According to this site, Canada has now surpassed the US in fully vaccinated population.
July 16, Canada 48.45% (at least one shot 70.05%)
US 48.07% (at least one shot 55.44%)
Note that these numbers are per total population. Other sites may report a percentage of eligible (12 and up) population
Not really bragging rights, I wish the numbers in the US were higher.
Addendum: ninja’ed, methinks.
“I had to jump through a hoop to get my shot” is not, in any meaningful strategic sense on a national scale affecting vaccine usage rates and the accomplishment of herd immunity, a distribution problem. Yes, some people have to schlep around to get a vaccine. Some aren’t good at understanding instructions or using a computer. The overwhelming majority of people do not have to go to any MORE trouble, than, say, going to buy groceries, or getting a new health card. All the provinces are, in fact, doing a good job of distributing their vaccine supply to people. Vaccines are not being underused by the millions, as some feared. What we get, we use; the measurement here is the usage of supply, a figure that has remained pretty steady for months now.
I have to say, this news about a UK study on gaps between vacciinations made me feel good today:
Experts say the findings support the UK’s decision on extending dosing intervals from the initial recommendation of three weeks.
An eight-week gap seems to be the sweet spot for tackling the Delta variant.
I guess some folks will still say that Canada’s vaccine strategy was “a complete failure on multiple levels” and this was because it was Trudeau’s fault.
Also, they may tell us that the only reason that we’re ahead of many countries in vaccination rates is only because of our “famously compliant population.” Stupid compliant population. They obviously have lost track of what FREEDOM is.
That’s reassurring. I think I got my second shot about seven or eight weeks after my first, so if that time gap is the sweet spot, I’m feeling even more protected.
Me too. Mine was at 9 weeks. This seems to be a pretty common interval, at least in BC.
I’m done! Got my second Pfizer shot early this afternoon, after two rebookings, each of which moved the appointment slightly sooner. Still, it was a long wait – the first one was late April!
Regarding how busy the mass vaccination clinic was, I’m with those who found it much busier than the first time. I think the main reason is that when I got my first shot, it was still quite limited by age and special category; currently I believe it’s completely wide open to everyone. It was at a large arena as before, but the parking lot was full and there was a significant lineup outside.
Just like before, however, it was managed very efficiently and I was at the front of the lineup in about five minutes and got the shot and sent off into the post-shot waiting area in about ten minutes more.
This is the one where they watch to see if you drop dead of an allergic reaction or something. It was no good telling them I survived the first shot – still had to wait about fifteen minutes.
There was one piece of incompetence, though. As before, I got a printed vaccination receipt and when I got home, as before, there was a confirmation email with a PDF receipt. But actually, there were two emails in succession, with two different PDF attachments, and both of them were blank! Fortunately, my son was visiting at the time and he informed me that I could access a PDF receipt on the Ontario COVID website, which I did. That one was non-blank and had all the right information.
It’s now been about four hours and still no symptoms – not even a sore arm.
Not to speak for @Sam_Stone, but there’s no denying that Canadians are a famously compliant people. As a matter of fact, they’re usually proud of it, constrasting it favourably with Americans’ famous rebellious spirit. The whole “nice and polite”, “we got our independence by asking nicely” schtick is an instance of this. Now, is it a good thing to be a famously compliant people? Sometimes it’s good and sometimes it’s bad. It’s clear that Canada’s success with COVID vaccination, in addition to being due to good organization (I’ve heard that buying a lot of vaccine doses was an important factor) has a lot to do with Canadians essentially obeying the government’s wish that they go get vaccinated, and in this case I’d say compliance was probably a good thing. But yes, Canadians are compliant, that’s just a fact.
I don’t really disagree with the sentiment, but I question the use of a loaded word like “compliant”. I would prefer to say “sensible”. At the risk of sounding righteous or arrogant, I really believe we’re getting vaccinated in large numbers because it’s obviously the right thing to do. Regarding the point about our independence, historically we managed to break ties with Britain peacefully because that was also the right way to do it. But when something asinine is decreed into law, we can be just as rebellious as anyone else …
Glad to hear you’re feeling good! And I’m also glad that the clinic was pretty busy… it shows we are really rolling along in getting vaccine into people. It looks like we’re set to surpass the UK in fully vaccinated people in the next few days.
Yeah, as if having a front seat for the absolute shit show that was the US in 2020 had no effect at all…
Plus, I would argue that what it really is, is we haven’t been trained to be reflexively oppositional to any request made to us, like the people in some Canada-adjacent countries have been.
It seems more and more, the typical American response to anyone ever asking you to do something is a belligerent “Who are you to tell me what to do?!?!” over-reaction. Take a look at all the videos you see these days, of interactions between cops, store workers, “Karens”, road-ragers, you name it. Everyone seems to over-react to everything.
Not flying off the handle when someone asks you to do something isn’t the same as being “compliant”. If the government really was asking us to do something outrageous, I’m pretty sure we’d tell them to get stuffed, but getting a vaccine during a pandemic is far from “outrageous”.
Agreed. And from my perspective, “the government” was not telling me to get a vaccine. I listened to medical professionals, epidemiologists and scientists. And looked at the evidence around me. “The Government” didn’t tell me diddly squat.
What “The Government” did in Canada was purchase a shit load of vaccines from a wide variety of sources in the very early days of the pandemic, before we even knew which ones would work. “The Government” got the Canadian military involved in getting these vaccines distributed to the provinces, and they did an awesome job. “The Government” (provincial) set up a very efficient vaccination network to get vaccines delivered into arms quickly, and keep records in people’s personal health history.
The covid crisis was not politicized in Canada. There are vanishingly few politicians who are on the side of Covid, and encouraging more people to stay away from vaccines and die.
Yeah, that’s a whole other argument. It annoys the shit out of me when people say I’m “following the government” when I wear a mask, stay home from public events, and work from home. Absolute bullshit! I was doing all of that before the government started telling us to do it, and passing rules about it. The Government was following ME! And quite a few of my friends, family and acquaintances, too boot.
Canadian politicians, to their considerable credit, generally listened to scientists and professionals, never used the word “hoax”, mostly followed the rules and largely refrained from politicizing health. A few massive mistakes were made, but the trick is to avoid repeating them. There were more successes than errors.
How do you get fifty Canadians out of a swimming pool? You ask them nicely. Canada is largely a nation of immigrants and Canadians are far from homogeneous. Canada is not Taiwan or Sweden. There is considerable compliance, faith in science, some faith in government. It is better to be kind than to be nice. I am too kind. Many Canadians are too nice. Most everyone is too smug. Canadian values are pretty good, not perfect, better than many.
Bingo. I was reading an American right-wing message board a few months ago, and the posters there were wondering why Canadians were not standing up to Trudeau and his lockdowns, his mandatory hotel stays, his border closure, his quarantine periods, his cancelling church services and arresting pastors, and his shutting down interprovincial travel. (I know, not all of these are Trudeau’s doing, but some Americans just cannot understand that Canada has provinces that make rules too; they seem to think that Trudeau has powers that he does not have.) Their point was, Covid and the response to it is such a political issue in the US, but why is it not in Canada? It should be, because Trudeau (and I’ll leave their adjectives and reasoning out of this post).
Anyway, I pretty much only read posts over at that board, but some Canadians do post, and the best response from a Canadian was this (paraphrased): “When the Liberal Prime Minister of Canada agrees with the Conservative Premier of Ontario, who agrees with the NDP Premier of BC, who agrees with the United Conservative Premier of Alberta–then the problem is impossible to politicize.”
Max Bernier has tried to politicize it, but he’s fallen a long, long way since he was a cabinet minister and runner-up in the Conservative leadership race. Nobody in the mainstream has paid the least bit of attention (aside from various municipal leaders siccing their police on his rallies if they’re breaking health regulations).
Generally true, though Doug Ford did definitely try and blame Trudeau for every hitch early on in the rollout. While JT and the feds were batting far from a thousand, DoFo was also desperate to deflect attention from his own dumpster fire handling of things. Now that vaccinnation rates are soaring and the province is opening up, the Premier’s gone a bit more quiet on it.
The various conservative premiers have absolutely blamed Trudeau for various things, but none have them have adopted the stance that Covid is no big deal and there’s no need for any public health mandates to control it. I believe they have been generally slower to enact lockdown measures than their less conservative counterparts, but even Kenney has instituted lockdown measures. The details of the response have been politicized, but the need for some sort of response has not.