On October 1st 2022, the Government of Canada removed all COVID-19 border measures such as required proof of vaccination, random testing, and mandatory isolation for high-risk travelers. For the first time since early 2020, the Canadian border is operating under “normal” conditions. For example: Americans interested in visiting Canada no longer need to download the […]
As of April 1st 2022, the Canadian border will no longer require a pre-arrival negative COVID-19 test from fully vaccinated travellers entering or returning to the country. Previously, a rapid antigen test or a PCR test indicating a person does not have COVID was required by border authorities. This rule change should encourage Canadians to […]
After being closed for nearly 19 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on November 8th 2021 the United States land border officially opened to all fully vaccinated Canadians. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced they will be staffing their border at pre-pandemic levels, but warns that wait times may be longer than in […]
On August 9th 2021, Canada opened its border to all fully vaccinated Americans allowing tourists from the United States to visit the country once again. The US border remains closed to Canadians, however, and American authorities recently extended the border closure until September 21st citing COVID-19 transmission rates south of the border as well as […]
Most Canadians are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Consequently, Canadians are starting to think about international travel again, and are beginning to research possible vacation destinations. This leads to the question, which countries can a fully vaccinated Canadian visit? As of July 2021, Canadian citizens who have received two doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, or […]
…Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold;Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate int…
A new provincial political party recently formed here, calling themselves the Sask United Party, which intends to out-conservative the existing Saskatchewan Party. Basically, I think its just another Cat party trying to pretend to be mice (see…
Here’s how I see it: First of all, Canadian voters haven’t turfed Trudeau in three elections and chances are they won’t in the 2025 either. The opinion polls are back and forth a bit – and who knows now what might be an issue in BC and Quebec…
I do keep wondering what, exactly, this China scandal is all about: Seriously. Watching journalists in Canada is like watching 7 year olds playing soccer. Just a gaggle of kids chasing the ball. No strategy or plan. Only focused on one ball …
Its the weekend, so here we go with some random stuff from the lighter side. BBC News posted an very odd tweet about how the pandemic hadn’t really affected anyone’s mental health – and the internet immediately went nuts:I built my cat a mech suit…
I thought this was outstanding: And with a disturbing rise in anti-transgender hate here in Canada and around the world recently, I want to be very clear about one more thing: Trans women are women. We will always stand up to this hate – whenever and …
Dogs, bruh!Great, now I have to go buy twice as many tennis balls. https://t.co/PMJnXwp8lJ— Gerggers (@gerggers) February 23, 2023this dog is friends with a crow and it’s like a real life pixar movie(jukin media) pic.twitter.com/A3pKDJOb…
First, a few cartoons I found about how crazy the anti-woke MAGA is getting:
Another word for “woke” is “kindness”
— Bob Rae (@BobRae48) March 3, 2023
And now, the hysterical MAGA reaction:
I dunno. I think the goobers might be telling on themselves when Bob Rae says a synonym for woke is kindness and they go full rage badger.
— Jay Gamble (@DrJayDrNo) March 4, 2023
If “kindness” is a bridge too far, then another word for “woke” could be “decency”. https://t.co/viYcOj9MnZ
— Scribulatora (@Scribulatora) March 4, 2023
I hear you and I’m sick of the intellectual dishonesty too.
Being #woke means being an aware and educated human being that thinks critically about political and social issues, injustices and sources of #misinformation and #disinformation.— timethief 🇨🇦 progressive left center voter (@timethief) March 4, 2023
Kayla Kisseadoo, a college student in Florida, had something to say:
“Woke? You mean practicing basic empathy? Valuing people who are part of your community?”
pic.twitter.com/O9Cslwh6XS— Rex Chapman🏇🏼 (@RexChapman) March 3, 2023
In Dan Rather’s substack Steady tonight, he and Elliot Kirschner ask “Does Anti-Wokeness Resonate?”:
In our bifurcated bubble-induced political ecosystems, trends can pop up, escalate, and reverberate with such ferocity that those who are exposed to them see them everywhere. But it is unclear how much they escape the echo chambers to permeate society at large.These thoughts come to mind around a term that has become so ubiquitous in right-wing political and media circles it might as well have its own show on Fox News. The term is “woke” … [which] originated in African American English to mean an “awareness of racial and social justice.” But it has since been appropriated by the political right as a cudgel to attack any reckoning around the injustices and inequalities of American history and society. These “anti-woke” crusaders love saying the word with the winks, sneers, and glee that their political ilk had once reserved for railing against “political correctness.”If you happen upon a Republican campaign rally, “woke” probably competes with words like “the” and “a” for total number of utterances. And there is no level of shame in how low pandering politicians will stoop in warning of the purported dangers of “wokeness.” Nikki Haley, the supposedly sober-minded and serious Republican presidential candidate, recently said “wokeness is a virus more dangerous than any pandemic.” Remind us again how many people have died from wokeness as compared to COVID?
Yes, just like the Marvel Universe and the Star Wars Universe, there is now a MAGA Universe that is creating its own hysterical version of reality:
It can’t be overstated how little the trending topics at CPAC – wokeness, gas stoves, Chinese balloons, Hunter Biden’s laptop, ivermectin, Don Lemon, Twitter shadowbans, Mr. Potato Head’s gender – mean to most Americans. It’s gibberish if you’re not in the right wing bubble.
— Mike Rothschild (no relation) (@rothschildmd) March 2, 2023
So, let me get this straight:
MAGA wants to bring back lynching.
They want to ban Black history.
They want to ban books.
They want LGBTQ back in the closet.
They want to eliminate Women’s body autonomy.MAGA means “let’s go back to the 1940s.”
WOKE means “FUCK THAT.”— BrooklynDad_Defiant!☮️ (@mmpadellan) March 3, 2023
“OK team. What are we outraged about today?”
“I don’t know. Maybe…. Canada?”
“Give me more.”
“Gay Canada. No — atheist Canada.”
“Missing something. Gimme cowbell.”
“Dictatorship?”
“More cowbell!”
“Atheist totalitarianism in Canada!”
“Hell yeah!” https://t.co/y6gMRmR8Sh— Dan Gardner (@dgardner) March 3, 2023
On the Canadian side, here is a great photo of Canadian MAGA that Brittlestar describes very well:
When you bring your friend to a restaurant and find out it’s Woke Moralists Eat Free night pic.twitter.com/AZshLd5DbX
— Brittlestar (@brittlestar) March 4, 2023
And this:
“I’m not washing my hands just because some woke moralist put up a tyrannical “Please Wash Your Hands” sign in the washroom!” https://t.co/eeT0rCZF8m
— Thesis Pi (@ThesisPi) March 4, 2023
Speaking of hysterical over-reactions, in other news of the day, Hershey’s Chocolates are being targeted by Canadian MAGA for daring to use a Canadian transgender woman as one of the women in their International Women’s Day “her/she” campaign.
Johnstone’s presence on the candy bar, however, has also garnered praise as well. #HerForShe #IWD #TransWomenAreWomen https://t.co/ZUmZ1KZy8v
— Justin Gibson (@JGibsonDem) March 3, 2023
A social media campaign by U.S.-based chocolate giant Hershey’s has garnered both a hateful response and a loud chorus of support after a call to boycott the brand’s chocolates over ads featuring a Canadian transgender woman.For International Women’s Day, Hersheys Canada has released five limited edition “HER for SHE” chocolate bars, featuring the faces of five women to “shine a light on women and girls who inspire us every day.”The chocolate bars feature Autumn Peltier, an Indigenous rights and water activist, Naila Moloo, a teenage climate innovator, Rita Audi, a gender and education equality activist, Kélicia Massala, the founder of Girl up Québec and Fae Johnstone, a transgender activist and the executive director of consulting firm Wisdom2Action.The campaign was meant to celebrate women and note the ongoing fight for equity, according to Hershey’s. It is donating up to $40,000 to Girl Up, a group that focuses on women’s equity.When the HER for SHE bar launched on March 1, Johnstone posted that she was honoured to be featured.In the social media campaign video, the 27-year-old raises an eyebrow, twirls and talks about creating a world where people live in “public space as their honest and authentic selves.”“I hope this campaign shows trans girls they can dream big and change the world, too.”After #BoycottHersheys started trending, she posted Thursday, saying it “shows just how far we still have to go in the fight for feminist liberation and trans rights.”“I’m not going anywhere. I’m not shutting up. I will always stand up for women and girls, cis and trans.”“Spurring an international campaign to boycott a chocolate company definitely wasn’t on my list of predictions for 2023,” she quipped.
Yes, there’s lots to chuckle at MAGA about, with these crazy goings-on — but MAGA hate isn’t really funny, is it.
As goes the U.S., so goes Canada. We’ve seen it in the backlash Fae Johnstone got to her Hershey Canada spot.
The absolute hatred being stoked is frightening. Trans people just want to live their lives but there are forces at work trying to eradicate them. https://t.co/dABJA48bf2
— Ted Raymond (@TedFriendlyGuy) March 4, 2023
A batch of very good substacks this week. When it comes to the news of the day, the conclusion of the Canadian columnists I read is this: 1. If China interfered in Canadian elections and the Liberals let them, then there needs to be an invest…
First, here’s something I didn’t know: Reservation runway: Rising Cree designer makes New York runway debut — ‘The future is going to be Indigenous-led’: designer Scott Wabano /via @CBCMontreal https://t.co/5ADVQ8anAR— Treaty Commissioner (@TreatyOffi…
A year ago, Russia launched its unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. A year later, Ukraine still stands. There is lots of commentary today about how Ukraine did this — Zelenskyy’s brilliant leadership, the indominable spirt of Ukraine’s people, t…
Yes, “home on Native land” is exactly right. Some Canadians may be freaking out about this national anthem version at the NBA All-Star game, but I think it’s perfectly justified: “Our home ON native land” -@JullyBlack 🙌🏽 pic.twitter.com/SMoxKHkMPE— And…
I still love this cartoon, from a year ago. Here’s one more great comment about the Rouleau report:So far it seems, according to Justice Rouleau, @JustinTrudeau’s worst fault regarding the convoy protest is that he said some things that some of th…
TL;DR Breaking: #POEC report “Canada’s use of Emergency Act justified due to shit policing and ongoing political interference and douchebaggery from the great unwashed” (I’m paraphrasing). Now go get jobs.— Dean Blundell🇨🇦 (@ItsDeanBlundell) February …
One of the things I love about social media is that we keep finding “some guy” who knows an awful lot of great stuff.For example, here is a Balloon Juice post with an outstanding discussion thread: Sunday Night Open Thread: Chatbot vs Jagoffs. The pos…
I know I’m pushing the season a little — six weeks until opening day! – but in honour of Superbowl Weekend, here’s some baseball stuff: Some of the worst baseball you’ll ever see pic.twitter.com/qURCSX3HtW— Shit Bsb Players Say (@ShitBsbPlyrsSay) Feb…
A roundup of this week’s news: First, this happened on Tuesday — weird, wasn’t it: The handshake. pic.twitter.com/9KBgNH1mcP— Andrew Brown (@browncbc) February 7, 2023 I can’t believe this needs to be said but- if you’re meeting the bloody Prim…
I said this years ago and I say it again today: We don’t get to choose the battle. We only get to choose our side. Right now, Canada finds itself dealing with Islamophobia and the anti-Muslim Bill 21 law in Quebec. This isn’t an issue t…
I noticed some of the kids from down the block coming home from school yesterday and one of them was wearing shorts ….Here’s some thoughtful, interesting, and funny stuff I have collected over the last week or so.First, the thoughtful:#Maddow20 years…
The Public Order Emergency Commission report is due this month, but already we have an initial report from the Ottawa People’s Commission — a community initiative set up last June when it looked like official Ottawa just wanted to deep-six the whole m…
I’ve been noticing and collecting a variety of recent posts and tweets about Covid and our situation these days, and the challenges we will be facing in 2023.
In the COVID era, the vulnerable people die earlier, the remained ones become vulnerable earlier.
— Hiroshi Yasuda (保田浩志) (@Yash25571056) January 14, 2023
And as for the continuing political implications:
Many people expected a huge explosion in babies after everybody stayed home for COVID but I didn’t realize they would be 20-50 year old men flying “F*ck Trudeau” flags screaming about imaginary rights they don’t understand.
— Dean from Winnipeg (@Dean_Winnipeg) January 30, 2023
Yes indeed:
… the same people who were wrong to say that we all had to catch it are the same people who were wrong to say that there is no way to stop it are the same people who were wrong to say that it’s just a cold are the same people who were wrong to say that kids don’t get sick …
— tern (@1goodtern) January 30, 2023
… are the same people who were wrong to say that there is no airborne transmission are the same people who were wrong to say that the pandemic would only affect people in China because western healthcare is better are the same people who are all complete and utter idiots.
— tern (@1goodtern) January 30, 2023
Why do we even hear from any single one of these people ever any more?
— tern (@1goodtern) January 30, 2023
But wait, there’s more….
When people start to develop immunity to a virus, it must evolve to be able to continue to infect people. Three years into our coexistence with SARS-2, most people on the planet have either been infected (in some cases several times) or vaccinated (in some cases multiple times) or some combination of the two. The virus must employ new tricks to get around our mounting defenses.“It is important to explain that variants will continue to emerge as the very survival of the virus depends on it,” Pollard explained. “We can expect new variants for the rest of our collective lifetimes, but we might anticipate less frequent waves in the future as immunity across the population continues to build.”
Others are not so sanquine about the virus evolution:
Canada had its worst year of the pandemic in 2022. Four waves caused by different Omicron variants. Now we have a sustained level of virus and hospitalizations caused by the “variant soup”. Forgive me if I don’t agree that we should stop talking about variant evolution. pic.twitter.com/4A1V5zYWWy
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) January 17, 2023
In The Tyee, Andrew Nikiforuk writes We Now Face An Army of Covid Viruses — a useful article to read in full, but here is a summary of his points:
Here are six observations on viral evolution and how it may shape our lives in this, the fourth year of the pandemic.
1. One virus has become many…2. The new COVID soup is a unique experiment in evolution…3. What were viral peaks are now a constant rising sea of infections with high and low tides…4. One pandemic has morphed into regional epidemics…5. Reinfections rarely happened. Now they are commonplace…6. We can do more to blunt the evolutionary threat of COVID subvariants…
🇨🇦 Did you know that Canada recently passed 50,000 COVID deaths?https://t.co/UW7LCjptt1
3/
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) January 26, 2023
~~~
🇨🇦 Did you know that there are now more than 700 Omicron subvariants, and that many of them can escape prior immunity and are resistant to available treatments?
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) January 26, 2023
~~~
🇨🇦 Did you know that the pandemic is not over?
11/ pic.twitter.com/0if90T3RPA
— T. Ryan Gregory (@TRyanGregory) January 26, 2023
Some recent comments on Covid epidemiology:
The COVID pandemic will not disappear until engineers address the niche the virus favours, says MIT nuclear engineer Charles Forsberg: dirty air in crowded indoor spaces, a product of modern buildings designed to save energy.https://t.co/t0FVc5Zpd1
— The Tyee (@TheTyee) January 12, 2023
We are dealing with a rapidly mutating, novel, airborne virus. Virologists said from the beginning that we needed to lower transmission or the virus would mutate too fast for our vaccines & treatments to keep up. That’s what’s happening now b/c ppl didn’t listen.
— Bree Newsome Bass (@BreeNewsome) January 16, 2023
The deadliest misinformation about Covid was that there was immunity by infection
In its pursuit
And in its aftermath
— Anthony J Leonardi, PhD, MS (@fitterhappierAJ) January 27, 2023
Here are some comments about Long Covid:
This is a must-read about how public health officials and government are silent on the crisis of Long Covid disability.
As @sophiehh14 reminds us, BC has not even tried to determine how many are suffering from Long Covid. How much of the workforce is affected? https://t.co/ZUqU50BBkO
— Andrew Longhurst #VaccinesPlus (@a_longhurst) January 27, 2023
And we shared the frustration that most clinicians can’t or won’t see the linkage between upstream sars-2, and downstream infection or autoimmunity. They ARE linkable via history, serology or even PCR (seeing a high cycle positive “tail”)
— David Fisman (@DFisman) January 27, 2023
Which effects of Covid are permanent?
Are people who are 25 now and infected twice a year going to carry their immune system damage all their life?
I would recommend not using yourself for practical research to answer this one. https://t.co/vNCYYAIOof— tern (@1goodtern) January 27, 2023
I read a lot of Covid research.
See my pinned tweet for the angle I view it from.
I don’t understand all the research, but here’s what I do understand:Specialists representing every bodily function are completely freaked out by what SARS-CoV-2 is damaging in their area.
🔥👇— tern (@1goodtern) January 17, 2023
~~~
Do you know the prefix ‘dys’?
It basically means ‘off balance’.Use Google’s search engine.
Write ‘ Covid dys ‘ into the search bar, wait a moment, then look at the autocomplete suggestions. pic.twitter.com/tnSTf9tmAO
— tern (@1goodtern) January 17, 2023
Long Covid now seems to be called Covid DECATI – Delayed Effect Cardiovascular And Thrombotic Injury:
A friend had Covid in July and a heart attack four weeks later.
That’s Covid Decati.Covid DECATI.
Delayed
Effect
Cardiovascular
And
Thrombotic
Injury.#CovidDecati— tern (@1goodtern) January 21, 2023
‘ ~~~
If you want to know what you can do about it, I’m afraid my best advice is to stop catching Covid, and try to live healthily.
Good diet, good weight, good lifestyle.I come at this from the risk reduction and hazard prevention point of view. 😔
— tern (@1goodtern) January 21, 2023
Finally, some new statistics on excess deaths.
The anti-vaccine and anti-public health restrictions crowd has always tried to pin excess deaths on anything but the actual virus that vaccines and public health restrictions try to contain and limit, and the data keeps telling them, nope.
— Bruce Arthur (@bruce_arthur) January 20, 2023
Stats Canada recently released some info about Canada’s excess deaths over the last three years — more than 50,000 extra from January 2020 to October 2022, mostly due to Covid and its damage to our health, but also due to drug overdoses.
There is evidence of excess mortality when weekly deaths are consistently higher than the expected number, but especially when they exceed the range of what is expected over several consecutive weeks.Provisional data show there were an estimated 53,741 excess deaths in Canada from the end of March 2020 to the end of August 2022, 7.6% more deaths than expected had there not been a pandemic. During this period, at least 42,215 deaths were directly attributed to COVID-19.
The worst times in Canada for excess deaths were January/ February 2022 in Ontario and Quebec, and mid-April/ mid-May 2022 in Alberta and BC.
Excess deaths in 2022 among worst in 50 years https://t.co/k2txe3is2V
— BBC News (UK) (@BBCNews) January 10, 2023
Modern humans are actually terrible at holding more than one piece of information in our minds at a time, but please try to understand that 20% excess deaths probably means excess other things like disability and hospitalisation and unemployment and illness. https://t.co/T0QDFvaN2y
— tern (@1goodtern) January 25, 2023
Finally, an interesting thread on Covid in the workforce:
The merchants of doubt spent a year trying to make the labour shortage seem like a mystery that had nothing to do w the virus. They openly mocked anyone that brought up long covid. It took a year but the media is finally pointing out that millions of workers are dead or disabled.
— Dr. Lisa Iannattone (@lisa_iannattone) January 30, 2023
Most of the media and their go-to pundits avoid addressing any science and data that might cause fear or discomfort for as long as they possibly can. Until it can’t be ignored anymore. When did feeling scared in times of uncertainty become a fate worse than long term disability?
— Dr. Lisa Iannattone (@lisa_iannattone) January 30, 2023
All of the soothing messaging being pushed in the media seems to be designed to dismantle our self-preservation instinct. Meanwhile, you know who’s still big on self-preservation? The Davos class. Hmmm 🤔
We should all be #DavosSafe.
— Dr. Lisa Iannattone (@lisa_iannattone) January 30, 2023
Tern gets the last word:
Which one of these two points do you think will come first?
A) The moment it’s forking obvious that the reason everyone’s unable to work is long covid.
B) Widespread brain decerebration to the extent that no one can understand anything at all anyway— tern (@1goodtern) January 30, 2023
UPDATE: Just saw this one, about booster shots:
Great thread here about a very pertinent study. Echoes a lot of my thoughts re. COVID-19 boosters.
In practical terms, I’m going to be hunting down either a second Moderna bivalent dose or Novavax in the next 1-2 months. I wish they were updated much more frequently, though. https://t.co/VoCr1ylboO
— Adithya Ramachandran (@AdithyaR_YXE) January 31, 2023
Here are some of the funny tweets and stories I have seen over the last couple of weeks: I am so tired of living like it’s the 1600s. Can I afford eggs at the market? Are my friends gonna die in the plague? Puritans coming for my sinful lifestyle. I wa…
I used to title these posts “From the Substacks” but good commentary is not just Substacks these days, its Medium and Patreon and blogs and opinion pieces from all over. So I will call these posts Today’s Scene – a collection of observations and o…
Was there ever a conspiracy theory more bizarre, more crazy, than believing that Russia was behind Trump’s unexpected 2016 election victory? But just because something sounds crazy doesn’t mean it isn’t true. For years now, I have believed so…
First, a few recent cartoons:
Global distribution of flamingos pic.twitter.com/SfTDLzYfzV
—
Amazing Maps (@amazingmap) January 20, 2023
In 1992, around 29,000 rubber ducks fell off a cargo ship in the Pacific Ocean. This is where they made landfall. pic.twitter.com/DmIKUOBuN4
— Amazing Maps (@amazingmap) December 14, 2022
When you can’t afford a trip to Europe pic.twitter.com/xVtvzwJK7H
— Terrible Maps (@TerribleMaps) January 7, 2023
And in Milan, which is in northern Italy and closer to Central Europe, a great cathedral was commissioned in 1386.
It took centuries to build and mixed countless Gothic styles – from the Perpendicular to the Flamboyant – with Renaissance elements; the result was totally unique. pic.twitter.com/WTuG8w1frb
— The Cultural Tutor (@culturaltutor) January 21, 2023
— Papa Woof und Krampus und Bleaken (@woofknight) January 6, 2023
This is cute art for kids…pic.twitter.com/9ri9KkvHmC
— Figen (@TheFigen_) January 14, 2023
Here’s the full story! pic.twitter.com/dIHmGVMiz4
— WeRateDogs® (@dog_rates) January 18, 2023
AAAAAAAAY back ! https://t.co/qHHsE4ZREX
— Henry Winkler (@hwinkler4real) January 21, 2023
How big is this?
Please answer in jiraffes or half-jiraffes as is proper for asteroids.
— jrenom (@jrenom) January 20, 2023
(If you can’t remember the details about the “half a giraffe” asteroid measurement, its at the end of this post from March – Today’s News: The end of the beginning?)
Triggers 😂 pic.twitter.com/PqDeCcoykB
— James Cameron (@lumin8) January 21, 2023
On October 1st 2022, the Government of Canada removed all COVID-19 border measures such as required proof of vaccination, random testing, and mandatory isolation for high-risk travelers. For the first time since early 2020, the Canadian border is operating under “normal” conditions. For example: Americans interested in visiting Canada no longer need to download the […]
As of April 1st 2022, the Canadian border will no longer require a pre-arrival negative COVID-19 test from fully vaccinated travellers entering or returning to the country. Previously, a rapid antigen test or a PCR test indicating a person does not have COVID was required by border authorities. This rule change should encourage Canadians to […]
After being closed for nearly 19 months due to the COVID-19 pandemic, on November 8th 2021 the United States land border officially opened to all fully vaccinated Canadians. US Customs and Border Protection (CBP) has announced they will be staffing their border at pre-pandemic levels, but warns that wait times may be longer than in […]
On August 9th 2021, Canada opened its border to all fully vaccinated Americans allowing tourists from the United States to visit the country once again. The US border remains closed to Canadians, however, and American authorities recently extended the border closure until September 21st citing COVID-19 transmission rates south of the border as well as […]
Most Canadians are now fully vaccinated against COVID-19. Consequently, Canadians are starting to think about international travel again, and are beginning to research possible vacation destinations. This leads to the question, which countries can a fully vaccinated Canadian visit? As of July 2021, Canadian citizens who have received two doses of the Pfizer, Moderna, or […]