Are You Ready For A New And Deadly Pandemic?

The other day I took my first ride on the Toronto subway system since the Covid-19 crisis began, and I was both impressed and shocked.

Impressed by the cleanliness of the cars, and the efforts to promote social distancing, but shocked by how many passengers weren't wearing masks.

There are plans to make masks mandatory, but the fact that people have to be forced to wear them is a real problem.

For while Canada has been making good progress in its war on the deadly virus.

Are the Cons Feeling the Heat or What?

One more sign that the Cons are feeling the heat. Police in Ottawa are bracing themselves for a rash of Unidentified Flying Idiot sightings.

As Dean Del Mastro heads for Parliament Hill to cut a big one on...um...AdScam

Tory MP Dean Del Mastro wants support from opposition MPs to call in Auditor General Sheila Fraser to investigate where $43 million in missing sponsorship scandal money went.

Gosh. I hope they open all the windows eh? Because this one's not just stale it's positively stinky.

As in a stinky attempt to shift attention from the Con Porky Action Plan, and this potentially deadly disaster.

Oh boy.These hideous porker Cons just don't get it do they? Adscam was just a piddly get-rich quick scheme by a small group of corrupt Liberal and ad agency operatives.

While the Porky Action Plan scandal is a massive multi-billion dollar attempt to corrupt our democracy. By BUYING votes with OUR money. And their complete mishandling of the Swine flu pandemic is endangering the LIVES of who knows how many Canadians.

But look...if the Cons are soooooo desperate to try to shift the focus away from their corrupt and criminally irresponsible behaviour. And are sooooooo desperate to investigate something...ANYTHING...but Porkyscam or the Porkalypse.

I say we investigate this one.

It's not clear exactly when he left the firm for a berth in the increasingly crowded PMO comm department, nor whether his imminent arrival through the revolving door may have had something to do with the edict on Navigator that allegedly went down at Langevin last week.

UPDATE: According to Navigator, Robertson's last day at the firm was Friday. Now that's one speedy revolving door.

Because that's interesting eh? And we NEED some answers.

Heh. Heh. Heh. What a difference a few weeks makes.

Golly. I can't WAIT to see Del Mastro float into the House of Commons, and cut a big one on Adscam.

I really MUST make a point of being there. Woof. Woof.

To join in the fun...



You know ....I do believe we have these Con hippos porkers where we want them eh?

Playing cheap politics with OUR money and our LIVES.... in the middle of a recession AND a pandemic?

Shame on them. Thank you Monkey God.

Now let's hit them where it HURTS...

The Harper Cons and the Vaccine Nightmare

As I was saying the other day...who needs Halloween when we've got this horror show?

But let's be very very clear who is mostly responsible. It's NOT our public health workers, who are doing a heroic job trying to cope with a wave of panic that is overwhelming our already overworked public health system.

And the provinces shouldn't bear the burden of the blame either. They can only give out as much vaccine as they get from federal authorities. And they don't have enough vaccine because our Con government made an almost unbelievable MISTAKE.

They ordered the vaccine manufacturer to make an enormous order of non-adjuvanted vaccine. But apparently were unaware that because the H1N1 virus grows slowly, a rush order for one type of vaccine would cause a major shortage of the other.

Even though they should have know that the WHO were about to complete a study showing that vaccines with adjuvants were safe enough for EVERYONE.

Now look... there is enough blame out there for just about everybody to get a bit of it. Like the people who are demanding to get vaccinated even though they are not in a high-risk group.

But Stephen's Harper's Cons must take most of the blame. Because the reasons for their incompetence are largely IDEOLOGICAL. They don't believe in a national role for government. They don't believe in strengthening our medicare system. How could they when Harper spent 15 years trying to DESTROY it.

They believe OUR health is a purely provincial matter. But since the HarperCons forgot to tell the Swine Flu bug to respect those provincial borders, now we're in this mess, everybody is panicking or getting angry.

And it all could have been avoided if these Cons had put the safety of Canadians before their hideous alien ideology, taken a leadership role in a NATIONAL emergency, and launched a massive ad campaign to educate the public and prepare them for the second wave of the pandemic.

Like the British started doing SIX months ago...



But instead of preparing us for this pandemic, what did our Cons do ?

Answer: Blow their ad budget trying to buy themselves a MAJORITY.

By spending gazillions of OUR tax dollars deluging us with commercials about their Porky Action Plan.

Oink. Oink ....



And if you think that's a nightmare....

Thanks to these rabidly ideological and incompetent klown porkers most of the population won't be vaccinated until well into December. And since the Swine flu could surge in the next few weeks, November promises to be an even darker month than it normally is...full of sickness and fear.

Great eh?

Tell your friends. Tell your neighbours. Tell everyone you can. Stephen Harper is definitely NOT a leader. Canada is a COUNTRY not a collection of provinces.

And these Cons have GOTTA go...

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h/t Impolitical

The Con Swine and my Halloween Costume

Gawd. This is going to be the WORST Halloween ever. I haven't even got my costume yet. I just can't make up my mind.

I mean how are you supposed to scare people eh? When you're living in Con Canada. And everyone is already terrified.

And furious.

And who can blame them?

Since there is no data on the safety of adjuvants in pregnant women, the federal government decided to also purchase 1.8 million doses of unadjuvanted vaccine to be used on that high-risk group.

What they didn't foresee is the huge shortfall precipitated by GSK halting production in mid-October of the adjuvanted vaccine, in order to complete the unadjuvanted version.

Talk about FATAL incompetence.

Which of course means FORGET about dressing up as Stephen Harper.

Or putting on a Con costume.












Because the last thing I want to do is spend Halloween night being chased by an angry mob shouting: Damn your Porky Action Plan....we want to LIVE !!!!!!

I did briefly think of dressing up as this Con.

Because that would also be REALLY scary eh?

But Sébastien pointed out that I'd need to fill my inflatable costume with so much hot air.

I might as well go as Balloon Boy.
















But that costume was sold out...

And besides I'm not sure it's butch enough.

Because I was traumatized as a child...



I wanted to dress-up as a fairy. With a plastic machine gun and a big kitchen knife...to cut off the wings of my enemies. But my parents wouldn't let me.

Oh well. I might as well face reality. I'm living in Con Canada. Stephen Harper and his Big Cheque gang were too busy buying a majority with OUR money to prepare the country for a flu pandemic.

Now we're going to start paying with our lives. But at least they're feeling the heat...

In the House of Commons yesterday, you could sense the unease on the Reform-Conservative backbenches. You could smell their fear

And at least I'm prepared eh?

And I've finally got my costume...















Because until these Con swine are defeated NOBODY is safe.

Have a great weekend everyone !!

Can the Flu Vaccine Make You Walk Backwards?

Welcome to my nightmare. Long lines of panicky and impatient people.

Emergency rooms full of kids with nothing but sniffles, accompanied by freaked out parents demanding to know why older children aren't getting the vaccine. Or worried that the flu shot might kill their babies or give them autism.

Sébastien is too tired to stand up, I don't know how I'm going to make it through the dark days of November. I need sleep so badly.

But stories like this one keep me awake at night...



Not just because Dystonia has NEVER been linked to a vaccine.

Acquired dystonia, also called secondary dystonia, results from environmental or disease-related damage to the basal ganglia. Birth injury (particularly due to lack of oxygen), certain infections, reactions to certain drugs, heavy-metal or carbon monoxide poisoning, trauma, or stroke can cause dystonic symptoms. Dystonias can also be symptoms of other diseases, some of which may be hereditary.

But also because more than a million people have watched that YouTube. And ignorance is CONTAGIOUS.

So imagine how happy I was to find this excellent article.

Because that's just about all you need to know. And BONUS...it also reminds us what happened in countries that battled H1N1 during the REGULAR flu season.

The New England Journal of Medicine reported this month that pregnant women suffering from swine flu were admitted into intensive care units in Australia and New Zealand during their just completed winter at a rate nine times that normally expected based on their population.

Where they also found out the hard way that we can expect emergency rooms to be swamped.

And that it is critically important to have enough ventilators, or enough EKMO machines that oxygenate the blood outside the body. And not just in cities, but also in remote communities. Because indigenous people in Australia caught the flu and died of it at a rate SEVEN times greater than the general population.

Now ask yourselves are OUR First Nation communities properly protected? And would you trust Stephen Harper's Cons with a pandemic when they are so obviously FAILING?

Because they don't believe in a national role for government. And they're too busy selling their Porky Action Plan trying to buy themselves a majority....and apparently succeeding.

Oh boy. I guess the moral of this story is that some people are easily fooled and others are idiots.

The good news? Sébastien is getting his vaccine tomorrow. And if he starts hee hawing like a donkey...or starts walking backwards. And I'm still alive.

You'll be the first to know...

The Harper Porkers and the Swine Flu

When you hear the oinking and grunting of the Con porkers mocking Liberal M.P. Carolyn Bennett...



When you hear them laughing at the swine flu even as Canadians die.

When you read about how they are bullying women.

The sexist jeering and catcalling from the government bench is getting out of hand, opposition leaders charged during today’s Question Period.

NDP Leader Jack Layton, meanwhile, said the “abuse is growing hotter, it is growing more frequent and there is more bullying.” He said women, in particular, are being targeted.

When you remember how these Cons spent FIVE times as much promoting their Porky Action Plan than they did educating Canadians about H1N1. Trying to BUY themselves a majority with our money. Putting their hideous ideology before the health and safety of Canadians.

And how we're all paying for it now

With emergency rooms swamped with screaming children, panicky parents, and exhausted staff.

And how when these Cons are challenged they just laugh, howl like hyenas, and mock women members of Parliament.

Oh boy...you know when you think about all of the above you can only reach two conclusions eh?

One.... we REALLY need to defeat these Cons. Our lives may depend on it.

And two...oink oink.

They don't call them porkers for nothing....

The Con Porkers and the Swine Flu

When history delivers its final judgement on Stephen Harper and his porker Cons, its verdict will be harsh.

They will be found guilty of so many foul things, from corrupting our democracy, and raping our Canadian values, to helping to torch the planet. But one of their biggest crimes could turn out to be not preparing the country for the Swine flu pandemic.

Because they chose to spend FIVE times as much money selling their Porky Action Plan...than they did on ads educating the public. So even as the second wave hits us the result is mass confusion.

Does the H1N1 vaccine give you the flu? Will it cause autism or Gulf War syndrome? Is it a cover for a sinister government plan to kill people? Is a plot by big pharma to sell drugs, make money and rule the world?

Or madness.

With people getting their information from old wives tales like this one.

Rather than from doctors like this one.

Why do people who would never use Google, or the opinions of friends and colleagues, to decide that they knew more than their lawyer, engineer or architect, decide that they know better than their physicians?

So let me put on my serious tuque for a change, and put all of this into even simpler words...that even a dummy like me can understand.

The H1N1 virus has only been around for about six months, and we can't predict what it could do next.

What we do know is that it's speading faster than any pandemic influenza ever has, and that while for most people it's only a mild illness, for some groups in society it can be particularly DEADLY. People like children, young and healthy adults, women...especially pregnant ones...and aboriginals.













People turn up in an emergency room one day, and the next day their lungs shutdown. And I mean shutdown, they can't get a BREATH of air. So they have to be put on a ventilator or on a machine that takes their blood and oxygenates it before returning it to their bodies.

And one of the biggest problems is, as a recent Canadian study showed...

The average stay on a ventilator is TWO weeks...which is incredibly long. And means that if the flu is allowed to surge out of control, we could run out of ventilators or intensive care unit nurses who operate them.

And force medical workers to make some terrible choices.

And then there's the moral dimension. Everyone should remember that if they don't take the vaccine, and they come down with the flu it may just mean a couple of days of misery for them. But they could infect others, swamp emergency rooms, and kill the pregnant woman at work, or the baby next door.

The Cons know that but they don't care. Because their ideology dictates that it's always about THEM. The jungle struggle of the individual over the health and safety of the collective.

Can you believe the shocking contrast? What are these criminally incompetent ideologues DOING? Apart from rubbing pork fat all over each other...trying to buy themselves a majority with OUR money.

Now don't take my word about the vaccine. Inform yourself. But please listen to doctors and scientists who know what they are talking about, not the internet charlatans who are just spreading fear and confusion.

And never forget how these Cons put their own corrupt interests before the health of Canadians. And left us drowning in ignorance in the midst of a pandemic.

Which is why I say, the sooner we can remove these porkers from power.

The SAFER we'll all be...

The Cons and the Swine Flu Threat

Because the Swine Flu is back in the news again, I decided to ask just about everyone I bumped into today, what they knew about the H1N1 bug.

And most of them admitted they were totally confused...and almost all of them were afraid of getting the vaccine. Despite the latest ominous signs.

A “striking” proportion of severe swine flu infections are occurring among young women, according to Canadian research that shows severe H1N1 can hit previously healthy teens and young adults hard and fast in a pattern previously only ever seen with 1918 Spanish flu.

And I couldn't help think how much better prepared we might have been if the Cons had spent more money on informing the public about the Swine flu. Instead of spending gazillions selling their disgusting Con Patronage Action Plan.












And whether things would have been different if old white men were particularly vulnerable, instead of women, young people and aboriginals.

But then what can we expect from this gang of political thugs? Who are prepared to put partisan politics before the lives of Canadians.

And will do ANYTHING for a majority. Like keep up the link to the Con Patronage Action Plan ....on the Health Canada web site.













As if their porky vote buying plan was more important than our health.

And then as if all of this wasn't bad enough ....Great Porker Leader only adds to the general confusion.

Prime Minister Stephen Harper may have added to the confusion about the H1N1 vaccine on Wednesday by appearing to hedge on whether he would get immunized against the swine flu virus.

OMG. I always knew these ignorant Con fanatics would kill our country... now I'm worried they could kill us first.

On the other hand I also knew that if we waited a while, instead of rushing into an election, the Cons would screw themselves.

But who knew it would be so ugly beautiful?















Hmmm....remind me to get some porky shots for my next fabulous video...Stephen Harper and the Pig People.

Golly. I think we finally got the break we needed eh? Oink. Oink.

I think we can work with this one...

The Swine Flu and Canada's First Nations

I don't know what's going to happen when the Swine Flu returns this fall. Nobody does.

But I do know that we can't afford not to be prepared.

Swine flu spreads four times faster than other viruses and 40 percent of the fatalities are young adults in good health.

Sixty percent of the deaths cover those who have underlying health problems," Chan said. "This means that 40 percent of the fatalities concern young adults -- in good health -- who die of a viral fever in five to seven days.

And pregnant women and aboriginal peoples are also particularly vulnerable.

So I find this hard to believe.

And this absolutely horrifying:

"There is no partnership [with the federal government]. There is no development of the organized system that everyone is part of," he said, noting that only two of 30 communities in his northern territory have a plan for dealing with the swine flu pandemic.

When the Spanish Flu struck Canada in 1918, some native communities were almost wiped out.

This flu bug doesn't seem to be nearly as deadly as the 1918 one. But then it didn't turn into a mass killer until the second wave hit.

As this chart from that year demonstrates.











So we can't take any chances.

And even if the H1N1 bug doesn't mutate into something more deadly, the volume of cases could swamp emergency rooms in Canada's big cities. So can you imagine what could happen in poverty-stricken aboriginal communities?

Our incompetent Con government says it knows what it's doing. But I don't believe them. So I hope somebody is working on an emergency plan, like the biggest air lift Canada has ever seen, to rush aid to those communities.

Because if we knew what could happen to our beautiful native people. And our government just let it happen. It wouldn't just add to our shame.

It would be absolutely CRIMINAL...

What it Feels Like to Have the Swine Flu

Even as the Swine Flu spread faster than any pandemic ever has. And the ominous news kept on multiplying.

Or not multiplying enough.

It may take substantially longer to make the full amounts of swine flu vaccine countries have contracted to buy because efforts to improve the yield of the vaccine seed strains aren't bearing fruit, experts say.

The Swine Flu didn't scare me.

I figured that even if I did get it, the piggy bug would be just like any other flu. A good excuse to call in sick...and feel GOOD about it.

But that was until I read this story.

What’s a little dizziness compared with the thumping pain of a headache that made even the softest pillow feel like a rough stone; or a bit of ear-fuzz after a throat so inflamed that swallowing water felt like imbibing shards of glass?

By teatime, as I sat watching Dumbo with the children, I realised that I couldn’t really lift my head. Shooting pains were assailing my arms and chest, and the muscles in my legs were joining in. And I was hot, really hot. Except actually I was cold, really cold. Brrr, shivery cold. Or was I hot? I had absolutely no idea.

If I closed my eyes, I could definitely see pink elephants, though. Dancing ones, with psychedelic trombones . . .

Oh no. Not thumping pain, shards of glass, and psychedelic TROMBONES. Now I'm terrified.

I'm writing my will. Instructing my doctors to hit me with all the painkillers ...or smack they got.

Trying to decide what's scarier....dying a horrible death...or being paralysed?

A fully licensed vaccine against human swine flu may not be ready until the end of the year, months after a second wave of flu is expected to hit Canada in the fall...

That would leave Canada and other nations to decide whether to invoke emergency measures and vaccinate people with only limited information about safety and dosing.

And of course trying to figure out whether I'd look like a genius or an IDIOT.

If I went to the movies dressed like this...
















You know I can't shake the feeling that this piggy bug story is going to get bigger and bigger until it EATS all the others. Including any plans for a fall election. And maybe even the Olympics.

Damn. Who knew life could be so dangerous eh?

Enjoy it while you can...

The Swine Flu and the Harper Cons

I know nobody wants to talk about it. But in case you haven't noticed the Swine Flu pandemic has taken a turn for the worse.

One moment you have what seems like an ordinary bug, and the next moment your lungs stop working.

"If you're young and healthy, you can recover from that severe lung injury. People do. But it takes a very long time.....Sometimes we're talking about a month, five weeks on a ventilator before you are breathing on your own. Some people can be left with so much residual lung damage, they will have abnormal lungs for their lifetime."

And if we get hid hard, and enough young and healthy people get sick, we won't have enough ventilators to treat them.

Or enough vaccine in time.

A fully licensed vaccine against human swine flu may not be available until the end of the year, months after a second wave of flu is expected to hit Canada in the fall, World Health Organization officials said Monday.

But despite all these alarming signs Stephen Harper's Con government isn't taking the threat seriously.

Where is the evidence that Canada is taking the swine flu seriously?...Nothing like what the U.S. leaders said has been uttered by their counterparts in Canada.....Prime Minister Stephen Harper has not spoken out on the issue....By failing to express a similar urgency, Canada's leaders are indicating it is okay to be complacent...

Great eh?

I knew we were in trouble when Stephen Harper finally revealed his plans to eliminate ALL taxes.

Destroy government and medicare. And turn our country into an anarchist jungle.

Perhaps Harper was oversimplifying; maybe he didn't fully think through what he was saying. But this is the prime minister of the country, not some guy who's had one too many drinks at a cocktail party and begun railing against the evils of government.

But who knew incompetence could be so DEADLY?

Oh boy. We were warned but didn't listen.

And now it's going to KILL us....

Swine Flu and the Pandemic of 1957

Well now we know what the new H1N1 flu virus is probably going resemble. Not the savage mass murderer of 1918. The far more gentle killer of 1957.

The swine flu strain that has sickened people in 30 countries rivals the severity of the 1957 “Asian flu” pandemic that killed 2 million people, scientists said.

But a killer nonetheless.

The virus is more contagious than seasonal flu, the Geneva-based WHO said yesterday. A “moderate” pandemic like the 1957 Asian flu could kill 14.2 million people and shave 2 percent from the global economy in the first year, the World Bank said in October.

Which makes what this Canadian doctor says ring a little hollow.

....The media must be more critical. How many pandemic false alarms do we need (remember "bird flu" -- the last great threat) before reporters start asking tough questions? How many times do the voices of catastrophe need to be wrong before we doubt their message?

Because a pandemic on the scale of 1957 in a more crowded world where more than a billion people go hungry, is nothing to sneeze at.

And what if the second wave of the pandemic is more deadly than the first ? And if you don't warn people about what might happen, how can you get them to change their behaviour?

Or prepare them for a worst case scenario...as scary as this one.

This is the scenario that has some scientists worried. The two viruses meet — possibly in Asia, where bird flu is endemic — and combine into a new bug that is both highly contagious and lethal and can spread around the world.

The good news is that when lethal viruses mutate to become more contagious they lose a lot of their killing power. The bad news is that even if this virus doesn't mutate into something deadly, it could still infect billions people so we can't underestimate what it might do.

"This H1N1 hasn't been overblown. It's a puppy, it's an infant, and it's growing....

This virus has got the whole human population in the world to breed in — it's just happened. What we have to do is to watch it, and it may become a wimp and disappear, or it may become nasty."

You know... no matter what that doctor says I think I'm going to keep washing my hands a lot. And opening doors with my elbows.

Because better too prepared than not prepared enough eh?

And besides ....I did a little research and found out that back in 1957 they were also hoping for the best. Wearing suits and ties to rock concerts.

But preparing for the worst.....