Defenestrate Them All: Canadian Politics 2021

Anyone near Ottawa, over 50k appointments were made available about half an hour ago. I got one for early Jan, my partner is getting hers this week.

Nice, I got one for early January also.

got my booster yesterday afternoon, got an early invite because I went double AZ. not feeling the greatest this morning...

So our one kid who just got cleared with a negative PCR from a school exposure (and subsequently me cleared to about to drive to see my ailing mum) just got a brand new notification (our fourth!) from the school and public health, so has to isolate and test all over again. Unfortunately this time it’s the variant requiring stricter measures so it’s all of us in isolation now, regardless of vax or symptom status. And it asks us to isolate her alone in a room, away from the rest of us, but that’s just not manageable. The worst part is that the PCR is mandatory at the end of it, so even if she’s still well and we’ve all been housebound, she needs to then go to the same testing place where all the sick ones are, potentially getting exposed all over again. I’m good with the isolating, but that part doesn’t seem sensible at all. We’ll do our best to deal though. This is really the only place I allow myself to vent a bit.

To be clear it’s our fourth exposure, but it’s been two per kid, from different schools, and one from hockey, so four separate case sources. We still do almost no socializing. Could be we are suddenly unlucky or it’s just gotten that much worse out there.

And it asks us to isolate her alone in a room, away from the rest of us, but that’s just not manageable.

o_O

Kim that sounds like a very unreasonable setup, sorry you are going through that

that’s awful. sorry, Kim

Two-day postponement for schools? What's the point of postponing for two days? Two weeks, or go online, or return Monday.

I personally think I had this in the days leading up to Christmas. Was sick the weekend before (sore throat, coughing, congestion, bit of a temperature), then started to get a little better each day. Mostly self-isolated, although I did make a quick trip to the grocery store (triple masked + scarf); I thought I was going to be stuck at home, so I had to. Trying to get a test proved to be pointless, so my sister suggested I come up as planned on the 24th, and they'd give me a rapid test there. It came up negative, so either I didn't have it or--what I think--I had three or four asymptomatic days, followed by four or five mildly symptomatic days, then the test.

Had to cancel my booster (Dec. 22) and probably will have to wait weeks. So--without detailing how supply works for retired teachers--I'm going to book off January and return February, presumably after a booster shot.

What I just heard on the radio is that the two-day delay is to give them time to install proper ventilation units?

I don't know...Better late--really, really, really, really late--than never, I guess, but wow.

nonsense of quebec's authoritarian measures made transparent by: "oh also shops will be closed on sundays???"

Feel like we're a matter of weeks from just letting er rip in much of the world? Like more back to normal than we've been in a couple years.

Sunday shopping ban is next level

Lol we got emergency alerts on our phones about the QC curfew.

No bars in Hull tonight, alas.

Newfoundland only got Sunday shopping in 1998. Should've stayed how it was, Sundays were super chill.

to my previous post.. this is just my head spinning a bit. Here we've gone from a case or two a day to per capita cases per day about on the level of Ontario now (if these numbers still mean much). They still report numbers as though they have any distinction between "contact of a previous case" or "under investigation". This week we were told to contact trace ourselves, Public Health is done with that. All cases are reported as "under investigation". ...by those infected? OK.

Kids are going back to school online. But restaurants are open, half capacity.

https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ontario-to-stop-collecting-covid-19-numbers-from-school-boards-suspend-reporting-of-cases-1.5724870

What does that mean exactly? Individual boards were reporting before the break--my board, Peel; you just had to look it up--but is that a separate thing from the province's own reporting? I can't figure that out from this story.

The ministry also laid out in the memo steps on how school boards can minimize school closures due to operational reasons related to "high rates of expected absenteeism" among staff.

I got a call today for a supply job next week. I hung up before getting the details, then booked off for the month. As I indicated above, I don't want to go back until I get boosted. I'm contributing to a looming absenteeism catastrophe, but I just don't want to be in there until I get that third shot. (If I did, as I suspect, come out of an Omicron infection, have I now built up immunity to that? Thing is, I'll never know if I did or not.)

BREAKING: @ongov to announce (imminently) schools will go online for the next 2 weeks. As bitter a pill for some who will struggle mightily during this time, this will afford some needed time to upgrade safety measures, defuse the surge of Omicron.

— Abdu Sharkawy (@SharkawyMD) January 3, 2022

Not sure about that source

Not to sound naive, but he looks pretty legitimate; guessing it's true. Not surprised, if so--the two-day postponement always struck me as ludicrous.

Schools moved online for at least two week; indoor dining, gyms, museums, etc closed; WFH if possible; non-urgent medical procedures paused (!):

New modelling from Public Health Ontario on hospital admissions shows that the Omicron variant will overwhelm the entire health system.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ford-public-health-measures-jan-3-1.6302531

Music lessons specifically mentioned in the full printed statement this time, sigh: https://covid-19.ontario.ca/public-health-measures

nonsense of quebec's authoritarian measures made transparent by: "oh also shops will be closed on sundays???"

― sean gramophone, Thursday, December 30, 2021 8:25 PM (four days ago) bookmarkflaglink

craziest thing about this was that grocery stores are not considered essential services and were closed sunday. only deps and pharmacies

I haven't really processed the Ontario changes yet; I keep getting e-mails or FB posts about this or that closing. It really is going to feel like April 2020 for at least a couple of weeks, probably longer.

Today's COVID-19 briefing in B.C. marks a significant shift in the province's fight against the virus.
Businesses and people know what to do to prevent spread.
Health orders are not the long term solution. #bcpoli

— Richard Zussman (@richardzussman) January 4, 2022

we're on our own, baby!

the pacific wild west

https://thetyee.ca/News/2022/01/04/BC-FOI-Missing-COVID-19-Data/

funny enough, before the pandemic, i requested copies of some forms from the ministry of health i had personally filled out. i needed them to figure out some personal information i had written but had forgotten what i had put down. i was actually given the option to request this information and i took them up on it. what a mistake that was. i was transferred to some weird department (i guess it must've been the privacy department?) and they asked me why i wanted that information. after i explained why, they told me they couldn't release it to me. i told them i was entitled to it under the privacy act and that they had even told me i could request the forms. the lady on the phone gave me the strangest runaround and weirdest excuse. i don't even remember what she said but she was trying to dissuade me from requesting it.

in the end, she budged. she quoted a delivery time that was ridiculously long. i think it was more than 30 days or something. i finally received the copies of the forms i filled out maybe 30 days later or so. the kicker: the information i needed from the form had been blocked out with black squares.

so, yes, i'm not surprised. we're all just sheep and do as the government says because we have no other choice. we're left in the dark about a lot of stuff through bureaucracy. they know they can get away with it. keeping us ignorant of the real details is how they control all of us. honestly, fuck the dumb provincial and federal governments.

yeah this policy was pretty much bullshit: https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/british-columbia/b-c-government-brings-in-10-application-fee-for-freedom-of-information-requests-1.6264020

New thread: Down With the Sickness: Canadian Politics 2022