I’m torn on this really. Restrictions of access in public spaces for the unvaccinated isn’t just to protect the public but to protect the unvaccinated. Restrictions in access to public health care is specifically to punish the unvaccinated. Notice they’ll still get health care, they’ll still be in beds, hospitals etc but they’ll pay some sort of tax. In no way could you consider this a protective action.
Basically this seems to be a fantastic way for provincial governments to deflect questions around why the capacity of teh health care system has not been systematically expanded to deal with the pandemic. If beds and staffing was larger this conversation would not be taking place now.
Quebec has doubled down on trying to get folks vaccinated by threatening an extra health tax if they do not. They argue that the unvaccinated 10% are requiring 50% of the ICU or hospitalization beds and this have higher costs while vaccinations are free and accessible.
“At a Senate hearing Tuesday, Fauci said that unvaccinated people are 20 times likelier to die, 17 times likelier to be hospitalized and 10 times likelier to be infected than the vaccinated. In that same session, acting commissioner of the Food and Drug Administration Janet Woodcock said that “it’s hard to process what’s actually happening right now, which is most people are going to get covid.”
I am totally fine with this. It’s not physically forcing vaccination; it’s a perfectly fair way of assessing the cost of health care.
I am a free market believer all the way, but the government has a role in things and where the government most has a role is in the control and regulation of externalities. I cannot think of a more obvious externality than this. Your decision to be a moron is just your decision if it only affects you, but this decision affects everyone, and a tax makes perfect sense.
Well, I suppose the possible silver lining is that the truckers might learn collective bargaining can work, and so they might start using that against their bosses, too.
That’s a vaccine mandate. My post was about the vaccine tax in Quebec.
The use of taxes to regulate externalities is, in my opinion, usually more effective, and more appropriate in a free society, than physical force. The trucker mandate is a tricky thing because
You have to let a Canadian citizen back into the country, it’s a Charter of Rights thing,
We rely on the trucking industry to keep us alive, and
Truckers don’t work for the government.
But TAX people, and like we see in Quebec, the spreadnecks will suddenly change their mind.
They should just slow the unvaxxed truckers way down. Delay them a few hours at the border each way. No mandate, just extra aggravation. Time is money in trucking. Now it’s the transport company that will be enforcing vaccines! That’s what a private enterprise would do, in the government’s position, I suspect.
You know, back during the election, when everyone was wondering why were having an election, I had a theory that Trudeau was trying to throw the election because he wanted out of this whole mess*.
Some of the stuff we’ve seen lately out of the government really supports that theory.
I also have a theory that he ended up winning because everyone else did a better job of throwing the election. There’s no way O’Toole came out with so many statements that pissed off both his supporters and his detractors at the same time by accident.
Yep. As I told the guys at the pub when they were complaining about Trudeau calling the election - who in their right mind would want to be PM right now?
Trudeau got stuck with the first year of the pandemic because he had the job when this all blew up. And as bad as 2020 was, there was at least some hope that we could pull together, and pull through.
But 2021? After it was clear that there was a hard core of morons who would simply refuse to take the vaccine, while also refusing to do anything else to control the pandemic? Plus dealing with the US, which had an even bigger hard core of idiots? These people have shown that they’re willing to risk almost anything to stick to their stupid guns - they’ll lose their job, be barred from restaurants, be shunned by family and friends, get sick, and sometimes even die. Can you imagine anyone, on any point of the political spectrum, actually saying anything that will get through to these people?
Hell, they won’t even listen to Trump when he says they should get vaccinated.
Any time previous to this, if you’d offered me the job of PM, I’d have probably been willing to do it. Now? No fucking way.
I live in Ottawa - blow up the residence and build a decent new one. just don’t use the people ruining the Chateaux Laurier (But that’s a different thread
Oh, god, don’t even get me started. Apparently they passed a law that they couldn’t blend the new part in with the architectural character of the old part? Who the hell thought that was a good idea?!?
New modeling - they do move a bit away from cases and start modeling against hospitalizations. The do provide a “Omicron=Delta” and “Omicron<Delta” curves but at this point I think we’re in the < camp.
Slide 20 has a nasty looking projection for Saskatchewan hospitalization rates.
I saw the designs for expanding the chateau. They seemed modern, enlightening, intelligent and harmonious in a way that I guess you have to be an architect to appreciate or respect. Me? I’m kind of antediluvian. I like buildings which are matchy-matchy. But at least they aren’t experimenting on a historic block or much-loved part of the city. So, there’s that.
It’s pretty much a damned if you do, damned if you don’t situation. Enforce a mandate, and you have thousands of drivers quit their job over their right to be idiots. Remove the mandate, and you let those thousands of idiots drive all over the country spreading COVID.
The only real solution is to stop being so dependent upon thousands of idiots. Alas, no one* knows how to arrange that.
*Well, okay, I know how. Stop treating drivers like shit so that people who aren’t idiots will actually take those jobs. But that’s not a solution that would be easy to implement.
