03.30.2021 06:55 PM

Stephen Maher’s report on the pandemic

Read this.

4 Comments

  1. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    Warren,

    As if Maher’s outstanding piece wasn’t shocking enough, these two whoppers are more than concerning. For some people, they’ll be behind the paywall. In short, did Hwang really lose 100 billion (the whisper number)? And by ricochet, will Viacom go down for the count? It’s stock has already been cut in half. This might just do it to finally sink these markets for good.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-30/archegos-fiasco-is-latest-reminder-how-superrich-love-leverage?srnd=premium-canada

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-03-29/one-of-world-s-greatest-hidden-fortunes-is-wiped-out-in-days

  2. Bill Malcolm says:

    Thanks for that link. I’d probably have missed it otherwise, because MacLeans got the NS shooter tragedy wrong last spring and summer with wild speculation, and I’ve paid it no attention since.

    Maher has given the most comprehensive summary of the pandemic in Canada that I’ve read. I live in NS, and two days after the lockdown here in mid March ’20, I had to go into a pharmacy to get my BP prescription — no deliveries when you live 25 klicks outside Halifax in a rural area, not even cold pizza. I wore a handmade mask based on a design from the Guardian UK online newspaper, and disposable gloves. Social distancing was already in force, but I looked like a bandit compared to the still maskless majority, including the pharmacy employees who also had no chance to social distance themselves from each other. I had no faith in going maskless as Tam/Strang were saying at the time, it’s common sense and physics. Also what Asian populations have done for years. BTW, St Patty’s Day was cancelled here a year ago, if not in Ontario.

    My takeaway from all this is pretty much what Maher has detailed. Mediocrity at the Federal level, and outright GROSS INCOMPETENCE in Quebec, Ontario, Manitoba, Saskatchewan and Alberta. All Conservative governments. NB under Higgs stands out as having done well despite being being PC, rather like the Aussies, who also have a Conservative national government, but don’t seem to be beset with whatever ideological right wing nitwitticisms there are which affects the premiers of the English-speaking provinces here in particular. I have relatives in Calgary, and I can only say, Kenney is a complete joke of an ideological idiot, and if there are Albertans who think he’s great, well they’re idiots as well.

    Ford was empathetic at first on the LTC issue, then all his old PC pals called him up and told him not to ruin the LTC gravy train, and he put their interests before the people. Plain and simple. Plus, like the other Conservative premiers bar Higgs, he hasn’t the first clue about how to conduct lockdowns or anything else to do with Covid. On again/off again, no plan, totally confusing — utterly useless. For 14 million people wandering what in hell is going on with the man.

    Here today, when the country is on the verge of a very bad out-of-control third wave, the Feds are signalling, the epidemiologists are signalling, public health is signalling — put in a real circuit breaker, and yet these grossly incompetent Conservative premiers merely repeat the mistakes Maher describes that they’ve made over the past year, too little too late, BS reasoning. Has Moe the the IQ of an ant?

    The whole Conservative-governed provincial health situation makes me want to barf. Intellectual dishonesty at its finest, strutting peacock premiers uttering fake libertarian arguments in an emergency.

    As for the mediocre Federal response: Years of bad neoliberal Conservative and then Liberal “governance” led to the gutting of the PHAC, lax preparedness, inability to walk and chew gum at the same time by our bureaucracy, they all factor in. As I’ve said here before, I personally have no confidence in either party, or the NDP for that matter. The country is rudderless, and if that’s a reflection on the country at large, well so be it. It isn’t the country of my youth, just a hollow shell created to make money for the already over-wealthy, and which treats its lower paid essential workers like absolute crap to make an extra dime.

  3. Steve Teller says:

    Pros: Very detailed, with a lot of granular information that I hadn’t read before.

    Cons: Seems a bit too apologetic for the Liberals (blaming past administrations), and a bit too one-sided in favor of hard lockdowns without considering the economic and mental health aspects. Also does not really address the huge vaccine bungle, which (as you’ve pointed out) falls squarely on Trudeau and Tam. The details about Tam’s background should have made her even more willing to speak up (like Fauci), rather than be Trudeau’s toady.

  4. Robert White says:

    I’m like Canada’s early warning Medical Signals Intelligence analysts in so far as I, for one, warned Public Safety & PMO that Sars-2-nCoV-19 is a bioweapon and Gain-of-Function man made deadly pandemic pathogen. It is of no surprise whatsoever that federal bureaucrats gutted federal medical signals intel just before this bioweapon was deployed.

    Don’t be surprised that Managed Care is in bed with the political parties as that is indeed a cash cow for many in wealth management circles.

    Our federal government bureaucrats should be investigated for the serial failures and haphazard approach to health care. They are nowhere near professional in terms of response.

    That article is an eye opener too, Warren. The author is one smart cookie IMHO. Thanks for the reference as it is top notch.

    rw

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