On the DEWLine 2.0: Dwight Williams

This looks like good news for us all, I think...

https://canadastrong.ca/products/well-life-covid-19-flu-a-b-home-rapid-antigen-combo-test-5-tests

You may have heard in recent months of the Canadian COVID Society. They're looking out for the rights of people living with, or trying to avoid having to live with, COVID infections across Confederation.

They just announced a new resource for such people:

https://bsky.app/profile/cancovsoc.bsky.social/post/3lnnhco2wm52w
https://bsky.app/profile/cancovsoc.bsky.social/post/3lnnhcowr622t
https://bsky.app/profile/cancovsoc.bsky.social/post/3lnnhcpjyfk2t

https://covidsociety.ca/priorities/safer-health-care/accommodation-request/

I believe that one of the more trustworthy Canadian info sources online at the moment re: COVID-19 is Tara Moriarty. Her main social media presence is still the Hellbirdsite, although she does maintain a Mastodon/Fediverse account as well.

https://x.com/MoriartyLab

https://mastodon.social/@MoriartyLab@med-mastodon.com

Excuse me while I politely ask her to resume cross-posting to the latter...

As regards today's op-ed cartoon by Greg Perry...

Whatever his own opinion, the family he depicted have a legitimate reason for a long, loud cry of frustration: COVID-19 is still very much part of the picture. So long as we don't require masking up properly and good air-cleaning measures in our workplaces - including public transit to and from those spaces - and our various levels of government are not dealing with the pandemic still in progress in the proper ways otherwise, SARS-CoV-2 and its medical consequences will still plague us. Socially, economically, in every way possible. The vaccines we have are still not enough in and of themselves to end the pandemic.

Therefore, Dads and kids everywhere have every right to keep crying.

This is not a good decision to take.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/new-brunswick/rapid-tests-federal-government-stop-supply-provinces-territories-epidemiologist-furness-1.7191833

Well, it wasn't a deputation. That's apparently not until next month, which is going to...not complicate at least one other appointment at the end of November. I am going to have to deal with lost income for however long I have to be ready to deliver it on that day, I think.

What did happen was further training, as well as face time directly with three city councillors. Leiper, Troster and Devine. Also, contact with some of the staffers of other members of city council.

Focus is still on mental health, poverty reduction and housing, because the city budget-building for 2024 is underway, and the staff's under direction to keep the rate increase to 2.5 %.

What I could have felt better about? More than a half-dozen of the 50 attendees masking up, for one. Seeing working air purifiers in the room for another. Neither of those things happened, though, so...

1. Trump on testing in general?

https://alexandraerin.substack.com/p/testing-trump

2. Criminalisation of climate activism:

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2023/oct/12/how-criminalisation-is-being-used-to-silence-climate-activists-across-the-world

3. The trial of Barber and Lich re: the Ottawa Siege continues.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottawa/freedom-convoy-made-it-near-impossible-to-live-zexi-li-tells-trial-1.6997367

4. Conservatives targeting the CBC again, more of that "War on Expertise" that David Brin warns us about...

https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/conservative-cbc-terrorist-language-guide-policy-1.6997926

I got alerted to this via the Hellbirdsite.

https://medium.com/@cdl.tuebingen/covid-19-is-killing-performers-a81d1cf209a2

From the same author of the above-linked article, "What COVID is doing to performers":

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1-PVLP_aQpcp-I2eXvcMOsALLRBD-sFxqdWJOhmnBBPA/edit?pli=1

1. Scientific American: Moral Injury Is an Invisible Epidemic That Affects Millions - published in 2022. This is a thing that politicians with kind intentions might be dealing with, too...

2. Canadian Press via CBC News: Foreign interference means Canada should get serious on media literacy, advocate says - published in 2023. A concern of every nation at this point, yes?

3. CBC News - Is the Bank of Canada making things worse? - published in 2023. Central bank bosses seem to be missing the points of much of the wider public right now, don't they?

4. CBC News - Construction labour crunch leaves Canada in need of boosting ranks of home builders - published in 2023.

5. Post News - COVID-19 Update for July 2023: Risks Are Low But Rising, and Too Many Are Ignoring Longer-Term Risks by Augie Ray

https://www.chch.com/ontario-to-stop-free-covid-19-rapid-test-program-in-pharmacies-grocery-stores/

https://twitter.com/allisonjones_cp/status/1667186535647567874?s=20

We need to push back on this, and now.

(Update 10 Jun 2023: I just e-mailed my MPP Stephen Blais about it!)