Wear Your Mask - COVID-19 Thread II

[Inquisitive Raven]

Medical exceptions only, and not very many of those.

Let me guess... documented allergy to the delivery mechanism of the shot, the vaccine would be ineffective because of a non-functional immune system, or vaccination would cause an immune system overreaction, and that's more or less it?

Hmm. if vaccination would cause an immune system overreaction, I'd expect that actual Covid would as well. If anything, I'd expect a worse overreaction from Covid.  In fact, one of the signs of immune system overreaction is blood clotting in places you don't want blood clots and Covid carries a much higher risk of that than the viral vector vaccines from J&J and Astra Zeneca.

[LynnInDenver]

Medical exceptions only, and not very many of those.

Let me guess... documented allergy to the delivery mechanism of the shot, the vaccine would be ineffective because of a non-functional immune system, or vaccination would cause an immune system overreaction, and that's more or less it?

Hmm. if vaccination would cause an immune system overreaction, I'd expect that actual Covid would as well. If anything, I'd expect a worse overreaction from Covid.  In fact, one of the signs of immune system overreaction is blood clotting in places you don't want blood clots and Covid carries a much higher risk of that than the viral vector vaccines from J&J and Astra Zeneca.

Well, it was basically an example of a potential legitimate reason to not get a vaccination, so to speak. Not having the list of what would qualify, I was basically taking a guess, with the idea that the legitimate exemptions would be countable on one hand, with fingers left over.

[robkelk]

"[E]ven when COVID is over, it's not over" - supply chain issues will be with us for a long time.

The Ottawa-based home and garden chain with 20 stores across Canada told customers in an email this week that it is sending out its Christmas catalogue "uncomfortably early" this year because it is anticipating major delays in getting its goods to market.

"The message for consumers is buy early, because there is no chance to reorder or to replenish [before Christmas]," said CEO Robin Lee in an interview with CBC News. He said that the inventory the company has now are products they ordered a year ago.

[robkelk]

Canadians who had allergic reaction to first vaccine dose can safely get second, advisory committee says

With some caveats, including "get the second shot under a doctor's care".

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Don't expect EI if you lose your job for not being vaccinated, minister says

Not official policy yet. They're treating vaccination as a condition of employment, and one does not receive Employment Insurance if one is fired for failing to abide by a condition of employment. (The employment lawyer quoted in the article as giving a dissenting opinion just lost a case at the Supreme Court regarding firing for failure to abide by a condition of employment, so the lawyer's opinion does not necessarily match judicial opinion.)

[robkelk]

Soprano creates mask made specially for singers

[robkelk]

Canadian federal public servants, RCMP and air and rail travellers must be vaccinated by month's end

As of October 30, you won't be allowed on a plane, intercity train, or cruise ship in Canada if you don't have both your shots (or a Johnson&Johnson shot).

(Mounties and civil servants who don't have their shots go on unpaid leave as of November 12. Telework from isolation will not be offered as a substitute.)

Medical exceptions only, and not very many of those.

Yeah, I suspected that this wasn't going to last.

Managers will decide on religious vaccine exemptions for federal public servants

"The validity of the belief itself must not be challenged by the manager; They must determine only if the belief is sincerely held by the employee," according to a document from the Treasury Board Secretariat.

Labour lawyer Marc Boudreau said the flexibility granted in this policy raises questions about how firmly the government plans to apply the rules.

Getting on a plane today? Here's what you need to know about new vaccination requirements

If travellers have started the vaccination process but have not yet completed it, they can show proof of a valid COVID-19 molecular test until Nov. 29. As of Nov. 30, the unvaccinated will not be eligible to travel, except for limited exemptions.

[robkelk]

If you're planning on visiting (or returning to) Canada, you must have this app and use it to submit your vaccination status (or, if you aren't fully vaccinated, to submit your quarantine plan).

Online version at that site, or download for iOS or Android. No charge for the app - if somebody wants money for it, he's a fraudster.

EDIT: If you don't have the ArriveCAN app and you try to enter Canada anyway, well... if you don't have Canadian citizenship, you'll be turned away; if you do have Canadian citizenship, you'll be given a quarantine plan to implement at your own cost. It's much less expensive to simply get the app.

[Labster]

Found this blogger who went through and read all of the the ivermectin studies.  TL;DR of a very long article is:
1. Half of all of these studies are utter garbage.
2. The remaining studies showed no effect, or a weak positive effect on preventing mortality or reducing symptoms.
3. For some reason, the studies showing the highest benefits of ivermectin on COVID seem to be in countries that have problems with parasitic worms.
4. If people think vaccines are tools made by the enemy, they're not going to trust the vaccine no matter what you say.

[robkelk]

Chapman's Ice Cream faces backlash and boycott over vaccination policy

Chapman is the vice-president of Chapman's Ice Cream, a family business in Markdale, Ont., that has been distributing ice cream products across Canada for 48 years.

His company is now at the centre of what he calls a "nasty" campaign by some anti-vaccine organizations and activists.

One ray of sunshine:

He says the boycott hasn't affected the company's bottom line — and he expects it never will.

"There's just not enough Canadians that are anti-vax enough to send us hate mail and to affect our sales," he said. "They might think that their boycott could actually do something to us, but we would never notice."

(BTW, I prefer the taste of Chapman's ice cream over the multinational brands.)


EDIT: An offer for Canadian residents only: $4 off coupon for Chapman's ice cream. Limit one coupon per household per year. And they've been doing this for a long time - I discovered that offer five months ago, and it wasn't new then.

[Norgarth]

RE: the annual coupon

Neat! 8) I mostly buy Chapman's myself (especially their Mint Chocolate Chip) I'll have to mention this to my family

[robkelk]

Well, that was fast...

Today: WHO identifies new COVID-19 "variant of concern", names it "Omicron"

This afternoon: Canada limits travel from seven countries in southern Africa where the Omicron variant has been identified

Starting today, all foreign nationals who have travelled through South Africa, Namibia, Zimbabwe, Botswana, Lesotho, Eswatini or Mozambique in the last 14 days will be barred from entering Canada.

[robkelk]

'Untenable' insurance policies could silence live music venues

The COVID-19 pandemic has already taken a big toll on Ontario's music venues, with several in Ottawa having closed their doors for good.

For those who've survived the lockdowns and capacity restrictions, however, there's now a new threat: many small-and-medium-sized venues are facing remarkably high increases in their insurance premiums.

"You can get insurance if you're willing to pay, in some cases — and this is not a made up number — 4,000 per cent higher than what you may have paid before," said Erin Benjamin, president and CEO of the Canadian Live Music Association, in an interview with CBC Radio's All In A Day.

"They're not all that high, but they're certainly higher than pre-pandemic amounts."

[robkelk]

Anime News Network: Man Diagnosed With Omicron Variant of COVID-19 Attended Anime NYC

The con required proof of vaccination for entry.

If you were there, or if you have been in contact with someone who was there, get tested.

[RMH999]

Preliminary results for Omicron vs Pfizer vaccine for antibody neutralization.

Antibody neutralization is the amount of antibodies needed in cell culture to stop virus replication.

https://t.co/8pa5kEw0FL - link is to PDF preprint paper

Summary: Omicron causes a 40x reduction in antibody neutralization for 2 dose Pfizer vaccination as compared to original Covid. As the 3rd Pfizer dose gives an approximate 40x increase in antibody production it effectively cancels out. Data for other vaccines not available yet.

[robkelk]

Almost 2 years later, Anthony Fauci didn't think COVID-19 pandemic would have lasted this long

I don't know why. After all, the H1N1 pandemic that began in 1918 took a full two years to go from "massive killer" to "only sometimes fatal flu", and didn't really stop until 2020... and we knew more about influenza then than we know about coronaviruses now. Why would this pandemic be shorter than the last one?

[LynnInDenver]

I think it was the hope springs eternal about people actually doing what would have been needed, which would have been complete lockdown, make it die out by isolating it long enough that all the carriers are no longer capable of spreading it, and we could have gotten back to normal. Unfortunately, we were already past that; even New Zealand was finding that it was impossible to stamp out, given they were still seeing outbreaks, albeit small ones, probably from it having gotten into the animal population and thus jumping back whenever the opportunity arises.

Unfortunately, being an invisible threat, the human species already is incredibly incapable of taking it as seriously as it should have been, and then there's the continued politicization of the idea of taking any precautions. We're starting to really show the strain here in my house of having to still deal with this thing, since we're among the group that's still taking precautions, yet too many people around us treating this so cavalierly that we're very much feeling like the only person in the team that's doing almost all the work on the project.

We want to go to conventions. We want to go to arcades. We want to go to parties with our friends. We want to sit down at restaurants to eat. And we can't, at least not more than once every couple of months, because we can't trust enough people to have done the work to enable it. And I know that the same forces making it political will also fight the necessary need to start reviewing what constitutes reasonable event sizes and reasonable adjustments to determining an appropriate occupancy of spaces by incorporating ventilation as part of the review process.

BTW, I wouldn't be surprised if we're pretty close to the German prediction in that everyone here in Colorado is Vaccinated, Recovering, or Dead.

[LynnInDenver]

Hm. If this is indeed the case, it explains so much about the whole thing and how it could spread so quickly.

https://scitechdaily.com/covid-19-breakt...ne-system/

[robkelk]

New rules for getting into Canada. tl;dr: You're going into quarantine, assuming you're allowed in at all.

[LynnInDenver]

Generally speaking, I think we all need to just assume that any international travel may well require more than a month of time - two weeks of quarantine once you get to the destination country, and two weeks of quarantine upon return.

I'm just assuming for right now that I'm not traveling internationally.

[Inquisitive Raven]

Even the people you'd think would be best able to prevent spread at a gathering failed spectacularly. Given that, I'm really not happy that my housemate is heading off Worldcon this week even though she's fully vaxxed and has had a booster.

[robkelk]

Canada's back to "avoid all non-essential travel" outside Canada

Needless to say, the airlines don't like it.

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Allergists hit with surge of vaccine exemption requests, but rarely grant them

In Ontario, they're the only ones who can grant medical exemptions to vaccinations.

"Those [seeking] exemption are asking ... to be seen as soon as possible — either to get benefit from going to restaurants, or being able to have removal of all the restrictions they have," said Dr. Ahmed Ahmed, a pediatrician who practises at the Kanata Allergy Clinic.

Ahmed says exemption seekers are "pushing" to be seen within a few days, while he simultaneously has a two-to-three-month waiting list for patients with food and other allergies.

"This leads sometimes to verbal abuse with my staff," Ahmed said. "It can be sometimes a hassle ... convincing them over the phone and answering their questions again, again and again."

To the people who want exemptions now, I say "Lack of planning on your part is not an emergency on the allergists' part." They have patients who will die without treatment; you won't die if you can't get on a plane or train or into a restaurant for a few months.

[robkelk]

Something to share with anybody who still thinks children don't get COVID:

2-month-old baby dies of COVID-19 at Montreal's Sainte-Justine Hospital

"The child, healthy at birth, had been recently hospitalized in intensive care due to COVID and died on Dec. 16," the hospital said in a news release Friday.

[Umbire]

Canada's back to "avoid all non-essential travel" outside Canada

Needless to say, the airlines don't like it.

---

Allergists hit with surge of vaccine exemption requests, but rarely grant them

In Ontario, they're the only ones who can grant medical exemptions to vaccinations.

"Those [seeking] exemption are asking ... to be seen as soon as possible — either to get benefit from going to restaurants, or being able to have removal of all the restrictions they have," said Dr. Ahmed Ahmed, a pediatrician who practises at the Kanata Allergy Clinic.

Ahmed says exemption seekers are "pushing" to be seen within a few days, while he simultaneously has a two-to-three-month waiting list for patients with food and other allergies.

"This leads sometimes to verbal abuse with my staff," Ahmed said. "It can be sometimes a hassle ... convincing them over the phone and answering their questions again, again and again."

To the people who want exemptions now, I say "Lack of planning on your part is not an emergency on the allergists' part." They have patients who will die without treatment; you won't die if you can't get on a plane or train or into a restaurant for a few months.

Something something "deprived of the freedom to consume etc. etc."

[robkelk]

Quebec closes at 5pm eastern time today.

Yes, the entire province. Yes, the province that one could hide Texas in. Yes, less than a week before Christmas.

[robkelk]

You know how every year there's something really popular that most people just can't get at Christmas time?

Guess what fits that bill this year in Ontario.

If you said "booster vaccinations", you guessed right. I'm self-isolating... again.