Coronavirus outbreak

[DeNiro]

19 hours ago, NewbieCanuckFan said:

 

 

WTF????  This has to be a fake news story....

“Florida uses drive-throughs to identify the worst people in the world”

[wloutet]

46 minutes ago, kingofsurrey said:

Most importantly teachers were compared to each other in the school / district / province based on their students exam scores.... So teachers were relentless in driving students to perform on these exams.

I'll give you an example of an exam I took in about 1985. I was teaching part time, and working for a computer company part time. The kids were complaining about having to write exams as no one ever has to do this after they leave school. So I told them about my exam the next day. It was a 2 hour oral exam in front of 3 very knowledgeable people. 12 people were to take this exam at different times. One would "pass" and get 100%, the other 11 would fail and get 0%. The "exam" was for a computer contract and was worth $400,000 over three years. They were looking at 12 vendors, but only 1 would be awarded the contract. I prepared for that exam the same way I had prepared for all of my exams since grade 9, reviewing what our company offered, what the others offered, what questions would I be asked, and how would I answer them, etc.. I passed, and we got the contract. I, of course, only got a commission, but it was a nice sale. Every sales person has to do the same thing: know your product, without having to go and look it up, know the competition, and so on.  My student's life would be filled with exams. I had to take an Insurance exam, with a pass mark of 75%, others take Real Estate exams, I've tutored people needing help in mathematics to pass their armed forces exam, their CGA, their commercial diving exam, and so on. I did not care how my students did against other schools, I did care that the students knew how to prepare and write exams.

[kingofsurrey]

47 minutes ago, wloutet said:

I'll give you an example of an exam I took in about 1985. I was teaching part time, and working for a computer company part time. The kids were complaining about having to write exams as no one ever has to do this after they leave school. So I told them about my exam the next day. It was a 2 hour oral exam in front of 3 very knowledgeable people. 12 people were to take this exam at different times. One would "pass" and get 100%, the other 11 would fail and get 0%. The "exam" was for a computer contract and was worth $400,000 over three years. They were looking at 12 vendors, but only 1 would be awarded the contract. I prepared for that exam the same way I had prepared for all of my exams since grade 9, reviewing what our company offered, what the others offered, what questions would I be asked, and how would I answer them, etc.. I passed, and we got the contract. I, of course, only got a commission, but it was a nice sale. Every sales person has to do the same thing: know your product, without having to go and look it up, know the competition, and so on.  My student's life would be filled with exams. I had to take an Insurance exam, with a pass mark of 75%, others take Real Estate exams, I've tutored people needing help in mathematics to pass their armed forces exam, their CGA, their commercial diving exam, and so on. I did not care how my students did against other schools, I did care that the students knew how to prepare and write exams.

Fraser insitute did well  off publishing school ratings largely  based on these exams.

Weird thing.....  schools on the west side of vancouver tended to do better on exams.  Private schools that had entrance exams for new students also did a better on the exams .  Weird heh ?

Edited June 5, 2020 by kingofsurrey

[Gurn]

1 hour ago, coastal.view said:

and i am happy to report

that my wish to dine out occasionally at my favourite places

is again restored

 

the feedback i received when i expressed this desire around a month ago

did not prevent this reality from happening

small comforts have been realized

 

and the infection rate in bc has continued to go down

am still baffled how that could possibly have have happened

That is correct

on May 12th you mentioned you wanted to go out and eat at a restaurant

Now in early June the health authorities have decided it is doable.

24 days later, an eternity in Covid times.

[coastal.view]

4 minutes ago, gurn said:

That is correct

on May 12th you mentioned you wanted to go out and eat at a restaurant

Now in early June the health authorities have decided it is doable.

24 days later, an eternity in Covid times.

well actually that has occurred well before today for me

but thanks for your day counting anyway

(by your count, happened almost 1/2 an eternity ago)

Edited June 5, 2020 by coastal.view

[kingofsurrey]

7 minutes ago, coastal.view said:

well actually that has occurred well before today for me

but thanks for your day counting anyway

(by your count, happened almost 1/2 an eternity ago)

Is the covid19 pandemic sound kind of a competition for. you ?  No medal  being given out  for first restaurant diner in BC .

Edited June 5, 2020 by kingofsurrey

[wloutet]

19 minutes ago, kingofsurrey said:

Fraser insitute did well  off publishing school ratings largely  based on these exams.

Weird thing.....  schools on the west side of vancouver tended to do better on exams.  Private schools that had entrance exams for new students also did a better on the exams .  Weird heh ?

Don't get me into the private school vs public school debate. I've looked a "clouds" from both sides now... having taught at public schools and private schools over the past 50 years. The private schools were a joy to teach at, but boy was the difference really slanted. Small classes, few discipline problems, homework assigned, 2 hour prep every night 5 times a week, compulsory tutoring or Sunday leave  taken away if you were falling behind. But it was not for me. I didn't want to be teaching somebody from another city, or province, or country, I wanted to be teaching in the environment I was living in. So about 92% of my teaching was public schools. Then I taught on the East side of Vancouver in the 70's for 4 years, and at 11 other schools on the island since 1974. I've never taught at the any of the schools on Vancouver's west side, but I am sure that it was very different.

As far as the Fraser Institute, let's just say, they have an agenda.

[coastal.view]

21 minutes ago, kingofsurrey said:

Is the covid19 pandemic sound kind of a competition for. you ?  No medal  being given out  for first restaurant diner in BC .

thanks for jumping into the middle of a discussion that has spanned more then today

you clearly have no idea of the history

but you think you can frame this simplistically

fine job

 

[kingofsurrey]

22 minutes ago, wloutet said:

 I wanted to be teaching in the environment I was living in. So about 92% of my teaching was public schools.

Spoken like a true math teacher......

[kingofsurrey]

Is Doctor Bonnie listening.... ?  Is Horgan / Fleming  listening..... ?

 

The World Health Organization (WHO) has changed its advice on face masks, saying they should be worn in public to help stop the spread of coronavirus.

 

"We have evidence now that if this is done properly it can provide a barrier for potentially infectious droplets," Dr Maria Van Kerkhove told Reuters.

 

"And we specify a fabric mask - that is, a non-medical mask," she added.

The WHO had previously said there was not enough evidence to say that healthy people should wear masks.

 

https://www.bbc.com/news/health-52945210

[-Vintage Canuck-]

 

[BPA]

Had lunch at Romers this afternoon with my co-worker.  Server was wearing a mask.  Place had social distancing measures in place.

 

My co-worker and I were not wearing a mask (cuz sidewalks and restaurant was not crowded).

 

I'll let you know if I got infected or not.

[The Lock]

5 hours ago, coastal.view said:

and i am happy to report

that my wish to dine out occasionally at my favourite places

is again restored

 

the feedback i received when i expressed this desire around a month ago

did not prevent this reality from happening

small comforts have been realized

 

and the infection rate in bc has continued to go down

am still baffled how that could possibly have have happened

Why would it prevent this reality from happening in the first place? I doubt anyone ever said you'd NEVER get to dine in again. It would just be a matter of time.

 

This whole thing is going to be a temporary thing no matter what, with or without covid. It's still important to be smart about things to limit the deaths and not overload the hospitals, which is what all of this is about in the first place.

 

But hey, at least now we can enjoy some of what we had before now, so cheers to that.

Edited June 6, 2020 by The Lock

[Me_]

Dr. Bonnie makes the New York Times.

 

The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test

[nuckin_futz]

Not sure if this has been posted. Dr Henry getting some love from the New York Times...........

 

The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test

Dr. Bonnie Henry kept the disease in check in British Columbia without harsh enforcement methods. Now, she is leading the way out of lockdown.

 

British Columbia’s provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, has won praise for minimizing the impact of Covid-19 on the province. Credit...Jackie Dives for The New York Times

By Catherine Porter

• June 5, 2020Updated 5:30 p.m. ET

 

That Tuesday in March was the day Bonnie Henry had been preparing for her whole life.

 

Overnight, 83 people had tested positive for the novel coronavirus and three more had died. The pandemic had officially broken out in British Columbia.

 

Standing inside the provincial legislature’s press gallery, the preternaturally calm top doctor of Canada’s westernmost province declared a public health emergency. Under her orders and recommendations, schools closed, bars shuttered and social distancing measures were put in place.

 

“It seemed so surreal,” she said. “I felt like someone was standing on my chest.”

 

That day, March 17, Dr. Henry ended her presentation with a line that would become her trademark, and a mantra for many Canadians struggling to cope under a lockdown. It has since been hung in windows, painted on streets, printed on T-shirts, stitched on shoes, folded into songs and stamped on bracelets.

 

“This is our time to be kind,” she said in her slow and low-pitched voice that many call comforting, “to be calm and to be safe.”

 

In the next few months, Dr. Henry would prove to be one of the most effective public health officials in the world, with lessons for nations struggling to emerge from lockdowns.

 

While Ontario and Quebec, the two most populous provinces, are still grappling with hundreds of new cases every day, British Columbia has now reopened schools, restaurants and hair salons. This week, the province of five million reported fewer than 80 new cases.

 

“By all rights, British Columbia should have been clobbered,” said Colin Furness, an outspoken infection control epidemiologist in Toronto. The province is on the coast, above Washington State, he noted, with a large population that travels back and forth to China, where the outbreak began.

 

“They took decisive action, did it early without hesitation and communicated effectively,” Mr. Furness added. “People listened to her.”

 

A former Navy physician, Dr. Henry has been lauded for her intelligence and strength, but also for her classically female leadership traits — humility, collaboration, empathy and emotion. In perhaps her most celebrated press briefing, she teared up after announcing the virus had broken out in long-term care homes.

 

The Lynn Valley Care Centre, a long-term care home in Vancouver where an outbreak of coronavirus was declared in early March.Credit...Jennifer Gauthier/Reuter

 

“We’ll embrace vulnerability in our leaders,” declared the Globe and Mail newspaper, as one way the coronavirus would change society.

 

Taking a rare break in her Victoria living room, wearing one of the many T-shirts emblazoned with her image sent by a fan, Dr. Henry said in a video interview that she is both heartened and frightened by her sudden fame. She is an introvert, used to working in relative obscurity. She wears her now famous collection of quirky shoes by a Canadian designer, John Fluevog, for “a bit of confidence.”

 

But she allowed that a 30-year medical career as a female fleet medical officer tending to 1,000 men at sea, a family doctor at an urban California clinic, an epidemiologist setting up quarantines for families exposed to Ebola in Uganda and the operational leader of Toronto’s response to the lethal SARS outbreak in 2003 prepared her well for this moment.

 

“It really is about the recognition that we are all in the same storm,” said Dr. Henry, 54, now on her 156th straight day at work on the crisis. “This is a storm that’s affecting the world. But we are not in the same boats, so we can’t make assumptions about other people. I am going to give you everything we know so you can do your best to keep afloat.”

 

A Costco in Burnaby used wood pallets to help shoppers observe social distancing in April.Credit...Darryl Dyck/The Canadian Press, via Associated Press

 

Dr. Henry grew up a military brat, the second of four daughters in a middle-class family. Her father was an army major whose job meant they moved every two years to different cities from St. John’s, Newfoundland, in the east to Calgary in the west, as well as to the Netherlands.

 

“Early on, we developed the habit of having our own worlds and being self-sufficient,” said Lynn Henry, Dr. Henry’s older sister. When Lynn suffered appendicitis at age 8, little Bonnie came to visit, looked around the hospital and declared, ‘‘This is what I want to do.’’ She would become the family’s first doctor.

 

After high school, Dr. Henry joined the naval reserves, drawn by the camaraderie, naval navigation and communication techniques, and the lure of the open ocean. She enlisted in her third year of medical school and graduated to become a fleet medical officer in Esquimalt, B.C., not far from where she lives now.

 

“I look back on it now, a lot of the work I was doing with a group of captive men was prevention. They would tease me about always telling them to wear sunscreen and use condoms,” said Dr. Henry, who stayed with the navy for almost 10 years, meeting her husband there. (They separated five years ago, after 20 years of marriage, and never had children.)

 

During a gastrointestinal outbreak onboard, Dr. Henry used basic epidemiological legwork and a microscope to trace the source of the sickness to contaminated bottled water they’d taken on board in Tahiti.

 

One day at her job at a clinic in San Diego, a man burst in with a gun, demanding to talk to someone. Dr. Henry stepped forward. “I said, ‘I’m somebody. Let’s talk,’” she recalled. “He burst into tears. He was in pain and distraught.”

It turned out he was recovering from open-heart surgery and was unsure how he would pay the medical bills.

 

It was while working for the World Health Organization tracing Ebola outbreaks in Uganda that Dr. Henry developed her ideas about how best to respond to public health emergencies. The keys to an effective quarantine, she came to understand, were communication and support, like food and medical follow-up, not punitive measures.

 

“If you tell people what they need to do and why, and give them the means to do it, most people will do what you need,” she said.

An Ebola screening facility in Uganda in 2018. It was while working for the World Health Organization tracing Ebola outbreaks in the country that Dr. Henry developed ideas about how best to respond to public health emergencies.Credit...Sumy Sadurni/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

 

She was working as an associate medical officer of health in Toronto in 2003 when a patient arrived at a hospital with a tuberculosis-like disease. It was her job to figure out what it was, and set in place plans to contain it. In the end, SARS killed 44 in Toronto.

 

Dr. Henry recalls the phone call she got one night, telling her the wife of one SARS patient had reported a fever and needed to be hospitalized. The couple had two children.

 

“We couldn’t find anyone to take in the children,” said Dr. Henry, breaking into tears, because people were so scared of the disease. “I remember calling around to children’s services. They said, ‘There is nothing we can do.’ At the end of day, they ended up going to the children’s hospital for four weeks.”

All four family members survived, but the memory of the stigma they faced and its harrowing effects stuck with Dr. Henry.

That’s why, even when pushed to ramp up police enforcement of social distancing in parks and protests — as she was empowered to do — she staunchly refused.

 

“That’s the only way as a community we can get through this without traumatizing people,” she said.

 

Her friends and colleagues say the Dr. Henry on television is the same person they know privately. On a 15-day hiking trip in Nepal with a group of traveling companions in 2017, she arrived at camp an hour before everyone else each day and then made sure bowls of hot water were ready for each as they arrived.

 

“It’s almost like she was groomed for this time,” said Dr. Anthony Mounts, a senior adviser for immunizations with the U.S. Agency for International Development, who met Dr. Henry in Pakistan working on polio immunization two decades ago. “But the job comes at enormous personal cost.”

 

Dr. Henry admits she has taken to grinding her teeth in her sleep. But she is laser-focused now on managing the virus to avoid any backsliding after the lifting of restrictions.

 

“The philosophy is how to make this sustainable over next year to two years,” she said. “We know there were unintended negative consequences from the things that we did, like intimate partner violence, suicides, children who didn’t get the services they need.”

 

The crucial thing now, she said, is to “find that balance so we minimize the impact of Covid, particularly on those people who are more likely to have severe illness or die from it, and minimize the unintended negative consequence of all the other things as well.”

 

“We have to find that balance,” she added, as she prepared to take her first day off in five months on Saturday. “We can manage this for as long as we need.”

 

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html

Edited June 6, 2020 by nuckin_futz
Failed to post the end of the article. It's posted in full now.

[-DLC-]

10,000 people in Vancouver for the protest...most wearing masks, some not.  We'll see what this means for our COVID numbers.

 

Also...saw an awful lot of Alberta, California and other plates today.  Nervous time as we wait to see what unfolds down the road.

 

Be safe everyone.  Not out of the woods yet.

[Me_]

1 minute ago, debluvscanucks said:

10,000 people in Vancouver for the protest...most wearing masks, some not.  We'll see what this means for our COVID numbers.

 

Also...saw an awful lot of Alberta, California and other plates today.  Nervous time as we wait to see what unfolds down the road.

 

Be safe everyone.  Not out of the woods yet.

California???

How???

[Wilbur]

1 minute ago, Me_ said:

California???

How???

Could've been up here for a while.  I see a car parked on the road most days for the past few months with a California plate while out for my nightly walk or run.  Can't remember the last time I saw a Washington plate, for what it's worth.  Definitely echo the uptick of Alberta plates in the last 2 weeks though.

[Gurn]

Many out of province licence plates on the ferry. Expected on the commercial rigs, but too many personal vehicles. They can not all be essential travel, especially the motorhomes.

[-DLC-]

13 minutes ago, Me_ said:

California???

How???

Unsure.  Woman...parked right beside me at Ironwood.  On her cell in her vehicle...boggles the mind.