Hello comrades and friends and friends of comrades!

You might have seen posts or hashtags about Canadian Shield relating to a pandemic response plan

It's not like our federal, provincial, and municipal governments have been doing a great job so I decided to investigate

THREAD

So Canadian Shield is a report sponsored by Global Canada which appears to be a corporate/business minded think tank

You can read the report here:

https://t.co/Pdh8NfePU7
A few influencing figures on this site have been promoting this so my first question was who wrote that report?

What expertise does that group collectively have?
Among the authors we have:

Chamber of commerce guy
Bell Canada corporate services guy
Economics prof
CEO FN health NGO
Yukon Minister of economic development
Businessman/consultant
PolSci associate professor
Scotiabank economist
Hobbyist biostatistician
QueensU NGO businessman
Epidemiology grad student

Infection model math expert
MD and public health expert
Emergency physician
Public health professor
Physician infectious disease specialist
Assistant prof public health
Now it's reassuring to see public health, infectiology, clinical expertise

Phew!
You'll notice I lumped the hobbyist biostatistician with the business people. First he blocked me when I asked why he wouldn't immunize healthcare workers first

https://t.co/ryXh1oJbdo
Second: he has recently lashed at people from oppressed communities

Third: not my favorite thing to pull a credentialist argument, but maybe he should listen to more qualified non dude and BIPOC that have medical or scientific expertise

Moving on..
So we have here a mixed group where the business people outnumber experts
The report itself focuses on a stronger lockdown, as well as increased testing, contact tracing, monitoring capacity until the COVID-19 vaccines have been fully deployed

Sounds good, right?
But see here the recommendations are based on short-run economic impacts vs. social impact + effect on virus transmission
Putting short-term economic impacts concerns first is what got us into this mediocre pandemic response

That's ... Not great.
They did say social impacts so what are they recommending?

"provide direct assistance to those most affected"

Hmm... That's vague 🤔
Besides providing more PPEs there's no mention of measures to increase the safety of workers, or anything specific to the sites of the greatest Canadian outbreaks (e.g. LTC, meat packing plants, distribution warehouses, etc.)
No provisions for precarious frontline workers (e.g. increasing transit capacity to reduce transmission, paid sick leave, mandatory distancing, no permanent or even temporary pay increase, etc.)
No assistance for those who stay home: no canceling rent, no canceling mortgages

No assistance for parents who keep children at home
Nothing wrt to schools, students, educators, or school staff
The lockdown stuff is good, as are the testing/contact tracing/monitoring recommendations. BUT they are measures meant to benefit the economy

Benefits to the public are a just a lucky coincidence if there's no consideration for those who have been made vulnerable
In conclusion I just want to remind everyone to be mindful when supporting a plan whose primary goal is to reduce short-term economic impacts

Thanks for reading
Acknowledgements

Special thanks to @poly_distortion who first put me on the scent

Friends help each other ✊

More from Government

Which metric is a better predictor of the severity of the fall surge in US states?

1) Margin of Democrat victory in Nov 2020 election
or
2) % infected through Sep 1, 2020

Can you guess which plot is which?


The left plot is based on the % infected through Sep 1, 2020. You can see that there is very little correlation with the % infected since Sep 1.

However, there is a *strong* correlation when using the margin of Biden's victory (right).

Infections % from
https://t.co/WcXlfxv3Ah.


This is the strongest single variable I've seen in being able to explain the severity of this most recent wave in each state.

Not past infections / existing immunity, population density, racial makeup, latitude / weather / humidity, etc.

But political lean.

One can argue that states that lean Democrat are more likely to implement restrictions/mandates.

This is valid, so we test this by using the Government Stringency Index made by @UniofOxford.

We also see a correlation, but it's weaker (R^2=0.36 vs 0.50).

https://t.co/BxBBKwW6ta


To avoid look-ahead bias/confounding variables, here is the same analysis but using 2016 margin of victory as the predictor. Similar results.

This basically says that 2016 election results is a better predictor of the severity of the fall wave than intervention levels in 2020!

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...करें और तुम भी पुत्र की इच्छा लेकर गूलर वृक्ष का आलिंगन करना। आलिंगन करने के बाद चरू का सेवन करना, इससे तुम दोनो को पुत्र प्राप्ति होगी।परंतु मां बेटी के चरू आपस में बदल जाते हैं और ये महर्षि भृगु अपनी दिव्य दृष्टि से देख लेते हैं।

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इस पर सत्यवती ने भृगु ऋषि से बड़ी विनती की।


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@EricTopol @NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad B.1.1.7 reveals clearly that SARS-CoV-2 is reverting to its original pre-outbreak condition, i.e. adapted to transgenic hACE2 mice (either Baric's BALB/c ones or others used at WIV labs during chimeric bat coronavirus experiments aimed at developing a pan betacoronavirus vaccine)

@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 1. From Day 1, SARS-COV-2 was very well adapted to humans .....and transgenic hACE2 Mice


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad 2. High Probability of serial passaging in Transgenic Mice expressing hACE2 in genesis of SARS-COV-2


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https://t.co/9Z4oJmkcKj


@NBA @StephenKissler @yhgrad We adapted a clinical isolate of SARS-CoV-2 by serial passaging in the ... Thus, this mouse-adapted strain and associated challenge model should be ... (B) SARS-CoV-2 genomic RNA loads in mouse lung homogenates at P0 to P6.
https://t.co/I90OOCJg7o