How're We Doing?

"Most people had assumed there would be a trade-off between health and the economy; that if you imposed restrictions to limit the virus's spread and keep deaths down, your economy would be hurt -- and the tougher the restrictions the worse for the economy."

"But not so. Countries that imposed restrictions early and severely, keeping deaths per million low, also had a low decline in GDP."

"By contrast, countries that applied restrictions haphazardly, letting deaths reach high levels while hoping to protect jobs, had among the biggest declines in GDP."

"It turns out the best economic policy was successful aggressive action to limit COVID's spread."

George Fallis, professor emeritus, economics and social science, York University, Toronto

Sweden had decided on the advice of their chief medical officer of health, not to impose  restrictions on its population, hazarding the belief that Swedes would behave sensibly, following basic guidelines of a level of social distancing and protective hygiene. Swedes for the most part, acted accordingly, and voluntarily limited activities while they went about their normal lives and trusted that their government's reliance in their population's good sense would lead to a better outcome than that of their neighbours who had gone in the opposite direction; lockdowns.

 

People walk near a trash can with a sign reading “The danger is not over — Keep your distance” in Uppsala, Sweden, in October. Photo by TT News Agency/Claudio Bresciani via Retuers files

The lack of formal restrictions in Sweden led to a large number of deaths early on, and the situation        failed to improve as time wore on. Swedish politicians were determined to forge ahead with no restrictions on trade and business; the idea was to proceed as normal; perhaps not taking into account in their deliberations that with their largest trading partners -- their neighbouring states -- closed down, the faltering economy that hit their neighbours would also impact on them. In the end, they gained nothing and lost more lives than did their neighbours.

 

High-income advanced economies with reliable health-care systems represented by 20 OECD countries came out of their ordeal with the global pandemic with mixed results. Using Canada as an example, its government faltered in initial decision-making, fluctuating between cautious instructions to its population, to eventual lockdown after downplaying the emerging seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The federal government's attitude toward securing its borders was lax, it denied the usefulness of mask-wearing, instead championing testing, tracing and isolating.

 

Pedestrians in downtown Toronto during the start of the city's second lockdown in November. Photo by Cole Burston/Bloomberg files

But even these practices were poorly executed in comparison to the take-up rate of their counterpart nations in other OECD countries. One thing all countries had in common, however, despite their modern, technically advanced economies and excellent health-care systems, was unpreparedness. Along with a critical lack of PPE and other related hospital-medical equipment. This, despite more than ample warning that just such a threat as a global pandemic hovered on the near horizon. This, despite that SARS-1 had proven itself to be a deadly virus the world handled poorly, offering a lesson in the necessity of proactive preparation.

 

The first entry of the novel coronavirus took the world by surprise as it swept through the globe following its initial emergence in Wuhan, China. Which Beijing initially played down, giving inadequate and incorrect information to the WHO, delaying the declaration of a pandemic. The world looked on, fascinated and disbelieving as China then took draconian measures to cope with a dread new virus with the intention of isolating the infection and stopping its spread. Despite which COVID appeared to experience little trouble escaping the boundaries set up to contain it as it spread virulently.

 

When the winter of 2020 merged into spring, it began to appear as though much of the world had succeeded in controlling the spread of COVID, and restrictions that were imposed were relaxed while the number of cases dwindled and a sense of optimism prevailed. Until the Northern Hemisphere entered fall, then winter and the fearsome second wave of infection re-entered. Monetary stimulus, support for businesses and workers were activated by governments even as GDP shrank and the death count rose. 

Some countries had moved expeditiously and severely to limit the first wave while others struggled to contain that huge entry of infections, with mixed results. South Korea as an example experienced a mere 4.4 percent decline in GDP, with eight deaths per million population, while the U.K. took a 21.8 percent decline in GDP, and suffered 595 deaths per million. It was soon realized that those countries with the largest GDP decline experienced a larger bounceback with the mid-year decline of COVID infections.

Austria Denmark, Finland, Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland experienced a smallish decline in GDP and a lower death rate per million, while Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom were hit much harder in both metrics. On the other hand other countries came off better in one metric and worse on another; France, Ireland,Netherlands, Japan, Sweden and the United States. Among these countries many committed errors in judgement, now facing a larger second wave of cases.

European countries -- in particular those that performed poorly during the first wave and lockdowns, have faced distinctly high daily death rates due to COVID-19. Severe lockdowns were re-instituted by early November and in some countries daily deaths are on the decline, while others remain struggling with ongoing high death counts. Austria, Belgium and Switzerland's death rates have been horrifically high. But it is in the United States where throughout the nine months of the coronavirus onslaught its spread was never brought under control, resulting in ongoing daily death rise surpassing levels seen in the first wave.

Those countries that realized partial successes in controlling the coronavirus are continuing to perform well at present, including South Korea, Japan, Norway, Finland and Denmark, where death rates have been kept at a relatively low rate. Australia and New Zealand are stand-outs for their success in avoiding a second wave entirely. What has been proven to be highly successful is a protocol of strict lockdowns maintained until low levels of cases are realized, then held there with tighter border controls. Testing-tracing-isolation regimes on a large scale has become a tool of necessity.

 

 

Comprehending COVID-19

"Where an epidemic is first detected does not necessarily reflect where it started."

"Research conducted in China and elsewhere since the COVID-19 pandemic began has shown that a range of animals -- including wild and farmed species -- are susceptible to infection, but when and where SARS-CoV-2 spilled over to humans, and from which animal, remains unknown."

World Health Organization report

"Asymptomatic people are probably especially important because from the studies that have been done so far people who have been asymptomatically infected, their antibody levels are lower and they may not be high enough to confer protection [without receiving an inoculating shot]."

"It's very misleading to discuss the overall case fatality rate because there is so much variability between populations and age groups."

"It tends to be the case that viruses that cause really, really high death rates are not well adapted to spread in humans."

Dr.Matthew Miller, associate professor, infectious diseases and immunology, McMaster University, Hamilton

"We should pause to remark that COVID-19 is extraordinarily successful epidemiologically, precisely because it is not extremely lethal."

"[Ebola, by contrast] is a rather stupid virus: It kills its host -- and itself == too quickly to spread far enough to reshape other species' life-ways to cater to its needs."

Dr.Samuel Paul Veissiere, Psychology Today, cognitive scientist, assistant professor of psychiatry, McGill University

There are no longer any reported cases of COVID in the city of 11 million inhabitants, Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged. There, life is resuming a normal pace. While globally the rest of the world struggles with seemingly vain attempts to control the contagion that has taken so many lives worldwide. Globally countries and their cities have experienced several 'waves' of the viral contagion, necessitating lockdowns, while their economies have been shattered, their people demoralized and fearful.

 

There remains two days left in the memorably cursed year of 2020, and when the midnight hour of 31 December arrives ushering in the next year, there will have been 1.8 million deaths worldwide, caused by SARS-CoV-2, and growing day by day. When the initial reports began circulating of a mysterious new respiratory illness, a puzzling, killing pneumonia appearing in hospitals in Wuhan, experts in the field sat up and took notice. China denied there was anything unusual happening, China informed the WHO there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission.

 

Then China closed ingress and egress to Wuhan, effectively locking the city of almost 12 million souls into itself, to contain a disease with frightening potential. Those experts looked on with growing trepidation. The coronavirus had no intention of being locked into Wuhan with its population and soon news coming out of Italy shocked the world as a warning of what was soon to appear on their own unready shores. New York quickly learned what Italy was going through and before long the virus swept the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan March 2020

Xie Huanchi Xinhua / eyevine / Redux

"As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by U.S. mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response. It is working to tout its own system, provide material assistance to other countries, and even organize other governments."

"The sheer chutzpah of China’s move is hard to overstate. After all, it was Beijing’s own missteps—especially its efforts at first to cover up the severity and spread of the outbreak—that helped create the very crisis now afflicting much of the world. Yet Beijing understands that if it is seen as leading, and Washington is seen as unable or unwilling to do so, this perception could fundamentally alter the United States’ position in global politics and the contest for leadership in the twenty-first century."

Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi March 18, 2020, Foreign Affairs

 Irrespective of the numbers of people whom COVID-19 has affected it is still not as lethal as an infectious disease as we commonly think it to be, given the horrendous number of victims it has taken. If it is any comfort to anyone at all, SARS-1 was far more deadly, with its one-in-three chance of killing those it infected. Even so, it failed to kill as many people as COVID has for the simple reason that the more lethal a virus is, it succeeds in killing their hosts and with it the virus itself, the opportunity to spread denied it as a result of its very virulent deadliness. 

 

COVID is different and it has behaved differently, its strategy is far more successful in that it kills fewer and infects greater numbers. Numbers so great that the kill-rate far outdistances that of the more deadly viruses that have gone before it. COVID thrives in those it infects and because it is less deadly it is more contagiously opportunistic, adept at transmission in a way that SARS-1 failed to be. Given the numbers it infects it demonstrates that though less deadly it has become more lethal simply through strength of numbers. 

The most common symptoms of infection; shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, cough, fever and tiredness is a giveaway of the virus's presence. Those failing to show any symptoms are still capable of infecting others, even as asymptomatic carriers' impact on infection spread is still an unknown. Roughly one in five people with COVID have no symptoms, representing around 20 percent of all cases. "But researchers are divided about whether asymptomatic infections are acting as a 'silent driver' of the pandemic'", according to a study in the Nature Journal.

And according to the WHO, "The virus can spread from an infected person's mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe heavily. These liquid particles are different sizes, ranging from larger 'respiratory droplets' to smaller 'aerosols'." No longer does science believe that surface contamination is the threat it was made out to be at the beginning of the pandemic; transmission is primarily through respiratory droplets and aerosols.

 

A man with what was then a mystery illness is brought into a Wuhan hospital in January this year. Photograph: Héctor Retamal/AFP/Getty Image

 

A study in ScienceMag illustrates that viruses in droplets "can be sprayed like tiny cannonballs onto nearby individuals", with virus-laden aerosols capable of remaining in the air for hours. COVID is able to remain active on a surface for several hours, even days, yet unless that surface is touched, and hands then reach out for eyes, mouth or nose, there is no threat as long as awareness and simple hygiene methods are followed; the use of antibacterials or rigorous handwashing.

There is relief on the horizon. Vaccines which are rolling out and beginning to be distributed since gaining official permission to proceed. Inoculations are taking place targeting the most vulnerable within society with plans to expedite vaccines for distribution and vaccinating entire populations. That may take as long globally as the length of time the world has been coping with trying to contain the outbreaks. Which is good reason to understand that populations must continue to distance themselves physically, wear masks, observe good hygiene and avoid crowded indoor spaces.

In the interim, other treatments of COVID are being explored. As long as the danger of contracting     COVID continues, alternate treatments fill a necessary gap, and may in fact continue to have applications useful to ward off the effects of COVID. Among them convalescent plasma which consists of using blood from people who have recovered from illness to aid others by using their protective antibodies as a new COVID-19 therapeutic protocol.

Canada has instituted a convalescent plasma trial with a need to recruit new blood donors to study whether the proposed therapy actually works as it is meant to do theoretically. Therapeutics such as this are yet to come to market, but what is available is a few drugs that help overcome the most severe cases of COVID: Dexamethasone, a steroid acting as an anti-inflammatory, proven effective on the most ill patients, and remdesivir, an antiviral which is able to prevent the virus from replicating in a person sick with severe infection.

Lastly, there is 'proning', considered effective in hospitals by reducing the high demand for ventilators with the process of turning a sick individual from their back to their stomach for improved oxygenation.

As far as the World Health Organization is concerned, COVID-19 should be considered a test run. A serious virus that has managed to upturn the world as we know it, but not as lethal as a viral pestilence can conceivably become. The WHO has warned and continues to warn of a severely deadly strain of virus that may eventually arrive. That the discoveries made by science in coping with and trying to fully comprehend the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID may better prepare us for the Big One.

"This is coming at the virus from a different way. It's almost boosting the patient's own immune system by giving them additional antibodies [through administering convalescent plasma]. Like a foot soldier to essentially fight off the infection."

"We're 100 percent reliant on people who have had the infection and have recovered to become blood donors."

Dr.Donald Arnold, associate professor of medicine, director, McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research 

Telehealth/Virtual Care : Can We Help You?

"We've seen phenomenal rates of patient satisfaction in virtual-care visits ... and it's a no-brainer as to why. They don't have to travel across town or miss half a day of work, and can comfortably see a doctor from the comfort of home or work with none of the risks of infection you'd have in the waiting room."

"Since then [introduction of the pandemic into the summer], we've returned back to a more sustainable pace of growth, but we're still meeting sales and usage targets in 2020 that we weren't expecting to reach for several years."

"We've seen massive adoption of virtual care and I'd be shocked if things went back [resuming in-office doctor visits by patients]."

"There used to be a technology gap for older people, but that's gone away too. If grandparents can connect with their families via video now, they can do it with a doctor."

"What we're trying to build is an omnichannel health experience that patients can access all in one place. The idea would be that we would eventually figure out a way to get all these providers into one platform, but we haven't made any firm decisions on how or when this will happen."

"Over time, what's happening is that we own a large chunk of the patient's health-care experience. We're the platform that has their hospital records, plus the one they get middle-of-the-night care in and they won't want to switch."

Dr.Brett Belchetz, CE, Maple Corp., telemedicine provider, Toronto

Photo: Maple Corp website

 

Every element of human activity has in a brief period of time switched from in-person to on-line connection, so why not doctors' appointments through telemedicine? When the global pandemic struck in North America doctors' offices went on clamp-down, and appointments were largely through telephone contact or Zoom meetings. They will remain that way for the duration of the infectious rate of SARS-CoV-2 until such time as the approved vaccines have seen global distribution and a majority of any population has been inoculated against COVID-19.

Virtual-care service through telehealth at Maple Corp. pre-dated the onset of the coronavirus, but it has realized a huge leap in telemedicine use with the advent of lockdowns due to COVID. Dr.Belchetz worked as a consultant and emergency room physician when with co-founders, the three started the company in 2015. Now, the trio's telehealth/virtual-care service fits right into this era of vigilance against virus contagion, complicated by overtaxed health-care resources.

It is a source of direct medical consultation available on a 24-hour basis, seven days a week, a platform that connects patients with a pre-vetted general practitioner or a medical specialist by video, instant message, or telephone call, which takes two minutes or under, to complete. There are at the present time over two million users and 1,500 physicians involved. Doctors tend to work as much or as little as they wish to commit to, while being paid a set fee for service per consultation.

An average of six doctors across the country make enquiries about joining the network every day, and another 600 GPs are listed as willing to join the roster, as need for their services increases. The company had been developing at ten to 15 percent month-over-month in revenue and usage, but it saw revenues triple between February and April of this year as physical offices and medical centres shut down during the initial lockdown and remained in that position since, offering telephone consultations in lieu of office visits.

A new report was recently issued by the CD.Howe Institute think tank focusing on this situation titled Canada's Virtual Care Revolution: A Framework for Success. A situation the pandemic has brought to bear through general adoption of virtual care. The report's authors anticipate that virtual care will become "a mainstay of clinical care in the future" as long as the financial and regulatory support can be relied upon from providers and governments.

"The pandemic absolutely was a tipping point for telehealth and you can't fit that genie back into the bottle", commented Duncan Stewart, director of technology, media and telecommunications research at Deloitte Canada, pointing to data from Ohio State University's Wexner Medical Center illustrating that 92.5 percent of patient visits conducted during a four-week period ending in April of this year were conducted through video or telephone, in comparison to 0.1 percent pre-pandemic, in March.

There is now an increasing number of publicly funded billing codes for virtual services, despite initial criticism on how the service might fit into the public health-care system in Canada. On the arrival of COVID-19, 60 percent of health-care visits with primary care physicians and specialists were conducted virtually, plateauing at 30 percent, according to a Canada Health Infoway survey of September 2020. Consumer and provider apprehension and lack of support from insurers and governments have been pushed aside in favour of the necessity of providing health care during COVID-19.

 

Maple, working with governments and insurers to accustom them to the idea and to implement programs has advanced trends to consolidate. In 2018 the company helped a rural hospital in Prince Edward Island through building a platform keeping the facility in operation with the use of virtual staff. Maple collaborates in Ontario with some long-term care homes so residents can be given virtual access to specialists. 

 

Green Shield Canada and Medavie Blue Cross have signed on to enabling wide-spread access to Maple services. And Shoppers Drug Mart Inc. invested $75 million into Maple in exchange for a minority stake in the company's future. Collaboration with the country's largest pharmacy chain helps to expand the service, demonstrating that Maple's platform is capable of handling business on a large scale driven by Shoppers.

The Future of Baby Busts

  COVID-19 drop in global birth rate  (Teresa Crawford/AP)

"Perhaps in an early phase of the pandemic, people might have also worried how safe it was to seek more medical care during the pandemic and so might have postponed getting pregnant out of concerns for the health of themselves and the baby."

"I think these worries have largely subsided in Canada, and now the biggest factor is whether people think their economic situation is stable enough or promising enough to support a child."

"Think the opposite of the baby boomer. If we see a drop in only one or two years, then the impact overall on the labour market, the financial sustainability of our pension and healthcare system would be limited."

"But if we see a sustained drop, this can lead to a permanent downsizing in the education sector and would have implications for the labour market and public expenditure programs."

Elisabeth Gugl, family economist, associate professor, University of Victoria

"We're more than half a kid short of replacement value."

"The evidence is clear. Birth rates have collapsed. We are pushing against something that is already failing. The patterns were already well-established."

"All of our population growth comes from immigration, which has been choked off [by the exigencies brought to bear through the global pandemic]." 

"You don't even have to look at the statistics, you just have to look at  your own family. Just look at the number of nieces and nephews and grandchildren and compare that to the previous generation."

"Nordic countries are the great test of whether incentives work. And their birth rates are no different than other parts of the world."

Darrell Bricker, CEO, Ipsos Public Affairs, co-author, Empty Planet

"What is interesting about the pandemic is that it's global. If the world is experiencing a reduction in the number of children, and you want to fill that gap with immigration, then you can't offset it with immigration."

"Every system will have its strengths and weaknesses intensified and amplified."

Nora Spinks, CEO, The Vanier Institute of the Family

 

Demographers and policy makers are closely watching numbers on global fertility, already in steep decline even before the pandemic struck. Now that it has it is assured that what is certain about the future of families is a baby bust. Total fertility rate representing the number of children a woman would bring into the world over the course of her reproductive life, had declined to 1.47 births per woman in Canada in 2019, representing the lowest figure ever recorded by Statistics Canada. The number of babies born for the population to replace itself represents the replacement rate.

The Brookings Institution in the United States, a public policy organization, for its part has predicted a "large, lasting baby bust" leading to a decline of 300,000 to 500,000 births in the coming year in the U.S. Woman who are already mothers have suffered a disproportionate impact from the pandemic, facing challenges with child care, compromised by a tough labour market. In Spain, 79 percent of women who had planned having children are now thinking twice about those plans. American women experiencing doubts along the same line in the U.S. stands at 38 percent.

Right across the G20 nations declining fertility rates have been recognized as educational levels for women have risen and these ambitious women launch careers. Women in France gave birth to 2.5 children in the 1970s, but by 2018 the birth rate in France had diminished to 1.8. In the U.S. women had an average of 2.5 children in the '70s, and by 2018 that number had dropped to 1.7, while in Italy the average was 2.4 children in the '70s, dropping to 1.3 by 2018.

 

If fewer babies are born in 2021 as a result of the pandemic, there will be fewer adults to generate the income tax revenues required to support our aging population as they draw on the Canada Pension Plan and use hospital services. (KieferPix/Shutterstock )

 

There may be less of a fertility fall in Canada than will occur in the U.S., believes family economist Elisabeth Gugl, even as she predicts women will postpone their first child and ultimately families will decide on a more limited number of children than they might originally have envisioned pre-pandemic. And there is the reality that the proportion of fertile women in the population is growing smaller and smaller as women hold off longer into their mid-30s and beyond to have children.

The Canadian government saw two-thirds of immigrants failing to arrive in Canada as a result of travel barriers linked to the pandemic, and it has now announced new immigration targets; 401,000 for 2021, 411,000 for 2022, and 423,000 for the following year even while acknowledging that an aging population matched with a low birth rate is the cause of economic and fiscal pressures they hope larger immigration figures will help to ease. Greater numbers in the workforce is required to provide the tax base funding benefits like health care.

Daryl Bricker of Ipsos Public Affairs pricks that balloon, reasonably pointing out that the largest number of migrants derive from India, China and the Philippines countries which themselves are experiencing fertility collapse numbers. Added to which fertility decline is seen as well among immigrant families coming from countries where large families are common. The world over, countries are struggling with ways to convince women to have more children. The same social upheavals where rural dwellers move to urban areas where they are unlikely to have as many children plays out all over the globe.

A gap exists between "fertility aspirations" accounting for the number of children women plan having, and the number they actually deliver, according to a UN working paper on policy responses to low birth rates. "The incompatibility between professional career and family life" steers highly educated women toward delaying motherhood or abandoning it altogether, points out the paper from the United Nations sexual and reproductive health agency, UNFPA. As well, the report notes additional factors discouraging women from bearing children; the trend toward "intensive parenting" among them, demanding significant time and investment in children's education and extra-curricular events.

Societies of strong traditional gender role norms according to the UNFPA paper, are seeing very low fertility. Parental leaves are being recognized as a most likely social tool for a positive effect on fertility along with job security. Should a certain proportion of parental leave be allocated to each gender on a "use it or lose it" basis the paper sees a way to convince both parents to share responsibilities. Yet the fact is, there is no "magic bullet" to convince fathers they should be more involved in child care.

A street artist performs with soap bubbles at Rossio square during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in downtown Lisbon, Portugal October 31, 2020. REUTERS/Rafael Marchante/

Canadian, Global Refuge for World Refugees

"I forget everything painful or hard during my life in Lebanon, during my life in Syria [anticipating completion of the process of  his refugee application]."

Basel, Syrian refugee in Lebanon

"I want them [fellow Afghan refugees appealing for assistance to be accepted as refugees to Canada] to have some kind of hope, but at the same time, not too much."

Abdullah Sarwari, former Afghan refugee, Vancouver

"I don't even know how to say to someone, 'I can't help you'."

Vania Davidovic, Oakville, Ontario

The UNHCR's annual global trends report shows Canada took in 28,100 of the 92,400 refugees who were resettled in 25 countries during 2018. (Paul Chiasson/The Canadian Press)

 

Yet Ms.Davidovic has had to learn to say just that: 'no'. She has been responsible for helping 56 refugees to come to Canada since 2015, as a sponsor herself or through success in finding other Canadians willing to accept a sponsorship role. For the most part, those that Vania Davidovic assisted were Syrians met through Facebook, living in situations that tested their mettle to survive. She struggled on her own to sponsor as many people in need as she was able to until it all became too difficult leading her to step away from befriending refugees on Facebook, unable to face their disappointment when she was no longer capable of continuing sponsorship.

The chances of refugees succeeding in persuading Canadians to privately sponsor them are fairly remote. Mostly due to sponsors identifying a specific individual or family and refugees require prior settlement of relatives, friends even a complete stranger living in Canada to offer their help. Sponsors are expected to pledge to raise the required funds, representing $16,500 per person -- and more for an entire family -- along with having to file reams of paperwork.

Still, thousands of people living in Canada find their way clear to become sponsors every year with a generosity that shines a light at a time in history of tightened border restrictions. The United States once held the reputation of being the globe's refugee resettlement leader. The current government in Washington declined to continue playing that vital role. Both the United States and Canada can claim with good reason that each is a nation comprised of refugees and immigrants.

The United Nations in 2019 resettled less than one percent of the world's 20 million refugees. Because private sponsorship has been enabled by the government of Canada it has become a unique opportunity for fortunate refugees to leave their state of statelessness after escaping conflict and oppression in their countries of origin, amid the general knowledge that Canada has accepted more refugees than any other country in the world in the last several years,leading to a deluge of requests filtering through to Canadian individuals and sponsoring groups.

Action Refugies Montreal sees its staff unable to keep track of the many queries they receive for refugee sponsorship assistance. The Anglican diocese on Vancouver Island which since 2015 has privately sponsored over 800 refugees is now in a position where the parishes are unable to sponsor and resettle everyone who writes to them asking for help, as many as five emails seeking assistance being received daily. 

Vania Davidovic took part in the surge in private sponsorship in 2015 and 2016 in a frantic scramble to resettle 25,000  Syrian refugees at a time when volunteers eager to help outnumbered the refugees needing help. The situation has now reversed itself although Canadians will continue to help refugees despite that other refugee crises fail to engender the same level of urge to help others on the part of Canadians as the Syrian refugee crisis had done.

In October the Canadian government set a target figure of 22,500 privately sponsored refugees every year for the following three years. Since 1978, over 325,000 refugees were sponsored in Canada. Professor Jennifer Hyndman at the Centre for Refugee Studies at York University in Toronto, speaks of Canadian sponsorship of refugees as "a civil society movement like no other".

When footage of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau greeting Syrians on arrival at Toronto International Airport in 2015 was viewed abroad, Syrian refugee Basel watched and cried. "I wished Justin Trudeau could see my situation", he said in a video call from Lebanon recently. He too needed a sponsor in Canada and turned to social media to contact people online, using Facebook pages dedicated to refugee issues.

Global displacement numbers have hit all-time high    CBC

 

Stephen Watt operates a website, Northern Lights Canada on Facebook, to match refugees with sponsors, attempting to help because refugees he says, have "no money, no resources ... no hope". He tries to give them the opportunity to acquire both. Basel found Watt, familiar with handling paperwork for over 100 privately sponsored refugees since 2016. He offered advice and assistance to Jewish Immigrant Aid Services in Toronto, in sponsoring Basel.

 

Professor Hydman's survey of over 500 sponsors indicated that three out of every five sponsors was asked to bring in other refugees after Syrian refugees arrived. The requests promoted the function of motivating Canadians to respond once again. And there are times when refugees who have settled in Canada themselves champion the private sponsorship program. As did former Afghan refugee Abdullah Sarwari.

 

He was brought by the Canadian government along with his mother and two younger siblings to Vancouver in 2019 and when he discovered the existence of private sponsorship he determined himself to begin helping others to reach Canada. He launched a Facebook group in September hoping to attract donors and sponsors to bring his friend Sikandar Ali living precariously in Indonesia,to Canada. 

 

The response was immediate, with over a dozen refugees contacting him with messages asking whether they could also be sponsored. Sarwari answers he is unable to help them at the present time, with not enough money gathered yet for Ali, his friend to be sponsored to Canada. 

Disciplined, Tough, Motivated, Drukpa Nuns, Nepalese Himalaya

Nepali Buddhist nuns practise kung fu at the Amitabha Drukpa Nunnery on the outskirts of Kathmandu. Dressed alike with matching shaved heads, the women and girls finish their daily exercise and move on to their other duties as part of the Kung Fu Nuns of Nepal, a name they have proudly adopted. Prakash Mathema/AFP via Getty

"The biggest challenge has been explaining to people how dangerous this virus is."

Jigme Konchok Lhamo, 28, Buddhist Drupka nun

 

"We are scared ... But fear can't stop us."

"We can't change the whole world by ourselves but even if we manage to help one life, that's a big success. We feel happy about it. We feel encouraged."

Jigme Yeshe Lhamo, 30, Buddhist Drupka nun 

"They are a new generation of women who are not afraid to break century-old taboos and stereotypes."

"They took their practice off the meditation cushion and into the world -- often times against criticism and threats to their safety."

Carrie Lee, former president, Live to Love International

A Kung Fu nun hands a woman face masks. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Handout by Live to Love International

 

These nuns are different than how nuns are traditionally conceived. For one thing, His Holiness, The Gyalwang Drupka, leader of the thousand-year-old sect, a decade ago gave encouragement to the nuns to learn Kung Fu martial arts reasoning it would give them exercise for better health, and confidence in themselves and their mission. Ever since, they have been dubbed the "Kung Fu nuns". 

 

Women of the Drukpa lineage representing the sole female order in the Buddhist monastic system are also unique in that they share equal status with monks.

They broke ranks with tradition when they eschewed expectations of focusing primarily on cooking and cleaning, and set aside the injunction not permitting them to exercise. And now, during the global pandemic they set out to break old taboos and search for new horizons in their zeal to do good in their world through influencing the actions of others prone to superstition and surrender to what they deem to be preordained fate.

The Drukpa nuns have undertaken the dangerous and arduous work involved in trekking through the oxygen-thin altitudes of the Himalaya to reach small, isolated tribal villages where COVID-19 has struck, just as it has elsewhere in the world. Bearing weighted backpacks, hundreds of the Buddhist nuns garbed in maroon robes dispense health advice to villagers sickened by COVID, and destitute.

The vital aid they offer consisting of sacks of staples; rice and lentils, toiletries and face masks hauled on their backs is meant to save the lives of the helpless villagers, to convince them first of the dire threat that COVID-19 poses to their well-being. The dedicated nuns' activities in delivering aid has benefited villagers on both sides of the India-Nepal border. About two thousand indigent families have so far been supported by the nuns.

 

Villagers line up to receive aid from the Kung Fu nuns. Thomson Reuters Foundation/Handout by Live to Love International

 

They do their best to convince the villagers that the virus is not "just a cold". Without access to news sources taken for granted elsewhere in the world, villagers tend to shrug off the nuns' efforts through training sessions on social distancing, hand washing and mask wearing. Nonetheless, the nuns have taken to working industriously with little attention to the hours they sacrifice to ensure food and hygiene items are delivered to COVID-struck villagers in the mountains.

The Indian district of Lahani is home to half the global network of roughly 700 Drukpa nuns. The inhabitants of the village in its entirety have all been infected by the virus, including relatives of some of the nuns. The nuns have also realized that for women, the pandemic has highlighted added challenges. 

"When I spoke to my cousin, she said maintaining menstrual hygiene was very difficult because sanitary pads are not available and even if they are, they don't have enough money to purchase them."

"It's a very big issue for women."

Nima Sherpa, 28, northern Nepal

This situation has informed the nuns what their next mission would do well to focus on; women's health, including hygiene specifically addressing menstruation. Teaching villagers as well, how to perform breast self-examinations for cancerous lumps.

Family members of Kung Fu nuns in India sew cloth face masks. Thomson Reuters Foundation

A New, Practical Pandemic Workforce Alternative

"It is tempting to believe that major cities will return to their pre-pandemic glory and that COVID-19 is nothing more than an anomaly. Cities will undoubtedly remain the economic and cultural hubs, but in the post-pandemic world, they might not regain the allure they have enjoyed in the past."

"It was not long ago that Detroit was one of the most prosperous towns in the U.S. and was known for its industriousness and innovation. Over time, Detroit and the automotive industry lost their competitive edge, and the Motor City first began losing prominence and ultimately faced bankruptcy prospects."

"The critical question is what cities can offer to attract talent, businesses and investments, if technology is making geography increasingly irrelevant."

Murtaza Haider, professor of Real Estate Management, Ryerson University, Stephen Moranis, real estate industry veteran, Financial Post 

Our urban landscape is changing. Once again. There was a time when prosperous middle-class people couldn't wait to leave urban centres to relocate to the suburbs where there was green spaces, larger homes and lots with gardens to raise a family, available at lesser cost than in the cities. Leaving the urban core to the lower middle class wedded to traditional city living and the larger class who remained where they were, who couldn't afford to move, mired in poverty.

And then came a reversal with the trend moving toward urban renewal and gentrification bringing a return to city living, when the poor found themselves pushed out of the downtown core unable to pay the new higher rentals, to the outskirts or to become homeless. There is nothing static about human movement geared toward benefiting those who are financially flexible enough to better their prospects by taking advantage of every new trend that appears over the horizon.

Now it appears that the global pandemic in less than a year has once again upended the social structure of urban life. Not that some corporations hadn't already decided to experiment with large parts of their workforce working remotely, reducing the need for costly real estate where workplaces could be shared among a half-dozen people who might physically appear from time to time before retreating once again to a remote workplace in their home.

The separation of work and home has dissolved, with one's home playing first fiddle to one's employment. In the process juggling responsibilities to one's private life inclusive of child care and time away from the work environment, even when it's your own home, complicating life for the employed and reducing operating costs for the employer. 

Remote working has become the norm, aside from workers in the retail industry and those working manual jobs that keep them directly in the workplace, along with factory workers struggling to observe distancing in difficult, tight physical spaces. There is increasing comfort between employers and their workforce within the tech-enabled work environment, however, where lines between home and office have been irrevocably blurred.

The test runs previously embarked upon, have been accelerated by the exigencies of exercising caution and care when at all possible during the pandemic. Company executive elite are paid to enhance the bottom line and that is done through many innovative means, and now that includes reducing real estate imprint. With the use of artificial intelligence over 4,750 earnings calls, Bloomberg LP was able to research that one in 8 corporate executives contemplate a reduction in spatial footprint.

Many are spending more time than ever inside their homes, as remote work, distance learning and social distancing shape the workweeks of many families

Plans are afoot and have advanced toward slashing office space, branch or outlet closures while taking steps to renegotiate rents  in a rental marketplace where there are now large empty gaps and building owners are anxious to make deals to retain renters in their commercial properties.  The decline in  demand for office and retail real estate has seen an opposite effect in warehousing properties, along with commercial spaces linked to retain logistics.

Online purchasing by the social distancing public consumer has boomed in lock step with a decline in in-person shopping, enhancing the need for warehouses and logistics hubs, now with more demand than in the past, leading to expanding services. Amazon Canada for example is building two new 'fulfilment' centres, in Hamilton and Ajax along with five more delivery stations throughout Ontario for a total of 16 logistic centres in Canada.

Technology adoption has been accelerated with new tech advancing in terms of months, seeing technology sales on the rise. Large technology firms are not now expanding their real estate empires. Pinterest Inc. recently paid a penalty to withdraw from its 490,000 square-foot lease in San Francisco, of $90 million to achieve its release. With Silicon Valley speedily adapting itself to remote workplaces, employers too are no longer harnessed to expensive-to-rent apartments in town.

Median rents for studio apartments in San Francisco have been reduced by 35 percent from the previous year and rental markets in cities like Boston and New York, known for their sky-high rental costs are now softening. New York and other cities now vaguely resemble ghost towns where hundreds of millions of office space rentals have been emptied of their client-base. Storefronts have been boarded up throughout the city, including parts of Manhattan.

Analysts are studying how affected the urban core of ciies have been, losing their competitive advantaqge by the growing reality of teleworking, cloud computing and video-conferencing with the long-term impact of remote working extending beyond the methods by which employees have adapted to a changed work practice where companies now can hire workers anywhere in the world with no requirement of relocating to expensive cities.

Long-term remote work has completely reshaped the 9-to-5 and blurred the lines between home and office

Publi8c Rebellion, Herd Immunity and Prioritizing Super-Spreaders for Vaccines

"Hot-spotting is dramatically more efficient than uniform allocation."

"We conclude that hot-spotting could enable public health authorities to greatly reduce the social and economic costs of COVID-19 until vaccine supply catches up with demand."

New scientific paper

"Let's assume the vaccines do nothing to stop the spread. Removing high-risk individuals doesn't really change anything."

"The optics are not that great: ‘You can get vaccinated because of your bad behaviour' [people taking advantage of an incentive to violate social-distancing rules so they can jump the vaccine queue]."

Mahesh Nagarajan, applied mathematician, business professor, University of British Columbia

Unmasked people take part in a protest against COVID-19 restrictions in Toronto on December 20, 2020. Photo by Chris Helgren/Reuters/File

Not yet published in a peer-reviewed journal, a new research paper recently posted on a 'pre-print' online site lacking independent scrutiny posits that the strategy of 'hot-spotting', essentially recognizing people who present as super-spreaders, with the use of smartphone contact-tracing apps to identify those super-spreaders, and then using the still-scarce supply of vaccines to focus on seeing them as a priority for inoculation, would have the effect of reaching herd immunity levels far faster than with the equal spread of inoculation distribution.

In theory, this would mimic the work of forest firefighters who see a wide-ranging fire and target it for immediate attention for the purpose of stopping its raging spread. In Canada, as elsewhere in an anxious world where the first doses of the recently-approved vaccines produced by Pfizer and Moderna are being circulated, it will take quite a long time -- perhaps into next year's fall season -- before sufficient vaccines will have been produced to facilitate inoculating entire populations against COVID-19.

Until that occurs, society must grapple with the need to self-isolate, to remain vigilant against contagion, to properly mask and attend to hygiene methods in a universal bid to cope with the infectious spread of the coronavirus that has succeeded in short order in upending the global social order in country after country, while threatening food security and taking the world economy into a veritable down-spiralling head-spin. Those doses of precious vaccine are in short order and will be for some time, taxing authorities to dole them out carefully among prioritized groups.

 

Hundreds of people gathered in Montreal Sunday and marched through the city protesting municipal and provincial government restrictions put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19. Montreal police (SPVM) handed out 269 infractions to protesters who weren't wearing masks   CTV News

 

The recommendations out of this paper appear feasible in identifying potential super-spreaders, to then prioritize those who infect the greatest number of other people, for the purpose of vaccinating them and thus removing the threat they represent in the ever-widening arc of infections. Herd immunity would theoretically be accomplished using less than half as much vaccine as opposed to it being distributed more evenly across a population.

Scientists from the Universities of Waterloo and Guelph, working in conjunction with the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics alongside drugmaker Samofi Pasteur were jointly responsible for the content and premise of the paper. Considered an excellent paper by one outside expert, to be seriously considered by Canadian authorities, that expert nonetheless cautioned the protocol would work only should the vaccines be proven to prevent infection with COVID, not merely prevent symptoms of the virus from occurring.

Queen's University infectious-disease specialist Dr.Gerald Evans also commented on the fact that it remains uncertain whether the apps would succeed in identifying possible virus transmitters, or would inadvertently catch "highly mobile persons". The paper was produced through a collaboration between mathematicians and physicists addressing the reality that the vaccine rollout will take considerable time and effort to achieve its ultimate goal. The authors cite theoretical research previously published suggesting targeting potential super-spreaders would have the effect of increasing the effectiveness of a vaccine.

Tracing apps harnessing the Bluetooth function on cellphones warning whether someone has been in close proximity to an individual who has tested positive for COVID to pinpoint those who have an exceptional number and duration of contacts is a vital part of the concept. Mathematical modelling was used to test the possible impact in prioritizing such people as opposed to the effect of uniformly administering vaccine.

 

Up to 2,000 people marched through the streets of Aylmer, Ont., angry about masks and physical distancing rules put in place by the provincial and federal governments. (Kate Dubinski/CBC)

 

They were able to conclude with a degree of confidence that half as many would require shots to reach herd immunity, the point where sufficient numbers of people are vaccinated to make certain the spread has been significantly reduced. Dr. Nagarajan from University of British Columbia points out a possible glitch; while the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines were seen to be 95 percent effective, that effectiveness was based on preventing symptoms; 'protective immunity'. 

The studies failed to collect data on sterilizing immunity, which is to say, whether the vaccines actually act to prevent infection from the virus occurring. Should this not be the case, the method of singling out super-spreaders would fail to be of much help, since they could continue passing on the pathogen to others, Dr.Nagarajan noted. Another issue is the potential  unintended consequences of the strategy, with people seeing an incentive to violate social distancing rules manipulatively to jump the vaccine queue.

 

On Sunday, hundreds of Calgarians marched down Stephen Avenue to protest public health restrictions intended to slow the spread of the coronavirus. (CBC)

Pilot Indiscretion Threatens Taiwanese New Year's Celebrations

“The local infection involves a woman in her 30s."

"Wear your masks well and let's not fumble this now, especially when we're in a period with a mutation that's transmitting fast."

"We need to have stricter controls for pilots."

"We're definitely going in the direction of stricter."

Taiwanese health minister Chen Shih-chung 

 

"EVA Air has always abided by the government's epidemic prevention policies, and most crew members also followed the epidemic prevention regulations."

"However, the behaviour of an individual employee has undermined everyone's efforts at epidemic prevention."

EVA Air statement

The pilot worked for Taiwanese international airline EVA Air. Photo: 123RF

So much for diligent attention to protecting borders and convincing residents to observe social distancing rules, hand-hygiene, and scrupulous surface-cleansing, country-wide COVID testing and contact-tracing leading to an astounding success in controlling the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19that has devastated Europe and North America, earning Taiwan great admiration and respect on the world stage for its vanishingly low infection rate and deaths attributable to COVID. 

 

A country acknowledged for its role-model status leading the world in containment of COVID is now prepared to roll back foreign flights into the country while tightening quarantine requirements for passenger crew members. That state of affairs in response to the appearance of the first locally transmitted coronavirus case since early spring. A 60-year-old New Zealander cargo pilot who works for Taiwanese EVA Air, decided to hide his virus symptoms and get on with work as usual.

Now, not only has he been tested positive for COVID, two work colleagues, also pilots, have also tested positive for COVID, as has a woman who had been in contact with the pilot. That's for starters. Contact tracing is carrying on to ensure that anyone who had been in close proximity to any of the infected individuals is not also carrying the virus. That the unidentified, and now former employer of the airline was coughing during his last flight but wore no mask, gave rise to a public debate.

The nation's pride in its accomplishment in besting COVID-19 has suffered a blow. It can no longer claim success in stifling domestic transmission, as it has done for  253 days. Immediate steps have been taken by Taiwanese government authorities to cut passenger flights from London by half, starting Wednesday, over the fear of the potential of importing the new virus variant recently widespread in Britain. Taiwanese citizens -- all 23 million -- are fuming over lax controls of pilots from abroad.

 

The public, anticipating public New Year celebrations, is now preparing for new regulations that may impact on that treasured tradition. The pilot, hospitalized for treatment, has been fined the maximum under the law of $10,000, coinciding with his very recent loss of employment for the Taiwanese airliner. What has occurred through a single case of neglect underlines how convenient it is for the coronavirus to muster a foothold even in countries where public health authorities had been diligent in its control.

 

Taiwan has reported its first local coronavirus case in 253 days. Photo: AP

 

China, Australia and now Taiwan stand as living examples of what can and will occur if and when that diligence is temporarily lifted, deliberately or by default or accident. All the quarantine regulations, isolation and contact-tracing, along with a public willing to sacrifice to deny the coronavirus an opportunity, collapsed as a result of one casual error in personal judgement. Authorities in Taiwan are now turning their close attention to flight crew members on occasion given more relaxed quarantine requirements.

 

Arriving pilots go into quarantine for three days while cabin-crew members quarantine for five. Newly instituted regulations with the intention of disrupting the coronavirus's newly-enabled foothold will see the isolation period increased to 14 days. In Australia, agencies imposed strict quarantines for hotels following a dozen Chilean crew members caught partying in a layover in Sydney. Authorities in Taiwan believe the New Zealander pilot normally based in Taiwan, on returning from a trip to the U.S. on December 4, met a friend with whom he went about to a number of different venues. 

 

The $10,000 fine struck against the pilot was for "covering up symptoms, contacts, and places visited while sick". Premier Su Tseng-chang and other Taiwanese officials now urge their citizens to think about remaining at home during New Year's celebrations, while public events remain scheduled. "You can get better angles from television", urged Premier Su in reference to the annual fireworks show at the Taipei 101 skyscraper. 

 

Taiwan News Photo

Mutant Srain: "No Cause for Concern" : View With Caution

 

"Even during the [recent] lockdown in England, this virus had an R-number that was about 0.4 larger than non-variant strains."

"The non-variant strains had an R number of about 0.8, but this variant had an R of 1.2 or even higher."

"[Potentially bad news for efforts to curb the spread of COVID-19, already claiming over 67,000 lives in Britain; 1.7 million worldwide]."

"I think it is highly likely to become the dominant strain across the UK given the trends we have seen so far. There is a hint that it has a higher propensity to infect children."

"We have to be cautious in our conclusions, this is still early days and there's still a lot of uncertainty about many aspects of this new variant."

Neil Ferguson, director of the MRC Centre for Global Infectious Disease Analysis

 

"There is an really unusual cluster of mutations associated with this variant -- 23 coding changes across the whole virus genome."

"The previous virus had a harder time binding to ACE2 and getting into [human] cells. [That made adults -- with more abundant ACE2 receptors in their nose and throats -- an easier target compared to children]."

"If the new strain is having an easier time of entering and binding to cells, that would put children on a more level playing field."

"It is possible that we may need to update vaccines, perhaps not every year. But we will need to monitor these viruses moving forward."

Wendy Barclay, head, department of infections disease, Imperial College London

Technicians conduct COVID-19 tests at a new facility Friday, Oct. 30, 2020, in Valencia, Calif. (AP Photo/Marcio Jose Sanchez, Pool)

"[The new strain will not decelerate vaccine efforts]."

"Right now, we have no indications that it is going to hurt our ability to continue vaccinating people or that it is any more dangerous or deadly than the strains that are currently out there and that we know about."

U.S.Surgeon General Jerome Adams

Fears of a highly infectious new coronavirus strain has prompted more countries to close their borders to Britain. A sense of global panic has set in with the news of a new strain discovered in the United Kingdom with 23 mutations in its genetic code representing a rather high number of changes, some of which appear to have affected the coronavirus' capacity to spread far more effectively. The fear that set into the global community has caused travel chaos, raising the possibility of food shortages in the U.K. even as the Brexit cliff edges nearer.

Hong Kong, Russia, Switzerland, Sweden, India, Jordan, Poland, Spain and Pakistan have suspended travel to British citizens planning trips abroad in the wake of Prime Minister Boris Johnson's warning of a mutated variant of the COVID virus which appears to be up to 70 percent more transmissible, appearing in the country. Other nations too have taken steps to block travel from Britain, including France, Germany, Italy, Canada the Netherlands, Austria, Ireland and Belgium.

This, even as experts have declared that the mutated strain most likely is in circulation in countries that have no idea of its presence, given their less advanced detection technologies. The most concerning thing about the circulation of the variant is its more transmissible capability than the original strain. What has been established is that the new variant reflects a critical mutation whose lineage has been recognized in explosively-swift transmissions in South Africa, now accounting for 80 to 90 percent of new infections in that country.

September was when the realization struck of the appearance of a new variant in Britain. In London by early December, 62 percent of COVID-19 cases were linked to the new variant, in comparison to 28 percent of cases attributable to the variant three weeks earlier. The appearance of the new variant has also been reported in small numbers by Iceland and Denmark. 

A concern has been raised that current vaccines may be compromised by this significantly mutated virus leading doctors at the Walter Reed Army Institute of Research in the U.S to research the effectiveness of current vaccines on the new strain. Early conclusions are that the vaccines will continue to be effective. Ugur Sahin, co-founder of BioNTech assured it was "highly likely" its vaccine would be effective against the mutated strain. The company could adapt the vaccine if necessary, given six weeks

.

The virus mutation was detected in September in Kent

"Viruses constantly change through mutation and the emergence of a new variant is an expected occurrence and not in itself a cause for concern."

"There is no indication at this point of increased infection severity associated with the new variant."

"[A conclusion] "challenged by the fact that the majority of cases were reported in people under 60 years old, who are less likely to develop severe symptoms."

The European Centre for Disease Prevention and Control (ECDC) threat assessment report

A man wearing a protective face mask walks past an illustration of a virus outside a regional science centre in Oldham, England, on Aug. 3. (Phil Noble/Reuters)