You as well .Good stewardship of the public treasury is essential to a healthy country.
I hope you get some.
You as well .Good stewardship of the public treasury is essential to a healthy country.
I hope you get some.
were totally fucked.KINSELLA: COVID returns with a vengeance as people ditch masks
Author of the article:Warren Kinsella
Publishing date:Apr 06, 2022 • 23 hours ago • 3 minute read • 267 Comments
This photo depicts a couple obeying masking rules while shopping for groceries
This photo depicts a couple obeying masking rules while shopping for groceries PHOTO BY FILE PHOTO /Getty Images
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We don’t even have to ask.
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About whether you’ve got friends and family who have gotten COVID, that is. Because we all know the truth: lots and lots of people are getting it. Everyone is talking about it, all over.
Maybe you’ve gotten it, too. Maybe you’ve got it right now.
Sure, lots of people have dodged COVID for two years. No longer: their luck has run out. And, now, it certainly seems like more people are getting sick than ever before.
COVID-19 — which never really left — is back. With a vengeance.
In Ontario, to cite just one example, it’s estimated that 30,000 people are now getting sick every single day. We have to use “estimates,” unfortunately, because Canadian governments have basically abandoned their obligation to carefully track how many of us are getting sick.
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But some things we do know. Here in Ontario, again, 173 patients were in intensive care units on Tuesday — 96 of those patients required a ventilator to breathe. That number is up from last week. Meanwhile, yet more deaths — a total of 12,479 so far. And, tellingly, hospitalizations on Tuesday climbed past the 1,000 mark, for the first time since February.
We can blame governments — of all stripes and at all levels — for what’s happening. But they’re only partly to blame. We’re to blame, too. Because, if we’re being honest with ourselves, we all know one thing has created the sixth wave more than any other.
Too many people have stopped wearing masks.
That’s a big mistake, and we’re now all paying the price. Here’s five simple reasons why we need to resist the temptation to toss out our masks. Clip and save.
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They work — to some, even better than vaccines. The director of the Center for Disease Control has testified in Congress that masks have been “the most powerful tool’ in the war against COVID.
“We have clear scientific evidence they work, and they are our best defence,” Dr. Robert Redfield said. “I might even go so far as to say that this face mask is more guaranteed to protect me against COVID than when I take a COVID vaccine.”
Vaccines work, sure. But their effectiveness fades over time. And they don’t cure, they prevent. That’s not all: many people have bona fide reasons for refusing vaccines. But there exists no medical reason for refusing to wear a mask where the circumstances warrant it. Everyone is fed up with masks, of course. But they work. Still.
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Masks are logical. COVID, as everyone knows, is spread through respiratory droplets — when a person coughs, sneezes or even talks. Redfield’s CDC says face masks, worn properly, are “particularly important” when you can’t maintain a six-foot distance from someone else. You can still get, and spread, the virus when vaccinated. But if you and everyone around you is wearing the right mask, properly, the risk drops to almost zero.
Variants come and go. And not all vaccines protect against all variants, either, as we are now experiencing, the hard way. But masks work against every variant to date, and every variant that is coming our way. Whatever their genetic mutations, masks protect against any strain of COVID.
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You know masks work. You know it. The outbreaks we are now seeing, everywhere, aren’t because people stopped getting vaccinated — they’re still getting vaccinated, and in record numbers in places like Ontario. It’s not necessarily because we got rid of vaccine passports, either, although that likely didn’t help.
The big change?
People stopped wearing masks. And COVID infections have gotten worse, and are getting worse every day.
The pandemic isn’t over. COVID-19 isn’t done with us. Get vaccinated, if you can. Socially distance and hand-wash, all that.
But don’t toss out your mask. Too many people did — and now too many people are getting sick.
— Kinsella was chief of staff to a federal Liberal minister of health
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KINSELLA: COVID returns with a vengeance as people ditch masks
We don't even have to ask. About whether you've got friends and family who have gotten COVID, that is.torontosun.com
Librarians. Fuck 'em.Local politics is always good for a hoot. It's where the third-stringers hang out.
Laws for thee , but not for me . So many of these politicians caught flouting their rules on both sides of the pond , it is almost as if they know it is all a hoax or something .U.K. PM Johnson shredded ministerial code with lockdown breaches: constitutional expert
Author of the article:Reuters
Reuters
Publishing date:Apr 17, 2022 • 20 hours ago • 2 minute read • Join the conversation
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson reacts as he meets with Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo in London, Tuesday, April 5, 2022.
Britain's Prime Minister Boris Johnson reacts as he meets with Ghana's President Nana Akufo-Addo in London, Tuesday, April 5, 2022. PHOTO BY JUSTIN TALLIS /AFP via Getty Images
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LONDON — Prime Minister Boris Johnson has thrust Britain into a constitutional crisis by breaking the law he set for pandemic restrictions, effectively “shredding the ministerial code,” the country’s leading constitutional expert said on Sunday.
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Peter Hennessy, a historian and member of the upper house of parliament, said Johnson had become “the great debaser in modern times of decency in public and political life” after he was fined by police for attending a social gathering in Downing Street while lockdown restrictions were in place.
The ministerial code sets out the standards of conduct expected of ministers and how they discharge their duties, according to the government website.
Johnson has been accused of misleading parliament over the matter by opposition lawmakers after he told parliament last year that all rules were followed in Downing Street during the pandemic. He will appear in the House of Commons on Tuesday to explain why he was fined by police.
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He has also apologized after he became the first British leader found to have broken the law while in office. Police are investigating further gatherings and he could receive further fines.
“I think we’re in the most severe constitutional crisis involving a prime minister that I can remember,” Hennessy told BBC Radio, asking why anyone in public life would adhere to the rules when the prime minister did not.
“The prime minister sealed his place in British history as the first lawbreaker to have occupied the premiership,” he said, adding that he was no longer worthy of serving the queen or her country.
Jacob Rees-Mogg, a minister in Johnson’s cabinet, said he respected Hennessy but did not think the constitutional expert had fully understood the constitutional significance of the ministerial code.
Johnson, he said, had told parliament in good faith that he had not broken any rules, because he did not believe he had.
“It is very hard to see that he could meet the high bar of deliberately misleading parliament,” Rees-Mogg told the BBC. “So I think Lord Hennessy, who is one of the most distinguished living constitutionalists, is on this occasion wrong.”
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U.K. PM Johnson shredded ministerial code with lockdown breaches: constitutional expert
Boris Johnson has thrust Britain into a constitutional crisis by breaking law he set for pandemic restrictions, constitutional expert says.torontosun.com
Is everyone dead yet ?Ontario's 19th bird flu outbreak reported in Huron County
A poultry flock in Huron County has been infected with a new strain of bird flu, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday.
Author of the articlean Brown
Publishing date:Apr 26, 2022 • 13 hours ago • 1 minute read • Join the conversation
A poultry flock in Huron County has been infected with a new strain of bird flu, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday.
There are now 19 outbreaks of the highly pathogenic H5N1 strain of avian flu in Ontario. The federal agency estimates 250,000 birds in the province have been impacted since the first outbreak was declared March 27.
The federal agency didn’t specify on its website where the affected farm is in Huron County, or the type of poultry.
The other outbreaks closest to London are near Durham in the Municipality of West Grey (confirmed April 9), in Chatham-Kent (confirmed April 6) and near Thamesford in western Oxford County (confirmed March 28).
Control zones have been set up around each property, so officials can control the movement of people and birds on and off those farms.
Outside of Ontario, there are outbreaks in every province except Prince Edward Island.
In 2015, federal and provincial officials spent months containing and eventually eradicating another strain of bird flu. That outbreak was contained to three farms in Oxford County. About 80,000 birds, mostly turkeys, were wiped out.
danbrown@postmedia.com
Twitter.com/DanatLFPress
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Bird flu: Ontario's 19th outbreak reported in Huron County
A poultry flock in Huron County has been infected with a new strain of bird flu, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said Tuesday.torontosun.com