Ahhhh... gotta read the fine print. Which I did.

The Pfizer website reads as follows:

In my quick search, I found two interesting points:

1) What’s the evidence for changing the schedule?
There isn’t much for the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine, as trials did not compare different dose spacing or compare one with two doses.

and

2) The trials of the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine did include different spacing between doses, finding that a longer gap (two to three months) led to a greater immune response, but the overall participant numbers were small.

My conclusion: keep Pfizer with the 3 week period between doses (give or take a few days). There isn't enough evidence to override this statement...YET.

* I don't trust local health authorities.
* I don't trust WHO.

Fair. I guess what I should have said was that their recommendation/information is being interpreted that way. As you allude to later, they haven't compared different dose spacing. The layman's impression I have from what I've been hearing and reading is that what's important to the manufacturer is to know the minimum time required, so they can give that second dose as quickly as possible while gaining maximum effectiveness, because of course in an ideal world where vaccine supply matches the need, you want everyone getting that second shot as soon as possible. However, we don't live in such a world right now, so they are weighing the pros and cons of everyone getting their second dose in 21-28 days as opposed to more people getting their first doses. My assumption is that they can make some good extrapolations based on other vaccines, as to whether extending the timeline will be detrimental.

Which I read as no evidence against, and some questionable evidence in favour.

I can understand this stance.

I have a fairly high level of trust in local health authorities, so I feel differently. Canada is a clear leader in the western world when it comes to how the pandemic has played out, and BC has had some of the better results in Canada, so I see no reason for concern over a decision like this. Hopefully for all of our sakes, it's the correct one.

Yes, us key-board warriors REALLY know what's going on. LOL

We really don't have much choice. There is still a lot of info that hasn't "leaked" out, so our sense of knowledge is a step or three behind.

Hope.. that's all we have. Generally speaking, we are moving forward, imo. That is something to hang onto as a positive.

Speaking of BC... I've heard rumors of a North Van hospital giving vaccines to admin ahead of frontline staff? A possible "firing" as well? Anyone else?

I is expert.




Has there been something more recent, or are you referring to this?

https://globalnews.ca/video/7572930/...-vaccine-queue

There was an update the next day on the Peace Arch Hospital one, but I didn't hear anything more about North Van.

https://www.surreynowleader.com/news...fraser-health/

Nope, what I've been hearing is regarding the Lions Gate Hospital.

It always takes a bit of time for the ooze to leak under the door.

Interesting. Disappointing if true, but I don't get too riled up over these isolated cases. Of course they need to investigate and deal with it if it's true. *******s in every walk of life, unfortunately.

Agreed.

My philosophy is this: expose everything to daylight.

Sunshine always clears things up.

Most of us are as qualified as the provincial or federal ministers in charge

The last few days of listening to experts, watching MTP and the West Block and 60 minutes its not exactly looking promising.
Here are just a few of the opinions I trust and I do not trust many of the provincial or federal health officers who answer to folks whose main concern is getting re-elected

• Bret Weinstein The virus came out of a Lab in Wuhan and the vaccine he would prefer to take Astra Zeneca
• DR Osterholm We are currently sitting on a beach with a category 5 storm 8-12 weeks away and wearing mask below your nose is like only closing 3 of the 5 screen windows on a submarine
• President of the CMA The federal governments vaccine plan numbers do not add up.
  [*} Presidents of the two CDN vaccination producers. We are getting limited support and not enough from our federal government

Well lets hope for the best wear a mask, wash our hands and limited contact. Sadly a vacation this year just seems like slim to no chance outside of Canada

Yeah, I've been taking this as a given for quite some time now. *Maybe* by the end of the year if all goes well, but it would have to be going really well for that to be a reality, because that's the worst time of the year for spread of the virus in our part of the world. I'm not counting on any international travel until next spring or summer (2022) - anything else will be a bonus. I'll just be happy if we can host some outdoor events for friends and family this summer.

Interesting article from Maclean's saying what a terrible job the Federal government and provinces are doing .
It asks the question which I ask of JT

If Climate Change requires a federal mandate why not Covid?

https://www.macleans.ca/opinion/the-...-worlds-worst/

https://ottawacitizen.com/pmn/news-p...box=1611663043

Centralized decision-making in health care stifles innovation

Sheppard said the Canadian health care system can’t be nimble because federal and provincial governments have seized control of decisions on how to handle the pandemic.

“During a new disease like a pandemic, when we’re learning about things, the people on the ground actually are learning a lot faster than the people sitting in Ottawa, Quebec City or Toronto,” he said.

He said Canadian businesses and universities have been struggling to get approval for testing strategies that use rapid tests to reopen safely.

“The way that the ministries of health are set up, they actually make it incredibly difficult to set those type of things up, because they hold on to all the power with a stranglehold.”

Sheppard said there’s no process private entities can use to launch innovative testing programs.

“The dogma from the ministries of health are simple: What we’re doing is right. There is no other better way to do anything … therefore we will not help anybody do anything different than what we’re doing. And anything other than that is a threat to our authority,” he said. “That’s the mentality, and it’s just killed innovation in the health-care setting.”

The core problem with pokerplayinggamble ITT is that this article he shares is a quite reasonable thing to discuss with basically anyone else ITT. Plenty of reasons to critique the canadian healthcare system and response to pandemic etc etc etc. But because pokerplayinggamble is a libertarian who things public healthcare should be abolished, its likely not possible and certainly not valuable to have those reasonable conversations with him about how to tweak and improve the existing system.

The whole exercise is just rather disingenuous. Presumably not one of those "five experts" quoted thinks we should do anything remotely like what pokerplayinggamble wants. If you want to argue for an anarcho-capitalist health care system or whatever it is you want, fine, feel free to post links arguing that and I'll be happy to ignore them outright. But maybe stop trying to snipe at the canadian health care system as if identifying ways it can be improved remotely justifies your worldview.

We have problems but this hospital behind on rent is booted from the building

https://abc13.com/heights-hospital-h...issue/9789321/

Yet another half assed measure, ban on flights to mexico and carribean can be loopholed using u.s. airlines. Let's bankrupt thousands of small business and keep wal mart jam packed. Let's ban flights and screw cdn airlines and make u.s. carriers busier
https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/new...kers-1.5290802

If by interesting, you mean interesting that Maclean's would publish such trash, I agree.

To support the statement that "It is an objective fact we are doing a terrible job fighting the virus.", the primary piece of evidence that is used is a report by the Lowy Institute. I found it here:

https://interactives.lowyinstitute.o...ountry-compare

Scrolling down, I found the ranking he referred to. Most of the countries above Canada are in Asia or Africa, but the one that struck me right away when I saw it was Sweden. Well, I know that Sweden has been touted by some because it kept most things open, but I also know their case and death numbers have not been good. I guess for Sweden to be ranked ahead of us, they must be factoring in economic performance, so I scroll back to find what they base their data on. Nope, nothing on economics - it's all based on cases, deaths, and tests.

Puzzling, then, that Sweden would rank ahead of us since they have more than double our death rate, almost triple our case rate, and only a 5% higher testing rate. Puzzling, that is, until you have a good look at that list. They count cases and deaths per capita AND total cases and deaths.

What. The. ****???

So, shocker, if you're a smaller country, then the numbers will be heavily skewed in your favour. That would be mitigated a bit on the testing side, where smaller numbers are worse - but they only used per capita numbers on tests, not overall tests (as they should have for deaths and cases). I don't know if the Lowy Institute has some kind of agenda they're trying to push with the data compilation, or if someone actually thought this makes sense, but either way this report seems pretty suspect at best.

Let's look at another of the author's claims:

"He (hopefully) knows that Canada’s COVID numbers are terrible—objectively worse than almost all peer countries, and heading in the wrong direction."

He doesn't say what he means by peer countries, but this is something I've looked at often, and that's what drove me to examine this Lowy report, because I've always had the impression that we're doing pretty well among the western world. To determine that, I have a pretty simple test - compare us to Europe. Piece of cake to do on Worldometer. I feel that's a pretty good assessment of our peer countries - those that are most similar to us in terms of government and society. Of course the US would be the other comparable, but I think we all know how that would look. So if we look at Europe, there are two metrics I compare. In cases per capita, we would be 43rd out of 49 countries (IE one of the lowest number of cases). In deaths per capita, 34th out of 49. If we remove the very smallest countries/principalities (<1 million) because they provide a lot of outliers on either end, we would be 33/36 in cases and 27/36 in deaths. Testing is something I don't look at that often; we would be a little below average there - 30/49.

So, "objectively worse than almost all peer countries"? Um, no. Not even close. I'd actually argue that we're doing objectively better than most peer countries. And that might be what irritates me most about this article - the misuse of "objective" and "objectively". The author is trying to tell us that his opinion isn't based on some bone he has to pick with the government - it's based on data! And it is - really bad data.

And the article is pretty devoid of any great solutions that we've missed out on. Canada's apparently doing a terrible job, but the author isn't able to articulate how so in any substantial way. The main focus seems to be on a centralized approach, but without much substance in terms of what that would look like or how it would help.

"Canadians are still moving from province to province, largely unhindered" - has that been found to be a large vector of transmission? I've not seen any data suggesting that it is.

"If the Prime Minister did implement a national strategy, he could then hire some of the million Canadians currently unemployed, and finally launch an effective test and trace program country-wide." - Canada's numbers would seem to reflect that testing and tracing is working pretty well.

"He could compel domestic drug manufacturers to retool and start producing more vaccines." - I, um, wait, what? How are we going to suddenly produce vaccines that we haven't created? If Pfizer or Moderna would be agreeable to one of our drug companies producing their vaccine, that would be great, but I don't know if that's realistic or even possible. I sort of doubt it, especially in any kind of time frame that would be helpful.

"He could, like U.S. President Joe Biden, use the national defence forces to set up regional vaccination centres." - maybe there's some merit here, I'm not sure. I don't have the impression that we're going to need any such help here in BC, but maybe it would be useful elsewhere.

None of this is to say all is roses and no mistakes have ever been made here. And there are lots of comparisons we could do that would not be as flattering. For example, Asian countries are kicking our ass. As are Australia and New Zealand, which would also be good examples of peer countries, although they likely benefit from being islands. But that should be a bigger "why are Asian/Oceanian countries doing so much better than the 'western world' " question. How we can improve PPE manufacturing and vaccine development for the future would also be legitimate questions to pursue. And what about the economy? What measures work, and which ones causes economic hardship with little pandemic benefit?

To me, this editorial reads like it's written by someone with a big axe to grind with government who tracked down some data he thought would back up his conclusions. It doesn't. In fact, it contradicts them.

Oh any article weather from the BCB or Mclean's may always have a slant to it I was more focusing on the point

Yes Health care is provincial but Trudeau had no issue threatening transfers to provinces that did not collect the carbon tax.

Also it is just not Mclean's now there are major worries that Canada is not one of the exempt countries on the EU's restriction on shipping vaccines. and all we have are verbal promises.
The next 12 weeks will be interesting as the strains are all here now.

I also think using Australia as a comparison for how we are doing is the best comparison. Large country with provinces are territories.

You should send this post to Macleans as a letter to the editor.

Seriously. I mean it's probably not worth the time cause Maclean's is total trash but you never know...

I never read it other than the odd article. So what news sources are we trusting the CBC, Rebel, CTV ????

Also I do not think we would be in much different position with the Conservatives in power other than financially. Heck with the no one be paying rent and we would be welded into our houses.

There's no way businesses and individuals would be getting as much relief as they are now if there was a conservative government. None.

Canada signs deal to produce novovax vaccine in canada

https://www.cp24.com/mobile/news/can...lant-1.5291842

Agreed but some of the support has gone overboard. When you see 15-17 year olds claiming 3/4 billion in CERB and a few other examples.

Even though a few months out it is positive. We need to be making the vaccines here. I am surprised that Pfizer or Moderna will not license it to be produced here

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/go...iX4Mv26xfjzZKy

Tough times in Newfoundland. The effects COVID has had on their off-shore oil industry and rotational workers no longer traveling to Alberta for work is bad. Plus a long list of over budget, behind schedule of large scale government funded projects.

I'm getting tired of this good news is on the horizon bs. Everything has been botched since day 1, and it's always just hang in there while we screw you all some more