Page 27 - C:\Users\rober\Documents\Flip PDF\Dog Watch2102 (1)\

27 Volume 73 Number 1
15 February 2021
tion. Check the last location date on the map to
see when the ship checked in. Canada’s subma-
rines will also never appear as they do not broad-
cast their location.
https://www.navalassoc.ca/fleet-tracker/
COVID-19 Update – 01 February 2021
Dr. John Blatherwick, “Former Naval Person”
very time you turn on the
E TV for news or read a news-
paper, the headlines are how
bad the COVID-19 pandemic is
and how stupid somebody, often
a politician is, regarding the
handling of the outbreak.
Trump is gone so the number of
negative stories regarding
COVID-19 have doubled. The
only problem is – it is generally
wrong. Children continue to be safer in schools
than at home; the health care system is not col-
lapsing; and after the Christmas bump, the num-
bers are stabilizing. And biggest of all, there are
two (three by the time this is published with the
Johnson and Johnson due to be approved) vac-
cines that continue to work extremely well. So far
in the USA, there have been no admissions to ICU
for people who have had two doses of the vaccine.
And so far, they seem to work against the UK,
South Africa and California variants. OK – I know
– we haven’t received any vaccine in Canada the
past week and won’t in the first week of February
– but – that is so that the vaccine production,
where Canada gets its vaccine from – can increase
capacity. Increased capacity means we’ll be able
to get all the vaccine Canada has ordered faster.
So, every time you read a story or hear a story
about how bad things are, remember that the vac-
cine is real, it works and we’re going to be able to
get it. Since many of the NOABC members are
age 75 plus, we are due to get it in April (register
for it in March – keep an eye out for details). The
people getting the vaccine are front line health
care workers and people living in nursing homes –
the hardest hit group for the vaccine. But we are
next in line. The Canadian Forces is handling the
federal distribution of the vaccine; Dr. Penny Bal-
lem, former Deputy Minister of Health for five
years, former City Manager for Vancouver, and
current Chair of the Vancouver Coastal Health
Authority is in charge of getting the vaccine into
our arms. I have known Penny for almost 50
years and I can vouch to you that she is a very
good administrator and pays attention to detail –
just ask King Wan! Canada is taking more steps
on to isolate people flying into Canada.
The short story – everything is trending the right
way. There will still be bumps along the way but
so far in 2021, so good. I am optimistic.
The New York Times
By David Leonhardt, 1 February 2021
Infections aren’t what matters
he news about the vaccines contin-
T ues to be excellent — and the public
discussion of it continues to be more neg-
ative than the facts warrant.
Here’s the key fact: All five vaccines with
public results have eliminated Covid-19
deaths. They have also drastically re-
duced hospitalizations. “They’re all good
trial results,” Caitlin Rivers, an epidemiol-
ogist at Johns Hopkins University, told
me. “It’s great news.”
Many people are instead focusing on relatively minor
differences among the vaccine results and wrongly as-
suming that those differences mean that some vac-
cines won’t prevent serious illnesses. It’s still too early
to be sure, because a few of the vaccine makers have
released only a small amount of data. But the available
data is very encouraging — including about the vac-
cines’ effect on the virus’s variants.
“The vaccines are poised to deliver what people so
desperately want: an end, however protracted, to this
pandemic,” as Julia Marcus of Harvard Medical School
recently wrote in The Atlantic.
Why is the public understanding more negative than it
should be? Much of the confusion revolves around the
meaning of the word “effective.”
What do we care about?
In the official language of research science, a vaccine
is typically considered effective only if it prevents peo-
ple from coming down with any degree of illness. With
a disease that’s always or usually horrible, like ebola
or rabies, that definition is also the most meaningful
one.
But it’s not the most meaningful definition for most
coronavirus infections.
http://www.noabc.com/