How Is Covid-19 Impacting Life in Your City?

[someone123]

Originally Posted by 10023

^ Interesting. I had assumed that the public health system in Canada was at least better funded, given that it’s a wealthier country than the UK (ex-London). In the UK, the NHS at this point is a liability to the country.

I don't know what the funding is like but we often have long waits and most of the hospitals around here look like Cold War bunkers. I don't think the problems are a money issue per se although maybe more funding would help. One strange feature of our system is the federal government pays for a lot of it but the provinces are responsible for providing the service.

Another strange aspect is we supposedly have worker shortages but we accept around 1% of our population each year in immigration.

Many Canadians with money go abroad when they can. Maybe this is a feature of the system rather than a bug.

Our care home system also seems bad. A large proportion of the deaths, up in the 40% range (I wonder if it's climbing again as the median infection is milder and a larger proportion who die are extremely old/sick), was just in old folks' homes. Our approach to solving this revolved around making sure 22 year olds don't go out to bars, which maybe has some impact in reducing prevalence (though by now it seems to me that most young partiers would have substantial immunity) but seems a bit indirect.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by photoLith

^
Hopefully the truckers et al can help change it by annoying the crap out of the authoritarians in Ottawa.

The truckers et al should be parked in Toronto and Quebec City given that the authoritarians are at the provincial level. The only cause they have against Ottawa is travel restrictions and a cross-border vaccine mandate which is also in place on the American side so I'm not sure what countries they planned to drive to unvaccinated...

[the urban politician]

The problem with COVID in the US is that American healthcare workers have been "burned out and overworked" FOREVER. I have listened to (hell, and even contributed to) bitching to deaf ears for as long as I can remember.

Long before COVID.

So using the "burned out and overworked nurses" excuse to continue to prolong pandemic measures.....well......isn't going to get us to any resolution.

[someone123]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

The problem with COVID in the US is that American healthcare workers have been "burned out and overworked" FOREVER. I have listened to (hell, and even contributed to) bitching to deaf ears for as long as I can remember.

In Canada some of this seems to come from the medical associations, credentialing, and universities themselves. The process to get a medical degree in Canada is ultra-competitive, to the point where extremely good students are turned away, yet we are told there's a huge shortage. I suspect it goes deeper and the system is inflexible in terms of training and what work needs to get done, such that the skills can never quite fit the demand.

And like I said in Canada we can attract 400,000 immigrants a year and our federal government can spend $300B extra but we can't do things like find people who are willing to do quarantined shifts at care homes and help old people take their pills and go to the bathroom. We paid tons of healthy young people lots of money to sit at home during the pandemic after forcing their employers to fire them.

[10023]

The problem in the UK is that experienced nurses only make £35k ($47k) a year, and then they wonder why there’s a shortage of nurses and we all get locked up for months so “save our NHS”.

The care home staff shortage is inexorable because it’s a shitty job that doesn’t require much skill (maybe empathy) and so it’s not a promising career. You need a lot of them but can’t just pay a lot more because people wouldn’t be able to afford care for their relatives. The answer there is to reduce the need for labor through automation, AI and robotics.

[someone123]

The nurse jobs I see around here start at about $30 Canadian an hour ($23.50 US). Our average "home" price including condos is $1.2M and average rent is in the $2,000+ per month range for a 1 BR. Our economy is pretty busted with older people retiring with huge housing windfalls and paying almost no taxes (the federal government mailed out a supplemental "thanks for being old" cheque during the pandemic) while many under age 40 are wage slaves or completely checked out and their big things in life are video games and weed.

I agree with you about the economics of these jobs but in Canada in the first year of the pandemic the federal government added 17% of our GDP to their budget. They could have carved out a tiny bit of that and dramatically raised wages.

[kool maudit]

Sweden lifting all restrictions.

[10023]

^ All good to see.

Switzerland might be next, which would be great because I’m going in a few weeks.

[the urban politician]

^ More countries wake up from this nonsense, the better.

Then all that will be left is those silly Canadians.

[SAN Man]

The California indoor mask mandate is ending on 2/15. The Super Bowl in LA is on 2/13.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by SAN Man

The California indoor mask mandate is ending on 2/15. The Super Bowl in LA is on 2/13.

In some places it never started

[the urban politician]

What I have been saying for a long time:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dai...-pandemic.html


It's time to get back to normal life! Harvard medical professor joins chorus demanding US finally drops COVID restrictions as cases fall 40% in a week and deaths flatten
By Mansur Shaheen U.S. Deputy Health Editor For Dailymail.Com
15:03 04 Feb 2022, updated 18:16 04 Feb 2022


Dr Stefanos Kales, of Harvard Medical School, has joined the growing calls for U.S. health officials to put the pandemic behind them
Kales said that it was a mistake for the pandemic response to be left in the hands of infectious disease experts rather than public health officials
Covid cases in the U.S. are down 40% over the past week and the 361,000 daily cases are far below the peak of 800,000 per day in mid-January
Iowa is set to become the latest state to drop pandemic restrictions, as Gov Kim Reynolds announced the state of emergency will expire on February 15

Dr Stefanos Kales (pictured), a professor of medicine at Harvard University, said that it was a mistake to allow infectious disease experts rather than public health experts to control the response to Covid. He also believes it is time for the nation to 'move on' from the pandemic.

Calls for the United States to declare the COVID-19 pandemic over and return to 'normal life' are growing, as cases have dropped 40 percent nationwide and it seems that all 50 states are past the worst stages of the Omicron surge that started late last year. But despite the growing sentiment, federal health officials have been slow to lift mandates.

The U.S. is averaging 361,072 cases per day, a far fall from the 800,000 cases per day at the peak of the Omicron surge in mid-January.

Dr Stefanos Kales, a professor of medicine at Harvard Medical school, told CNBC this week that the government made mistakes early on by choosing to value the opinions of infectious disease experts over all others during the early stages of the pandemic.


“I think what we saw is the danger of turning over public policy and public health recommendations to people who have had their careers exclusively focused on infectious diseases as opposed to public health in general,' he said.

Last month, he published an article on LinkedIn calling for pandemic-related measures to be focused on the vulnerable instead the population as a whole. While some people with comorbidities that put them at risk of serious complications from the virus still do need some safeguards, the average healthy, vaccinated, person is totally OK, he said.

'We badly need to allow the general public, particularly the young, to get back to normal life,' he wrote.

'... It is like trying to stop a snowstorm by catching each and every snowflake, rather than keeping the roads open by plowing.'

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

It is like trying to stop a snowstorm by catching each and every snowflake, rather than keeping the roads open by plowing.

what a beautiful and accurate analogy.

the time to live with covid and get the fuck on with our lives has long since come.

[suburbanite]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

what a beautiful and accurate analogy.

the time to live with covid and get the fuck on with our lives has long since come.

Want to be Prime Minister of Canada?

[pdxtex]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

what a beautiful and accurate analogy.

the time to live with covid and get the fuck on with our lives has long since come.

Je$us f3ck yes!! Make that Harvard guy president. The residual damage of this entire fiasco is asinine. Downtown Portland went from a lively, walkable neighborhood to a 3/4 vacant, dirty and violent ghost town in THREE months. There's still blocks of boarded up windows. As of the end of January, the city counted 800 tents in downtown neighborhoods. Eight hundred!! The longer we try and keep up this zero covid strategy, the longer the us workforce is going to be a spooked horse. I said similar shit from the get go back in 2020. Make everyone wear a mask, shelter vulnerable people, if you are sick stay home. The metrics being used are 100% batshit insane too. Alaska with 284 cases per 100k is considered the worst in the nation. Everyone else keep calm and soldier on. Man that was wishful thinking. The next time shit hits the fan, I pray its not in this city. Godspeed SSP members.

[MonkeyRonin]

Originally Posted by the urban politician

What I have been saying for a long time:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dai...-pandemic.html

Canada's chief health officer (and most of her provincial counterparts) are now saying the same thing: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/can...onse-1.6339609

I think it's looking pretty clear that Covid restrictions' days are numbered. Who knows, maybe we'll even beat you guys to it at this rate.

[TWAK]

Originally Posted by MonkeyRonin

Canada's chief health officer (and most of her provincial counterparts) are now saying the same thing: https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/can...onse-1.6339609

I think it's looking pretty clear that Covid restrictions' days are numbered. Who knows, maybe we'll even beat you guys to it at this rate.

There's a bunch of places in the US that don't have restrictions and some places even have mandates against restrictions. California opened June 15th 2021 and LA is hosting the Super Bowl.
Life has returned to normal for millions of Americans. Come out to CA and party!

[pdxtex]

^^^^there is still some top down tweaking that needs to come from Washington. The white house is trying to tow the narrative line while us governors are starting to break rank. Unless the messaging is consistent tho, corporate America is going to just keep all their employees home. That's another ball of wax all together. The administration is claiming great job gains but I wonder how many of those are just people returning to the work force. Unless your city already had a huge downtown population, its gonna be a bumpy decade for those neighborhoods. I predict Oregon or Hawaii will be dead last to completely throw in the towel.

[10023]

Essentially, anyone who still gives a single fuck about Covid is an idiot.

Lift all restrictions and eventually the people who have become phobic will come to their senses. But it’s time to stop waiting until everyone feels completely comfortable and won’t have their feelings hurt. See Australia.

[CivicBlues]

Originally Posted by 10023

Essentially, anyone who still gives a single fuck about Covid is an idiot.

Lift all restrictions and eventually the people who have become phobic will come to their senses. But it’s time to stop waiting until everyone feels completely comfortable and won’t have their feelings hurt. See Australia.

And you seem to give the biggest fuck of all about people who still give a single fuck about COVID

What does that make you? A meta-idiot?