Roundup: An oncoming vaccine delivery crunch

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It looks like the vaccine delays are at an end, with ramped up deliveries planned through to the end of March, and Pfizer’s Canadian president insisting that they fully plan to meet their contracted deadlines. Add to that, there is more talk of AstraZeneca vaccines on the way (which could be from India as well as the US), but as has been pointed out in this breakdown of vaccine delivery math, this is going to put more pressure on provinces to get those doses into arms.

Why is that concerning? Well, provincial government competence is a very live concern. Ontario, for example, still hasn’t set up a web portal or call centre to book appointments for vaccinations, when they’ve been caterwauling that they need more doses – only, whoops, it turns out that they can’t even bloody count the doses they’ve delivered and they only delivered half as many as they thought they had. That’s not exactly encouraging (particularly because the government is being run by a gang of incompetent murderclowns).

Add to that, Ontario’s ethical framework for vaccine priorities is far more confused than it should be. Would that this government could get its act together, but no. This is only making a bad situation worse, but remember, everyone has to keep praising Ford for how he really exceeded his (low) expectations, rather than holding him to account for the thousands of unnecessary deaths that have occurred on his watch.

Good reads:

  • Canada led an initiative of 57 other countries in unveiling an international declaration against state-sponsored arbitrary detentions for political purposes.
  • Canadian Forces reconnaissance teams are assesing the border to establish COVID screening centres, as the government is looking at testing some essential travellers.
  • The government’s expected gun control bill is expected to have an optional buy-back policy, which advocates say is far less effective than a mandatory one.
  • The Star has been going through the pandemic document dump released to the Health Committee to try and find patterns and narratives therein.
  • The Canadian Press compared CERB data to population statistics, and found a high proportion of payments went to diverse, low-income neighbourhoods.
  • Here’s a look at the ongoing delays with our shipbuilding programme, because we are loading up all of the capabilities onto one platform, unlike our allies.
  • NATO is talking about compensating member countries who deploy their forces for defence and deterrence deployments, and Canada could stand to benefit from that.
  • The Official Languages Commissioner has received a complaint that the report into Julie Payette’s conduct at Rideau Hall was in English only.
  • This week, we can expect to see whether the government – and the Commons – will accept or reject the Senate amendments to the assisted dying bill.
  • Susan Delacourt looks at how Erin O’Toole is trying to paint himself as some middle-class guy trying to hug the political centre (yet neglects his predilection for lying).
  • Chantal Hébert does not see an election coming anytime soon, and looks at how the different parties are positioning themselves in the meantime.

Odds and ends:

South of the border, wealthy political donors are afraid that Biden will appoint qualified people to diplomatic roles rather than them. Such a normal country…

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One thought on “Roundup: An oncoming vaccine delivery crunch”

  1. Here in Saskatchewan, they have gone all-in on the “blame Trudeau for any vaccination delay” meme. There are no visible signs of any actual vaccination roll-out plan except to say that tens of thousands of people over 70 are in Phase One and are supposed to get vaccinated by the end of March.
    Exactly how this is supposed to be implemented over the next 6 weeks is a mystery.
    I think they have been vaccinating some people in retirement homes and at hospitals, and they do announce the numbers of vaccinations given – we are at about 30,000 now I think. But there is no “list” or any indication of how they intend to go about vaccinating thousands more over the next 6 weeks.. The pharmacies haven’t been told anything. They haven’t said if they are planning clinics in the cities.
    Occasionally in January they were announcing clinics for “independent seniors” in various small towns – interestingly enough, three of the dozen clinics were at towns in Premier Scott Moe’s riding! – but there was no follow-up on this by the media here.

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