Responding To COVID-19...The Godfather Of Modern Canadian Conservatism Weighs In.

TheConservativeReformAlliancePartyIs
JustThatVille


Earlier today, in noting Andrew Scheer's call to start reducing CREB benefits to ensure that those folks who need our help most don't choose not to work, we suggested that CanuckistanMikitaians might be living in a very different dog-eat-dog Trump-style world at the moment if Mr. Scheer  had prevailed in 2018.

In response, an Anon-O-Mouse in the comment threads posited the possibility that Scheer's Conservatives would have behaved just like Trudeau's Liberals to the COVID-19 crisis from a substantive point of view and that his harping now was little more than political grandstanding.

All of which had me reconsidering my thinking until...

The good Mr. Scheer's political godfather weighed in:

Gosh.

Is it any wonder that it was imperative to change the lyric to this old Uncle Neil classic a little so as to include a verse focused on the good Mr. Manning?

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Subheader?....This.
And why note the bringing of the good Mr. Flannagan into the musical mix, above?.....Well, dustbins of history and all that I reckon.


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Lame Duck Grifter Guy Calls Canadians-In-Need 'Freeloaders'.

Link

Looks we really dodged a bullet with this fine fellow.

I mean, leaving aside the irony of the projection for the moment, just imagine the dog-eat-dog world we would be living in right now, and the civil unrest that would inevitably lead to, if he and his had prevailed in 2018.


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Our Tuesday Pick....Looping.

SearchingForTheUltimate
SingleBuffaloVille


Last week we noted that John Fogerty is playing with his kids these days as is, I've just learned, Billie Joe Armstrong.

And when it comes to that goddamned Tweedy, I've mentioned my feelings of inadequacy as a dad when it comes to him and his before. 

So.

While I realize that I can compensate somewhat by playing a few tunes with our oldest, Bigger E. (see below), what about the no longer (so much) littler e.?

I mean, how can I possibly help her out with her chosen field given that I can't dance, tap or otherwise, to save my life?

Well....

I guess I could use some of the stuff lying around the subterranean homesick blues room to help her set up a percussive loop station.

Whew!


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Should mention that the microphone is actually E.'s, not mine....

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Deja Vu All Over Again....Former BC Liberal Attorney General Offers Up A Conflicty 'Solution' To A Problem That May Or May Not Exist.

OnceAwesome
AlwaysAwesomeVille


Gosh.

I didn't know it was possible for the VSun's Ian Mulgrew to write an entire column with his tongue fixed firmly in cheek...

The burgeoning court backlog and the chance of violent and other defendants avoiding conviction because of the pandemic’s effect on timely trials concern former B.C. attorney general Barry Penner.

“I’m worried about a large number of criminal cases being dismissed, not on the merits but because of delay, and I’m worried about that risk rising as cases pile up,” he said. “The accused is going to walk, and it might be a person who is a risk to the public and that doesn’t serve the public well and the public won’t be happy about that.”...


But do we really have the kind of problem that Mr. Penner is so worried about?

Perhaps:

...The B.C. Supreme Court and the provincial court curtailed normal operations in mid-March because of COVID-19, social-distancing health orders. Jury trials now are impossible and only urgent and select other matters are proceeding.

Most criminal trials are adjourned until the fall and the delay may cause some to exceed time-limits set in 2016 by the Supreme Court of Canada. The Jordan decision defined “unreasonable” delay under the constitution and said the wait for trials to begin in provincial courts should not exceed 18 months and in superior courts, not more than 30 months.

As a result, hundreds of cases were thrown out because they did not meet the new standards aimed at ending a pervasive legal culture of delay in the courts and complacency towards it...


But hang on, as Mr. Mulgrew points out, there is an out of the Supremes' own making:

...Still, in that (2016) ruling, the Supreme Court said there could be exceptions caused by special circumstances — and COVID-19 would appear to fit the criteria...


Regardless, how does Mr. Penner think we should deal with the imminent release of the entire contents Group W Bench onto the streets of British Columbia?

Well, he thinks that a very fine institution called the 'BC International Commercial Arbitration Centre' which was set up by the super double-plus-good Socreds back in the go-go Expo '86 days is the way to go:

...“To the extent that civil matters, business and commercial disputes, can be moved out of the courts and dealt with privately, it will free up time in the publicly funded court system to deal with the criminal matters and important family law disputes,” he (Penner) said...


And just take a guess who the managing director of said very fine institution that can help us do things 'privately' is?

Bingo!


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As to the subheader to the post?.....Take it away NVG.

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What To Do When The Netflix Well Runs Dry.

Link

Solid advice if you ask me...

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A Virulent Problem Of A Very Different Kind Spreads North.

On the plus side, at least these fine folks were not brandishing high powered firearms unlike a considerable number the 'very good people' who are their compatriots to the south.


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Our Friday Pick...The Tyee.

AllTheNewsThat
FitsVille


In the hunt and peck world that our online information gathering routines have become, it's easy to forget that there are still media organs out there organizing things daily.

I must admit, while I don't always agree with him entirely re: the organs he trumpets, I do find former ink-stained wretch Rod Mickleburgh's Twittmachine exortations to actually read, and pay for, dead tree versions of newspapers daily to be pretty inspiring.

Personally, I still buy dead tree versions of the Globe and the NYTimes once a week, religiously, and, worse, it drives C. crazy when every small town paper of any and all description fills the car when we travel.

Anyway...

This got me to thinking about the best of the online papers.

For me, it's still The Tyee, the progressive-focused media organ that Jason Kenney loves to hate.

One of my favourite pieces of the last few days is a story by Chris Cheung profiling one of those groups of folks that these difficult times have taught us actually matter. Here is his lede:

“Before, we were referred to as that cleaner,” said Vilma Lopez, who’s worked at a BC Hydro building for 17 years and cleaned houses before that.

“Now, people are recognizing our worth.”

At a time when everyone’s thinking about the surfaces they touch, the janitors who once quietly did the cleaning are now in the spotlight.

Any place — office, shelter, hospital — still in operation is being made safe by cleaners.

These days, that takes more work and involves more risk to the health of the cleaners and their families — who are still being paid close to minimum wage without additional hazard pay...


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On the Zoom machine the other day we were starting to plan how we would do things when and if we're allowed back into the lab and it struck me that my presence on-site probably matters least...After all, it's not like I'm the one who even knows how to twiddle the knobs to carry out the latest fluorescence resonance energy transfer experiments anymore given that it is my job to find/raise the money to do said experiments, not actually do them...It was a weird and likely very important realization.
Update: Another former ink-staineb wretch, Tom Hawthorn, just pointed me to a very worthwhile and important piece by a former Tyee staffer, Richard Warnica, on the situation in care homes published in the NaPo (which, I suppose, kinda/sorta more fully proves Mickelburgh's point). 


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COVID-19: Putting The Latest Clinical Trial Data Using The Antiviral Drug Remdesivir Into Perspective.

ProperlyControlledTrials
MatterVille


Yesterday, we noted Anthony Fauci's comment on the limited early release of summary data from a multicenter, placebo-controlled clinical trial using the antiviral drug remdesivir in  COVID-19-confirmed patients with lung symptoms.

Essentially, Fauci touted the modest, yet statistically significant, improvement in 'time to recover' as well as the modest, yet not statistically significant (at least in conventional terms), mortality improvement as being important because these findings will now open the door to further improvements using subsequent combination treatment regimens.

You can listen to Dr. Fauci's comments (which he buttresses with the fact that the first efficacious antiviral drug against HIV-induced AIDS, AZT,  also only had modest effects on its own), here.

Of course, this has led to all kinds of speculation about how important the latest remdesivir findings actually are.

Derek Lowe, who has proven to be an honest broker in such matters, puts these and the other less impressive clinical trial data, including those published in the Lancet yesterday, in perspective:

...(T)he picture that’s emerging is that remdesivir may be of some help in less-severe cases. It is not a cure; a cure would have shown up in the trials we’ve run already, and cures are mighty thin on the ground for viral diseases. We can hope that the time-to-recovery is actually a useful measure and that the drug might get people out of hospitals a bit earlier, and hope a bit harder that there really is a mortality difference that will turn out to be real as we go into larger and larger numbers of patients. But working against that is the possibility that wider use of the drug will obscure the effect rather than make it more obvious...

Helpfully,  Dr. Lowe also gives his thoughts on remdesivir vs. the hydroxychloroquine:

...To forestall some questions that I know will come up: what do I think about this versus hydroxychloroquine? Well, we have more controlled data to work with on remdesivir, for one thing, so whatever benefits there are, are more obvious. The balance of what controlled data we have on HCQ is negative, and here we’re at least more mixed. There is also (to the best of my knowledge) no particular safety signal for remdesivir, as opposed to HCQ (particularly the HCQ/azithromycin combination). So while I’m not bowled over, I’m more optimistic than I am about hydroxychloroquine...


As for the combination therapy breakthroughs that Fauci is hoping for down the road? Well, here Lowe is more pessimistic. They seem to have different views on the applicability of targeted monoclonal antibody-based drugs.


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Lowe notes a weird quirk in the data in the Lancet paper, which is that remdesivir treatment did cause a noticeable decrease in viral load in that trial (which was carried out in China)...Given that remdesivir is designed to work by blocking the ability of the virus to make more of itself, if it really and trulyresults in a clinical improvement without decreasing viral load one would, as Lowe points out, 'have to wonder what's going on.'
For those of you new around these here parts, I previously wrote about Dr. Lowe's bonafides, both from an online communication and scientific perspective...Here.
Please note: while I am in the science geek game on the biology side of the ledger, I am not a virologist or drug developer, at least not in the strictest sense....That is why I am relying on honest brokers like Dr. Lowe in this case.

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Hey. It Worked In Ukraine, Right?

PropWash
EverythingVille


From Mark Mazzetti, Julian E. Barnes, Edward Wong and Adam Goldman in today's New York Times:

Senior Trump administration officials have pushed American spy agencies to hunt for evidence to support an unsubstantiated theory that a government laboratory in Wuhan, China, was the origin of the coronavirus outbreak, according to current and former American officials. The effort comes as President Trump escalates a public campaign to blame China for the pandemic.

Some intelligence analysts are concerned that the pressure from administration officials will distort assessments about the virus and that they could be used as a political weapon in an intensifying battle with China over a disease that has infected more than three million people across the globe.

Most intelligence agencies remain skeptical that conclusive evidence of a link to a lab can be found, and scientists who have studied the genetics of the coronavirus say that the overwhelming probability is that it leapt from animal to human in a nonlaboratory setting, as was the case with H.I.V., Ebola and SARS...

Personally, I would not be the least bit surprised if it turns out that this politically-driven, Cheneyesque 'conclusion shopping'  is really happening once again.

After all if they could blame all the Manafortian corruption in Ukraine on the Bidens in Ukraine and get away with it, why not send Rudy or, more likely, his remote-controlled henchmen to Wuhan?

And then, perhaps, they can get the dog breeder to do the bioinformatic analysis of the genetic fingerprinting.

Sheesh.

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The Pretzel That Is The Logic Of Mr. Sloan

SwallowingDogWhistles

HandOverFistVille

The good Mr. Sloan of Mississauga has written a letter.

It is not clear who, exactly, he has written said letter to, but it would appear he wants everyone in Canada, or at least everyone in #CdnPoli, to read it.

Here's the link but handle with care if you are concerned about catching logic pretzel cooties.

Anyway....

In his letter Mr. Sloan explicitly states that he never questioned, or even intended to question, the loyalty of Canada's Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam:

"...I did not - and I am not - questioning Dr. Tam's loyalty to Canada. There was no intention to question it..."

Which means everything is all fine and good, right?

Well, actually, no - at least according to the actual record and, as you might have guessed, Mr. Sloan himself just three paragraphs later in his very own letter:

"...The question regarding whether she works 'for Canada' or 'for China' was a rhetorical question. Sure I could have just as easily asked does she work 'for Canada' or 'for the World Health Organization'..."

Gosh.

Even if one ignores the issues with syntax and punctuation, after reading that it is almost impossible not to ask the following question...

Does this very fine young fellow even knows what he is saying and/or questioning?

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National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Press Release On Remdesivir Trial For Advanced COVID19 Patients.

PlaceboControl

IncludedVille

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Note: Please a follow-up to this post....Here.

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You're going to be hearing a lot more about the antiviral 'remdesivir' from all quarters in the coming hours...

The NIAID release is here.

Here is their kicker:

Here is Anthony Fauci's announcement regarding the NIAID sponsored multicentered trial's preliminary results:

Dr. Fauci speaks on the clinical trial for potential coronavirus treatment drug remdesivir:

“What it has proven is that a drug can block this virus ... This drug happens to be blocking an enzyme that the virus uses." pic.twitter.com/hFTPUIa8No

— NBC News (@NBCNews) April 29, 2020

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Please note that Fauci heads the NIAID as his day job.
No Hot Take Here...Will update once the honest brokers weigh in.....

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Our Wednesday Pick...John Fogerty And His Fortunate Sons And Daughter.

SomeFolksInherit
StarSpangledEyesVille


There was a time, when he was at his peak as both a musician and the quintessential roots rockin' American songwriter of the time, that John Fogerty could not bring himself to play his own songs because they were owned, lock, stock and barrel, by his rapacious record label.

Later, the head of that same label sued Fogerty for sounding like himself when he made his comeback with the album 'Centerfield' in the mid-80's.

And even now, though he's made up with the label since it was sold to new owners awhile back, Mr. Fogerty does not own his greatest hits.

That, he figures, will start to happen in about five years:

..."I don’t own them, still," Fogerty (said in the fall of 2019). "But hopefully I'm going to live long enough that they finally revert to me. It's a period of about 56 years, and so far, we've been celebrating the 50th anniversary of 'Proud Mary,' so you do the math. It should be pretty soon."...


All of which makes it truly amazing that Fogerty nows feel comfortable enough to play said songs, essentially in a round, with his three kids for all of us to see and hear.

And, yes, even at age 74 he still sings in the same goddamn key that nobody else can really hit.

Amazing.

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If Jonas Salk Flew In Today.....

AllOverPeopleChangingTheirVotes
WithTheirOvercoatsVille


First, from the front page of today's digital grey lady...

Second, from crazy town...

Finally, from the poll-fevered, chart-busting minds behind USA Today...

Nearly one-third of Americans believe a vaccine already exists to prevent coronavirus infection but is being withheld from the public, while nearly half believe the COVID-19 virus was created in a lab...

****

You know, I wonder...

If Jonas Salk flew in today, would the media tell us that 'some experts argue that the Polio virus is not actually a serious threat to human health and wellbeing'?



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The irony here is that a number of vaccines are now starting to enter early stage clinical trials....And if one of them hits a home run soon, will Mr. Trump's GOP-stopped America even be able to distribute it to everyone, regardless the letter after their governor's name, in a timely and orderly manner?



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John Ivison Says What?

AllOurSlackers'R
ThemVille


Under the headline 'Trudeau's lavish handouts risk turning workers into welfare slackers', the good Mr. Ivison's writes the following in his latest legacy media, hedge fund-owned newspaper column:

...The reason is that the launch of the Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy program (by the federal government) on Monday creates the conditions for moral hazard — where parties protected from risk will act differently than they might otherwise have done if they were not protected.

Specifically, there is a worry that some workers might prefer to sit on their duffs for the next three months, pocketing $2,000 a month, rather than going back to work when called by their employers...

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From a report in Mr. Ivison's legacy media, hedge fund-owned newspaper awhile back:

The (federal) government is pledging nearly $600 million over the next five years to help news organizations struggling to adapt to a digital age that has disrupted traditional business models...

{snip]

...Paul Godfrey, the CEO of Postmedia, which publishes the National Post and daily broadsheets in many of Canada’s largest cities, said that tax credit “could be looked upon as a turning point in the plight of newspapers in Canada.”

“I tip my hat to the prime minister and the finance minister. They deserve a lot of credit,” said Godfrey. “Everyone in journalism should be doing a victory lap around their building right now.”...


All snark aside, it would appear that Mr. Ivison is actually arguing for the social breakdown we are seeing south of the 49th.

Right?



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Meanwhile, despite the earlier bailout, a lot of folks at  the always hedgy/forever debt-laden Postmedia will now lose their jobs...Gosh, I wonder what they might have to say to Mr. Ivison about his denigration of their lifeline from the feds? (see reader Lew's insightful take on this in the comments).


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Our Monday Pick....Tune-Yards.

I do not have a hip-ness bone in my entire body.

However, every once in awhile I stumble into such things, usually somewhere out on the edge of MusicVille.

This happened a while back with Tune-Yards, a wonderfully inventive project of Merrill Garbus and her musical partner Nate Brenner.

The core of how they do things, layer-by-layer, can be seen in the video above, but there are all kinds of way more riotous examples of them going berserk in the tubes.

And if you want to see them present tense, up close, they'll be doing a livestream tomorrow/Tuesday afternoon at about 4:20pm.


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NPR has an eclectic listing of upcoming musical livestreams....Here.
What sent me back to the works of Ms. Garbus in the here and now?...Well, I was listening to the New Yorker radio hour on the weekend and learned that she does their theme music.



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