Canadian Politics Today

Is there a way we can assess true negligence in this atmosphere ? 

How ?

Investigation of when people knew things and what, if any, their actions were given that information.

Canadian and US federal governments were both slow to respond.  The US was seemingly worse.  At least Canada finally got its butt in gear.

Most western governments were slow to react, most will be judged on how they responded after the fact. Trump has to be one of the worst but you have to wonder when his faithful with realize it, if ever.

1. Ok.  It's hard for someone to assess their reaction though, I would think, unless it's obviously inappropriate.  For example, after 9/11 it was stated that US intelligence warned of a threat months before the attack.  I don't think that information alone is enough to assess the reaction by the administrations.

2. Well, maybe so.  Again - hard to say for sure.  Can you compare two places, even places as similar as Canada and the USA ?

It seems ever more apparent from statements emerging from within Trump's own WH that he ignored warnings simply because he was more concerned about his single minded focus on the economy, especially in an election year. He has blood on his hands.

Trump now wants to fire Faucci for having dared to be critical of his slow response to warnings of the outbreak.

Mr. Trump reposted a Twitter message that said “Time to #FireFauci” as he rejected criticism of his slow initial response to the pandemic that has now killed more than 22,000 people in the United States. The president privately has been irritated at times with Dr. Fauci, but the Twitter post was the most explicit he has been in letting that show publicly.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/12/us/politics/trump-fauci-coronavirus.html

The feds slow early response: 

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid-19-canada-federal-response-1.5529263

The government's initial focus was on repatriating stranded Canadians in Wuhan, China, the epicentre of the outbreak, and subsequently on Canadians to be evacuated from cruise ships. That evolved into a focus on travellers from China and those coming from other coronavirus hot spots like Iran.

While that response included quarantines for repatriated travellers, it did not involve stricter border controls in general, as Canada agreed with the World Health Organization's advice against closing borders and travel bans.

"The long-term implications of shutting down borders is they're not very effective at controlling disease. In fact, they're not very effective at all," Hajdu said on Feb.17.

Multiple studies have shown that borders don't stop viruses, but stricter controls can slow them down by days or even weeks. Since the goal was delaying the virus and buying time, Chowdhury said not restricting entry into Canada early on was one of the government's biggest missed opportunities.

Graham said on record saying Canada should have closed borders early on.  Graham is yet again correct.

Graham is yet again restating the obvious as if it was news.

Trump/admin and acolytes are in hyper-mode trying to impress the point that SaviourTrump's so-called "China travel ban - enacted Feb 2", is the "silver bullet" showcasing Trump's above reproach response in handling COVID-19!



facts:

- on Dec 31: China notified international health officials that it had detected an outbreak of a mysterious pneumonia-like illness
- on Jan 3: Dr. Robert R. Redfield, the C.D.C.’s director, notified Trump's Secretary of Health & Human Services (Alex Azar) that China had potentially discovered a new coronavirus
- from that Jan 3rd date on through to the deployment of Trump's so-called "China travel ban" enacted on Feb 2, at least 430,000 people arrived in the U.S. from China on direct flights; the bulk of these travelers entering at airports in Los Angeles, San Francisco, New York, Chicago, Seattle, Newark and Detroit.
- the described "ban"... isn't a ban; rather, only foreign nationals travel has been restricted while some 40,000 travelers have since entered the U.S. on flights from China over the ~2 months since the Feb 2 enactment... comprised of American citizens, green-card holders and their non-citizen relatives.
- no travel restrictions were put in place for flights from Hong Kong, Macau, Taiwan, Korea, Japan or Singapore
- no travel restrictions were put in place for persons recently in China but arriving into the U.S. via a third country
- no travel restrictions were applied to shipping carriers
- no travel restrictions from Europe were applied; more pointedly: U.S. Got More Confirmed “Index Cases” of Coronavirus From Europe Than From China

What Trump doesn’t mention, however, is his administration’s failure to restrict travelers from Europe until it was too late. An investigation by The Intercept shows that travel from Europe was a key facilitator of the virus’s spread in the U.S. — a large amount of the first Covid-19 cases in the U.S. can be traced to Europe. While the China restrictions operated as an attempt to close the front door to infections from the nation where the pandemic started, the back door — travel from Europe, where the virus took hold particularly fiercely in Italy — remained wide open until the middle of March and can be connected to a surge of cases in the U.S., especially in the New York area.

of course, following this one-month delay between internal Trump admin notification and the enactment of travel restrictions, on through to the early days of March when testing first began in the U.S. ... on through to present day, the U.S. has still tested less than 1% of its entire population for COVID-19 - testing which doesn't include any contact tracing or antibody detection capabilities.

Nope some people here defended our government saying we shouldn't close borders because it wouldn't prevent the spread.  You specifically criticized Trump for shutting down travel from China and other COVID trouble spots.  At least Trump managed to do one thing right in all of this.

Closing borders may not have been helpful when what was really necessary was early and massive testing and quarantine, regardless of whether travellers were returning Canadians or not. Even near the end of March, returning Canadians were not being tested and isolation instructions were vague with no monitoring. People had their goodbye parties down south, came home, went shopping and visited elderly parents in long term care homes and other family and friends. By the time reality kicked in, it was too late.

I wanted to trust Dr Tam, but she has proven to be too easily influenced by business and political interests, thus our current situation and lack of preparedness.

Because of a mask shortage, she told us not to wear any until just recently. I've been frustrated by people not distancing properly, and I discovered that if you wear a mask, people stay away from you. That alone is a good reason to wear one.  Lol