Canada's vaccination rate overtakes US
bbc.com
bbc.com
I'm pleasantly surprised. I honestly expected it to drop off after about 70% and for us to start running out of volunteers not much after the USA. I guess people's hesitancy has dissipated. And the antivax spectre was overblown, at least here. Some local data for the curious: https://russell-pollari.github.io/ontario-covid19/vaccinatio...
That might be a different definition, though (e.g. full population vs those over 18) or data may be lagging for either source.
Canada has had some of the longest, most evidence-free lockdowns of any Western country. Our vaccine acquisition strategy was a disaster, saved only by the near miraculous ramp-up in manufacturing capacity by two American pharmaceutical companies: Moderna and Pfizer. None of those vaccines were manufactured in Canada.
The federal government effectively doubled the national debt in about a year, firehosing money to any and all causes indiscriminately. Small businesses like restaurants and gyms remained closed or severely restricted in much of the country for well over a year, while large foreign businesses like Costco and Amazon thrived. Only in the last month have things started to open up again.
Provinces instituted draconian restrictions, up to an including a months-long 8PM curfew in the province of Quebec. Movement between provinces, a constitutionally-guaranteed freedom, was severely curtailed - roadblocks with police presence were often set up to prevent "non-essential" travel within the country.
All manner of restrictions on fundamental freedoms were reaffirmed by the courts, relying heavily one Section 1 of the Charter of Rights and Freedoms as its escape clause: "Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms guarantees the rights and freedoms set out in it subject only to such reasonable limits prescribed by law as can be demonstrably justified in a free and democratic society."
Translation: fundamental rights can be abrogated by government whenever it's convenient to do so.
The minority federal government used the pandemic opportunistically, shutting down legitimate investigations into misuse of government funds and ramming through legislation that was unrelated to the pandemic - draconian gun control legislation, massive increases in carbon taxes, regulation of social media, "hate speech" laws that aim to severely curtail freedom of expression, the list goes on. Any criticism of these bills was met with cries of "Now is not the time for criticism, this is a pandemic!".
With a useless senate, captive courts, and weak opposition parties, our government has shown itself to be a rather authoritarian one. And with no term limits, it's quite possible we could be under the thumb of incompetent authoritarianism-lite for the next decade.
The worst part is that few Canadians seem to be bothered by this.
Not sure if the facts agree with you here. Canada had, at one point, the largest number of vaccines on order per capita from a number of different companies. [0]
You seem to dismiss this news which contradicts your point - that Canada has better vaccination outcomes than those countries who DO produce vaccines, like the US and the UK, to say nothing of peer countries like Australia. [1]
Certainly many aspects of the pandemic response could have been massively improved on — but I’m not sure if there’s any citizen of any country that doesn’t feel that way today.
My suggestion: open your eyes a bit and take a moment to be thankful for the relatively good outcomes we’ve enjoyed vs the rest of the world. We’re not under anyone’s thumb yet.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/15/us/coronavirus-vaccine-do... [1] https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
I was also going mask-free in Texas over 3 months before I was able to do so in Alberta. When I returned to Canada, I risked huge fines by refusing to stay in a government-mandated quarantine hotel (despite the fact that I was already fully vaccinated), and still had to quarantine at home for 2 weeks. Again, despite the fact that I was fully vaccinated.
No quarantine at all was required when I landed in Texas 6 weeks prior to that.
A lot of Canadians blindly point to mortality statistics without a) correcting for differences that predate covid, and b) consideration of fundamental freedoms. This is apparently a minority view in Canada, but I (and many others) value preservation of natural rights over safetyism.
There's a lot I disagree with in how you're framing your post, but I'll only address this:
What you describe is a good thing.
Borrowing lots of money during a crisis to avoid long-term damage is the best possible use of national debt (whereas compensating for a budget in deficit, the usual offender, is the worst).
We often forget that money is a virtual thing. It's a signal of where value should be distributed. During a crisis, firehosing money towards closed-down businesses is saying "this crisis is only temporary, these businesses should still be able to operate when the economy opens up again".
Politicians spent irresponsibly in 2020 and continue to do so now. A cursory examination of even recent history (see: the 90s) is enough to show that we are in for a world of financial hurt within the next decade as interest rates rise to combat inflation.
And Section 6 of the charter says:
"Every citizen of Canada and every person who has the status of a permanent resident of Canada has the right
a) to move to and take up residence in any province; and
b) to pursue the gaining of a livelihood in any province."
Even at the most locked down you could still move to one of the Atlantic provinces if you were taking up residence/starting a job there.
The limitations were IMO reasonable and a big part of the reason the Atlantic provinces did so much better at controlling spread was because they limited travelers.
And they have the media in their pockets so no one will complain. Until recently we were forced to wear a mask always, even if we were completely alone in the middle of the street. The police kicked doors down if they suspected there was a reunion going on in your private property. It was a nightmare.
If you are American, cherish your freedom! You don't know how valuable it is.
Heath cards. You're welcome to attempt to get a third dose.
> I also mixed [] and had a terrible reaction
And I had the same and had a terrible reaction, including vomiting. Both our situations are anecdotal though. I haven't seen any research showing that the reactions to mixing mRNA vaccines is worse.
> I then discovered the CDC does not advise mixing
Not for any known negative reason though. The WHO is fine with it, and so is the UK, Spain, and Germany (among others).
> The Canadian Immunization Research Network is performing active surveillance for adverse events after immunization against COVID-19. You are being invited to take part because you have been vaccinated against COVID-19 and agreed to be contacted about vaccine studies. The purpose of the study is to see how often health events occur after COVID-19 vaccination. If you might be interested in helping with this surveillance, please visit https://CANVAS-COVID.ca for additional information on how to participate. Your participation is entirely voluntary.
This is literally fake news.[1]
“It’s a little bit of a dangerous trend here. We are in a data-free, evidence-free zone as far as mix and match,” Soumya Swaminathan told an online briefing.[2]
[1]https://globalnews.ca/news/8021692/mixing-covid-19-vaccines-... [2]https://www.reuters.com/business/healthcare-pharmaceuticals/...
Which makes sense because while there is no evidence against mixing and matching, there is not very strong evidence in favor either.
So the mix and match should only be done at the guidance of a public health agency which might, for example, recognize that due to a constraint in the supply of Moderna doses, they may be better off taking the slight risk that mixing might cause some issues in a small number of people (again there is no evidence that this is the case), than the much greater risk caused by a large percentage of the population not being fully vaccinated.
The CDC therefore does not recommend mixing because over the past few months the US has acquired enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the country which is not the case for all but a handful of other countries.
That statement applies to most medical interventions before testing. If a public health organization thinks they’ll need to mix doses, they should have the foresight to sponsor a trial. It’s very ethically questionable to foist untested interventions on your citizenry.
I can understand that you may have to inform your practicioner as they may not have permission to automatically access your data.
By contrast, Canada seems to have hit an inflection point in mid-June, at about 90 doses per 100 persons.
In Canada, about 13 percent of persons are under 12 years of age, and the vaccines are not permitted for them. Therefore, in rough terms, the pattern so far is indicating that essentially every eligible Canadian is likely to receive the vaccine. Linear extrapolation based on vaccination rates over the past 10 days suggests that this result may be achieved in under 2 months. Naturally, linear extrapolation is a problem in a system like this, but the Canadian data are not sufficiently past the inflection point to justify nonlinear regression.
The Canadian story is being played out in several other countries as well: inflection points occur somewhere above 80 doses per 100 persons.
As in so many things, the USA is exceptional.
Graphs, as of today, are at https://imgur.com/a/hANzuWt, based on data from covid.ourworldindata.org. (I don't want to post my website where this graph is auto-updated daily, along with case data for various nations, plus provincial data in Canada and state data in the USA, simply because it is on a server in a research group that cannot withstand hackernews-scale traffic.)
Japan - 119
Canada - 696
Germany - 1,093
France - 1,704
US - 1,876
UK - 1,886
Italy - 2,118
Judged by this metric, Canada came second among the major first-world democracies. We did well. To be sure, there were missteps. We should have done better. But we could also have done a whole lot worse.
Disclaimer: Canadian
2) Mixing Ox/Az w/ mRNA vaccinations has been shown to be better than 2x Ox/Ax [1]
3) Pfizer, Moderna, AZ/Covishield, and J&J are the only approved vaccines. Certainly no "soup of the day" [2]
I hardly think any of this is "cringe".
[0] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/201...
[1] https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/mixing-vaccines-pfizer-astraz...
[2] https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/cor...
Source: google it
https://health-infobase.canada.ca/covid-19/vaccination-cover...
After the initial safety trials showing that these vaccines have no significant adverse effects, we should have just gotten a dozen YOLO engineers and statisticians to run any permutation of dosage, duration, and vaccine candidate; much like how software companies run thousands of A/B tests at scale.
It's a frigging pandemic with millions of deaths, there's no time to waste jacking off bureaucrats.
Really, there's no good reason that clinical trials should cost $$$$-$$$$$ per participant. Here's how much it should cost:
~$20: targeted ads enrolling one participant
~$20: doses of the vaccine for one participant
~$30: distribution and logistics
~$100: human staffing and follow up
~$5: experiment analysis
Instead, everything gets ballooned up by 10x or 50x because of arcane legislation. In the middle of a global pandemic.
> There exists in such a case a certain institution or law; let us say, for the sake of simplicity, a fence or gate erected across a road. The more modern type of reformer goes gaily up to it and says, “I don’t see the use of this; let us clear it away.” To which the more intelligent type of reformer will do well to answer: “If you don’t see the use of it, I certainly won’t let you clear it away. Go away and think. Then, when you can come back and tell me that you do see the use of it, I may allow you to destroy it.”
I, for one, would try to run clinical trials the total opposite from software companies.
"Fail fast, fail often" nor "Iterate fast, release often" really work for healthcare.
In Canada, Astrazeneca was available to anyone who wanted it if you wanted to skip the line for mRNA and be vaccinated immediately. Originally this was before the (likely overblown) health concerns with Astrazeneca.
As a Canadian, I found the roll out to be quite organized. The original promise was that all Canadians would have access to a vaccine by September and it looks like we will meet that goal handedly. I wouldn't call it a disaster at all. But then I don't live in Ontario.
The mix of vaccine shots doesn’t bother me.
Indeed comparing and following the USA is a problem.
The rules changed all the time and with no explanation or justification. Government ministries didn't speak to one another or the regions. Multiple times the education minister said schools were opening while the premier said they were staying closed (or vice versa).
Vaccinations were delegated almost entirely to the regions and it was complete chaos, especially since the pharmacies were left to do all their own booking. I registered with the region and over 30 pharmacies to get my first dose. Then I got offers of first dose for more than a month after that I had to keep cancelling. 2nd dose was much more straight forward, but that was just luck since I know plenty of people who had to search and scramble.
The re-opening stages have minimal differences between them and don't offer any incentive to get vaccinated since there are no exceptions or enhancements for those fully vaccinated.
Government failed us pretty hard.
My experiences with the provincial registration system in Ontario, were the complete opposite of yours. They were very good. Once my demographic became eligible, it was a single form to book an appointment. The actual vaccine clinics were quite efficient, and the followup (if you opted-in) was quick and easy.
The hardest part was waiting. Vaccines supply was the issue, but given Canada’s bargaining position (essentially none?) I’m shocked we got them as quickly as we did.
It did!