Evusheld, which helps the immunocompromised avoid COVID-19, made more available - "Evusheld consists of two antibodies that are injected, and can help protect patients for up to six months."
Given the moral panic over the immunocompromised and masks, this is not going to help. Covid hystericists are just livid that most people have moved on and they're no longer able to control them and wrecking society in the process
SARS-CoV-2 suppression and early closure of bars and restaurants: a longitudinal natural experiment - "Despite severe economic damage, full-service restaurants and bars have been closed in hopes of suppressing the spread of SARS-CoV-2 worldwide. This paper explores whether the early closure of restaurants and bars in February 2021 reduced symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 in Japan. Using a large-scale nationally representative longitudinal survey, we found that the early closure of restaurants and bars decreased the utilization rate among young persons (OR 0.688; CI95 0.515–0.918) and those who visited these places before the pandemic (OR 0.754; CI95 0.594–0.957). However, symptoms of SARS-CoV-2 did not decrease in these active and high-risk subpopulations. Among the more inactive and low-risk subpopulations, such as elderly persons, no discernible impacts are observed in both the utilization of restaurants and bars and the symptoms of SARS-CoV-2. These results suggest that the early closure of restaurants and bars without any other concurrent measures does not contribute to the suppression of SARS-CoV-2."
We already knew that lockdowns didn't work - but so much for covid hystericists mocking those who killed grandma because they wanted to eat at Applebee's. Of course covid hystericists will say that that the fact that there is no dose-response relationship just shows how deadly covid is and that stricter lockdowns are needed
No one loves or hates the ArriveCan app. Reviews are about politics | Toronto Sun - "Not only is ArriveCan more popular on Apple’s Canadian app store than Netflix, Disney+ and Prime combined, it has a mind-boggling 4.5 out of 5-star rating. With 565,000 ratings, more people have weighed in on the usefulness of ArriveCan than Google Maps, which has been around for more than a decade. The app only scores a 3.9 rating on Google’s app store, confirming perhaps that Trudeau supporters are more likely to own pricey iPhones rather than Android handsets. If you haven’t been following the controversy around the ArriveCan app, it has been blamed for the customs backlog at airports by the union representing border guards. Despite the government claiming 99% compliance with the ArriveCan app, border guards have complained that they spend much of their time helping people fill out the app properly for both land border crossings and people arriving at airports. Meanwhile, mayors of border communities, tourism groups, chambers of commerce and others have said the app is having a detrimental effect on tourism especially from the United States. Many Americans don’t know they need the app to enter Canada and are loath to download it and fill it out for short day trips into Canada... the app is glitchy and even tech savvy people — never mind the seniors I’ve heard from on flip phones — have had issues."
Experts warn ArriveCAN app could be violating constitutionally protected rights - "A recent glitch in the controversial ArriveCAN app that sent fully vaccinated travellers erroneous messages saying they needed to quarantine affected more than 10,000 people... it took the government 12 days to notify travellers of the error. This is troubling to some data and privacy experts who say the app may be violating the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, which protects the right to move freely. There’s also a debate among experts about whether ordering people to remain in their homes for two weeks without justification is a form of unlawful detention. “It creates direct harm for people who are receiving this incorrect notification and following it,” said Matt Malone, a law professor at Thompson River University in Kamloops, B.C., who specializes in trade secrets and confidential information. “The government hasn’t provided sufficient transparency about why that happened. And there needs to be better accountability practices in place to make sure it doesn’t happen again.”... The messages also raise concerns that the government doesn’t have a handle on the app’s automated decision-making functions, which in theory are meant only to determine if information uploaded to the app is accurate. “I think it’s very troubling and I think it raises some important questions about government use of AI,” said Teresa Scassa, Canadian research chair in information law and policy at the University of Ottawa. “This is one of their flagship tools and there doesn’t seem to be any transparency or clear governance.” The government... said it’s important that travellers understand that CBSA and public health officials are responsible for determining if someone needs to quarantine — not the app. But travellers who received the erroneous quarantine order have told Global News there was no way to contact the government to correct the mistake. Efforts to do so, they say, have been met with automated messages or agents who couldn’t discuss the issue specifically... Either the app does or doesn’t make decisions on its own, Scassa said. Both of these statements can’t be true... Data and privacy experts also have broader concerns about ArriveCAN. The technology behind the app is considered a “trade secret,” according to the app’s AIA. This means any attempt to obtain information about how the software works will likely result in a government rejection because these details are often considered confidential, third-party information under federal privacy and access to information legislation. The companies that developed the app for the government have also cited non-disclosure agreements and “secret” classification of their work as reasons why they can’t release details. Malone, the data and privacy law expert, said the absence of publicly available information about ArriveCAN’s software is deeply concerning, especially in light of the recent glitch.He also said it’s concerning that the government would define this kind of technology as a trade secret, given the potential impact of ArriveCAN on the lives of Canadians. “It exposes fundamental problems we have with seeking redress under existing privacy and data protection laws”"
Calls from travellers, experts to ditch ArriveCAN app grow despite glitch fix - "Calls to scrap the ArriveCan app continue from experts in medicine and technology as well as travellers... “We’re so short-staffed and spending so much time dealing with this app that we really don’t have time to do our actual jobs anymore,” Mark Weber, president of the Customs and Immigration Union, said... The app has also outlived its usefulness as a way to safeguard public health, according to Dr. Andrew Morris, professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto. “I really just have no idea why we would continue to be using it as we are right now. It seems to me a lot of effort, work and to be honest inconvenience for many people for very little benefit”... Bianca Wylie, a technology expert and partner at Digital Public, argues a lack of oversight and accountability plague an app that holds sensitive information, saying the ArriveCan platform should be voluntary."
ArriveCAN: A look at the federal government’s plan for the contentious app - National - "Wylie said people were not using that app at a high volume before the pandemic, because it was voluntary and there were easy alternatives. But she said Ottawa has been using COVID-19 as an opportunity to speed up the transition. “The federal government has been using a public health crisis to basically train people in a border modernization exercise that they have wanted to do,” Wylie said, adding that modernization initiatives are fine as long as they are voluntary and alternatives are available... officers who already feel spread thin because of staffing shortages find themselves acting as “IT consultants” and troubleshooting travellers’ technical issues rather than doing what they’re trained to do. “If the goal of the app is to make cross-border travel more efficient or more secure, well, it doesn’t work in its current iteration”... Border town mayors, border-city chambers of commerce and even duty-free stores have complained publicly that they think ArriveCan, along with other pandemic border restrictions, have been a deterrent to American tourists... Canadian acting darling Simu Liu joined the “scrap the app” bandwagon, challenging his followers to say a single nice thing about it in a tweet Tuesday, then saying immediately: “I failed the challenge.”"
Border chambers of commerce ask government to end ArriveCan app - "A coalition of Chambers of Commerce representing border communities across the country is calling on the federal government to suspend use of the ArriveCAN app. The group is also asking the government to lift the remaining COVID-related border restrictions. “The border measures are not only slowing down border crossings, but they’re also having a deterrent effect on visitors from the USA,” said Windsor-Essex Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Rakesh Naidu. “The ArriveCAN app is hurting both our tourism industry and our economy in general.” U.S. visits through land ports are still down significantly across the country, compared to before the pandemic. Statistics Canada reports that border crossings from the United States in June 2022 were little more than half the number made in June 2019. Tourism spending in Canada is still more than a third below pre-pandemic levels. Wait times at land border crossings have lengthened by up to two hours since 2019 despite traffic being cut in half, and bridge authorities attribute this entirely to restrictions and the ArriveCAN app. The average processing time for arriving passengers at airports has increased by 400 per cent. “It isn’t only affecting the tourism industry,” said Naidu. “More than half of the total trade Canada conducts with the United States is by truck. The additional time and resources spent on border measures and the ArriveCAN app slows the crossing for all and puts additional strain on already stretched supply chains.”... Windsor West MP Brian Masse said it is really about reducing physical presence at the border through going through the process to use the actual ArriveCan. “We may actually have some perjury at the House of Commons committee because I asked specifically whether ArriveCAN was actually just a cover for a more permanent app,” said Masse. “And that's what it seems to be there and I've talked with the union presidents as well to who suspects the same thing.”"
Mandatory random COVID-19 testing for fully vaccinated air travellers resuming next week - "Tourism industry leaders are also criticizing the government's decision to reinstate testing for international air travellers. The Canadian Tourism Roundtable, which represents the tourism and travel sector, released a statement calling the move "unnecessary."... A spokesperson for the Greater Toronto Airport Authority (GTAA), the organization that runs Toronto's Pearson International Airport, said the authority is "pleased" that testing is moving offsite. The GTAA had been one of the most vocal critics of the government prior to the suspension of random testing. The spokesperson said suspending testing at the airport has reduced delays."
From July, before all the theatre was dropped
There is no obvious scapegoat for Canada's air travel woes - The Hub - "Pausing and unpausing an economy is not something we’ve ever done before. If you put the economy in an induced coma, there’s going to be some grogginess... the rest of the world is facing many of the same challenges we are... There’s also another problem: the red-hot labour market. Unemployment rates in North America are extremely low right now and finding people to work is hard... We are all dying to travel, and those of us who can are doing so all at once"
Meme - "HELLO, I'M HEATHER AND I'm ADDICTED TO THE COVID NARRATIVE."
"Hi Heather."
Kevin McKernan 🙂 on Twitter - "The Live-Dead qRT-PCR problem, the testing industrial complex and its impact on society. I never thought the work I did for the human genome project would be weaponized to lock down society. We are now ruled by qPCR right and the transparency on the process is shameful... Why Live-Dead matters. The majority of the time a patient is qPCR positive (<40Cq) is the tail end of the disease where the virus is shedding and more dead than alive RNA. I call this the lower infectivity long tail. People detected in this window are usually non-infectious... Everyone caught in the long tail create a chain reaction of contact tracing testing and when these people are young and have less risk than the flu... Great Barrington Declaration..."
Singapore Matters - Posts | Facebook - "Some say MOM should have acted earlier and prevented the clusters. Let's say MOM did act earlier. To prevent the clusters, they would have to space out the workers by moving many of them out of the dorms so that safe distancing can be effectively done. They would also have to put a stop to communal activities including cooking. Let's say MOM moved the workers out to hotels, resorts, cruise ships, provided 3 free meals a day. Let's say also that because MOM acted so fast, it prevented clusters from forming. Consequently, there were only a few cases which were very quickly contact-traced and ringfenced. You think Singaporeans will applaud MOM for their efficiency and foresight? Singaporeans would have a totally different experience. First, no big clusters to shock them. They experience a different kind of shock: the shock of seeing taxpayers' money being used to give luxurious housing to FWs. What? Free meals even. Xenophobia will rise from some quarters as cries of how the government treat FWs better than ciiizens flood social media. 'Oh, we are second-class citizens in our own land. Vote them out!' Should the government try to explain that these are necessary to prevent clusters and that if they had not done so, huge clusters would have been formed, you bet the response will be: don't give excuses lah. don't bluff lah, we were not born yesterday. All you need is to do contact tracing and clusters will not be formed. Isn't this what you had been doing to prevent clusters? Everyone has a response, a response based on what is experienced."
From 2020
NIH director Francis Collins wanted a 'take-down' to stifle Covid-19 debate - "emails released through a Freedom of Information Act request filed by the American Institute for Economic Research revealed what I see as worrisome communication between Francis Collins, Anthony Fauci, and others within the National Institutes of Health in the fall of 2020. At issue was the Great Barrington Declaration, an open letter written in October 2020 and eventually signed by thousands of scientists. It argues that Covid-19 policy should focus on protecting the elderly and vulnerable, and largely re-open society and school for others. At the time, Americans would have benefited from a broad debate among scientists about the available policy options for controlling the Covid-19 pandemic, and perhaps a bit of compromise. The emails tell us why that isn’t what we got... he believed the Great Barrington Declaration idea of focused protection would result in more deaths than the alternative view of one-size-fits all restrictions. Collins also confirmed that he believed the three authors of the declaration were “fringe” scientists. October 2020, when Collins wrote that email, was a time fraught with uncertainty. Positive results from Pfizer’s ongoing vaccine trial were still four weeks away. Many Americans were fatigued with ongoing restrictions, either imposed by governments or self-imposed. And two dueling documents — the Great Barrington Declaration and the John Snow Memorandum — were released and garnered thousands of signatures. The declaration argued for focused protection and permitting many people to return to normal life. The memorandum favored prolonged one-size-fits all restrictions. At the time, I did not take sides, and urged public dialogue between scientists who held both views. We needed “a Covid policy response that engages with people who hold views and perspectives different than our own,” I wrote then. What concerns me about the NIH director’s email and his interview on television is that he appeared unwilling to have this dialogue. Collins’s day job does not make him arbiter of scientific truth, the Pope for all scientists. On questions of unprecedented pandemic policy, he is surely entitled to his opinion — as we all are — but his is just one opinion of many. When it comes to lockdowns or school closures, the answer to the question of whether the benefits exceed the harms and, if so, under what conditions, is far from certain, and scientists will continue to study this for decades. As a good scientist, Collins should have recognized the massive uncertainty around these policies. Collins’s response to a memo signed by thousands of scientists should not have been to call for an immediate and devastating take down, but to use his pulpit as NIH director to hold a series of public discussions and dialogues. In a world where scientists were trapped in their own homes for months, a series of dialogues — even virtual ones — made available for the broader scientific community, policy makers, and the public would have benefited us all... One tenet of the Great Barrington Declaration was that schools should reopen immediately and broadly. In hindsight, it is now clear that reopening schools could have been done safely, as was done in many European nations in 2020 and in the U.S. in the fall of 2021, even before vaccines became available for children. A public forum between scientists might not have accepted all of the reasoning in the declaration, but might have reached a vital compromise, which would have benefitted millions of children, particularly poor or disadvantaged children — and their parents. Unfortunately, we failed them all. A dialogue might also have led to better strategies for nursing home residents, the group most decimated by Covid-19... Jeffrey Flier, the former dean of Harvard Medical School, and I called for dialogue and debate among scientists without demonization in April 2020. I’m disappointed to see a few months later that the NIH director, a man uniquely positioned to foster such a debate, had actively sought to thwart and discredit scientists with alternative ideas to the pandemic response. His ad-hominem comment that the authors were “fringe” was unnecessary and unhelpful. In the weeks that followed, more and more mud would be slung against the authors of the Great Barrington Declaration, as well as against scientists who held alternative policy views, and favored more and stronger restrictions. The vitriol ensured that the country would not have the dialogue it so desperately needed."
"Trust" the "science". Clearly science suffers when there is debate. Scientists must not spread "dangerous" "misinformation" - those who do need to lose their jobs
CDC loosens recommendations for some Covid-19 control measures - "The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention says the nation should move away from restrictive measures such as quarantines and social distancing and focus on reducing severe disease from Covid-19. In new guidelines released Thursday, the agency no longer recommends staying at least 6 feet away from other people to reduce the risk of exposure -- a shift from guidance that had been in place since the early days of the pandemic... "The current conditions of this pandemic are very different from those of the last two years," Greta Massetti, who leads the Field Epidemiology and Prevention Branch at the CDC, said... The new guidance also does not advise quarantining people who've been exposed to Covid-19 but are not infected... The changes are an acknowledgment that SARS-CoV-2 may be with us for the long haul. They aim to help people live their lives around Covid-19 with minimal disruptions to work and school. They are also more risk-based, advising people who are at higher risk for severe illness to take more personal precautions than others."
From August. Of course, even after this I saw lots of covid cultists proclaiming that they were still terrified
Nicole Saphier, MD on Twitter - "A big update from @CDCgov today is the CDC recommendations no longer differentiate based on a person’s vaccination status - acknowledging breakthrough infections are common, and taking natural immunity into consideration. Next up, they need to vocalize that vaccines/boosters should be individually risk-based and not mandated (especially in low-risk populations like kids)."
Eva Vlaardingerbroek on Twitter - "So even the CDC no longer discriminates between Covid vaccinated/unvaccinated individuals, but the Biden administration STILL bans unvaccinated non-citizens from entering the country. When on earth is this insane mandate ever going to drop?"
Silent crisis of soaring excess deaths gripping Britain is only tip of the iceberg - "Britain is in the grip of a new silent health crisis. For 14 of the past 15 weeks, England and Wales have averaged around 1,000 extra deaths each week, none of which are due to Covid. If the current trajectory continues, the number of non-Covid excess deaths will soon outstrip deaths from the virus this year – and be even more deadly than the omicron wave. So what is going on? Experts believe decisions taken by the Government in the earliest stages of the pandemic may now be coming back to bite. Policies that kept people indoors, scared them away from hospitals and deprived them of treatment and primary care are finally taking their toll. Prof Robert Dingwall, of Nottingham Trent University, a former government adviser during the pandemic, said: “The picture seems very consistent with what some of us were suggesting from the beginning. “We are beginning to see the deaths that result from delay and deferment of treatment for other conditions, like cancer and heart disease, and from those associated with poverty and deprivation. “These come through more slowly – if cancer is not treated promptly, patients don't die immediately but do die in greater numbers more quickly than would otherwise be the case.”... The Government has admitted that the majority of the excess deaths appear to be from circulatory issues and diabetes – long-term, chronic conditions that can be fatal without adequate care. Such conditions were also likely to have been exacerbated by lockdowns and work-from-home edicts that increased sedentary lifestyles and alcohol intake at a time when Britain was already facing historic levels of obesity and heart disease... The latest fallout could not be hitting the NHS at a worse time, when it is struggling to bring down the pandemic treatment backlog and failing to meet targets across the board... There is growing frustration among health professionals that little is being done to highlight the excess death problems. When a similar number of people were dying from Covid each week, there was a clamour for greater restrictions. Prof Carl Heneghan, the director of the Centre for Evidence Based Medicine at Oxford University, said excess deaths began to increase noticeably from around the end of April. They have stayed high compared with the past seven years. “The signals in the data suggest something is not quite right,” he said. “Sustained rises in deaths should trigger an investigation that may involve accessing the raw data on death certificates, a random sample of medical notes or analysing autopsies... At the moment, the majority of excess deaths appear to be related to heart disease and diabetes, but it will only be a matter of time that people will start dying of longer-term conditions left untreated, such as cancer. In July 2020, a government report warned that lockdowns could cause the deaths of 200,000 people because of delayed healthcare. At the time, those findings were largely ignored, as the Government was urged to press ahead with restrictions. If that report holds true, the current excess deaths will be just the tip of the iceberg. Sadly, that iceberg was only too visible before we crashed into it"
Only covid deaths matter, of course. Trust the "science" and blame the unvaccinated
Only now are the crippling costs of lockdown becoming fully apparent - "The economic news grows worse by the day. And it’s pretty obvious why; sadly, the pandemic didn’t end with the success of the Government’s vaccine rollout programme. Only now is the full horror of the disease’s debilitating after effects beginning to become apparent. Even at the time, nobody thought lockdown would be cost free; Rishi Sunak, then Chancellor, always said there would be a price to pay for furlough and the plethora of other interventions deemed necessary to support the Government’s social distancing instructions. But lockdown was also sold as just a temporary hiatus, a bit like an induced coma, with the economy returning to normal substantially undamaged by its sudden stop as soon as the public health emergency was over. This has turned out to be very far from the case. The economic harm these policies have caused, never mind their wider impact on health, education and general well being, may even turn out to have been worse than the financial crisis, which presaged a decade long pause in living standards... Given that the effect of Covid was to bring deaths forward from the future, you would expect, now that it is over, to see a period where mortality is lower than usual. Instead, it continues to be much higher, as many of us feared it would be at the time. The effect of lockdown has been to create an ongoing health crisis long after its immediate demands were lifted. Much the same can be said of the wider economy, which was completely discombobulated by months of enforced closure... so much of today’s sea of troubles, seemingly pushing in on all sides, have their origins deep in the global policy response to the pandemic – be it surging inflation, a growing wave of industrial action, ruinous public debt, looming recession, damaged education or broken public services... only now are the lasting costs of these policies becoming clear. What the pandemic did was destabilise not just the UK, but the entire global economy, cruelly exposing fault lines and weaknesses which had been left unaddressed over decades. Crucially, it substantially damaged the supply side of the economy, so that when demand came racing back there was insufficient capacity to cope... The great outpouring of government largesse that occurred during the pandemic has got voters used to the idea that there is a limitless source of money that can be used to tide the country over almost any crisis... Rising inflation and interest rates are already having a crippling effect on the Government’s debt servicing costs. Add in the tax cuts, the suspension of green levies, the price freeze and more subsidies for poorer households, and Sam Tombs of Pantheon Macroeconomics is probably right in his assumption that Government borrowing this year will surge to more than £170bn, way in excess of the Office for Budget Responsibility’s spring forecast of £99bn."
Rupa Subramanya: How Ottawa exploited our fear to limit our liberties - "Under rigorous cross examination by the applicants’ attorney, Sam Presvelos, it was revealed that the bureaucrat in charge of Covid Recovery, a unit within Transport Canada, that none of its members had any medical, scientific, or epidemiological background. Apart from Jennifer Little, its director general, and one other individual she named under cross examination, we still don’t know its membership or its exact terms of reference. For a unit that Little herself in her affidavit described as the “focal point” of the government’s travel mandate, we know precious little about this group which has a huge impact on the lives of millions of Canadians. Understandably, many observers, including myself, are increasingly skeptical of the Trudeau government’s vaccine mandates. While we’ve not had a comparable court case for the federal workplace mandate, the documents made public in the travel mandate case cast serious doubt on Trudeau’s claim that his government followed science and the evidence... vaccine mandates proved a useful wedge issue in the lead up to last fall’s election. Is there any other credible explanation as to why the mandates were announced just two days before the election call and were implemented only after the government scraped back in by a whisker? If it really were about the science, wouldn’t it have made more sense to implement the mandate immediately and fight the election with the mandate as a fait accompli? Or did the nature of the virus mysteriously change shortly after the Trudeau government got re-elected?... vaccinated people, depending on whether they’ve had two or three shots and how long ago, are often just as likely to transmit the virus as the unvaccinated, and this makes complete nonsense of the mandates whose explicit purpose is to reduce transmission. Similarly, it made nonsense of provincial mandates which prevented unvaccinated individuals from getting access to restaurants and other public places. As a matter of principle, forcing people to get vaccinated against their will could only ever be justified, that too in extremis, when there’s a serious negative externality involved. If one person not getting vaccinated significantly increases the possibility of others getting the virus, one could make a public health argument for vaccination on that basis, weighing that against the deprivation of individual liberty. In retrospect, I’m sceptical that this made much sense even before Omicron, since we now know that a significant number of “breakthrough” infections were occurring. With Omicron, this argument is much less valid. Diminishing public health benefits do not justify overriding an individual’s choice on whether to get vaccinated or not... Ultimately, anyone’s attitude toward vaccination, masking or other behaviours, is going to be based on their personal assessment of what in medicine is called the “risk-benefit tradeoff.” In other words, is the risk worth the reward? But let’s not forget that when we compare risk and benefit, the weights we attach to each of them are ultimately at least partly psychological and not based purely on the science. A climate of fear is likely to make an otherwise rational person exaggerate the danger of not doing what the government tells you ought to do and underplay the autonomy that you have as an individual to make intelligent choices for yourself. Naturally, the climate of fear benefits those who wish to restrict our individual liberties. Knowing what we now do about the travel vaccine mandate came into being, the Trudeau government or any government for that matter can’t simply blithely tell us that they’re following the science to justify future restrictions on our civil liberties. The threshold must be much higher than that and governments must be held to account if they fail to provide a convincing explanation as to why they need to curtail our freedoms."
ZUBY: on Twitter - "Imagine if poverty, homelessness, or obesity were approached with even a fraction of the obsession as the rona."
ZUBY: on Twitter: - "If I tell you to lose weight, lift weights, stop boozing, and stop eating like pig, then I am a fatphobic villain who hates science. If I tell you to stay home, wear a mask, and take multiple novel injections, then I am a selfless hero who cares about humanity. Interesting.
Our society runs off emotions rather than reality. Always seeking the easy way out and the path of least resistance. Even if it's less effective overall. It's OK to shame people for not getting a shot, but not OK to shame them for slowly killing themselves in myriad other ways."
Western University stands firm on masks, COVID vaccines for students - "Returning students, faculty and staff must be fully vaccinated against COVID-19 and have received at least one booster. Students will have to don medical-grade masks in classrooms and seminar rooms and those speaking may remove their mask to do so... Last year, Western had some of the strictest COVID requirements among Canadian universities, requiring all students living in residence and on campus be vaccinated... London’s Fanshawe College is going in a different direction. Students there will not need proof of vaccination status or be required to wear masks as in-person instruction resumes in 65 per cent of classes this fall"
So much for following the science
‘Only the beginning”: Hundreds protest Western University vaccine mandate - The Globe and Mail - "Speakers at the demonstration included a medical student, a former Huron University College professor who said she refused to comply with the school’s previous vaccine mandate, and the Haldimand-Norfolk health unit’s acting chief medical officer of health who has been an outspoken critic of COVID-19 mandates... Most Ontario universities have not imposed vaccine or mask mandates for the fall semester, and the province has lifted proof-of-vaccination rules in public spaces. Western is the only university in Canada to mandate booster shots for all staff and students on campus. The University of Toronto and Trent University are requiring those living in residence to have three and two doses, respectively, and urging all others on campus to keep their vaccinations up-to-date... Donalds criticized what he called a lack of transparency around the university’s decision. He also questioned the timing of the announcement, which came after some students had already paid the first tuition installment. He said he felt “coerced” to get two doses earlier in the pandemic when proof of vaccination rules were in place. Now, he said, after “waking up to the situation”, he does not want a third shot."
Universities, colleges should follow Ontario medical officer on COVID requirements: gov’t - "Universities and colleges should follow the advice of the province’s chief medical officer of health when it comes to COVID-19-related requirements at their institutions and not make up their own, a government spokesperson says"
Some Western students confused why university mandated a 3rd COVID-19 shot after they'd paid tuition - ""I was really happy and very relieved when I heard what the university was mandating. They acted with integrity and did the right thing," said Beth MacDougall-Shackleton, a professor in the biology department. "People had been on edge. We'd been waiting to see what will be required for the start of school. The mandate protects public health. It protects us."... Maxwell Smith, a bioethicist at Western, calls the university's move "reasonable." "I think it's pretty reasonable, given the objectives the university is trying to achieve," Smith said. "Most Ivy League schools in the states have mandated booster shots. Western has a choice and it is choosing to add protections versus removing them.""
Weird how people are still deluded into thinking that the vaccines reduce transmission. So much for following the science
Will COVID booster mandates help campuses? Experts weigh in - "As Western University imposes a booster mandate for all incoming staff and students – an effort, it says, is to lessen the risk of COVID-19 transmission on campus this fall -- not all infectious disease experts are on the same page about the benefits of such mandates. Dr. Martha Fulford, an infectious disease expert with McMaster University, says she sees the overall medical value of vaccines but doesn’t agree that booster shots should be mandated for public health... “It has become clear that COVID vaccines are not stopping onward transmission,” she said, referring to the spread of variants such as Omicron and sub-variants. When it comes to determining the need for booster shots, it would be easy for each person to have an individual risk assessment with their family physician, Fulford said. “But we’re not going to see a public health benefit in terms of a decrease in onward transmission”... “If you’re going to mandate something, regardless of whether you agree with that person’s individual decision, there has to be a very compelling public health or medical rational for that. It’s just not there anymore for the COVID vaccines and certainly not for boosters.” While the benefit of booster shots might be more apparent for an older, immuno-compromised individual, she said, the benefits of another vaccine for a younger person, particularly if that person already has two doses or has actually recovered from COVID, is much less clear. Karina Top, an associate professor of pediatrics and community health and epidemiology at Dalhousie University, says she supports mandate efforts, believing booster shots could maximize protection for incoming students."
This is interesting since an expert is explicitly saying that people should have bodily autonomy violated solely for the purposes of protecting themselves, i.e. "for their own good". The implications of this are intriguing (and entirely foretold, despite liberals claiming otherwise)
Western must explain rationale for COVID booster mandate: experts - "The university’s administration should be more clear about the science and data informing its decision and the consultations they had when developing the policy, said Zain Chagla, an infectious disease physician and associate professor at McMaster University. Mandates should never be taken lightly and the benefits must be weighed against the potential harms of the policy, particularly as Ontario moves beyond the emergency phase of the pandemic... “We’ve seen Omicron rip through Canada, in the context of high vaccine rates. Three doses maybe has a transient effect on transmission,” Chagla said. “When you start seeing a giant mandate being imposed on students, some who got their vaccines in December or January, it becomes harder to justify.”... forcing a third dose policy on students will be a barrier to education for some and may reduce campus goodwill and buy-in if another public health issue, such as a meningitis outbreak, erupts and triggers a separate vaccination push"
"Trust the experts" - when they say what liberals want to hear
Ford government calls on universities to follow public health | Toronto Sun - "The moves by the universities are well offside current public health guidelines. There is widespread speculation that Western’s policy was the result of demands by the faculty association currently negotiating a new contract with the school. So far, Western has refused to comment on that claim, despite repeated requests. While the provincial government doesn’t run these schools directly, they do regulate them and provide significant funding each year. Asked to react to these announcements by the schools, Scott Clark, a spokesperson for Colleges and Universities Minister Jill Dunlop, said the province wants to see schools follow the advice of Dr. Kieran Moore, Ontario’s chief medical officer"
