........ and become an island nation without intraprovince (intrastate) border crossings

Every country has a unique situation though the ones that were successful all seemed to have a federal mandate. Now some of these countries did not have provinces or territories but some did.

I think the provinces may have reacted early not liking it but it sure would be easier for them politically to say Were just following federal mandates.

WE also have now our first case of the India variant

https://montreal.ctvnews.ca/first-ca...ebec-1.5396800

Again we have been to slow to act and now this one will run rampant as well.

Nutella point about a 6th wave may not be that crazy in a year

That's bulllshit. Closing the land border is logistically straightforward, but it was instead done in a weaksauce way that allowed tons of people to circumvent the rules.

Same goes for intraprovincial travel, which wouldn't have even been necessary in the Taiwan model. Remember, they didn't lockdown, ever.

How do you and brook go on about what we should be doing without knowing the basic stuff we already are doing. No it is indeed not rocket science

If the existing systems are robust enough, then you’re correct, there is nothing to fear from letting people fly in. I believe the opposite, but luckily we get to play “proof is in the pudding” rather than engage in a pointless internet debate: if cases in India are overwhelmingly made up from a specific strain, health departments will be able to track if they do indeed spread in Canada. Count on Trudeau-bashing media to give us a daily update on any such strains.

If you’re right, then letting the flights land and counting on our screening process was the correct thing to do. If the strain spreads like those from England or elsewhere and its turns out to be more deadly and contagious than what we had before, then I guess it’s a case of “Oops, my bad.”

Overall I would say the media treats Trudeau with kid gloves other than the Sun

Oops my bad after Oops my bad a few times. I think the system they have now requiring the test before getting on a plane is great and the 14 day quarantines another plus compared to the old way. Lets hope its only the one case but that is like hoping the Leafs win the cup

Lets add that International flights are OK but BC folks cant travel in BC

You can ban all the flights from india, brazil and mars you want, but the fact is people are already circumventing brazil bans by stopping over in the states. And people are also landing in buffalo and driving over to avoid the quarantine

If I want to fly from rio to toronto all I have to do is stop over in miami

And just so we're clear- I'm not a fan of mandatory hotel quarantine for canadian citizens and permanent residents. I think it's extortion at that cost, and have yet to see any studies proving its efficacy

I agree there's lots to learn from Taiwan, but it's an even worse "we could have done this by acting like them" example. Not saying you're using it in that way, but I've seen others who have. You've got the fact that they're an island nation, plus the hyperawareness of pandemics by the entire population after SARS, the perceived need to move quickly since they're on China's doorstep, and a population that is far more conditioned to listening to their government.

This isn't meant to be some kind of laundry list of reasons that we're different, and because we don't have the same conditions, we should throw up our hands and say "oh well, guess we have to let the virus do its thing" - I'm just trying to illustrate that while we can learn from these examples, expecting a replication here might be unrealistic. Maybe Covid will be our wakeup call, like SARS was for eastern Asia.

Right, a couple of us posted about that yesterday in the Covid thread.

Why do you conclude it will "run rampant"? From the article you linked (and one I linked yesterday said something similar):

Time will tell, of course, but it's far from a given that this is a huge deal. It's easy to get caught up in India's huge numbers and think they must have some terrible strain causing unprecedented spread, but they have almost 1.4 billion people.

But...their numbers have not plateaued yet, and I don't know how strong their health infrastructure is, so I'm definitely concerned for them, even if they don't have a more transmissible strain yet.

So you understand why I respond “lol no” correct? We should get no sense of security from a quarantine with so many loopholes. We can do one of three things: continue on as we have been doing, which by your own admission is not going to be effective, we can do nothing as you seem to be recommending and rely on hope for a positive outcome, or we can revamp the system to deal with oversights like the ones you mentioned.

It’s undoubtably naive on my part to assume that our federal government is capable of it: we’ll undoubtably chug along with hig rates and shutdowns until (hopefully) vaccinations start to have an effect. As for a ‘covid zero’ plan; that ship has sailed over a year ago.

Heh, so it seems the "big news" of Montreal having their first case of the variant from India may not be news at all. In today's briefing, Dr. Henry talked about how it's been here for weeks. I just looked up an article to get more detailed info:

https://bc.ctvnews.ca/as-ottawa-impo...-b-c-1.5398205

So, it sounds like it's been here for at least a month (as I assume if there were 39 cases on April 4, the first few would have been some time before), and they don't find it all that concerning.

It's easy for us to get caught up in the "OMG the variants" fear, when it's not always a big deal. There are hundreds (thousands?) of different variants, and most of them are rarely talked about because there's really no reason to.

That said, I'm sure this news will please many:

Canada imposes ban on passenger flights from India, Pakistan for 30 days

And I'm fine with that. I said earlier that I hadn't see evidence that we had to ban flights immediately; presumably government has. If government doesn't feel they can implement adequate quarantines, testing, and contact tracing, then this seems prudent.

Flights from india and pakistan banned for 30 days....right just 30 days. I've seen this show before- 2 weeks to flatten the curve

^^^^^ ya like it is so obvious and easy to avoid a direct travel ban. My point is, and always has been, our biggest leak is our land border

If I'm reading this correctly then r has fallen below one on canadanfor the first time in weeks

https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/key...-tam-1.5399708

All I know is Alberta cases seem to grow a bit daily and the rate is over 10%

I also saw on the news we have had 24 cases of the India variant? Unless I heard that wrong and Alberta has a case already.
As well 1/2 of all cases related to travel have come from India according to CTV Local this morning

7 day average is starting to go down in Ontario indicating the growth is slowing, so expect a reopening just before summer and the 4th wave to threaten the start of the school year.

Nova Scotia seeing high case numbers 3 days in a row and going into a 4 week lockdown.

Canada signed a new Pfizer agreement for booster shots to cover all Canadians annually over the next three years. Obviously we hope this won’t be needed, but very glad they’ve put the leg work in to ensure it in case it is.

Reopening won't start until mid summer. If school is threatened again in spetember, and we're still in this mess then vaccines don't work. And if vaccines don't work then we are straight fuxked

India suspends Vaccine shipments

https://nationalpost.com/news/canada...ol-problems%20


And the ones from the USA quality control issues

https://www.fiercepharma.com/manufac...es-at-troubled

7-day average in BC peaked (for now at least) on April 12th, and has come down about 15% so far. Hospitalizations still going up like crazy, but that is a lagging indicator, so hopefully that's just catching up from the spike.

If this is serious, why are you expecting a 4th wave? The only way I see that happening in a significant way is if vaccines take a really, really bad sideways turn, or we see a far more significant mutation of the virus that the vaccines can't handle. If you simply mean *some* kind of surge, much smaller than all of the past ones, I suppose that's possible without a vaccine issue/major mutation.

Who couldn't predict cutting off vaccines after we cut off their flights. Genius move there. Also a good way of admitting the hotel scheme doesn't work

Cut off vaccine shipments plus prove your hotel thing doesn't work all in one move- well played!

FYP.

Whether the move to cut off flights was a good idea or not, the two things are unrelated. This has been a known issue for weeks now.

India stopping vaccine shipments has more to do with domestic politics (and common sense from their viewpoint) than Canada shutting the door to a few thousand people a day. Do you really think any politician is going to continue to export vaccines while their population gets decimated?

Was just reading they're suspending all exports not just canada. See guys this is the internet it's ok to admit being wrong