Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated:

https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/health/2019/03/28/anti-v...

Is the science settled on whether 90% vs 100% has an impact on the health of society given omicron?

> Meanwhile, anti-vaccine people are single-handedly working to revive diseases that were almost eradicated

Conflating traditional anti vaxers with the new COVID anti vaxers is dishonest, they actually usually come from different parts of the political spectrum.

It is militancy like yours that is elevating opposition.

I am vaccinated but support anyone that stands up to a mandate, vaccination passes or emergency powers. I don't really have to justify that any further.

It’s amazing that the definition of a word like vaccine could change suddenly, because it is was incompatible to one virus — a mysterious super virus whose origin is still unknown, according to the WHO.

Accordingly places where transmission is likely (eg. a small intimate restaurant) are serious and potentially deadly health risks to the elderly, unvaccinated part of the population.

So long as our hospitals are overwhelmed (as they currently are) it's a very bad idea to open up these high transmission areas to unvaccinated people, as they'll inevitably catch the disease and are so much more likely to end up in the hospital in ICU.

This is why restaurants/bars/etc should continue to have vaccine mandates even though so many people are vaccinated.

The point isn't to coerce the last 10% into getting vaccinated. It's to protect the hospitals from being overwhelmed by new cases from the unvaccinated.

In all provinces, the elderly were the very first to get vaccinated. First. First to get second vaccinations, and for a long time, the only group allowed to even get a third shot.

There are no unvaccinated elderly people running around, unless they insist on not being vaccinated. In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.

Your last paragraph makes sense, but the rest?!

> In such cases, that's their choice, and no one should take additional precautions for those opting out.

Yeah it's getting to the point where if stubborn old people want to meet their maker sooner than later, well sure that's their choice and we should let them, but at the moment the hospitals are overwhelmed and this has negative impacts on everyone, as it delays all the other surgeries and other work that the hospital needs to do.

I'm fine with lifting vaccine mandates once hospitals are unlikely to get overwhelmed, but it's not at all clear we're at this point yet.

Going to be very interesting to see what happens in Alberta and Sask over the next little while as they're lifting the vaccine passports.

notice the probable or confirmed case and know that hospitals (US) are eligible for additional reimbursement with covid “case” patient from a $100 Billion CARES act fund (at minimum)

>Individuals who received at least one dose was calculated as (# of individuals who received at least one dose) / (population estimate).

Deaths are also only attributed to Vaccinated category after 14 days from the second dose, else it’s a “unvaccinated” death.

This is the first vaccine ever where you can die 13 days after a vaccine, and be classified unvaccinated. It’s just magical how “science” to advance “public health” works.

https://www.alberta.ca/stats/covid-19-alberta-statistics.htm... — the source data for the site in the parent post

Sounds like a nonsense insane tin foil hat theory to me.

(This being said, very few governments did lockdowns properly, and therefore almost every half-measure taken was ineffective and wasteful.)

So as a napkin calculation how many normalised years of lost labour do we have from the deaths... 0.13 years from the 50-59 year olds, 40-49 0.08, 30-39 0.06, 20-29 0.08, 10-19 0.1, for a total of 0.45 years of lost labour from deaths if the whole country caught covid.

In a world were all economic activity can be turned on and off like a lightswitch it would make economic sense for Canada to flick that switch and leave it off for up to 5 months (of absolutely zero economic activity which is not the actual level of lockdown as essentials still run) to irradicate covid, from the impact of deaths on work produced alone.

So yes as a general rule I would argue that locking down entire countries can make great economic sense if you can lower your death rate (say by using the time where covid spread is reduced by rolling out a vacine that would reduce the lost time to 0.0045 years if everyone got it). Though of course you'd need to get into the nitty gritty of stunted business growth and if killing off 8% of people over 60 is a good way to reduce taxes needed to support them to have a definitive answer.

NB: I'll add that I'm replying to your question on the economic sense. Personally I find reducing the pandemic to this view deplorable but as some do argue it I thought I'd argue the countercase along those lines. I.E. Even if you're a heartless bastard only interested in money you should still be enforcing strict controls until your population is aproaching as vaccinated as it's going to get.

Add to that that the true cost of Covid-19 in survivors (including asymptomatic and mild cases) remains to be seen in terms of DALYs/QALYs, and is known to be significantly greater than zero. [1]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-022-00403-0

Car accidents are 30-40k/year in the US, so 10% of covid. And the number of measures taken to reduce car accidents is extraordinary - age limits, compulsory driver's licenses, city design rules (roads, pedestrian crossings, etc, etc), speed limits, car construction regulations, compulsory insurance, and more. Given that, what's the appropriate level of regulation you suggest for covid?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30342665

It’s obviously a rhetorical question. I’d suggest that in all cases whether such mandates are appropriate depends on their proportionality relative to the harms they prevent.

As a vaccinated person I flat out blame the people that didn't get vaccinated for making the last year much worse than it'd had to be. If we had better vaccine coverage we wouldn't need the restrictions that we had to put in place. They don't only put burden on the healthcare system (which they do), preventing people that need care from getting it (which they do), but they also mean the rest of us have to do more because they're not willing to do their share. I guess the bright side is that this is a tiny minority around these parts.

While we developed vaccines at an impressive speed, governments royally screwed up the rollouts and logistics. Had we all done real proper lockdowns and taken public health recommendations seriously for a few weeks, and had governments been properly supportive (ie.: enabling) of that, our current vaccination uptake might have been enough to eradicate covid-19.

Why do you think our hospitals are understaffed? It’s not because of the great pay of the Canadian system

That said you can't healthcare-capacity your way out of a pandemic, the USA has managed to overwhelm its capacity in numerous jurisdictions despite having much higher baseline capacity than any Canadian jurisdiction. It is not an honest argument worth engaging with.

Not sure what province you are in but using the Canadian average and a 40% increase in beds, that’s roughly $50 million per bed. That is quite frankly a colossal waste of money. Do you feel that this is money well spent?

Likewise if you think that the healthcare system capacity was the only limiting factor with respect to COVID-19 public health measures that reduced transmission your model of the epidemiology of SARS-Cov-2 is incorrect.

"I said $40k per person was enough to build an ICU bed for everyone in Canada."

You didn't say that in the comment I replied to, maybe you said it elsewhere?

$40k per person in Canada is 37 million X 40,000 - that's 1.5 trillion CAD, right? Is my math correct on that? That's 2 years of the entire federal budget where did you get that number from?

It’s mentioned in Pierre Poliveres speech in parliament, here’s a link: https://youtu.be/cGbnjF3OdNQ

Quality-Adjusted Life Years, and Disability Affected Life Years, respectively. Without an understanding of them, you can't actually have an objective conversation about measuring the impact of any kind of illness.

Why do you believe this? Do you assume there is no benefit to doing so? Or do you assume that the harms outweigh the benefits?

You'd be wrong on both counts. [1]

[1] https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-021-01676-0

The health impacts of vaccinated, and unvaccinated, have been measured according to current models. And in current models, getting the disease does not offer as much protection as also getting the vaccine - and thus protecting the wider population is best done with a mandate. A minuscule number of individuals is posing a threat to the rest of the population. The freedoms of the individual end where society begins. One doesn't get to walk down the street threatening to punch everyone they meet, even if they never throw a punch.

There were no orders but recommendations only in regards to vaccines. I understand you realize the difference between the order and recommendation. Recommendation does not require compliance.

And the burden was caused by lockdowns and complete absence of vaccines in Canada for a big while

Now with Omicron (for the last few weeks at least) it's clearly not needed any more, but governments move slowly, so it'd take a few more weeks. There's other restrictions that were put in around that timeframe that no longer make sense, like requiring PCR tests, and all those are on their way out.

This protest makes no sense except as a way of sowing chaos and seeking to destabilize the country.

This allows the federal government to send the army if necessary (although Trudeau said they wouldn't), allows the police to fine and detain protestor that do not want to leave the blockade. And allows the federal government to require private companies to provide services, in this case towing companies to tow the rigs.

It also allows for freezing bank accounts of e.g. companies that have trucks participating in the blockade without a court mandate.

I think, but I am not sure, that this only applies to "strategic sites", in this case the border and maybe highways. Protester blocking a random street in Ottawa may not be concerned.

So, why require the mandate: To prevent the slim minority of truckers participating in the blockade from impacting everyone else for months.

But sure, it's all because of Trudeau's ego.

"beginning in early January 2022, DHS will require that all inbound foreign national travelers crossing U.S. land or ferry POEs – whether for essential or non-essential reasons – be fully vaccinated for COVID-19 and provide related proof of vaccination. This approach will provide ample time for essential travelers such as truckers, students, and healthcare workers to get vaccinated."

https://www.dhs.gov/news/2021/10/12/secretary-mayorkas-allow...

So it causes no harmful change for Canadians in general, for as you say, nothing changes.

So... why not give in to this demand then?

As an aside, forcing truckers to get vaccinated makes no sense. They mostly work in isolation, and it isn't like blocking the virus at borders really helps these days.

I support forced vaccination for front line health care workers, those caring for the elderly, where it matters.

Giving in would set a terrible precedent and would undermine Canada's continued existence as a free society.