Saturday, October 10, 2020

Will The Second Wave Overwhelm Our Hospitals?

Maybe it was pandemic fatigue that left so many feeling apathetic and demotivated. Too tired to fight a virus that could kill them and their loved ones.

Or maybe it was base ignorance, that made them believe that COVID wasn't that dangerous, and that even if they got it they would survive.

Or maybe they thought it was a joke and didn't give a damn about the lives of others.

But whatever the reason, the second wave is here, the virus is surging all over the world from Montreal to Moscow.

And now that thanks to scientists like Dr Sai Ling we can clearly see the enemy. 

Thanks to the work of scientists like Dr. Li, the new coronavirus, known as SARS-CoV-2, is no longer a cipher. They have come to know it in intimate, atomic detail. They’ve discovered how it uses some of its proteins to slip into cells and how its intimately twisted genes commandeer our biochemistry. They’ve observed how some viral proteins throw wrenches into our cellular factories, while others build nurseries for making new viruses. And some researchers are using supercomputers to create complete, virtual viruses that they hope to use to understand how the real viruses have spread with such devastating ease.

We can understand why it's such a deadly threat.   

And why in hindsight, some politicians were in too much of a hurry to open up for business again...


But then many of their constituents and desperate small business owners were demanding an end to the lockdowns.

And it took forever for the CDC to acknowledge or confirm that the coronavirus can spread through the air.

The US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention updated guidance on its website to say coronavirus can commonly spread "through respiratory droplets or small particles, such as those in aerosols," which are produced even when a person breathes.

So many could not have known how dangerous the virus was.

"There is growing evidence that droplets and airborne particles can remain suspended in the air and be breathed in by others, and travel distances beyond 6 feet (for example, during choir practice, in restaurants, or in fitness classes)," the page now says. "In general, indoor environments without good ventilation increase this risk."

The shabby Con media was more interested in fake scandals than in the real dangers of a pandemic.

So now a lot of people are going to get sick and die of ignorance...

Hospitals all over Canada are in danger of being swamped.

Most large hospitals in Greater Toronto are operating above 90 per cent capacity with some already full and experiencing patient gridlock in emergency departments, a situation the Ontario Hospital Association warns is unsafe and unsustainable during a pandemic.

“There is enormous growing risk,” said Anthony Dale, the association’s president and CEO.

And front line workers are in danger of collapsing, overwhelmed by a pandemic that just goes on and on...

It's hard to watch that video, but Canadians need to hear from those who have worked so heroically to try to bring the deadly virus under control.  

So they can understand how they feel when they see Covidiots wrecking all they have managed to achieve.


So do them a favour, do the right thing. Wear a mask. Wash your hands, maintain a safe distance from others, stay home as much as possible, and download the covid alert app.

For if we can't beat down the coronavirus before the seasonal flu arrives, the old and the vulnerable in this country won't stand a chance.

And that deadly failure will haunt us forever...


8 comments:

  1. "The shabby Con media was more interested in fake scandals than in the real dangers of a pandemic."

    And they still are! Incoming wall-of-text rant but did you see Skippy's tantrum at the finance committee when Wayne Easter literally shut him off? Or Liberal MP Brenda Shanahan's principled stand for Margaret and Sacha's privacy, against that snaggletooth scumbag Angus. There's something perversely personal about this. It's a vendetta. Which isn't ethical at all.

    And she's right, the pandemic is far more important than whatever sick persecution campaign for political capital they want to pursue against the Trudeaus. Especially when Justin has been doing a good job managing the pandemic, and it's obvious they can't stand it.

    I'm glad the Liberals are putting up a good fight against this nonsense (which sets a really chilling-effect precedent as regards government officials investigating private citizens and the family members of MPs). They're keeping their focus on important things, even if the garbage media and obsessive DipperConBloc axis of evil are still having their torch-and-pitchfork hatewank about this fake WeGhazi crap. Trudeau even called it a conspiracy theory in QP last week, sneering at Skippy. Then he said it again to shut down some dumbass reporter at a COVID presser who wouldn't shut up about it.

    Let Chuckles and Skippy call a pandemic election if they think this is so unforgivable. The fact that they haven't means it isn't. They have no sense of priorities, no perspective on matters of life and death. Sociopaths, the lot of them, and they have the nerve to accuse Trudeau of being privileged and out of touch. When people in Quebec and Ontario start dropping en masse like flies off Pence's head, and the United States has a post-election "disruption" in three weeks, the Kielburger nothingburger will get revealed as the petty, irresponsible distraction coming from the opposition and their pet press, which is all that it's always been. Will the media learn their lesson? No, of course not. "If it bleeds, it leads."

    I did a sort of stream-of-consciousness write-up of my own late last night, about how that same broken media isn't even doing their own horse race coverage correctly, never mind their piss-poor interpretation of public health statistics. So even though they'd rather talk about polls than the pandemic, they're reporting fake news with their catastrophic narratives about the "end of Trudeau's career."

    The only numbers that matter are case counts and deaths, but the media is obsessed with polling, and they can't even read any of it. Nik Nanos in particular is such a profiteering charlatan. I saw someone on Twitter with a perfect comparison: "Nanos used to be the gold standard. Now he's become the Fitch Credit Ratings of pollsters." He lies through omission knowing full well his crap tracker is paywalled, only telling CTV what they want to hear. When all this is said and done, an eventual public inquiry into COVID (mis)management needs to start by calling Skippy, Chuckles, Nanos, and Ivison on the carpet for gross negligence. First question:

    "How much of the COVID death count could have been avoided if you weren't so busy chasing bouncing-ball poll numbers and fake scandals, destroying kids' charities, and vilifying a 72-year-old woman with bipolar disorder for being the mother of a Liberal prime minister while seniors were being wiped out in Mike Harris' privately-run nursing homes, that you undermined the federal government's response to a pandemic? How much of this is due to the pandemic itself and how much is the result of your asinine horse-race coverage, tabloid scandal-mongering, right-wing bias, and Trudeau derangement syndrome? How much? How much? How much?"

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  2. Anonymous11:13 AM

    The Ford government has made a right guddle of public communication. In stage 3, they sold everyone on get back to normal, eat and drink indoors without masks in bars and restaurants. Now they blame the public for the spread of the disease in bars and restaurants! There was plenty of evidence from around the world that going back to normal in bars and restaurants was going to be a disaster and they should never have allowed it.

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    1. I think as much or more of the blame has to go to young folks at house parties, drunken idiots without someone keeping an eye on them.

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  3. Anonymous1:30 AM

    The facts are that these selfish sonsabitches who reject wearing a mask and social distancing could care less about other people and that wont change. A piece of shit is a piece of shit, period. Though we're too "civilized" to lock them up, we instead slap their wrists and give them a fine for possibly maiming and killing who knows how many people. Ignorance is no longer an excuse. That's why it pains me deeply to see so many people going to great lengths to protect themselves and others, only to have it nullified by these covidiot assholes. That is why we're now stuck in this yoyo cycle of infection and death until a vaccine becomes widely available. It need not have been this way if we had simply locked up the offending individuals but that wouldn't be "civilized" now would it? "Here's your fine, now go kill some more people".
    JD

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  4. Hi Jackie.... Yes, I'm afraid Poilievre has gone off the deep end. My guess is that he just can't stand the thought that he could have been Con leader until his bully past caught up with him. As you know I've got the goods on him, and will make sure he goes down in flames at the most critical point of the next election campaign. I could do it now, but the pandemic has sapped my strength, so it can wait. The polls may be a bit erratic, but the Liberals are leading in all of them. O'Toole is looking more like a buffoon every day, and with Ford sagging in Ontario, I'm fairly confident that all is set for a big winning election early in the new year, especially if Trump causes a democratic crisis and O'Toole gets to wear it here...

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  5. Hi anon @11:13 am.... Ford got off to a bad start when he encouraged people to party, then he recovered a bit, only to have the mediocrity of his government and his medical experts come back to haunt him. In the latest Abacus poll he is down eight points, so that's a start. If the NDP and the Liberals had better leaders the race would be tighter. But hopefully the numbers will keep Ford from calling an election, which he was clearly preparing to do...

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  6. Hi JD...I share your anger at the way some people just don't get it, and can't even wear a mask even though until a vaccine arrives it's the best thing we can do to stop the virus. Covid cases are still growing all over the world, we don't know enough about what could happen this winter, and still those anti-mask clowns keep on risking their lives and the lives of others. In Scotland I believe a first offence is $750 (pounds) and the next is about $1,500. And university students are first given a yellow card, like soccer players, and a second offence is a red card, and an expulsion from university. We need to get tougher on offenders in this country or we will never get to the safe or safer place we all want...

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  7. Hi Gyor....House parties may be a place where young people contract and spread the virus. But since many of them work in low end retail jobs where they are exposed to the public, I suspect that's more of a factor than house parties. If we had a better contact tracing system we could settle the argument....

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