What should by a thrilling start to a new school year is instead a terror for many students and staff at @mcgillu whose administration had forced them to chose between risking death or serious illness or jeopardizing their education or livelihood. 1/4
@mcgillu McGill has refused a vaccine mandate, even in its own residences, isn't requiring distancing or masking by profs in poorly ventilated classrooms and had threatened discipline against faculty who want to go remote to protect immunocompromised family living under the same roof.
2/4
@mcgillu The school has defended its reckless conduct with arguments that reveal a profound lack of understanding of science, #COVID19 and the law, creating a scarlet letter that won't weather well as it competes globally for students and faculty.
3/4
@mcgillu Make no mistake: the conduct of McGill threatens Montreal too as many in the school live in communities across that great city. The fourth wave of this pandemic is rising, and unless McGill changes course, it may reach daunting and deadly heights.
4/4
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This is a dodge by @celliottability who knows better as the health minister and a lawyer.
She's had six month to replace the medical officer of health for Haldimand-Norfolk during a pandemic and the Health Protection and Promotion Act REQUIRES her to do so EXPEDITIOUSLY. 1/X
@celliottability It was exactly six months ago today -- March 5 -- that Dr. Shanker Nesathurai, then medical officer of health at @HNHealthUnit announced he would resign effective May 21.
So why is it that half a year later Elliott has not filled that position? 2/X
While the requirement to fill a vacancy does not specify a time frame, the legislature chose the word "expeditiously."
Surely, it does not mean a delay of more than six months during the worst pandemic in a century. #COVID19 3/X
While @TorontoStar published a story Friday in which @OntLiberal questioned why @HNHealthUnit named as acting medical officer of health someone who opposes #COVID19 lockdowns, my review of his writings raises another concerning question:
Has he misrepresented evidence?
1/X
@TorontoStar@OntLiberal@HNHealthUnit@strauss_matt@spectator@BorisJohnson In that piece, Strauss misstates findings of studies and reports to build his case against lockdowns.
I use "misstate" and not "misrepresent" because the latter implies an intent to deceive and I have no basis to know his intent - errors may be the result of carelessness.
3/X
A pandemic is not a time for moral grandstanding and PR spin but we've gotten a double dose of each when faced in Canada with the choice of vaccinating with AstraZeneca to prevent #COVID19 1/16
Public Health and public figures pushed AstraZeneca at a time when vaccines were scarce and variants and cases were surging, telling Canadians it was their duty to take AZ first if that was the 1st vaccine available. 2/16
But messaging shouldn’t trump math when fighting an enemy whose spread threatened to overwhelm the capacity of our hospitals to treat all acutely ill patients. 3/16
Real-world American study of 91,134 people finds one dose of Pfizer/Moderna protects MUCH LESS against death/hospitalization then two doses in 3 or 4 week intervals.
The finding should raise questions about Canada delaying doses 16 weeks.
Some health officials, including @Healthmac defend the delay pointing to a less robust study that counted as one-shot immunized those who had a dose but who were hospitalized or died before the two weeks that shot needs to build an immune response but now the verdict is in...
2/X
The new study did NOT count people as having gotten one dose unless they were fine for 2 weeks before illness began. Those who got sick in the first two weeks were counted as not vaccinated at all. The one-dose group was limited to those who were health 2+weeks after 1st dose
3/X
1/2 Public Health and private vigilance in Ontario is our 1st line of defence against #coronavirus If it falls short, we face a crisis. Epidemiologists estimate between 40 and 70% of adults will eventually get coronavirus. Even at the low end, that's 4 million people infected.
2/2/a If we borrow data from China, 20% of those infected needed hospitalizations. That works out to 800,000 hospitalizations in Ontario. Even if we cut that in half, that's 400,000 needing spaces in hospitals already so full, patients are treated in hallways ...
2/2/b So public health and private vigilance must slow the spread so hospitalizations gets stretched out over many months.
My analysis springs from that for Massachusetts by director of the @HarvardGH@ashishkjha - but #onpoli bed shortage is much worse
1/4 #SuperTuesday - (1) @JoeBiden is frontrunner, having swept the South, even edging @BernieSanders in Latino-heavy Texas, beating @BernieSanders twice in his New England backyard, winning in the prairies in Oklahoma and GOP-dominant Alaska and keeping close behind in California
(2) If this dynamic continues, Biden will win the nomination by a comfortable margin; the only places I seeing him getting beat by Sanders is the Sunbelt, where Bernie has won Nevada, Colorado and Utah, and perhaps the Pacific Northwest. Everyplace else is Biden land.
(3) That's a BIG "if" as dynamic can and do change. Now that Biden is frontrunner, he becomes the focus. He has a lengthy political history to attack and has shown himself vulnerable on the hustings by his struggles to speak clearly. The next debate, he will be under full assault