity boarded them all for months. also the bottleneck in vaccinating will be worse than the bottleneck in production, so there’s no reason not to sell excess vaccines once they hit the limit

So you're saying we will get them later but "later" means days rather than weeks or months?

idk when we’ll get them. i just don’t think producing countries hogging the vaccine and Moderna and Pfizer abdicating their contracts with other countries is gonna happen to any great extent

the big constraint on the Moderna and Pfizer vaccines, for example, is freezer space. the latter needs to stored at -70c, while former needs -20. UK or Germany or the US can produce much more per day than they can freeze. they’ll start selling to Canada and other countries once their freezer storage capacity runs out, which should happen pretty quickly after production ramps up

Hm, seems like uncharacteristically bad PR from Trudeau if that's the case.

i just think some people on twitter were loud with their "canada is fucked on vaccines" takes
we'll see if they're right

I assumed it’s the usual Trudeau derangement syndrome types makes disproportionate amounts of noise.

Flopson is probably right but my links were from CTV and G&M, not PrairieRebel13 on Twitter, ftr.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/edmonton/alberta-covid-19-response-tension-recordings-1.5814877

Big showdown in Etobicoke yesterday.

http://toronto.citynews.ca/2020/11/26/police-adamson-bbq-covid19/

I lived in the New Toronto/Alderwood area for 25 years, was never aware of their existence.

stolen joke from FB: "bbqanon"

Why the media gave that situation any oxygen to begin is infuriating. It was obvious that he just wanted to be a martyr and the subject of gofundme campaigns.

lol right on time: https://www.blogto.com/eat_drink/2020/11/fundraiser-adamson-barbecue-raises-more-28k/

Agree with your take on supposed vaccine crisis, dyson. I don’t think there’s much that could be done better under the circumstances.

That said, it should now be a given why having air tight supply lines for such things is kind of a big deal. People hopefully will remember these things for future and push for more proactive governance.

Blaming Trudeau for the decline of vaccine creating capacity is sorta dumb, it happened a long while ago, when Trudeau was still a Breboeuf dweeb.

Oh, Tories who do that are ridiculous, considering it was Mulroney who privatized the companies in the first place. No one (including Trudeau and Chrétien but also Harper) has done anything about it in 35 years. Maybe it doesn't matter, as flopson might be saying.

I missed the AOC/Jagmeet Singh Twitch stream. Anyone knows if it will be archived?

There's a VOD on Twitch

I watched some. AOC said that she might be making Twitch a weekly thing. She wound up streaming for 6 hours just because people were donating too much money (200,000 USD by the end - I think for eviction defense and assisting undocumented people).

According to Trudeau, 50% of us will be vaccinated by next September. Not sure if that sounds good or disappointing. It feels vaguely Hunger Games-like, or like Shirley Jackson's "The Lottery." My guess is that teachers will be somewhere in that first 50%, which may or may not include me, a retired but fairly active supply teacher. That I start thinking this way is not ideal.

Where did he say 50%? The reports I've seen say (vaguely) "the majority", e.g. https://globalnews.ca/news/7488324/vaccine-coronavirus-trudeau-nato-fortin/

I heard audio of him saying that on the news yesterday.

Hm, he says "majority" in the clip that comes with the Global piece. 50% would be a weird goal to set or promise to make, for the reason you give.

I went looking for a clip, couldn't find one. I positive I heard Trudeau say this yesterday.

"I'm"

Anyway, whether 50% or a majority--which probably means, I don't know, 55 or 60%; I doubt very much it means 75% and upwards--my original point still holds: I'm left wondering if I'm going to be on the right side of that. (If I weren't still supplying, I'm almost certain the answer would be no.)

Right, I was hoping "majority" meant 70%+ or whatever the threshold is for herd immunity.

50% isn’t half-bad (heh) when you consider that it very likely covers the vast majority of at-risk Canadians.

In terms of elementary schools--this is what I don't like, it gets me thinking "me, me, me"--I have to believe the thinking will be get the teachers vaccinated, and then the kids are near the end of the line.

Jason Kenney is absolutely blunt and gets to the point: https://www.vice.com/en/article/88ax7v/jason-kenney-targets-south-asians-for-covid-says-nothing-about-anti-maskers

Listening to the actual audio from the radio program really does not make Kenney look any better: https://www.facebook.com/watch/live/?v=435088651218061&ref=watch_permalink

There's something slimy about the way he starts out patronizingly 'praising' the "beautiful, wonderful" family- and hospitality-oriented nature of South Asian communities (based on his friends in the community) before working up to announcing increased policing and fines for home gatherings, no doubt targeted towards this community that concerns him. He mostly handwaves away the host's seemingly valid point that the neighbourhood he's talking about contains a lot of frontline workers who are unable to work from home before eventually mentioning that school reopening will be delayed by a week to give kids time to recover from, uh, family gatherings over Christmas.

I didn't realize btw that i) Alberta is taking some weird anti-federalist stand by not letting people use the federal COVID app and ii) their case numbers have gotten so much worse than Ontario's and Quebec's.

I believe that young kids won’t be getting vaccinated at first, but it’s primarily because the vaccine for them needs to be in a slightly different format or dosage or something.

xp. can't help but feel that possibly conservative covid-denialists might be part of Alberta's problem

more of a pressing problem than any south asian cultural issue

Legault still on the fence about Xmas gatherings, says he’ll make a call on the 11th but right now forbidding them seems likeliest.

Also, fuck Jason Kenney.

fuck Jason Kenney

Feels weird to be doing this here, but:

If there are any other Albertans here, there’s a petition going round to allow the use of the federal app: https://www.change.org/p/tyler-shandro-minister-of-health-alberta-allow-use-of-federal-covid19-contact-tracing-app-in-alberta

And I guess another plug, if you’re on Facebook come join us at the PALbertans group for AB progressive memers.

Also, fuck Jason Kenney.

Legault just cancelled Xmas.

That genuinely surprises me.

at least the laicité is consistent

My thoughts exactly.