Coronavirus outbreak

[Mustard Tiger]

12 hours ago, King Heffy said:

You failed to answer mine.  I specifically said that anyone unvaccinated by choice is not worth wasting medical resources on, but these truckers are even worse and are actively trying to destroy our country.  Once again: Name one antivaxxer who this country would not be better off without. 

You are no better then the freedumb fighters with comments like this man. They are on one side of the spectrum saying they are losing their rights and freedumbs, And you are on the other saying they shouldn't have the rights to public services such as healthcare. 

 

Edited January 29, 2022 by -DLC-

[johngould21]

11 hours ago, -DLC- said:

Are we dealing with tag teams in here now.  One disappears and another's on the scene?

 

Hmmm, interesting.

or bots?

[johngould21]

6 hours ago, JoeyJoeJoeJr. Shabadoo said:

Remember that Washington State Trooper who went off on an epic rant on his radio because he wouldn't get vaccinated so instead he quit his job of 22 years, all while filming himself? Yeah, well....

 

 

Yep, right to the grave, they'll deny their ignorance.

[Alflives]

11 minutes ago, johngould21 said:

Yep, right to the grave, they'll deny their ignorance.

True, but these antivaxxers end up dying in our hospitals, therefore taking up valuable medical resources.  

[stawns]

1 hour ago, Russ said:

What goal post am I moving? I'm waiting for one that's going to target the current variant as opposed to the variants that are less and less common. Sorry I didn't look up the exact date of when it's coming to Canada, they say ready for March but might not get here until April, we've been behind USA for releases this far. 

 

I got my 2 shots, I'm willing to get a booster, I just don't think getting an outdated booster at this point is needed if they feel they have one coming out in a few months that's more effective against the modern variant. 

I don't have any issue with that, it's understandable.  Boosters do help, for sure, but two shots is still pretty decent protection I think.  I got mine because I was getting close to 8 months and I work in a very high exposure, high risk workplace

 

[JM_]

34 minutes ago, Alflives said:

True, but these antivaxxers end up dying in our hospitals, therefore taking up valuable medical resources.  

 

the constitutional stuff is hilarious. We don't have a democracy 

 

No, we have a great one. One that provided a free, awesome choice to stay healthy. 

 

Our academic gene splicer seems to think our health care system is a-la-carte otherwise Trudeau is a fascist. Thats what we're dealing with here. 

 

I can't wait until the idiots go back into the woodwork. 

[Alflives]

Well, the idiots protesting in Ottawa have out their Confederate flags.  

[JM_]

1 hour ago, Russ said:

What goal post am I moving? I'm waiting for one that's going to target the current variant as opposed to the variants that are less and less common. Sorry I didn't look up the exact date of when it's coming to Canada, they say ready for March but might not get here until April, we've been behind USA for releases this far. 

 

I got my 2 shots, I'm willing to get a booster, I just don't think getting an outdated booster at this point is needed if they feel they have one coming out in a few months that's more effective against the modern variant. 

don't you think its a better idea to just go off what the medical experts recommend? 

[JM_]

2 minutes ago, Alflives said:

Well, the idiots protesting in Ottawa have out their Confederate flags.  

 

I wonder what other alt-right flags are there? has anyone done a story on that yet? I bet there are all kinds of signals of white nationalism sprinkled in there. 

 

When you look at the people behind this "protest" its pretty disgusting what they promote. 

[Alflives]

2 minutes ago, JM_ said:

don't you think its a better idea to just go off what the medical experts recommend? 

Why listen t medical experts, when there’s urine to drink?  Don’t you know that chowing down on horse dewormer followed by a urine chaser is healthy?  

[JM_]

Just now, Alflives said:

Why listen t medical experts, when there’s urine to drink?  Don’t you know that chowing down on horse dewormer followed by a urine chaser is healthy?  

I'm more concerned for people deciding to "wait" for something better down the road. Its really unfortunate that there was a misleading pre- print of a paper suggesting the booster wasn't effective against the current variant, which turned out to be quite wrong. But the doubt got circulated anyway.

[TOMapleLaughs]

10 hours ago, Alflives said:

And people say I drink too much.  What in the world are you even talking about?  

Did you not even read the context?

[TOMapleLaughs]

10 hours ago, Playoff Beered said:

I'm not bashing the USA, just stating facts, as to them being the world leader atm all you offer is your assurance "there's just no way they're not the worlds leader atm"

That's it?...nothing more?

Who's the world leader nation?

 

China?

 

Pass.

[Playoff Beered]

12 minutes ago, TOMapleLaughs said:

Who's the world leader nation?

 

China?

 

Pass.

I never said China is the world leader nation, you however, claimed the US is the leader nation which it is clearly not, this is backed up by facts from many sources. You also claim that the US has better covid policy than Canada, well the US has 2711 deaths per million, Canada has 876 deaths per million. If Canada followed the US model we would have more than 3 times the deaths in Canada. That would mean more than 70 000 more deaths than the 33 518 we have already lost. Pass indeed.  

[JM_]

1 minute ago, Playoff Beered said:

I never said China is the world leader nation, you however, claimed the US is the leader nation which it is clearly not, this is backed up by facts from many sources. You also claim that the US has better covid policy than Canada, well the US has 2711 deaths per million, Canada has 876 deaths per million. If Canada followed the US model we would have more than 3 times the deaths in Canada. That would mean more than 70 000 more deaths than the 33 518 we have already lost. Pass indeed.  

bingo. All we've learned from the US is how not to do things. 

 

Oh and just how cold hearted conservatives are now. They just don't care about the increased deaths, its far more important to be unmasked in a WalMart. 

[Russ]

1 hour ago, JM_ said:

don't you think its a better idea to just go off what the medical experts recommend? 

The WHO do say right now healthy people don't need them. I get your point but experts vary all over the place

 

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/who-says-theres-no-evidence-healthy-children-adolescents-need-covid-boosters.html

 

He said scientists may eventually redefine how many doses are required in the primary series of Covid shots. While most healthy people may need just two shots, he said the elderly or immunocompromised may need three or four

Edited January 29, 2022 by Russ

[TOMapleLaughs]

13 minutes ago, Playoff Beered said:

I never said China is the world leader nation, you however, claimed the US is the leader nation which it is clearly not, this is backed up by facts from many sources. You also claim that the US has better covid policy than Canada, well the US has 2711 deaths per million, Canada has 876 deaths per million. If Canada followed the US model we would have more than 3 times the deaths in Canada. That would mean more than 70 000 more deaths than the 33 518 we have already lost. Pass indeed.  

As far as nations capable of being world leader nations is concerned, it's either the US or China.  The metrics being missed in this little bash don't include the most important ones:  The economic ones.  The financial ones.  The US has built a substantial hegemony due to it's vast economic resources that other nations simply don't have.  And whether we like it or not, that hegemony absolutely envelopes Canada.  I mean we can bicker about all sorts of other stats to take a piece out of them for giggles, but that really is meaningless.

 

As far as US covid stats are concerned, well NY has had the same outcomes as Florida despite wildly-differing policy.  So maybe covid ultimately doesn't care about policy.  This seems like 1yr old or 2yr old points anyway, as by now omicron impacts us all quite equally and we're pretty much on our own to deal with it.  Regardless of policy.

 

Oh, and which nation were we ultimately dependent on for vaccines?

 

Okay...

Edited January 29, 2022 by TOMapleLaughs

[NewbieCanuckFan]

7 minutes ago, TOMapleLaughs said:

As far as nations capable of being world leader nations is concerned, it's either the US or China.  The metrics being missed in this little bash don't include the most important ones:  The economic ones.  The financial ones.  The US has built a substantial hegemony due to it's vast economic resources that other nations simply don't have.  And whether we like it or not, that hegemony absolutely envelopes Canada.  I mean we can bicker about all sorts of other stats to take a piece out of them for giggles, but that really is meaningless.

 

As far as US covid stats are concerned, well NY has had the same outcomes as Florida despite wildly-differing policy.  So maybe covid ultimately doesn't care about policy.  This seems like 1yr old or 2yr old points anyway, as by now omicron impacts us all quite equally and we're pretty much on our own to deal with it.  Regardless of policy.

 

Oh, and which nation were we ultimately dependent on for vaccines?

 

Okay...

I trust Florida messing around with the actual numbers much like Pfizer mucking with the numbers to make them look better.

 

Anyhow:

 

https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2021/feb/26/instagram-posts/chart-comparing-new-york-and-florida-covid-19-flaw/

Edited January 29, 2022 by NewbieCanuckFan

[Gurn]

https://www.msn.com/en-ca/news/other/some-trucker-convoy-organizers-have-history-of-white-nationalism-racism/ar-AAThcrZ?ocid=msedgdhp&pc=U531

As the first vehicles from the trucker convoy started appearing on Ottawa streets, some Twitter users shared a particular photo: a pickup truck with a confederate flag flying from the bed.

Now, as the convoy descends on Ottawa with the stated aim of opposing all COVID-19 mandates, anti-hate experts allege those with white nationalist and Islamophobic views don't just represent the fringes of the movement but are among the organizers of the convoy.

"We're saying that this is a far-right convoy because -- from day one -- the organizers themselves are part of the far-right movement," said the Executive Director of the Canadian Anti-Hate Network, Evan Balgord.

"They have previously been involved in far-right movements and have made Islamophobic comments in the past."

It can be difficult to determine who is a key organizer of the convoy, but there are some names that emerge time and time again -- whether as authors of the $7.4 million GoFundMe, as points of contact on the website that boasts a petition with 240,000 signatures, or on social media posts providing widely-shared directions to anyone hoping to join.

Global News contacted all the organizers mentioned in this story, but none responded by the time of publication. Jason LaFace, an Ontario organizer, did pick up the call, but upon the reporter identifying themselves, immediately laughed, said "no thank you," and hung up the phone.

The convoy initially kicked off with a focus on opposing vaccine mandates — especially the one aimed at truckers. The government announced in November 2021 that all Canadian truckers seeking to cross the border from the United States would need to be vaccinated in order to avoid a 14-day quarantine. That mandate went into effect on Jan. 15.

The United States also instituted its own ban on unvaccinated truck drivers a week after Canada implemented its policy.

In the days since the trucks hit the road, the stated goal of the movement has become muddied.

One trucker who is headed to the protest, Brigitte Belton, told Global News in a Friday interview that her goal is "to get freedom back," and that she is "not here for politics."

Commenting on other participants whose goals may be more extreme, she said "whatever their agendas are, that's not what we're here for. So they need to be quiet. They need to go home."

Read more:

Organizer of GoFundMe campaign for trucker convoy withdraws $1M, company confirms

A group affiliated with the convoy, Canada Unity, has produced a "memorandum of understanding" they plan to present to Gov. Gen. Mary Simon and the Senate, which they believe would force the government to rescind COVID-19 public health measures, or force the government to resign en masse.

"The GG wouldn't dismiss a Cabinet that hasn't lost the confidence of the Commons ... moreover, the GG has no authority to independently rescind laws or regulations," said parliamentary expert Philippe Lagassé.

The convoy has a number of participants with different goals and isn't cohesive, but some popular webpages help paint a picture of the people behind the convoy.

There is a GoFundMe page that has raised more than $7 million for the trucker convoy. That fundraiser has two names on it: Tamara Lich, and B.J. Dichter.

Speaking to a cheering crowd at a People's Party of Canada convention in 2019, B.J. Dichter warned listeners about the dangers of "political Islamists," and said the Liberal Party is "infested with Islamists."

He added that, by meeting "with extremists," Conservative and "establishment" politicians "put at risk moderate and secular Muslims, who want nothing more but to integrate into Canada, to become Canadian, and to leave the garbage of their birth country behind them."

"Despite what our corporate media and political leaders want to admit, Islamist entryism and the adaptation of political Islam is rotting away at our society like syphilis," he added, according to a story written for the Toronto Star by Alex Boutilier, who is now employed by Global News.

Another dominant voice within the convoy community is a man named Patrick King. King is listed as a contact for North Alberta on Canada Unity's website, which hosts the memorandum of understanding that boasts more than 240,000 signatures.

King's name was repeatedly mentioned on the convoy's walkie-talkie app, Zello, on Friday -- but he has ended up in the public eye for different reasons in the past, according to footage posted online.

In a video posted on Twitter in 2019, King suggests that unless Canadians "get up off your as---s and demand change," they might want to change their names to "Ishmael" or "drop a bunch of change down the stairs" and  "call yourself chong ching ching chang."

In other video footage, King can be seen repeating racist conspiracy theories. In one clip posted to Twitter by another user, King says "there's an endgame, it's called depopulation of the Caucasian race, or the Anglo-Saxon. And that's what the goal is, is to depopulate the Anglo-Saxon race because they are the ones with the strongest bloodlines," he said.

"It’s a depopulation of race, okay, that’s what they want to do.”

Read more:

‘Fringe minority’ in truck convoy with ‘unacceptable views’ don’t represent Canadians: Trudeau

He then talks about men with the first names "Ahmed" and "Mahmoud" who he claims are trying to “not only infiltrate by flooding with refugees, we're going to infiltrate the education systems to manipulate it” so there is "less procreation" which leads to "less white people -- or you know, Anglo-Saxon. Let's say Anglo-Saxon, because when I say white, all the ANTIFA guys call up the race card."

In a Facebook Live posted directly to his page, King says that COVID-19 is "not a naturally occurring virus."

"It's not a naturally occurring virus, it's a man-made bioweapon that was put out to make people sick, to push the narrative for all these jabs, is what it was," he said.

“Because the jab is the, they want to be able to track you, follow you, know your every movement you do.”

King did not answer two phone calls or respond to emails from Global News.

Jason LaFace -- who at times uses the name "LaFaci" -- is listed as the North and East Ontario organizer for the convoy on the Canada Unity website, and has been cited in other media as the main organizer for Ontario. In photos posted to his Facebook page, which were screenshotted by Global News, he shared an image titled "Canadian politicians who are not born in Canada" and included his own caption: "traitors to our country."

According to a screenshot obtained by Global News, LaFace posted a selfie where he wore a hat with what appears to be the initials S.O.O., which is believed to stand for Soliders of Odin -- an anti-immigrant group first established in Finland.

The emergence of the far-right Soldiers of Odin group in Canada raised concerns about the potential for “anti-immigrant vigilantism,” according to a de-classified intelligence report obtained by Global News in 2017.

One of the admins on their website is actually somebody who's like the vice president of the Soldiers of Odin, a skinhead group in Sudbury, Ont.," said Dr. Carmen Celestini, a post-doctoral fellow at The Centre on Hate, Bias and Extremism and an adjunct professor at the University of Waterloo.

"His name is Jason LaFace. He also uses other names, but he is a vice president of this group, which organize events that will try to stop immigration, people who are BIPOC or people who are in LGBTQ communities."

"Last summer," she added, LaFace posted a message on Facebook indicating that he planned to "paint over a mural in Sudbury for (Black Lives Matter)."

LaFace later apologized, saying he "should have researched a bit more what was going on in terms of the mission and why it was sanctioned by the city."

"I apologize for my behaviour to the entire city," he said, according to the Sudbury Star.

However, LaFace showed a slight change of heart in a recent Facebook Live.

"This whole moment in history right now has changed my life for better, for the rest of my life," LaFace said.

"I'm not a bitter little a--hole like I used to be, where I was pretty ignorant to some people online."

Read more:

Far-right groups hope trucker protest will be Canada’s ‘January 6th’ 

However, in that same video, LaFace also issued a message about Prime Minister Justin Trudeau.

"There's things that are working in the background right now, that I found out this morning, Justin Trudeau is going buh-bye. It's true, he is," he said.

"It's done, so now we just have to deploy our plan ... he's gone when we're done."

When Global News attempted to contact LaFace for a comment, he said "no thank you" and hung up.

As the ideologies allegedly supported by a number of the convoy's organizers make headlines, some truckers are getting frustrated.

"We're here to get freedom back. That's what we're here to get, out here for. Whatever their agendas are, that's not what we're here for," said Belton, referring to the more extreme voices tied to the movement.

Belton is a trucker who has been regularly making TikTok videos about the convoy and plans to attend Saturday's protest. She is also listed as a Sarnia contact on the Canada Unity webpage.

"They need to go home. We don't need them. We don't need their numbers. Yeah, we've got huge numbers with just people that want to go back to a normal life and that's what we want," she said.

Read more:

Singh’s brother-in-law has asked for his $13K trucker convoy donation back, source says

Lich, an organizer of the truck convoy, said in a video posted to the convoy’s Facebook page that those promoting violence or hate do not reflect the position of the protesters.

“As you know, we are on our way to Ottawa to hold a peaceful protest. I just want to put it out there that nobody in this convoy will be inciting violence or uttering threats. That is not what we’re here to do,” Lich said in the video.

“If you see anybody trying to associate themselves with us that is acting in that way, you need to get their truck number and their licence plate and report it to the police."

For some, the individual views of organizers aren't as important as what they're doing for the cause.

When Belton was asked specifically about organizers and told some of what Global News had uncovered about LaFace and King, she said the information about the purported views is “irrelevant” for her.

"I'm coming here for freedom," she said.

"All I know is that they're good people to me and they are helping me."

[JM_]

12 minutes ago, Russ said:

The WHO do say right now healthy people don't need them. I get your point but experts vary all over the place

 

 

https://www.cnbc.com/2022/01/18/who-says-theres-no-evidence-healthy-children-adolescents-need-covid-boosters.html

 

He said scientists may eventually redefine how many doses are required in the primary series of Covid shots. While most healthy people may need just two shots, he said the elderly or immunocompromised may need three or four

and your local health authority recommends that you do get one: https://www2.gov.bc.ca/gov/content/covid-19/vaccine/booster

 

sure you can go forum shopping for the answer, but WHO doesn't have the local health information that the BCCDC does.