Canadian COVID-19 News

[Montanan]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Damn straight! Doesn't every nation have a Strategic Maple Syrup Reserve?

The USA's syrup reserve is of the corn variety and is located in Iowa.

It becomes a sticky situation when such reserves are tapped.

[Montanan]

OMICRON Coronavirus Variant Alert.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/money/mark...?ocid=msedgntp

Moderna CEO Stephane Bancel has left no doubt whether he’s taking a glass half-full or half-empty approach to the emergence of the new omicron coronavirus variant.

He told the Financial Times there’s no world where current vaccines are as effective as against the delta variant. And he suggested the dropoff could be significant.

“I think it’s going to be a material drop. I just don’t know how much because we need to wait for the data. But all the scientists I’ve talked to . . . are like, ‘This is not going to be good’.”

. . .

Regarding the financial market's response:

“The major vaccine makers have offered timelines of two to six weeks for assessing its vaccine evading capabilities, and in the meantime, travel shutdowns and behaviour modification are a risk as we await anecdotal and statistical evidence of the spread of the virus and its virulence,” said Steen Jakobsen, chief investment officer at Saxo Bank.

So 2020 was dominated by the wild-type, 2021 by Delta, will 2022 be the year of the Omnicron?

Triple jabbed in Montana. Stay safe, stay healthy.

[Montanan]

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s government tightened travel restrictions meant to contain the spread of the omicron variant of Covid-19 as Canada identifies more suspected cases already in the country.

The government will now require all air travelers into Canada -- from countries other than the U.S. -- to test at the airport, whether they are vaccinated or not, Health Minister Jean-Yves Duclos said Tuesday at a press conference. Canada is also considering new testing rules for travelers from the U.S. by both land and air if needed.

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/other...?ocid=msedgntp

[N Coast Murray]

Restrictions tighten up a bit in BC's Northern Health region after BC confirms its first omicron case:

https://www.princegeorgecitizen.com/...-begin-4815877

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by pcmm

I agree, I'm not sure that travel bans really work other than to attempt to solw things down and "buy some time". I think globally we need to shift our focus to helping (in a big way) the more vulnerable countries get as vaccinated as possible. The battle as I see it now is to try to catch up/get ahead of the "variants of concern" That's not really going to happen until places like Africa where the vaccination rate is as low as 10% gets addressed.

Completely agree. All the experts have been saying this from the beginning of vaccinations; this pandemic will continue to fester until we get the most of the world's population immunized. We say it, and believe it, but we in the rich countries continue to hog most of the global vaccine production for ourselves.

[Montanan]

New travel restrictions for Canada. Fewer exemptions from being fully vaccinated.

https://www.yahoo.com/news/covid-19-...193502546.html

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by pcmm

I agree, I'm not sure that travel bans really work other than to attempt to solw things down and "buy some time". I think globally we need to shift our focus to helping (in a big way) the more vulnerable countries get as vaccinated as possible. The battle as I see it now is to try to catch up/get ahead of the "variants of concern" That's not really going to happen until places like Africa where the vaccination rate is as low as 10% gets addressed.

Indeed.
Posted yesterday ➥ https://www.cruisersforum.com/forums...ml#post3530004

Travel bans have failed, if they're judged by their effectiveness in keeping variants out permanently.
But bans can slow the entry of new variants into a country, which can give local health authorities more time to understand the threat, and prepare for it.

So far, about 24 countries have reported the new Omicron variant.

Politicians try to grab the easiest solutions, even the ones that may not be so effective, and sometimes at the expense of ignoring what would work.
And what would work, is a global strategy to make sure we have very few unvaccinated people.

A study [1], in the journal Science, that looked at bans in the earliest stages of the pandemic, found that "the travel quarantine introduced in Wuhan on 23 January 2020 only delayed epidemic progression by 3 to 5 days within China, but international travel restrictions did help to slow spread elsewhere in the world until mid-February.
Their results suggest that early detection, hand washing, self-isolation, and household quarantine will likely be more effective than travel restrictions, at mitigating this pandemic."

The study concluded that a travel ban can help a country, when it's combined with strong internal measures, but not when it's seen as a substitute for domestic responses.

[1] “The effect of travel restrictions on the spread of the 2019 novel coronavirus (COVID-19) outbreak” ~ by Matteo Chinazzi et al
➥ https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/science.aba9757

[Scorpius]

A news item on CBC this morning that provinces are reducing the age limits for booster shots. Alberta plans to make them available to everyone 12 and over in age-staged groups over the next couple of months. Ontario is expected to announce a program today.


They also noted that waning immunity levels may require annual booster shots going forward.


It appears that this waning immunity thing is becoming an issue - possibly because of the emergence of more variants like Omicron.

[Mike OReilly]

It's what they've been saying from the get-go. Just like we have to keep boosting and modifying the influenza vaccine, so to with covid-19.

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

It's what they've been saying from the get-go. Just like we have to keep boosting and modifying the influenza vaccine, so to with covid-19.

I know there's been talk that, with this new mRNA technology that it may be possible to produce a vaccine to stop ALL corona viruses such as SARS, MERS, and the common cold - as well as Covid-19. That would be a heck of a step forward!

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

I know there's been talk that, with this new mRNA technology that it may be possible to produce a vaccine to stop ALL corona viruses such as SARS, MERS, and the common cold - as well as Covid-19. That would be a heck of a step forward!

Wouldn't that be amazing. Even just being able to modify the vaccine to better target the new variants in a timely way is a game-changer.

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

Wouldn't that be amazing. Even just being able to modify the vaccine to better target the new variants in a timely way is a game-changer.

Well, every year we get a "new" flu vaccine and I don't hear tales of months of trials and government approvals before it is made available for general use - although maybe all that is going on in the background. Perhaps a pan-coronavirus vaccine could fall into the same category where a revised annual version is just released to the market as a non-event.

[N Coast Murray]

That's what I'm hoping for...for it to fade into the background like the Flu.

Apparently the Flu kills an average of 500,000 people worldwide every year and is pretty much ignored by most of the public, is not very newsworthy, and an acceptable risk in our lives.

Covid is averaging 2,500,000 deaths per year so far. Might be a few more years before it settles down to become 'background noise' like the Flu. Bleak, but realistic, and subject to change positively or negatively at any time depending on new variants.

A hard reminder that we are a part of Nature, and when there are too many Lemmings...

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by N Coast Murray

A hard reminder that we are a part of Nature, and when there are too many Lemmings...

Spot on! And it applies to much, much more than Covid.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

Well, every year we get a "new" flu vaccine and I don't hear tales of months of trials and government approvals before it is made available for general use - although maybe all that is going on in the background. Perhaps a pan-coronavirus vaccine could fall into the same category where a revised annual version is just released to the market as a non-event.

Yes, modified vaccines fall under a different category and approach in the approval process. I don't recall all the details, but they don't require the full-scale Stage I, II and III trials that new drugs or vaccines must undergo because they are considered modifications to an already-approved item. So it can happen a lot quicker.

But the mRNA technology should allow us to be far more targeted, and should allow us to much quicker.