Roundup: Getting to COVID-zero

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The pandemic continues to grow exponentially, and people are wringing their hands about what to do, the notion of getting to COVID-zero is circulating again, after certain jurisdictions – Australia, New Zealand, Slovakia – managed it. So here’s Dr. Isaac Bogoch to explain it.

We can barely get premiers to institute some reasonably tough measures as it is, which is going to make anything required to actually crush the virus almost impossible – especially if we’re relying on their political calculus that closing businesses is worse for them than the hundreds or thousands of deaths that will happen otherwise.

For a bit of a reality check on the feasibility of this, Chris Selley explains why some countries’ systems for locking down COVID wouldn’t work in Canada, either because they were draconian or we are too far behind the curve to make it happen.

Good reads:

  • Moderna’s COVID vaccine is also showing close to 95 percent effectiveness, and it doesn’t need super-cold temperatures. (Here is a comparison of the two vaccines).
  • With news of the second vaccine on the horizon, Canadian innovators are stepping up to offer their help with things like the super-cold storage for the Pfizer vaccine.
  • The Canadian Forces have also said they are ready to play their part in helping to distribute the vaccine across the country if required.
  • Justin Trudeau told an international conference on media freedom that “crackdowns” on journalists are an attack on democracy.
  • The federal government is expected to table new privacy legislation, possibly this week, that will contain strong enforcement measures for digital companies.
  • The Liberals have relented, and will turn over un-redacted WE documents to the Parliamentary Law Clerk.
  • It appears that Andrew Scheer is employing his sister-in-law part-time in his constituency office, and that she is employing his wife at her business.
  • Bill Morneau has accepted a fellowship at Yale (while still seeking the OECD job).
  • Max Fawcett remarks on Jason Kenney’s truculent remarks about Keystone XL, and why he’s his province’s own worst enemy for these pipeline projects.
  • Kevin Carmichael looks at another emerging Asian trade pact, and laments that Canadian businesses can’t be arsed to diversify away from the American market.
  • Colby Cosh recounts how the ability for CBSA officials to search your computers and mobile phones may soon be curtailed by recent court decisions.
  • My (somewhat delayed) column offers a reminder that the there is a constitutional division of powers, and to stop looking to Trudeau like the father of the premiers.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Getting to COVID-zero”

  1. They haven’t really relented though. I’m glad to see them still pushing back against this obsessive nonsense and running out the calendar. People are dying. Nobody cares about We-Ghazi besides Pierre the pigeon and Charlie the tuna. The opposition has no policies, nothing but mud to sling and conspiracy theories to ramp up to deflate the Liberal polling numbers. It’s high time they get a life or get out.

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