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 […]

Listen to Republican H.R. McMaster straight-up confirm the basis of the *first* Trump impeachment: that Trump stalled critical military aid for Ukraine to try to get election dirt on the Bidens. Sheesh. pic.twitter.com/YHVvA2cr9X— Heath Mayo (@HeathMay…

I suffer from”vellichor” myself!X is slowing down but I still find some great “long threads” posts.These comparison photos are fascinating:2. Big oak tree, Thomasville, Georgia, 1885 to 2020 pic.twitter.com/tHUe1j8fMZ— Time Capsule Tales (@timecaptales…

Last week, Ekos published the poll above – here is the discussion:Conservative Party Sees Seven-Point Decline: The Harris Effect? Party still leads by 14 points, would likely win majority if election were held tomorrow

The Conservative Party has enjoy…

Two stories today in the “Christ, What An Asshole” news, and its not surprising they concern Pierre Poilievre and Donald Trump.

He calls him sellout Singh and then asks for a favour? What a fuquing loser!— Shawna little knock🇨🇦 (@shawna_knock) Aug…

Why Poilievre wants an early election:

Ohhh THAT’S why Poilievre wanted the NDP to pull the plug on the Lib govt yesterday LOL. The Cons are in full panic mode: “Economy beats Bank of Canada forecast with 2.1% growthFastest growth since the first quar…

Sometimes I have thought that bloggers like me are too “down” on the media.And then then I see how many in the American media persist in living in a myth world where they can pretend there is still a reasonable choice to make about whether Harris or Tr…

Saturday, Aug 31 was International Overdose Awareness Day and in Saskatoon it was marked at Prairie Harm Reduction through memorial and remembrance. Here are photos and an article from The Star Phoenix:The photos show artist Kamisha Alexson …

I haven’t been following the Paralympics as much as I should have, but here’s some great news:GOLD FOR CANADA 🇨🇦 Nicholas Bennett wins Canada’s first gold medal at the Paralympics.He swims his way to gold in the 100m breaststroke SB14. It’s his second …

…Misinformation about COVID vaccines, and vaccines more generally, has become so entrenched and normalized that it now regularly forms part of political platforms.

Given that vaccines, including COVID vaccines, are widely considered one of the greatest achievements of biomedicine – it has been estimated that over the past 50 years vaccines have saved more than 150 million lives – this is a deeply worrying trend. We need to recognize that the merger of politics and vaccine misinformation is doing grave harm….

given the strong, broad and international scientific consensus on the value of COVID vaccines, how did we get here? Obviously, there are many factors at play, but, alas, the embrace of vaccine misinformation is increasingly about ideology.

Political identity has become one of the most significant – perhaps the most significant – variable predicting vaccine hesitancy, the embrace of vaccine misinformation, distrust of relevant scientific institutions, perceptions of risk surrounding vaccines, and belief in the efficacy of disproven COVID therapies (e.g., ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine). Indeed, numerous studies have shown a strong and growing association between vaccination hesitancy and ideology. In the U.S., political partisanship matters more than race, age, insurance coverage or education in predicting vaccine uptake. Studies have consistently shown that those who identify as Republican are much more likely to not get vaccinated and to hold a dim view of COVID vaccines. A 2024 study found that even the reporting of vaccine adverse events is influenced by political identity, showing that in Republican states, “vaccine recipients or their clinicians” are more likely “to report COVID-19 vaccine AEs” than in Democratic states.

A similar trend can be found around the world, including in Canada. ….

…The harms of increasingly politicized vaccine discourse are not isolated to COVID. The hesitancy created by the spread of misinformation during the pandemic has spilled over to adversely impact the perceptions of other beneficial vaccines. A 2024 study found, in the words of the researchers, that “conservatives in the United States spread their negative attitudes towards the COVID-19 vaccines to unrelated vaccines,” including flu, HPV, MMR and chickenpox. Studies show that politicizing public discourse about vaccines can also heighten equity issues and make it more difficult to counter harmful misinformation….

In The Tyee, Andrew Nikiforuk As COVID surges, the high price of vaccine denial

…As of mid-August, about one in every 19 British Columbians were enduring an infection, with or without symptoms.

Although the media routinely dismisses all COVID infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that’s not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health.

Repeated studies show in the bluntest terms that the initial acute infection is only the tip of the iceberg. Even a mild bout of COVID can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain function (see sidebar), long COVID (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes people more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers.

These problems can erupt three years after an infection and are especially prevalent in patients who’ve been hospitalized by COVID.

Which is why the U.S. immunologist and COVID specialist Dr. David Putrino emphasizes, “There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences.”…

on an annual basis COVID infections still account for 20 times more deaths than influenza.

The data is not complete but this death toll likely made COVID the second or leading cause of death in the country last month.

According to Moriarty’s data, the number of COVID deaths per infection remain highest in Newfoundland, New Brunswick and Saskatchewan because they have older populations often compromised by serious medical conditions. They are also served by shrinking health resources.

…According to an increasing number of researchers, immune deregulation triggered by COVID probably plays a significant role in the dramatic global upticks in infectious diseases. The suspects include RSV, a variety of herpes viruses, whooping cough (now burning up the charts in Canada and England), scarlet fever, dengue fever, fungal infections and tuberculosis. Forty-four countries have now reported a 10-fold increase in the incidence of at least one of 13 infectious diseases compared to trends prior to the pandemic.

Although vaccine hesitancy, climate change and permissive travel have also played a role in this microbial wave, researchers strongly suspect that COVID’s disruption of the immune system has made it harder for many people to fight other infections.

…Here, then, is where we’ve arrived. We’ve entered a vicious cycle where more infections generate more COVID variants. The new variants have become more immune evasive. At the same time society has generally abandoned masks, testing and basic public health messages.

We could slow and suppress the cycle by facing the challenge squarely. For example, by cleaning dirty air the way we once tackled the disease-ridden spectre of cholera-infested water.

But public health officials are afraid to talk about clean air let alone the obvious: avoiding infection.

Beating back COVID requires hard work, communal wisdom and clear policies that markedly reduce the level of infection in society.

To date we have chosen viral denial, dirty air and a triumphant reign for long COVID.

I don’t subscribe to the Globe and Mail now, so I can’t link to this article, but Picard always writes well:

Which is worse: Infectious diseases or the denial of their danger? In the age of #misinformation, bugs are spreading with ease, by ⁦@picardonhealth⁩ via ⁦@GlobeDebate⁩ #COVID19 #infodemic https://t.co/cxPZWbP1KA pic.twitter.com/9DDf57Y29V

— André Picard (@picardonhealth) September 3, 2024

Finally, some good news:

New report of a nasal vaccine booster provides strong, durable #SARSCoV2 cross-variant protection—preventing infection— compared with shots in non-human primateshttps://t.co/nOV0afzw85@NatImmunol pic.twitter.com/BRJin06Y4y

— Eric Topol (@EricTopol) September 3, 2024

Meanwhile, the United States has lost its mind:

BREAKING: Lifesaving medication for postpartum hemorrhaging is being pulled off emergency carts because of new Louisiana law reclassifying misoprostol as a controlled dangerous substance. My first @pulitzercenter StoryReach article for @IlluminatorLA https://t.co/RkmZd3n6V0

— Lorena O’Neil (@lorenaoneil) September 3, 2024

Canada is still mystified by Singh’s decision to “rip up” his Supply and Confidence agreement with Trudeau. 
Funny, most of the time when people “rip up agreements” it’s because the other side didn’t deliver. Notice @theJagmeetSingh never once men…

For years now, we have been told how successful the Canadian right-wing social media influencer pundit critics are. They told us during the Convoy how popular these yahoos were — because look at all the money they raised.  They told us how e…

David Rothkopf writes Navigating Bullshitworld How Do We Keep the Fires of the DNC Burning When So Many Seek to Douse Them With Torrents of Crap?: As the peaks of last week’s Democratic National Convention recede into memory I feel they are also a…

First, a glance at art:

Here’s a short look at politics with some compare-and-contrast posts:Similar photos that are miles apart… pic.twitter.com/PSBWuU7Q1m— Ab Gamble (@AbGamble1) August 20, 2024

He’s trolling Millhouse pretty hard. Keep up …

I’m seeing a number of news stories lately about how expertise is being downgraded, and experts dismissed. Tom Nichols talks about all this in his book, The Death of Expertise:Tom Nichols (@RadioFreeTom) answers that question in his great book: “The De…

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 […]

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 […]

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 […]

The Niagara Now newspaper committed real news this week! Covering a recent Poilievre speech at a Niagara-on-the-Lake food coop, reporter Richard Wright reported yesterday on Poilievre’s remarks and, remarkably, also explained how wrong and inaccur…

Over the last few weeks I have seen some interesting posts about art, culture, etc. that didn’t seem to fit into a daily post. So I have gathered them all together here. Enjoy! First, a fascinating assembly here — did you know that Leonardo Da Vi…

As summer turns into fall, its becoming increasingly obvious that the wannabe Emperors in our midst have no clothes.

Emperor Trump:Is it me or does it feel like someone hit a switch and all of a sudden a whole lot more people in this country were li…

Hey, on a side note, did you know that Harris and Walz both like to cook? I think that’s pretty great.Responding to another tweet, I posted this a couple of days ago and it now has hundreds of “likes”:
On a side note, maybe Tim and Kamala could have a …

Somebody posted Poilievre’s bizarre “morning in Canada” video on You-Tube before the CPC deleted it. It is creepy, out-of-touch with reality, and absolutely full of bees! Is it the CPC “communications experts” who are trying to manufacture a Canad…

 The Democratic Convention speeches tonight were outstanding, but none so much as Biden’s – Dark Brandon was in the house tonight, and unexpectedly, I found myself crying at the end – “America, I gave my best to you.”

Biden: America, I gave my …

Obama gave a great speech tonight at the DNC, but there was one “short” part in particular that will never be forgotten:Ok this is a perfect comedic delivery. pic.twitter.com/7ZOUaG9j19— Jason Kander (@JasonKander) August 21, 2024

He did. And ‘stuck’…

 Here is poet Amanda Gorman’s new poem The Sacred Scene at the Democratic National Convention. The speeches at this convention have been extraordinary. David Rothkopf thinks we’re seeing the beginning of a new era: When the Obamas a…

As I watched Kamala Harris’s great speech tonight, I pondered the serendipity of the moment, the incredible chain of accident and surprise and coincidence and luck that brought her to that stage:First, in 2020 Biden had picked her for VP, so she achie…

Aaron Rupar has popularized a new term for how the American media is reporting on Trump — “Sane-washing” Trump’s speeches are gibberish — stream-of-consciousness rambling whines about the 2020 election, interspersed with tariffs, ‘Sir’ stories, …