We Canadians are a compliant flock. We have faith in our government. We share a strong egalitarian streak. If there is a line, we’ll stand in it peacefully. But the Liberal government’s bungled rollout of Covid-19 vaccinations is ruffling feathers here, and many people in my parents’ cohort have ditched the wait and flown south in search of their own vaccinations. This may be hard for Americans to understand, but in Canada this qualifies as subversive.
Snowbirds Fly South for the Vaccine
For Floridians, this is not a major revelation. And truthfully we rather have Canadians take advantage of the vaccine program rather than the denizens of the Garden and the Empire, at least Canucks are polite (I know, the Quebecois suck a bag of sugar free richards too).
These people have been cooped up for more than a year, unable to hug their grandchildren or stroll without fearing the quiet menace of aerosol particles. Many complain that the vaccine registration systems, controlled by provinces, are impenetrable or Soviet: You have to know someone or hope for a lucky glitch that lets you slide into the queue. The statistics also offer little hope. So far, 1.8% of Canadians have been fully vaccinated, a rate that puts us slightly behind Brazil.
Holy crap. These are the numbers I just picked up for the US:
Florida sports 16.25% for the completed 2 shot series only, but we are almost at 6 million Floridians vaccinated with one or both doses. And either my math is really bad, or my calculator says that out of 37 million Canadians, only 666,000 have been vaccinated so far. Please tell me I am very wrong.
Further, when the first round of jabs began around February, disheartening news followed. In early March, Canada became the only country in the world to delay the second dose by four months. We love our quirks, but uniquely inept life-and-death policy decisions strain one’s patience. When addressing how that extension would affect the province of British Columbia, Canada’s chief science adviser, Mona Nemer, framed it as a “population-level experiment.” How comforting.
OK, that Canadians are not staging Honduran-type caravans and crossing the northern border illegally reflects how nice they are and hate to impose on anybody else. But I also know that when Canadians finally lose their minds, it is spectacular and worth of Pay-Per-View.
Dear Canadian healthcare: You were are not supposed to out-Cuomo the asshole in Albany.
Full Hat Tip for PaulKersey.
Delay the second dose for four months? You can’t delay the second dose.
The efficacy rate craters when you do that. Down to under 30% if I recall. Saw a video from a vaccine researcher that said as much. Wish I could find the link.
He said to be effective as advertised, the protocol they tested with has to be followed, which makes sense.
My old team was 2/3 Canadian. My new one has only two.
I don’t miss the sanctimony.
Do you have a reference for that statement about loss of efficacy?
In today’s WSJ there is a piece by Marty Makary, MD (prof of medicine at Johns Hopkins) arguing that the Brits got it right when they elected to try the “just one shot for the two dose vaccines” approach. A new article in the same issue refers to that as a “gamble” and describes how in fact it did work but if it had failed the consequences would have been nasty. True. Makary says that the data show 85% efficacy after one shot, which is lower than for two but not by a large margin. I still need to finish reading the article. You can find it at opinionjournal.com, the open access to the WSJ opinion section.
I tend to give credence to Makary’s statements, since his analyses on Covid and vaccines and immunity match what I learned in high school biology, unlike the claims of Dr. Fauci which do not. And Makary in fact spells out what aspects of Fauci’s analyses he disagrees with and why his view is the right one. An example from a few weeks ago: Fauci was looking at “herd immunity” as if it were defined exclusively by who is vaccinated. Makary pointed out that this is wrong, it is a combination of those vaccinated and those with natural immunity (due to having had the CCP virus, with or without symptoms). The difference is quite substantial, and means that herd immunity is imminent rather than being far away if not unreachable, as Fauci claimed. (That piece also can be found on opinionjournal.com, you’ll have to do some searching to go back far enough.)
Sheesh! Even my baby sister knows what herd immunity means….
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Yes, but your baby sister doesn’t practice politics over everything else.