Study aims to uncover who is most vulnerable to coronavirus

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

Hopefully, will be broader than just age and gender and include socioeconomic and ethnic origin characteristics:

For infectious disease experts, one of the most intriguing mysteries about COVID-19 is why there is so much variation in the virulence of the disease, particularly among people in different age groups – including children, who rarely experience severe illness.

While it’s been clear since the beginning of the pandemic that the elderly or those who have chronic medical conditions such as hypertension or diabetes are at higher risk of getting a severe case of COVID-19, it is also true, based on worldwide data, that there are some cases of healthy young adults as well as children, who are becoming critically ill.

“The question is why,” said Lisa Strug, associate director of the Centre for Applied Genomics at the Hospital for Sick Children in Toronto. “That’s where we believe we’re going to get some insight from genetics.”

Now Dr. Strug and her colleagues have launched a cross-Canada initiative to sequence the DNA from a large number of individuals who have been infected with COVID-19. The project, which is partly funded through private donation, will make its data widely available with the goal of identifying genetic variations that are relevant to the severity of the disease and that could help inform treatment.

Key to the project is the question of age and its relationship to the progress of a COVID-19 infection.

“We are looking at the entire spectrum – from birth to over 70 – otherwise you might not get the full picture,” said Upton Allen, the hospital’s head of infectious disease, who is co-leading the effort with Dr. Strug.

Disease modellers have been starved for information about the character and prevalence of COVID-19 in the young. Evidence suggests that most children who are exposed to the virus will have only had mild symptoms or none at all. However, they may still be transmitting the virus to others. This means children could be an important factor in the community spread of the disease – a detail that is difficult to capture in forecasts that could help determine when physical distancing measures can be lifted.

While there have been theories about why the disease has the age profile that it does – a profile not seen in influenza, for example – researchers are looking to ground those ideas with hard data.

“It’s humbling,” said Jesse Papenburg, a pediatric infectious disease specialist at the Montreal Children’s Hospital. “It seems that many of the things we thought we knew about respiratory infectious disease in children don’t seem to be playing out that way with COVID-19.”

Dr. Papenburg is among the collaborators that the Toronto group has already reached out to in order to gather a diverse set of genetic samples for the study.

Because a patient’s genes do not change after the disease has come and gone, Dr. Allen said the project will be able to obtain genetic data from individuals who were ill and in hospital but are now recovered. The study will include a control group of individuals who were infected but who did not experience serious symptoms.

Some of those controls will be drawn from family members who live in the same household as those who became ill but who, for whatever reason, were spared despite a similar level of exposure. In that situation, Dr. Allen said, the strategy will be to find the family member who is most distantly related (such as a spouse) to see what genetic differences turn up.

Dr. Strug said the study will involve reading and comparing the entire DNA sequences of large numbers of individuals, and using statistical tools to see which variations may correlate to different responses to the COVID-19 virus. Researchers will also focus on genes that are linked to specific pathways in the immune system or that relate the way the virus attacks cells.

The project’s original aim was to sample the genomes of at least 1,000 people who have been infected with COVID-19, but that was before it was clear how extensive the outbreak would become across Canada.

“Unfortunately, access to individuals that are symptomatic is not going to be a challenge,” said Dr. Strug, “so I think that we are going to far exceed a study of 1,000.”

She added that initial results could emerge within the next six to 12 months. Parallel projects supported by the British-based Wellcome Sanger Institute and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute in the United States are also under way.

Stephen Freedman, a clinical scientist with the Alberta Children’s Hospital Research Institute in Calgary who is not involved in the genomic studies, said they would yield important information and potentially answer some of the biggest questions surrounding COVID-19. However, he added, COVID-19 is outpacing research to an extent that some of those answers are more likely to inform the next pandemic.

Dr. Freedman is leading a separate study that will combine Canadian and international data to help health workers spot COVID-19 in children and better predict which cases will likely require hospital care, as well as determine what interventions are most effective.

“Trying to glean out that data is really crucial to coming up with management strategies in real time,” he said. “Even though children do better than adults, there are still a host of children who do poorly and there are children who die,” he said.

Source: Study aims to uncover who is most vulnerable to coronavirus

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Do COVID-19 Racial Disparities Matter? Opinion versus evidence

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

The wilful blindness of dissociating race with socioeconomic factors.

Opinion, rather than any hard analysis, compared to more evidence-based work by the CDC CDC Hospital Data Point To Racial Disparity In COVID-19 Cases and the Associated Press Outcry Over Racial Data Grows as Virus Slams Black Americans:

There is now a racial justice angle on the coronavirus pandemic. Ibram X. Kendi, Director of Antiracist Research at American University, led the charge in the Atlantic a week ago, calling for data on COVID-19 deaths broken down by race. Nikole Hannah-Jones (whose work Wilfred Reilly mentioned in this space back in February) followed up with a Twitter thread documenting the disparate impact the virus has had on black Americans. Dr. Anthony Fauci, America’s top immunologist, hit a similar theme in a recent press conference. To sum up the argument: Black people make up roughly 14 percent of the American population, but far more than 14 percent of Americans killed thus far by COVID-19.

According to one view, this racial disparity amounts to evidence of systemic racism. But the argument rests on the false presumption that, in the absence of racism, we would see equal health outcomes by race. The data suggest otherwise.

In fact, blacks are more likely than whites to die of many diseases—not just this one. In other cases, the reverse is true. According to CDC mortality data, whites are more likely than blacks to die of chronic lower respiratory disease, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, liver disease, and eight different types of cancer. The same thinking that attributes the racial disparity in COVID-19 deaths to systemic racism against blacks could be applied equally to argue the existence of systemic racism against whites.

In some cases, there are obvious biological reasons for racial disparities in disease. Melanin content alone might explain the racial disparity in skin cancer, for example. But in other cases, the source of the disparity is mysterious. Why are whites more likely to die of Alzheimer’s? We don’t know. What’s important is that disparities between groups are not abnormal and are not, by themselves, a sign of any deeper societal malady.

A softer version of the above-described argument would concede that racial disparities in COVID-19 don’t prove anything by themselves—but would point to the various risk factors that nevertheless make black Americans more susceptible to COVID-19. Blacks are more likely to work in the service sector, for instance, which means they have more opportunities to contract the virus. Moreover, blacks are more likely to suffer from diabetes, asthma, obesity, and hypertension, all of which make the virus more deadly. Moreover, black Americans are less likely to have access to high-quality health care, and are more likely to live in areas that are served by over-burdened hospitals and emergency-response services.

But if we are going to discuss underlying risk factors, we should discuss them directly rather than immediately using race as a proxy. Focusing on age makes sense, because it has been obvious since early on that the elderly face a far higher COVID-19 case fatality rate. Focusing on people with pre-existing medical risk factors makes sense for the same reason. But absent some hitherto undiscovered genetic factor, focusing on race makes about as much sense as focusing on, say, religion. If anyone bothers to look, there will probably be disparities between Catholics and Protestants. Yet no one will feel the need to mention these at a press conference, and our public health efforts will not suffer as a result.

The fact is that our culture is obsessed with race. Part of this stems from a sincere desire to help the less fortunate, who are disproportionately black. But much of it stems from a deeply felt shame over the sins of history—slavery, Jim Crow, and all that followed. As a result, anything vaguely resembling a concern for black suffering is applauded—and no further questions are asked.

The House Democrats’ proposed coronavirus relief bill included a provision requiring that federal government agencies use as many minority-owned banks as possible, and another provision requiring corporations to maintain staff and budgets dedicated to “diversity and inclusion” for at least five years as a condition of receiving emergency funds. It is hard to see how either policy helps the less fortunate, much less why such non-urgent provisions are appropriate to include in a disaster relief bill.

On the sillier end of the coronavirus race obsession, CNN ran a story about black Americans who won’t wear masks because they fear being mistaken for criminals and killed by the police. A tweet from one black educator—“I want to stay alive, but I also want to stay alive”—received 124,000 likes.

Though the CNN article suggested that the fear was valid, it did not give even one example of a black person actually being harassed in this way, much less killed. Last year, 41 unarmed Americans were shot and killed by the police—nine of them black. Meanwhile, the coronavirus has been killing over 1,000 Americans per day. There is simply no comparison. Given how high the stakes are, the media should be disabusing people of life-threatening racial paranoia, not catering to it.

There are many lessons to take away from this pandemic, but the importance of race is not one of them. Italy, Spain, and France—all heavily white countries—have been among those hardest hit by the pandemic. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who possesses as much race and class privilege as anyone on Earth, has been hospitalized as a result of the virus. If there is a lesson to take away from COVID-19, it’s not that your racial identity matters, it is that ultimately all of humanity shares a common fate.

Source: Do COVID-19 Racial Disparities Matter?

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Double standards? PM and Scheer merit sympathy for wish to be with their families

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

At a time when the issues surrounding how governments and society should respond to the COVID-19 pandemic and the corresponding health and economic crisis, one can never underestimate the propensity for silly and shallow commentary.

And the media also pays far too much attention to these superficial issues.

I am sympathetic with political leaders who want to spend time with their families during these difficult times and do not find the actions by the PM and Andrew Scheer to be unreasonable.

As unfortunately to be expected, some Conservative commentators commentators can’t resist the temptation to take aim at PM Trudeau’s going to Harrington Lake to be with his family.

And also, as expected, no sooner than their commentary and tweets are out the corresponding story regarding Andrew Scheer travelling back to Ottawa with his family on a government jet along with two MPs in a confined 9 passenger jet.

Just as previous columns expressing outrage over PM Trudeau’s personal staff were undermined by revelations of Scheer’s excessive compensation for personal expenses (paid by the Conservative party).

As Norman Spector suggested in a tweet, the government could have reduced the risk by sending a separate plane for Scheer and his family despite the additional cost.

The more egregious examples are below, starting the Candice Malcolm:

While ordinary Canadians are facing hefty fines for breaking coronavirus-related public health orders, it appears that the same rules don’t apply to the prime minister and his family.

On Sunday Sophie Grégoire Trudeau posted pictures of herself with Justin Trudeau and their children on Instagram taking part in Easter festivities. According to the advice of public health officials, Trudeau violated the government’s social distancing rules.

“Even though families across the country are having to get a little creative and celebrate a bit differently this year, we’re all in this together,” Grégoire Trudeau wrote on Instagram.

Since March 29, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau and their children have been living in Harrington Lake, Que. while Justin Trudeau has remained in Ottawa.

As Justin Trudeau and his wife and children now live in separate households, the family should be practicing social distancing.

Social distancing means that individuals should avoid contact with those that live outside their household, including family members.

On Friday Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam told Canadians celebrating Easter and Passover to stay home this year.

“We need to not let down our guard. The safest plan for your holidays is a staycation for the nation,” she said.

Dr Howard Njoo, Canada’s deputy chief public health officer, added that celebrations should be limited to members of your household.

On April 1 the government of Quebec introduced strict travel restrictions across the province, including police checkpoints to prevent unnecessary travel in and out of Quebec.

Since the restrictions began, police have prevented 2,300vehicles from crossing the Ottawa-Gatineau border.

How Justin Trudeau’s trip to the family retreat in Harrington Lake would be considered necessary travel is not clear.

On Friday a family of four in Oakville was fined $880 for rollerblading in a parking lot of a community centre. The family says there was no indication anywhere that they were not allowed to be in the area.

In recent weeks hundreds of Canadians have also been fined for breaking public health orders, most of them for not following social distancing rules.

Source: Double standard: Trudeau violates social distancing rules

And the similar if not plagiarized one by Brian Lilley:

Justin Trudeau showed once again on Easter weekend that he doesn’t play by the same rules as everyone else, not even the rules he tell us to follow.

It was just last Friday that the PM was telling the whole country during his daily address that you couldn’t go see family for Easter.

“This weekend is going to be very different. You’ll have to stay home. You’ll have to Skype that big family dinner and the Easter egg hunt,” Trudeau said, standing outside of Rideau Cottage on the grounds of Rideau Hall in Ottawa.

That statement was followed up by this one.

“During the long weekend, we will all have to stay home. We cannot have gatherings for dinner and we’ll have to be creative to organize an Easter egg hunt inside the house,” Trudeau said.

So what did he do this weekend?

He got in his motorcade, with his full entourage, on Saturday afternoon and drove to the PM’s summer residence at Harrington Lake. From one cottage to the other, it is about 27 kilometers, it crosses a provincial boundary and goes through at least three municipalities.

In other words, Trudeau did exactly the opposite of what he, his own medical experts and the premiers of Ontario and Quebec have been saying. Ontario’s Doug Ford and Quebec’s Francois Legault have told people not to go to the cottage and to stay in our primary residence.

This is all part of flattening the curve we are told and making sure we don’t spread the virus. Quebec has even imposed travel restrictions within the province and for more than a week now, people trying to cross from Ottawa into Gatineau have been turned back unless they are essential workers.

No visiting the cottage, no shopping, no visiting family, no going on a drive through Gatineau Park. If you don’t live there, you are turned back.

Trudeau lives by different rules, though.

In normal times I would get this. I don’t begrudge him the fact that he travels with a big entourage; I get that being PM carries risks most of us can’t dream of. That said, these are not normal times.

Most of us would have loved to have visited family this weekend but we didn’t. We stayed home.

My parents are a short drive away and yet I have not seen them since they got back from Florida more than three weeks ago and I won’t see them soon.

Health officials warn against visiting anyone that you don’t already live with.

We are told time and again, including by Trudeau, that these are the sacrifices we have to make to fight COVID-19. On Saturday — just before he hopped in the motorcade and broke all the rules — Trudeau invoked the sacrifice of the men at Vimy Ridge to encourage us all to follow the rules.

Then he went to the cottage to see his wife and kids who have been living there for weeks and guess what, they had a big Easter egg hunt outside and posted it on social media.

At times like this, we need leaders who will lead by example; this weekend, Trudeau was not that leader.

He was showing he doesn’t follow the rules he sets for the little people and by posting the photos online, he and his family were openly mocking us.

Source: LILLEY: Trudeau’s cottage visit mocks us and the rules he sets

The one column by Ryan Tumulty who at least gives both equal treatment:

Conservative leader Andrew Scheer brought his wife, Jill, and five children to Ottawa aboard a small government jet, along with two other MPs, during a time when health authorities are encouraging people to keep socially distant.

The government has dispatched planes to pick up MPs in western Canada to allow them to attend the House of Commons in person for emergency votes that have taken place since the Commons stopped sitting in mid-March.

As the CBC first reported, the flight aboard the nine-seat Challenger jet picked up Green Party parliamentary leader Elizabeth May and Employment Minister Carla Qualtrough in British Columbia, before collecting Scheer in Regina along with his wife and children.

Public health officials across Canada have encouraged everyone to stay home due to the crisis and to avoid all non-essential travel and keep a two-metre distance from others.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau also travelled over the weekend, heading to Harrington Lake, which is about 25 kilometres from his home, Rideau Cottage, in Ottawa.

Trudeau’s wife, Sophie Grégoire Trudeau, posted a photo online of the prime minister and his three children on Sunday at the cottage.

Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, has discouraged people from going to their cottage properties.

“Urban dwellers should avoid heading to rural properties, as these places have less capacity to manage COVID-19,” she said in early April.

Meanwhile, May confirmed every seat on the Challenger plane was full once Scheer’s family boarded, but she said everyone did their best to limit potential spread.

“I wore my mask. I kept the best distance I could keep under the circumstances,” she said.

May said she was extraordinarily grateful to be offered a seat on the flight, because otherwise, even after driving to Vancouver, she would have had to board multiple commercial flights.

“It was still going to be three airports going through Vancouver, going through Toronto to get to Ottawa.“

She said she was offered the flight by the government and initially told it would be her, Qualtrough and Scheer on board. May said afterwards she was given the chance to object when Scheer asked to bring his family, but she understood where they were coming from.

May said the deciding factor was knowing that if Mrs. Scheer and the children were not allowed onboard they would have had to make their way to Ottawa by commercial flights.

“It is a personal family decision. I am not going to put myself in their shoes,” she said.

Scheer’s spokesperson Denise Siele said the trip made more sense than other possible options.

“This one way trip resulted in less travel than Mr. Scheer flying back and forth every time the House sits, or flying the entire family on commercial flights through multiple airports,” she said in an email.

She said the Scheer family would now be remaining in Ottawa.

“After spending several weeks in Regina over the March break, Mr. Scheer and his family will be based out of Ottawa for the rest of the spring session.”

Simon Ross, a spokesperson for the Government House Leader, said the government has sent several flights to bring MPs and senators to Ottawa for emergency sittings.

“During these exceptional circumstances brought on by pandemic, when possible the Government has sought to accommodate government aircraft requests from MPs and Senators.”

May said she returned home on the government plane Saturday, after the house rose, with only her and Qualtrough on board.

Source: Government’s COVID-19 rules don’t seem to apply to Andrew Scheer and Justin Trudeau

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You don’t stop a virus by bleeding democracy

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

Why is it that governments, no matter their political stripe, cannot resist the temptation to over-reach and reduce oversight, whether with respect to bloated omnibus budget bills or during the current COVID-19 pandemic?

And while the federal Conservatives, supported by the NDP, correctly forced the Liberals to back down given a minority government, in Alberta, there is no such check on the UCP government as this Globe editorial details.

Even more shameful than the attempted federal Liberal element given the UCP’s majority and its disregard for parliament (ironic, given that Premier Kenney was an effective parliamentarian at the federal level).

Hopefully, the same conservative-leaning pundits that rightly condemned the Liberal attempted power grab will also call out the Alberta UCP power grab (the first one to do so, John Carpay: Alberta’s Bill 10 is an affront to the rule of law):

Three weeks ago, the Trudeau government tried to use the cover of the coronavirus crisis to give itself unchecked powers once enjoyed by 17th-century European monarchs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had recalled the House of Commons on March 23 to debate and pass emergency measures to shore up the economy and help Canadians who were losing their jobs.

The opposition were willing to back the minority government’s economic measures, but once they saw the draft bill, they realized the Liberals had something more in mind.

Along with tens of billions of dollars in aid for Canadians in need, the bailout legislation also included clauses that would have given the government the power to raise or lower taxes, and to spend money, without going through Parliament. These extraordinary powers were to last until Dec. 31, 2021.

The opposition, along with many in the media, this page included, were having none of it. By the end of the day on March 23, the government relented. It removed the offending clauses, the opposition offered its backing and, the next day, the bill became law.

Team Trudeau has not explained its attempted end run around democracy, probably because it can’t. There is never any reason to usurp Parliament’s critical role as overseer of government and keeper of the public purse. Every Canadian government, provincial or federal, should get that.

And yet, barely a week later, it happened again.

In Alberta, the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney used its overwhelming majority to push through a bill on April 2 that gives cabinet ministers unilateral power to write and enact new laws in public health emergencies, with zero oversight by the provincial legislature.

Under Bill 10, the only requirement for enacting a new law is that the relevant minister “is satisfied that doing so is in the public interest.” The only limit on that power is that a new offence cannot be applied retroactively.

It is utterly wrong for democratic governments to seek unilateral powers under the cover of an emergency. It is also unnecessary. There is no justification for it – especially not the one that says governments need to move quickly in a crisis.

Alberta passed Bill 10 in less than 48 hours; the Trudeau government, having secured the support of the opposition, passed its original bailout measures in the same short period. Last weekend, it took less than a day for Parliament to adopt a wage subsidy package. The government shared the legislation with the opposition in advance and made changes to ensure it would pass.

Giving legislators the chance to study, debate and vote on bills doesn’t result in unacceptable delays – if anything, as shown time and again, it improves legislation. More importantly, the transparency and accountability that comes from having to pass a bill through Parliament is the foundation of our system of government.

The Liberals and the opposition parties are now arguing about how often the House of Commons should sit during the remainder of the crisis, and whether sessions should be held in person with a skeleton crew of members, or with all MPs, via teleconferencing.

However it does so, Parliament must sit. Committees, too. And Question Period must happen, so that the government remains answerable to the House and to Canadians. That holds in Ottawa and in each of the provinces. It goes for both minority and majority governments.

Under no circumstances should any government see this emergency as an excuse to sideline the elected representatives of the people.

Thanks to their daily crisis briefings, government leaders are dominating the news coverage. Opposition voices have been sidelined, but they must be given their due in order for our democracy to function properly. That happens best in Parliament.

This crisis is demanding a lot of Canadians. They are self-isolating at home with their families. Many have lost their jobs, or are watching their businesses teeter on the precipice.

They will be able to decide for themselves whether federal and provincial opposition parties have helped the situation, or simply been a partisan nuisance. But Canadians must not come out the other end of this only to discover that their institutions and rights have been compromised by governments that grabbed for powers they were not entitled to.

Source:    You don’t stop a virus by bleeding democracy Editorial <img src=”https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/p5aED50QGxv9DJSWx6332Wy7vT0=/163×0:4746×3055/600×0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/5D7WOGR7DNNH3AJ33H42OZMKTU.jpg” alt=””>     

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Change is Hard: Managing Fear and Anxiety about Demographic Change and Immigration in Polarized Time

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

Some good ideas to help people adapt to change, particularly relevant during these surreal times:

What does the research suggest we should do?

  • Protect democracy first. Immigration is being used as the perfect wedge to divide Americans and weaken our pluralistic democracy. This creates a responsibility for its proponents to acknowledge that how we advance immigrant justice has an impact on how opponents of democratic pluralism and supporters of authoritarianism conduct their assault on democracy.

  • Learn from history. America has seen this movie before, a century ago. We should devise solutions to the current stress caused by decades of immigration and rapid demographic change by modeling what good change management looks like and leading our communities and our nation through this difficult period of adjustment with honesty, nuance, respect and empathy.

  • Focus on narrative and culture change strategies. Since the immigration debate is about culture and identity, we must engage in culture change work to promote norms, values and behaviors that affirm shared ideals of freedom and opportunity, as well as human dignity. We must also adaptthe narrative to affirm unity and interdependence, create space for complexity, and connect immigration to broader aspirations about how to uplift all Americans.

  • Use framing to inoculate rather than alienate. Immigration proponents may use narrative frames that unwittingly pit Americans against immigrants, thus alienating them. It’s best to avoid deifying immigrants as better than Americans (immigrant exceptionalism), focusing too narrowly on immigrants rather than on shared identities or shared values (making it about them rather than us), elevating the value of diversity as an inherent good (promoting the notion that we are more different than the same), and making people who are immigrant agnostic or skeptical feel judged, irrelevant or ignored. It’s preferable to use approaches that inoculate long-term residents against fear-based narratives.

  • Work side by side to build a more just America. Efforts to build bridges and bonds must exist alongside and support longstanding efforts to build power for marginalized people and eliminate structures of oppression, including racism and inequality. These efforts need to actually shift the views and systems that uphold racism and othering.

  • Strengthen capacities to build bridges and promote social cohesion, community by community. New funding streams need to support social cohesion all around the country at this critical time. In particular, organizations dedicated to bridging and dialogue work need to be funded and scaled, related efforts need to be expanded in social change and service organizations to influence their organizational culture and impact more broadly, and corporations and government need to recognize that this type of work merits significant engagement and investment.

  • Grow the base of support. Supporters of immigration cannot win by staying on one pole of the ideological debate and relying on a small, activated base of supporters. They must compete for some meaningful segment of white Americans and immigrant skeptics, and fight the gravitational pull of white nationalism, which is targeting this population. There are no shortcuts around the hard work of listening to the public at neither pole.

  • Build relationships across difference. Research shows that meaningful contact between long-term residents and newcomers improves the former’s perceptions of immigrants or of people they consider “other” and that deliberative dialogue and deep listening are effective in changing opinions. Contact and dialogue work, along with robust multi-stakeholder civic and community engagement, are the foundations of strong, cohesive and resilient communities.

  • Invest in vulnerable places. Rural areas, exurbs and suburbs that are more homogeneous are more prone to react with discomfort to demographic change, such as recent immigrant or refugee arrivals. This makes them more likely to feel the lure of xenophobia and white nationalism. It is precisely in these places that proactive investment and intervention are needed to address the anxiety about demographic change and immigration and push for the adoption of welcoming initiatives.

Source: Change is Hard: Managing Fear and Anxiety About Demographic Change And Immigration In Polarized Time 

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Canada is sending the right immigration signals to the world

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Of note. Good summary:

Canada may be the most open country on the planet right now.

Countries around the world have shut their borders, closed their airports, and imposed lockdowns to fight the deadly coronavirus.

Canada, too, has implemented such emergency measures.

But, it is also seeking to strike a balance between containing COVID-19 while also enabling global talent and foreign nationals into the country. This is due to Canada’s recognition that newcomers are part of the solution to supporting its economy during this challenging period, as well as the country’s unwavering commitment to reuniting family members even in the wake of its travel restrictions.

Canada doing everything it can to accommodate immigrants

On March 16, 2020, Canada unveiled special immigration measures related to the coronavirus pandemic.

The most notable measure was the decision to restrict travel into the country until June 30th, although several major exceptions were made.

Recognizing that the immigration system would face significant disruptions due to developments that are both within its control as well as beyond its control, Canada has taken additional steps to try to keep its immigration system running as smoothly as possible.

For instance, Canada has stated that no immigration application will be refused due to incomplete documentation. Rather, the federal government will provide applicants with more time to obtain their documents before it makes a decision on their application.

Make no mistake about it, Canada’s immigration system is facing disruptions.

Canadian government officials must work remotely to protect their health and safety as well as the safety of their family, friends, and communities. They are also responding to competing priorities to navigate this crisis which is requiring them to divert their attention from their day-to-day immigration responsibilities.

Factors beyond Canada’s control include people overseas facing lockdowns, travel restrictions, service disruptions, and other obstacles that are hindering the ability of foreign nationals to come to Canada or submit a completed immigration application.

Nonetheless, Canada is doing its best to adapt which is sending the right signals to foreign nationals around the world.

That is: we will do everything we can to accommodate your immigration goals and help you during this period of need.

Permanent residents

Consider that despite all that is happening in the world, Canada continues to hold Express Entry draws.

Four Express Entry draws have taken place in the three weeks following the travel restrictions being announced, including two draws on April 9 that saw Canada issue a total of 3,900 invitations to apply for permanent residence.

In addition, British Columbia, Alberta, Saskatchewan, and Manitoba have all had Provincial Nominee Program draws.

Permanent residents outside of Canada are being accommodated in a number of ways. They are still able to travel to Canada. And, those who received a confirmation of permanent residence (COPR) prior to March 16 are also able to come to Canada.

International students

Some international students are exempt from Canada’s travel restrictions, but Canada took a step further recently to try to accommodate even more international students.

The decision to allow some international students to pursue online study and remain eligible for a Post-Graduation Work Permit was a major one. The majority of Canada’s international students are interested in transitioning to permanent residence. Hence, the PGWP is a critical stepping stone in helping them achieve their immigration goal.

Canada recognized it would be unfair to deem students ineligible for the PGWP due to circumstances completely out of the student’s control (that the student was forced to pursue online instructions due to the cancellation of classes to prevent the spread of the coronavirus).

Time will only tell if Canada chooses to take its PGWP flexibility one step further.

If public health officials advise the federal government to extend its coronavirus containment measures, Canada may feel the need to enable the September 2020 cohort of international students to also be able to access online courses while remaining eligible for the PGWP.

This may be necessary any way, given international students may struggle to find available flights or face other disruptions that could prevent them from being in Canada in time for September 2020 classes.

Foreign workers

Temporary foreign workers (TFWs) are largely exempt from the travel restrictions given how important they are to Canada’s economy. Canada has sought ways to make it easier for employers to hire TFWs by loosening Labour Market Impact Assessment rules in priority occupations in the agri-food and transportation sectors. Such flexibility is crucial to helping employers access workers to help sustain Canada’s food supply.

Assistance for newcomers in Canada

Much of the financial support announced by Canada in recent weeks is available to immigrants who are Canadian citizens or permanent residents, as well as international students and temporary foreign workers. Irrespective of their immigration status, individuals within Canada may be eligible for vital government income support such as Employment Insurance or the new Canadian Emergency Response Benefit.

Here, Canada is telling the world that even if you are not a citizen or permanent resident of our country, we will stand by you to provide you with as much support during this difficult time.

Immigration will help Canada recover from the coronavirus crisis

We are currently living in an unprecedented moment in history that is taking a significant toll on the emotional, physical, and financial health of us all.

Nevertheless, it is important to remember that we will eventually get through this difficult period and once we get a chance to catch our breath, we will look back at how governments around the world responded to the crisis.

On the immigration front, it is difficult to criticize Canada’s response and it appears very likely that Canada will be lauded for the compassion it has shown to immigrants of all stripes during a period where it is very well within its right to shut down its borders and immigration system.

Immigration has various short-, medium-, and long-term benefits for Canada, and a very strong argument can be made that facilitating immigration even during this crisis is necessary.

In the short run, permanent residents, foreign workers, and international students will help to stimulate economic activity in Canada which will help to alleviate the economic strain Canada is currently under.

In the medium- and long-term, immigrants will be key to keeping Canada prosperous since they will spur economic activity as workers, consumers, and taxpayers.

Source: Canada is sending the right immigration signals to the world

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Canadian doctor once posted to Beijing ignored by Ottawa after offering help with COVID-19 response

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Does seem to be an oversight. The more serious one is why was he not replaced (likely due to budget pressures and the high cost, and changing priorities):

For seven years, Felix Li served on the distant front lines of Canadian public health, in China. As a doctor posted to Beijing, he fostered ties with health authorities that let him peer beneath the official rhetoric of a country that has been the source of multiple viral epidemics in recent decades.

When Dr. Li returned to Canada in 2015 and retired from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) after 23 years, he was not replaced.

But he retained his contacts inside the Chinese public health system and was keen to help when another outbreak began to emerge.

So, a few days after the Jan. 23 lockdown of Wuhan, he sent an e-mail to the PHAC, including Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, offering his expertise.

“I offered to go back to Ottawa to work with them on this. I needed to help, to save lives,” Dr. Li said in an interview.

In the e-mail, he described his knowledge of the Chinese system and the contacts he maintains there.

“I got an e-mail back saying, ‘We’ll talk about it and let you know.’ But I never had any response after that.”

Instead, the PHAC has relied heavily on the World Health Organization for information and guidance in its response to the rapid spread of the deadly new virus.

But critics have questioned the relationship between the WHO and China, whose response the WHO has praised effusively. The health organization has raised few public concerns about the reliability of information provided by Beijing, despite evidence suggesting Chinese authorities have significantly underreported the death toll from the outbreak.

Dr. Li said that, during his time in China, there was a difference in “the quality of the information” he was able to obtain by communicating directly with people at China’s Ministry of Health and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. During the 2013 H7N9 avian influenza outbreak, for example, he received updates directly from Chinese officials.

Were he working now, he’d “probably get a lot more timely and accurate information on things,” he said.

There is good reason to seek more sources of information, public health experts say.

“In any acute emergency, there is always benefit of ‘on the ground’ expertise and contacts in getting access to data and understanding the nuances of actual context. There is also always value in having multiple sources of data, information or intelligence, and it would be wise to have as many sources as possible,” said James Orbinski, director of York University’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.

“Relying on one source of information for critical decision making leaves you open to all of its biases and limitations, and every source – even ‘official’ ones, like the WHO, the government of China, the CIA, the government of the United States, the government of Canada – has biases and limitations.”

The PHAC says it has full confidence in its methods – and in the WHO. “With the situation related to COVID-19 continuing to evolve rapidly around the world, Canada will continue to work closely with its international partners, including the WHO and China, as well as with provincial and territorial counterparts to reduce risks to Canadians and the global community,” spokesperson Anna Maddison said in an e-mailed statement.

The agency can rely on Canada’s foreign service “to share and gather information related to health and public health matters,” Ms. Maddison said.

Canada’s embassies and consulates in China, however, have been working with low staffing levels after non-essential staff – including provincial representatives – were sent home.

Unlike the U.S., Canada does not have a wide-reaching global public health service, which makes it reliant upon the WHO. That’s not a bad thing, said Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease specialist at the University of British Columbia who has worked with the WHO.

“The WHO is a very reputable, very strong organization which has that capacity,” Dr. Murthy said. “I don’t think Canada specifically needs a foreign public health agency.”

But there are also risks in relying on an agency that itself relies on information from China, a country where statistics are often bent to political imperatives. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has itself been criticized for cutting its staff in China by two-thirds before the COVID-19 outbreak.

In Canada, meanwhile, it appears health leaders are not receiving sufficient advice on the potential weaknesses of Chinese data being transmitted by the WHO, said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who has twice worked out of the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

The result is that China’s “politically motivated misinformation tragically leads to unnecessary Canadian deaths,” he said.

Dr. Li began his public health work in Beijing in 2008 with the belief that “Canada should not be responding to epidemics or pandemics when they reach the shores of Canada. We should be proactively working with China.”

He declined to offer his views on how China and Canada have responded to COVID-19, for fear of damaging his relationships with public health officials he still hopes to work alongside.

“As a medical doctor and a public health doctor, our task is to save lives. If I were called upon, I’d jump on the next plane to Ottawa,” he said.

Source: Canadian doctor once posted to Beijing ignored by Ottawa after offering help with COVID-19 response

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UK: While ‘low-skilled’ migrants are saving us, the government is cracking down on them

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Expect all governments will need to reflect upon the importance of lower-skilled immigrants following the pandemic:

This crisis has revealed how arbitrary the phrase “low skilled” is: how we value people, their rights, what they’re paid and the conditions they work in is all wrong. For all its warm words about key workers, the government should be reminded of this.

The day Dominic Raab encouraged us all to clap for the workers who are risking their lives to keep society going, the government restated that some of those same people won’t be allowed in the country come January 2021. While Priti Patel is conspicuously absent – notably on immigration issues – the department she oversees decided now was the time to reiterate that as part of its new immigration rules, “low-skilled” people would not be able to apply for a UK work visa.

Millions of key workers in the UK are migrants – approximately 23% of all hospital staff, including 29% of doctors and 18% of nurses, 20% of agricultural workers, more than 40% of food production workers and 18% of care workers, rising to 59% in London. These are the human beings who, for decades, politicians have blamed for holding down wages, ruining “British culture” and overburdening public services.

Source: While ‘low-skilled’ migrants are saving us, the government is cracking down on them

And the following related critiques:

The government has sparked fury by quietly publishing guidelines for a crackdown on ‘low skilled’ immigration at the height of the coronavirus crisis.

Businesses had called for a delay to the new “points based” immigration rules, amid warnings they could throw care homes and healthcare providers into crisis.

And just days ago Boris Johnson’s stand-in Dominic Raab heaped praise on checkout workers and cleaners, saying: “I think you’ve certainly made us all think long and hard about who the ‘key workers’ are in our lives.”

But Home Secretary Priti Patel last night pressed ahead anyway, publishing guidance for employers outlining the new system.

The radical shake-up will block millions of ‘low-skilled’ – by which it means low-paid – workers from coming to the UK.

After Brexit people will have to earn over £25,600, have a job offer and speak English to a certain level in order to get a work visa.

There will be some exceptions for people who earn £20,480 to £25,600 in shortage areas like the NHS.

But the plans have prompted an outpouring of fury from businesses and council who warn sectors like social care face “disaster”.

In response the Home Office told businesses they should simply end their “reliance on cheap, low-skilled labour”.

Shadow Home Secretary Nick Thomas-Symonds said the guidance was a “slap in the face”.

He said: “These last few weeks have been a stark reminder, not that one should be needed, of the incredibly important  contribution frontline workers make in our communities.

“Workers like nurses, carers, supermarket staff and refuse collectors are playing a vital role in saving lives and keeping our country running, often at risk to themselves. It will be a slap in the face to many of these workers to see themselves classed as low skilled and unwelcome in Britain.”

Tom Hadley, director of policy and campaigns at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation (REC), called for a “temporary immigration route” in light of the Covid-19 crisis.

“Now is not the right time to plough on with immigration reforms. The national effort needs to be focused on eliminating coronavirus, protecting jobs and getting the economy back on track.

“The country will recover from this pandemic – and ensuring businesses have the skills they need in future will be essential to the recovery. From carers and cleaners to retail workers and drivers, the current crisis is showing us how much we depend on people at all skill levels.

“We need a temporary immigration route meet the needs businesses in every sector of the economy. Post-Brexit and post-virus, this will help businesses succeed and support job and growth here in the UK.”A government spokesperson said: “Now that we have left the EU, free movement is coming to an end and we will be introducing a new points-based immigration system from January 2021.

“We want to give employers as much time as possible to prepare for the new system that will bring in the best and brightest to the UK, which is why we have published this guidance today.

“The Government is committed to helping businesses through this difficult time. We have announced unprecedented support for businesses including £330 billion in business loans and guarantees, cash grants for small businesses, paying 80% of furloughed workers’ wages, business rates holidays and tax deferrals.”

Source: Fury as Priti Patel pushes immigration crackdown guide during coronavirus crisis

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USA: Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Similar in Canada I believe, making it all that more impressive how well public servants were able to ramp up so quickly EI claim processing and implement CERB (WatchJohn Ivison: Amid staggering unemployment rate, public servants handling EI claims are unsung heroes).

Similar issues arose regarding lack of COBOL programmers during Y2K:

Over the weekend, New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, made an unusual public plea during his daily coronavirus briefing: The state was seeking volunteer programmers who know COBOL, a 60-year old programming language that the state’s unemployment benefits system is built on. Like every state across the nation, New Jersey was being flooded with unemployment claims in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And New Jersey’s data processing systems were unprepared.

“We literally have a system that is 40-plus years old,” Murphy said.

To COBOL programmers, it was a familiar ask. In times of bureaucratic crisis over the last 50 years, Americans have been faced time and time again with the dusty, dated systems that undergird much of our government, and economy. In response to Y2K, when it was unclear whether the date of the new millennium might cause cascading errors across the entire world’s computing systems, legions of programmers fluent in largely forgotten languages like COBOL were specifically hired to fix government and enterprise code. As a result, Y2K was largely a nonissue.

Over 20 years later, much of the state, federal, and banking systems still run on these very same programming languages.

New Jersey isn’t the only state that depends on COBOL. Connecticut’s computer systems for processing unemployment also runs on it, the state’s governor said last week, which is causing weeks-long processing delays. Connecticut and four other states are creating a joint effort to recruit retired COBOL programmers who can update the state software.

The scarcity of COBOL programmers has led to increased interest in startups like COBOL Cowboys, made up of older, experienced programmers who have the know-how to operate these systems.

COBOL debuted in 1960 and was largely used on IBM mainframes for business tasks like accounting. IBM continues to sell mainframes compatible with COBOL.

The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly warned about the use of legacy programming languages for critical systems. In 2019, the GAO issued a report summarizing 10 federal computing systems that were in desperate need of an overhaul. For instance, the Department of Education’s system for processing federal student aid applications was implemented in 1973. It takes 18 contractors to maintain the system, and since it’s written in COBOL, it requires specific hardware and is difficult to integrate with newer software languages.

GAO considers COBOL a legacy language, which means agencies have trouble finding staff that knows how to write the code at all. And when they can, the specialist contractors charge a premium.

It also means that when a system breaks, there might not be somebody there to fix it. And that’s where New Jersey finds itself now, with a sagging system and lack of qualified engineers.

Despite its age, and the fact that so many programmers have moved onto C and Java, COBOL is still a widely used programming language. It’s tried and true, which is partly why it was so widely adopted by banks and governments in the second half of the 20th century.

Today, nearly half the world’s banking systems run on COBOL, according to Reuters, and more than 80% of card-based transactions use the code.

“I show COBOL programs written in 1960 that you can still compile and run today,” says J. Ray Scott, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the few professors who still teaches COBOL.

“I would hate to be a bank and have Python, and Python 3 came out and broke everything, and then we have to recompile all our code,” he said.

Scott attributes the lack of COBOL programmers to a number of issues, from the absence of an open-source version of the software in the ’80s and ’90s to the simple appeal of newer databases that natively connect to the internet.

“There was a period of 20 years where people were sure COBOL was dead, so there was nobody teaching it, nobody learning it,” he said. “COBOL started before there were disc drives, let alone the internet.”

A sliver of hope, Scott says, is that COBOL isn’t a particularly complex language to learn. When he was starting his career programming for steel mills in Pittsburgh, he says companies would perform aptitude tests for workers on the floors of the mills. If they passed, they were sent to a two-week COBOL class at IBM and then put onto the job in the IT department.

Bill Hinshaw, who runs COBOL Cowboys, says that the 60-year old programming language still has some life in it, especially in industries where it’s inexorably linked to critical functions. In his experience, governments are simply working with older versions of software and hardware, compared to banks and other industries.

“We’re dealing with more and more people who want to modernize COBOL,” Hinshaw says. “COBOL is not going away.”

Still, governments relying on a system too arcane for most working engineers can be perceived as a structural failure. Murphy’s plea for COBOL engineers is also a sign that local, state, and federal governments have overwhelmingly failed to update their technologies to meet the needs of citizens.

“There will be lots of postmortems,” after the coronavirus passes, Murphy said in his address to New Jersey. One of them on our list will be, ‘How the heck did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?’”

Source:  Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

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Race-based coronavirus data not needed in Canada yet, health officials say

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Big miss here IMO, given the confluence of race and socioeconomic disparities.

While it may not be an immediate priority during the pandemic, better data of health disparities among visible and non-visible minorities would be helpful, not just during pandemics:

Despite a growing awareness in the United States that some minority groups might be at higher risk for the coronavirus, provincial health officials in two of Canada’s hardest hit provinces say race-based data isn’t needed here yet.

Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, said Friday that statistics based on race aren’t collected in Canada unless certain groups are found to have risk factors. The World Health Organization hasn’t yet said that’s the case for coronavirus, he added.

He said resources are much more effectively used tracking down the people each infected patient had been in contact with, rather than targeting entire groups.

“Right now we consider our main risk groups (to be) the elderly, those with other co-morbidities, regardless of what race they are,” he said. “Regardless of race, ethnic or other backgrounds, they’re all equally important to us.”

There is early evidence from the United States that shows African Americans may be disproportionately affected by the pandemic. Some large cities are seeing higher rates among their large Black populations who historically have had poorer access to health care and higher rates of poverty.

Among them is Chicago, whose mayor vowed Monday to launch aggressive public health campaigns aimed at her city’s Black and brown communities after numbers showed Black residents accounted for 72 per cent of deaths from complications from COVID-19, despite making up only about one-third of the population.

Mayor Lori Lightfoot told The Associated Press that the disparities in Chicago “take your breath away” and required an immediate response from the city, community activists and health care providers.

In Alberta, chief medical officer Dr. Deena Hinshaw said they know some groups in Canada are systematically disadvantaged based on their appearance or socioeconomic status.

While the province also doesn’t currently collect the race of someone who is tested or treated for coronavirus, she suggested it’s something that may be looked at in future.

“The information that we collect is really focused more on risk activities and less about ethnicity,” she said Friday. “But it’s certainly something we need to look closely at to determine if we need to start collecting that going forward.”

Hinshaw said the province has good information-sharing agreements with many First Nations in particular, so that is one way they might be able to compare numbers, though it’s not something they could release publicly without the Nations’ consent.

Dr. Anna Banerji, a pediatric infectious disease specialist who co-chaired the Indigenous Health Conference at the University of Toronto, says First Nations are almost certainly at higher risk.

“A lot of Indigenous people have a lot of co-morbidities. For almost any disease out there they have higher prevalence of cardiovascular disease, diabetes, chronic obstructive lung disease,” she said.

They were also significantly overrepresented in the last pandemic to hit the country. Despite representing 4.3 per cent of the population, they accounted for 27.8 per cent of hospital admissions reported to the Public Health Agency of Canada during the first wave of H1N1 in 2009, according to the National Collaborating Centres for Public Health.

Many First Nations are small or remote and face the added challenge of a historic lack of funding for things like medical services.

Banerji launched a petition last week to demand more action from the federal government, arguing Indigenous leaders have asked for more access to things like health care workers or rapid testing, but their communities have not received the same financial support as non-Indigenous towns and cities.

But while Banerji said it’s important to document how coronavirus is affecting Indigenous communities, she stresses that information is only useful if it leads to more supports.

“I think it’s good to collect that data,” she said. “But collecting data on how we failed Indigenous people is not a very useful thing, unless you act on it.”

Source: Race-based coronavirus data not needed in Canada yet, health officials say

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