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Old Posted Feb 1, 2022, 5:52 PM
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someone123 someone123 is offline
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Join Date: Nov 2001
Location: Vancouver
Posts: 33,677
Quote:
Originally Posted by 10023 View Post
Do you know where people are being stupid about Covid? Canada.
There was a recent poll out and we're up to 54% who want all restrictions gone. I think things will flip pretty soon, though it might require a more significant drop in hospitalizations. It won't happen due to the truckers and they might make it take longer, though a lot of our restrictions are provincial so it doesn't really matter how many people show up in Ottawa for those.

One cultural quirk in Canada is that public healthcare is considered kind of sacred here (partly due to it being perceived as superior compared to the US; we only have so many things like that so we have to really lean into the ones we've got), and as in the UK we have a chronically struggling system with a lot of heavy bureaucracy and credentialism. You can always say the system's at 90% capacity or 103% and the staff are all burned out and so on. I think it would be good to solve this issue but it's not really new or particular to covid or best solved through pandemic restrictions.

I've also noticed our "Overton window" shifted really quickly in the direction of restrictions. BC is considered one of the more laissez-faire provinces for example but we still have a mask mandate and vaccine passports and for a while gyms were closed during omicron when they already had all of that in place plus I think 50% capacity limits. Before they were closed and the measures were tightened a bit for omicron there was a significant group presenting the status quo in Canada (90% vaccinated etc.) as "let 'er rip". Similarly there are people who act as though 1 death per million per day (weighted heavily toward sick or very old or those who didn't take the vaccine they could have) is an enormous crisis.
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