lolCanada Thread

At the local level the performance isn’t as bad. The Federal government failed to get us enough vaccines, but the clinics are pretty impressive for something they’ve just launched. The one closest to us is doing 1000 shots per day.

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Our vaccinate rollout is embarrassing and infuriating me and making me finally crack after 12 months of self imposed lockdown.

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This. So this.

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Things are starting to happen thank god. My parents should get the vaccine by mid month and I might get it as early as June. This is a three month improvement over just a week ago.

I guess the decision to move the second dose out 4 months is making a huge difference.

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At least here the people who have had one already will still get their second. It’s only going forward that the second dose will be delayed.

Also, it seems more and more likely the first dose is enough to protect against the most serious outcomes right? Seems like this delay of the second dose is the right play.

I am not really sure what you are expecting? If the US block vaccine exports from anything manufactured in the USA there isnt a lot u can do. Israel apparently paid much more than the EU per dose and gives away patient data so thats why they are ahead a lot. Not having a lot of vaccine production isnt a canada specific problem. India is the biggest manufacturer and they said “India first” as well. You could buy the Russian and Chinese stuff with all the strings attached. The EU started checking vaccine exports as well. So what could have gone differently?

We could have broke ground on manufacturing facilities a year ago.

That would’ve taken some real clairvoyance, given that a year ago the consensus was that we wouldn’t have a vaccine for 2-3 years minimum. And vaccine production facilities still wouldn’t be ready by now. AND even if by some miracle they were, we still need to buy the glass vials, needles and other things that go into vaccine distribution, and those are spoken for just like the doses are.

There’s no excuse for us not being ready for the next pandemic, but there was nothing that could’ve been done this time around.

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Lolcanada. From today’s Globe.

An inconvenient truth of Canadian politics is that our public sector is pretty ineffective. I know that sounds like a conservative talking point, but there is a really bad culture of accepted mediocrity at all levels of government. I do think that’s changing though, some of the crown corps and regulatory agencies in Ontario are modernizing. But the baby boomers in the public service* are totally useless and by and large mostly sit around counting their days to retirement.

*I mean mostly the administrative end. More front line Canadian public sector workers have to actually work.

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The next couple of weeks are going to be really telling.

I spend 95% of my time dealing with regulators and can 100% confirm this.

idk, there’s definitely a certain je ne gaf pas here in City #2, which extends to people not clearing snow from their own damn walks and steep twisty front steps.

Yep the feds have utterly failed in every way imaginable on this. It’s pathetic beyond belief. My younger brother is getting his shot next week in states and I will be lucky to get it in June.

That’s good. Both my parents have their first dose which is great. I’m glad the most vulnerable are getting shots here at least.

Please elaborate.

66th globally.

First, lol at that conclusion from that table, fully a third of the 65 jurisdictions ahead of us are tiny European territories that could be vaccinated in a week if they wanted to. We’re not far behind the EU, which has their own manufacturing facilities and thus have some control over supply.

Second, even taking it at face value, that still doesn’t answer how they’ve failed in every way imaginable.

“Every way imaginable” seems like hyperbole, but they deserve the criticism they’re facing. It’s not a secret that we can’t produce our own vaccine, so it was clear that deals to import vaccines would be critical. And they made bad calls on that front. One thematic issue with the Trudeau government is that they are too friendly to China, and that hurt them again with vaccines. When they should have been making deals with Pfizer and Moderna they were negotiating with China to help them test the CanSino vaccine (why not use Canadians as guinea pigs for Chinese pharmaceuticals, that’s just win win!). That deal blew up. Oops. Then they avoided making deals with the US because they were worried Trump would win and not deliver. Oops. Then they finally made the arrangements with Pfizer and Moderna in Europe … who promptly told them they couldn’t deliver on the promised timelines. Oops.

I am somewhat sympathetic to governments catching all the blame for the bad outcomes of Covid, that’s not fair. But Canada is way behind global peers here so the patience is running dry. Our public sector has always been kind of a bumbling ineffective system that was mostly successful as a vector for converting GDP into pensions for civil servants, but their inability to rise to the occasion is totally deserving of criticism.

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I literally can’t think of a single way we excelled when it comes to vaccine.