A “straw man” is when I change your position so I can easily argue against it. Asking you to state your position is not a straw man. But yeah, this conversation is hopeless.
I give up as well.
Why? I’m curious as to your reasoning.
I feel like I"m reading an extended version of the National Post Comments page where you frequently see conversations like:
“ARGLE BARGLE this is all Trudeau’s fault!”
“Why specifically is this his fault? Here is the policy and here are the people responsible for it”
“AAAGHH, you and the other commies just LURRRVE Trudeau!”
Its my interpretation, GMANCANADA, that you think our health care system should be used as a tool to enforce morality.
Since health care providers are more moral people then prisoners, the former will get the treatment that is withheld from the latter. If so, that is simply not how our health care system works. Everyone gets treatment; of course, there are priorities (which can be discussed and analysed), but ultimately, they are not based on the patients’ moral standing.
I’m okay with prisoners getting vaccinated before I do (I’ll be last on the list because I have no conditions to move me up the list). Prisons have been the epicentres of massive outbreaks, and prisoners can’t get away from the contagion like I can. We put people in jail to punish/rehabilitate them, not to kill them.
Here is the rationalist argument for why caring about who “deserves” the vaccine more is not the right way to go about it.
This is a situation that has to be led by the science, not by what people feel is correct.
In this case, it seems that the Feds have different people to vaccinate than the provinces do. They found it’s better to keep this separated than to have the feds try to handle everyone. It makes sense to me.
Frankly, the way prisoners have been treated during this pandemic is utterly barbaric, and allowing prisons to become and remain hotspots causes all sorts of problems, even outside the prisons. I’m fine with them getting theirs.
I’m more concerned about how slow everything is going in general. They really need to be working out how to do this as quickly as possible, as this is not going to the final pandemic. Heck, it’s pretty likely this won’t be the last vaccine we’ll have to take for this pandemic.
I’ve stated in my position many times, this is truly hopeless.
I don’t have time to battle your straw men or personal attacks and distortions. This has nothing to do with morality, hatred of prisoners or feeling superior to them, judging vaccine priority based on morals, taxi drivers, Amazon drivers, 50 year old diabetics, cleaning workers, or 551,200 vaccines.
Once again, to state it simply, I’m pissed by the fact that there are large regions of Canada where front line healthcare workers have not received any vaccine whatsoever and they have no indication when they will receive it. Meanwhile the federal government has chosen to not supply these areas in favour of prisoners who reside in an isolated controlled environment.
The area that I am most familiar with is Niagara, the very first workers started being vaccinated today, a full month after vaccines begin arriving in Canada and five days after prisoners started being vaccinated.
Additionally, It was also announced today that the supply of vaccine was going to be dramatically lower than what was originally promised. All Moderna vaccine allocated to Niagara has been diverted elsewhere for reason not clear.
Today the Medical Advisory Committee which represents the staff, the chiefs of services of Niagara Medical Association executives and physicians in Niagara issued an open letter this afternoon detailing how desperate the situation for front line vaccines in Niagara is right now.
I guess if there is anything to take from all this, none of you other than @beepbeepkill who suggests it may be logistics, has posited any sensible reason for the federal government’s decision not to help out hospitals in crisis. Every post comes down to personal attacks suggesting that I am a right-wing, National Post reading, morally deficient sub-human.
I will let the MAC of Niagara know they they’re a morally deficient drop in the bucket and tell them to quit bitching.
That made it all worthwhile. Literal LOL.
But prisons have been hotbeds of infection. I don’t know if you’ve seen any of Qadgop’s posts, but his facility has been overrun with COVID and his is far from the only US prison that has been devastated. As per the link above my understanding is a few Canadian prisons have been hammered as well. Unfortunately due to the tight quarters prisons seem to be especially vulnerable to explosive spread.
Seems reasonable to me they’d be a very high priority as a result.
I don’t have a problem with a few prisoners being given higher priority if they are:
- of advanced age or have chronic disease
- are in a place with outbreaks
- have limited access to care
My understanding is that a significant number of people in prison are awaiting trial and have not yet been proven to have broken the law.
Should they be the very highest priority? Probably not. But better to vaccinate the highest risk people quickly. No reason I need to exactly agree on a theoretical ranking of everyone. I’d prefer to see frontliners go first, but 600 prisoners does not seem an onerous obstacle to this.
There are two prison systems in Canada: federal and provincial. That’s important to remember, because it means that the feds control one system, while the provinces control another.
For the most part, provincial systems control healthcare delivery. This is where GMAN’s complaint comes from: the lack of properly delivering vaccines to Niagara. But vaccinating federal inmates in Bath and Millhaven and other federal institutions, is outside the Ontario government’s purview. Because those are federal institutions.
The separation of powers between the federal government and the provinces is clearly outlined at ss. 91-95 of our constitution. The federal government provides very little healthcare–federal inmates in federal prisons, sure; but also Canadian Armed Forces members, to list one example.
If GMAN feels that “federal inmates getting the vaccine ahead of Ontario nursing home inhabitants” is somehow due to Justin Trudeau, he would be wrong. He’s looking at two different jurisdictions, Ontario and Canada, and Canada can do what it needs to, under its jurisdiction. Ontario can also, if it wishes.
I’d suggest that GMAN’s complaint is more with Doug Ford than it is with Justin Trudeau.
Exactly. What happened is incredibly obvious.
- Trudeau’s government is following the vaccination plan as developed by the professionals.
- Erin O’Toole found an instance that has poor optics (because some people, especially right-wingers think prisoners should be treated badly).
- He decided to create some political hay out of it.
- Because O’Toole said something the right-wingers think it must be true/outrageous.
- And here we are.
What I don’t understand is why Trudeau doesn’t fire back with “We’re following the vaccination plan that was developed late last year. Why didn’t you object to it then? Or did you not read it? Why are you opposed to following the plan developed by the professionals?” That’s probably what I would do, but then maybe I would make an awful politician because stupid political stunts like that really piss me off.
Loony goony Sloany is at it again .
Apparently O’Toole found out that Derek Sloan Accepted Donation From Neo-Nazi Paul Fromm during his CPC leadership run, and is going to toss him out now.
Sloan’s defence of his (yet another example of) politial incompentence / racial malice is that Paul Fromm is apparently a CPC is a party member. Either way at the end of the day you can’t fight the party leader, they’re the one who has ultamate veto on who is allowed to run, where, as a party candidate. Sloan’s 9 lives are up.
Yes, the fact that a prison might be described as an “isolated, highly controlled environment” does not mean that controlling the spread of the virus there is somehow less critical than in other places.
Prisons are not places where it is easy to maintain social distancing among prisoners or between prisoners and staff. That makes it a place where the virus spreads very quickly. So from the perspective of preventing the spread of infection they are not “highly controlled.”
Prisoners are highly vulnerable to exposure and infection, arguably more vulnerable than the “front line workers” that GmanCanada is so upset for. Also prisoners often have many health problems that might make them more vulnerable. For that reason it might be very logical for policy makers to target prisons.
GmanCanada seems to imply that it is evident that prisoners should not be a priority over “front-line workers.” I’d be interested in seeing the explicit reasons why this should be and how those reasons might hold up to scrutiny.
Is it because GmanCanada thinks people in prisons are less vulnerable? Or less deserving? Or what? The actual reasons for his outrage are left to the imagination.
And because it is necessary for staff to be in contact with prisoners, they are not as “isolated” as you think.
If the virus rages out of control in a prison, it will be like a bomb in the community, and it will get out, because it will spread to people who aren’t prisoners.
That makes it critical for the society at large to stop a prison from becoming a hotspot.
Also, as noted, there seems to be justification for holding the prime minister personally responsible.
Maybe @Qadgopthemercotan should be consulted for his experience on this particular subject.
No they’re not. Please take a moment to read what I post instead of fabricating your ad hominem attacks implying I’m an amoral right wing whack job. I think it’s very sad that you feel compelled to do this.
If the virus rages out of control in the community and front line health care workers ranks are depleted due to Covid or burnout, the health care system will collapse. That seems to be pretty self evident.
In reference to your first point. I simply think that vaccinating 660 health care workers in the hardest hit communities (nationally) will have a better payback for the health care system as a whole than vaccinating 660 prisoners. Obviously you don’t, for reasons that can only be left to the imagination.
Please find the actual citation that says the plan all along was to vaccinate prisoners before front line health care workers, as opposed to your vague appeals to authority.
I just read in the Ottawa Citizen that the explicit priority was 1) front line workers, 2) workers in senior residences and 3) seniors in those residences. I read the article twice and couldn’t find any mention of penitentiary inmates.
Okay, so what’s the epidemiological evidence to support that position?
So that’s what you think, huh? Are you an epidemiologist? Are you a public health expert? What facts and reasoning is your opinion based on and why should you—of anyone else—give do much weight to it?
You still haven’t answered why you thinking your opinion is one that has credibility.
No, it’s apparently not obvious to you what I think. I offered some considerations why it might be important to give priority to prisons and why experts might want to vaccinate prisoners early. I don’t actually know what is better. But I recognize that there might be valid reasons that experts might make this choice and thus eschew outrage.
You have chosen to ignore them and offer just a naked claim that your way would be better.
If you read my post, those reasons are right there. You still haven’t given any actual reasons for your conclusion that addressing prisons first is wrong.
Does it occur to you that a prison might be more or at least equally likely to become a dangerous hotspot? What is your expertise that tells you it’s obviously not?
It isn’t a vague appeal to authority. I had assumed (incorrectly) that you might go to the original source (National Advisory Committee on Immunization) since I mentioned it a few times.