Where is Canada in terms of reopening? The US has 3 states now set to go to 100% capacity with day-to-day businesses, but I haven't heard of anything about plans in Canada.
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Also, last I checked the US is averaging more vaccinations per day than Canada has vaccinated in total thus far. Edit: Yes, in fact, the US just vaccinated 2.9 million today. Canada is currently at 2.4 million doses total. On a per population basis, they are at 6 doses per 100 people. The US is at 27. |
Canada has had a horribly slow vaccine rollout. None of my in-laws over the age of 60 in the greater Toronto area have been vaccinated yet. It's really disheartening, and we hope they are vaccinated soon.
On the flip side, metro New Orleans is now at 11.2% fully vaccinated (ldh.la.gov/coronavirus). The mass vaccination sites set up have been working very well. It's all done by appointment, so there are no long lines. |
^^That’s pretty much the way it’s being done everywhere in the US. I got mine at a drive-through site in Tucson (again, I first made an appointment online).
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Rich, powerful guy flew on a private plane to the UAE to get his shot because he couldn’t get one at home. What’s wierd about this is that Canada famously contracted for something like enough vaccine to vaccinate every Canadian 3 times over, the most per capita of any country in the world. |
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Our vaccines are coming from Europe as the US has an Americans-first policy and hasn't been exporting them to us. It varies from province to province but we're in the range of about 5% of the total population having had a first shot only. The fully vaccinated (two shots) proportion is way lower even. In terms of reopenings it varies a lot from province to province and even from region to region within provinces. But nowhere in Canada is as wide open as Texas or Florida are, for example. Masking in stores, etc. is mandatory everywhere, and school is still disrupted to some degree often with a mix of online vs. onsite. But no schools are closed in Canada AFAIK. Office workers are still very predominantly working from home if they can so CBD office districts are still extremely quiet and in some cases deserted. Restaurants are open for sit-down with some restrictions in most places, but not quite everywhere. Gyms are reopened in most places with restrictions again, as are movie theatres with reduced capacity. I think in some areas bars have reopened but I don't think you can mill around too much and need to wear a mask if you get up to go the bathroom. Nowhere has nightclubs, festivals, raves or large-scale concerts or sporting events with large crowds. |
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As it happens, I trained in a hospital building that dated from the 1930s but if it's still in use today it must have been gutted and totally redone inside. It had large open wards holding 30 patients or so, the only privacy being curtains between beds. That would be totally unacceptable in American medicine today and so would the nurse's station that couldn't directly visualize and electronically monitor every bed. Newness isn't just about having modern equipment although that's important. Modern hospital design also makes certain things much easier or even possible like isolation of large numbers of infectious patients (i.e. COVID) and monitoring of more patients with fewer staff. In a competitive environment, it also allows hospitals to make being a patient in them a bit more pleasant with gourmet food and the ability to allow family members to stay in the room with the sick person in some cases (this is especially common in childrens' hospitals). As I've said, the lower US average lifespan numbers are complicated to interpret, involving things like remoteness from medical facilities, payment issues for chronic care (not acute serious illness--the kind that gets you hospitalized--where there is a right to care regardless of ability to pay) and a lack of medical sophistication, especially among generally uneducated, immigrant and minority groups. Recently high rates of opiate addiction in some US communities are also thought to play a role. But none of this really effects a direct comparison of middle class urban dwellers. It's hard to find direct comparisons of the health and mortality figures for urban-dwelling members of the middle class only, country to country, but I think they'd be fairly comparable on either shore of the Atlantic, with the British having, perhaps, the edge on chronic care and the US having the edge when it comes to acute hospital care. |
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And, yeah, I don't understand the lifespan argument. The U.S. has better healthcare and a lower lifespan. The availability of the best healthcare doesn't mean some people won't engage in risky, harmful activities. |
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Older hospital buildings do exist, but I doubt many are acute care facilities, and any that remain must be on the way out.
"Acute" is a technical term regarding both hospital services and facility requirements. I'm sure you can technically convert an old building, but it would be extremely expensive. And the final product probably wouldn't be lean. Examples of what lean means: Departments are located to optimize healthcare and staff workflows, like imaging is convenient to orthopedic exam rooms. HVAC systems can be maintained without closing the spaces below or any key services. Rooms are sized optimally. Stuff like this can be much harder if not entirely unworkable in a renovation. |
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I had to get a medicated skin cream while I was in London a couple years ago for a skin issue I had at the time. I was actually just looking for an OTC substitute to use until I could get back to the U.S. But in the U.K. you apparently speak directly to the pharmacist when you go to buy any sort of medication. I described the issue and the guy hands me the prescription strength medication... and charged me £2 for it. It took about 5 minutes and blew my fucking mind.
Getting the same thing in the U.S. would've required waiting a week to go to a dermatologist, a $40 co-pay for the doctor visit, a $40 co-pay for the prescription, and then a trip to Rite-Aid/Walgreens/CVS etc., to wait several hours for them to "fill it". It really put into perspective how many hoops we have to jump through over here to get even the most basic medical care. |
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MANAGEMENT of obesity, however, is another matter. I haven't got numbers but I'd bet the US medical system is much more aggressive in management of morbid obesity with such things as bariatric surgery. |
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But the experience you described is more a matter of what drugs are approved for dispensing without a prescription by which category of provider than anything else. Where I am presently in Arizona, I can go to Mexico 40 miles away and buy all sorts of drugs, some of which are considered "mind altering" and strictly controlled as well as antibiotics and others over the counter in a pharmacia. Is this a better system? That's a matter of opinion. As we all noticed when the UK was the first to approve COVID vaccines, they are a little more relaxed about who can prescribe and dispense what types of meds than we are. Also, the co-pays you described depend completely on the type of insurance you have. In my case, if I got it from Walgreen's or a supermarket pharmacy it might have cost me nothing. If I got it from CVS I would have paid full price because my insurance doesn't have a contract with CVS. The doctor visit would likely have been free in any case, whether I saw a dermatologist or an NP at the "minute clinic". |
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I'm happy to know that my parents will be getting their COVID vaccines soon, through their HMO (Kaiser Permanente); they are in their late 70s. My sister got vaccinated some weeks ago because she is a middle school teacher. My partner and I can't wait to get vaccinated, we plan on doing it as soon as we are allowed to---we're both 50 years old. |
I haven't really been going through this thread, so this question might've been asked before, but who here knows anyone, or knows OF anyone, who's had COVID?
Two of my co-workers had it; one of them went through very severe symptoms, with the headache, nausea/vomiting/diarrhea; the other one said he just felt really fatigued for 3 or 4 days, and headache-ey for a day or two; his wife had it too and went through worse symptoms. A few other co-workers were exposed to it but tested negative, and quarantined for 14 days. Another co-worker of mine, her brother died of complications due to COVID. He died about a month ago, and the funeral was only last week, or something. Very sad. A friend of my parents, her brother also died due to COVID complications. |
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