A reminder that we live in a country in which driving with a phone to your ear is so dangerous as to be illegal.
The New Segregated Economy
And the Hospitals will staff themselves.
172 Windsor, Ont., hospital staff suspended without pay for not getting COVID-19 shots
Oh?
“We shouldn’t be doing things for the sake of it” Health Secretary Sajid Javid says a scheme for vaccine passports for entry to nightclubs and large events in England will not be going ahead.
The Segregated Economy
Canada opened the land border to fully vaccinated Americans on August 9th, hoping to spur recovery in their destroyed tourism industry.
Border crossings did increase somewhat at first but have steadily declined since: currently down 90% versus 2019:
Click on chart to enlarge.
We don’t need no stinkin’ tourist dollars.
In 2019, tourism was Canada’s number one service export, totaling 3% of total exports, generating $105 billion in revenue, and accounting for 1.8 million direct and indirect jobs in Canada.
Labour Day Round-Up
What did everyone see out there the last couple of days in our new segregated economy? Are things bouncing back?
The Manitoba marathon was a bit thin this year.
The event usually hosts roughly 12,000 participants, but Munday said this year was closer to 3,000. Runners were required to wear masks while waiting in their corral and once they crossed the finish line. Orange pylons separated athletes into five lanes at the starting line. Once a buzzer would sound, five people would start to run, followed by a five-second pause before the next group of five could begin. Munday said the delay between runners helped ensure social distancing during what is normally the most crowded portion of the event. “We usually send them out in five waves over a period of 20 minutes,” the executive director said. “Today, we did groups of 500 over four-and-a-half hours.”
It Should be Over
But it’s not.
They got the level of compliance they wanted/needed. If there’s still a problem its not because enough people didn’t “step up” or “buy in” to the vaccines. The same can be said about the masks and the lockdowns. The general public has done more than its fair share to help and not without considerable cost and risk to themselves. Continuing to gas light, demonize, bully and intimidate them will not improve the competency of the leaders involved, or the efficacy of the injections. Nor will it fix a health care system that we all know has been broken for generations now .
Click on image to enlarge
McFlurry Truthers
The Federal Trade Commission reportedly Is Looking Into Why McDonald’s Ice-Cream Machines are often broken.
Nobody cares about all the monkeying around with viruses, but when the ice cream stops flowing the feds are right on it.
Coming Soon To A Gym Near You
Nice business you’ve got there, be a shame if something were to happen to it.
Friday, September 3rd is the date given by the province in the latest public health orders to start requiring people to be fully immunized to participate in certain activities, gym and fitness centre usage being one of them.
Spence says three shutdowns of his gym over the last 18 months have been wearing on him and his business. “Each time you lose between 15 and 20% of your clientele. And then they brought in the mask mandate, which eliminated quite a few more people. 8 out of 10 people cancelled because they wouldn’t wear masks while working out. And then they brought in the vaccines.”
With current vaccination rates in Steinbach sitting around 61.9% for first-time vaccinations, both Dyck and Spence say that a large portion of the community can no longer access their facilities due to not being fully vaccinated. This frustrates Dyck, “So, 38% of your members are now ineligible to attend your business.” According to Dyck, Anytime Fitness will not be collecting any income from members that cannot come to the gym as “that would be unethical. At the very least, we’ll freeze it indefinitely until these things sort of change, or unless there’s a change of mind or change of heart from the government.”
They won’t kill your business, they’ll just make it impossible for you to live.
Micromanagement fever
You can sing the praises of medical experts all you want, but when they offer advice in areas in which they clearly have no expertise, such as engineering and economics, its time to rein them in before its too late.
This is just a little too Orwelllian:
Canada needs a comprehensive solution that incorporates population immunity and transmission reduction, coupled with continued cluster control through test-trace-isolate-support systems (including a strong paid sick-leave program), border control and surveillance.
The op-ed includes a tacit admission that common surgical masks are useless in preventing viral spread. The solution? Force office workers to wear respirators normally used by welders and painters:
When indoor close contact is occurring, cloth or medical masks should be replaced with respirator masks, which provide superior protection through a combination of exhalation source control and inhalational filtration.
An Epidemic of Mandatory
The official narrative has shifted from “we can beat the coronavirus” to “we can coexist with it but only if you follow our shifting instructions very carefully.” The pandemic has become endemic, going from something we can beat to “another virus that we’ll have to live with.” As far back as February, an article in Nature asked if we could ever be “coronavirus-free… [by maintaining] heavy restrictions… could the world hope to rid itself of the virus?”
Probably not.
Fauci’s Theory of Rights
You don’t have any.
And if you do unelected officials will decide if and when they apply.
Papers Please
One man’s journey from the US to Canada.
How is it relevant to people other than me? I estimate that it took the Canadian government and its contractors at least 25 minutes to deal with 2 people entering Canada. Even if they sped it up substantially, they would get at most 8 people through in an hour.
That doesn’t scale. The border policy for Americans will change later this month. If even 100 North Dakotans wanted to drive up I-29 to Winnipeg in the morning, not close to 100 of them would get through the Emerson border.
And why?
Because of government overkill. I had evidence of both vaccinations and evidence of a negative Covid test in the previous 72 hours. Could I have picked up Covid on one of the 3 airplanes or in the airport? Sure. But the probability was extremely low.
What’s missing from so much of government policy in Canada and the United States is numeracy. Rochelle Walensky, head of the Centers for Disease Control, shows no understanding of simple probability theory, as Jacob Sullum has shown. Whoever put the Canadian policy together shows a lack of numeracy also.
That dog don’t hunt.
The War Against Small Business
This one didn’t seem to get a lot of uptake the first go round. Have another look.
Revenge of the Spoilsports
Douglas Murray-The 2020s will be boring, not roaring
Much has already been said about how underwhelming ‘freedom day’ was, not least because our twice-jabbed Prime Minister gave his great national address from self-isolation. Adding to the feeling of merriment, he then warned that from September anyone over the age of 18 hoping to go into a nightclub or other venue ‘where large crowds gather’ will have to show papers demonstrating they are fully vaccinated. Meanwhile the NHS ‘ping’ app has already closed musicals and other live performances that were finally about to return. The future rolling out before us is one not of greater freedom but of endless pings, masks, boosters and variants.
And yet it is the response of wider society, and not just officialdom, which suggests a problem. Small yet suggestive case studies have hinted that we are keener to put the dampeners on than we are to take them off.
Can you say micromanagement?
More and more Manitobans must be feeling like Charlie Brown trying to kick Lucy’s football. Unlike the leaders of jurisdictions to the west of us, Brian Pallister firmly believes that his micromanagement of human affairs need not be ended, but merely tweaked. The following is only one example of the bzyantine dance of Covid theater that residents of our province must endure.
Restaurant patrons may only sit together indoors if they are from the same household or if all those 12 and over are fully vaccinated. Outdoor maximum table size remains at eight people, but opening hours will be extended to midnight and the requirement to buy food when ordering alcohol is being scrapped.
Boris Johnson’s Britain
Where the foxes caper unmolested, the government packs your school lunch and of the tree of the knowledge of fat and sugar, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.
Move those goalposts!
Many of us have seen this coming for quite some time. It’s par for the course when computer models substitute for rational judgement.
Should we aim for higher,” [Tam] asked. “Yes, I think we should. As I said, shoot for higher, shoot for gold, shoot for the stars. That gives us a better buffer for managing the COVID-19 situation.”
Shooting the economy in the head should not be confused with shooting for the stars.
You’re Not Scared Enough
Long Haulers
Matt Ridley looks back for signs of when things might get back to normal.
Three years after the second world war ended, the government was still micromanaging the decisions of consumers. The reluctant withdrawal of the state from rationing (and the even longer persistence of price controls, wage controls, exchange controls and central planning generally) infuriated at least some of the British people, though much of the anger was, as now, directed at cheating rather than the rules.
The Problem is Capitalism
