caretaker

Saskatchewan records it's fourth death. "On Saturday, the province also announced four new cases plus confirmation of the one presumptive case reported Friday, bringing Saskatchewan’s total number of cases to 289.
https://leaderpost.com/news/saskatch...-efe73cb2f2cc/

scrubbedexpat091

35 new cases today in BC, 3 additional deaths.

Health officer says what people do this weekend will define the next 2 weeks.

News media appears to have blown the ferry story yesterday out of proportion, BC Ferries confirmed they are running less sailings, and operating vessels at 50% capacity, the ferries were not actually full as media first reported.

Will be at least a few weeks before any date is set for a return to school.

Federal prison in Mission (about an hour East of Vancouver) has 26 cases between staff and inmates.

BC received some supplies this past week, but at this time BC isn't in a position to share supplies with other provinces.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/briti...by-3-1.5529885

dbd33

I was in the car when she came in my ear. Level of annoyance, Trumpian.

dave_j

Essential travel?

dbd33

Routine travel. I went to buy groceries. That's all the car moves now, once a day to the barn to ride, once a week to fetch the dismally limited foodstuffs available at Costco. Loblaws and the LCBO. No raclet, no Camembert, we're forced to live like Canadians.

Back with Ms. Patel:

"Sorry if people feel there have been failings" is just "I'm sorry you feel that way". Not an apology but an insult.

scrubbedexpat091

If Trump refused to leave, I would imagine he would be removed by force if necessary.

Anyhow say there is no election, come January 20th at 12 noon both Trump and Pence lose all their power and are no longer in office and the line of succession starts, which gets a little interesting. Since there is no President or VP elect next in line of succession is Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, but this is an election year for the house, so every house seat is up for election, but there was no election, so there is no speaker of the house as the current congressional terms up for grabs this year, their terms all end on January 3.

So where are we now, oh yes next in line is Iowa Republican Chuck Grassley, US Senate pro tempore, but wait it wont be him either. See 35 senate seats are up for election, and those 35 terms end January 3 as well, since there was no election those 35 seats are now empty, 23 of which are republican.

So now we have no president, no VP, no speaker of the house (not house at all as there was no election) and we have 65 senators left, where does that leave us in our hypothetical world.

We have 65 senators left, of the 65 left majority are Democrat and in our hypothetical world, the next in line would be Senator Pat Leahy of Vermont.

But wait that scenario isn't likely.

Remember US President isn't directly elected by popular vote, so states could if they chose to find a way to put forward their own electors in the electoral college but this isn't an easy feat either, example 4 swing states have republican legislatures but democrat governors so these states would not easily agree on who their electors would be, and this would need to be repeated 50 times, and oh boy would piss of voters and be political suicide for state legislators and governors who went this route.

Appears the only instance of a federal election being delayed was in 2018 when Northern Mariana Islands delayed theirs due to a typhoon, Northern Mariana Islands is a US territory but not a US state so they don't get to vote for US President in the general election.

Any road except holding the election is a difficult uphill battle that at this point doesn't seem feasible. That article has the details and was my reference.

https://www.bostonglobe.com/2020/04/...r-coronavirus/

dave_j

Well argued, but we have in this president a man who's demonstrated a willingness to ignore rules that govern how others behave, to lie and cheat the US people and to persecute anyone who stands up to him.
He owns the Justice Department, has placed Trump men in high places, commands the Senate and as Commander in Chief of the Forces his word is law and I don't see anyone sticking their head up to have it cut off.
I recognise that what I'm arguing is extreme and highly unlikely to come to pass but this man isn't completely sane and likely to do anything to stay in power.
Your reasoning relies on constitutional arrangements governing political decision making, I'm suggesting that, like the attempted disenfrachisement by the Republicans of large swathes of the poorer class, these arrangemnts could be bent or ignored completely.
But I've always been a cynic, perhaps too cynical this time but this pandemic may be just the excuse he's been looking for.

magnumpi

They released Boris !!

caretaker

The good news is a Canadian lab has a test kit that provides a result in an hour. They had it under development to detect infections, and were able to adapt it for covid-19. The 'lab' part is smaller than a toaster so portable enough to rapidly assess spread in small towns and rural areas. Millions are promised to be in the works soon.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/ottaw...-new-1.5530669

Almost Canadian

Interesting discussion. A number of these discussions have been posted:

Paul_Shepherd

It’s a tough one, I have listened to a few of Peter Hitchens’s arguments on this subject, I normally agree with a lot of what he says in general, but I am not so sure on this. He is of course right in that there is no evidence that a lock down is saving considerable more infections and therefore deaths. We have not seen what is going to happen to Sweden yet, plus its hard to compare a country of 10 million to a country of 65million.

I think the one argument for the lock down, is looking at the mess the US is in now…. Maybe if they had introduced social distancing measures or a lockdown earlier, they wouldn’t be in the mess they are now in……its hard to say, but the UK is a very densely populated country, to me, not locking it down could have been resulted in huge numbers of deaths….I know there is no evidence, but its just a logical observation for me. I don’t think anyone really knows......

Danny B

World leaders are in an awful situation right now. Damned if they lockdown, and damned if they don't. Peoples health vs their countries economy. It's a tough one.

I bet Trump didn't expect to make this choice when he signed up for the job in 2016.

Danny B

Peter sounds so much like his brother it is uncanny.

jimf

This article describes an approach to herd immunity which seems reasonable. Maintaining lockdown to availability of vaccine doesn't seem to be workable.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/202...-end-lockdown/

Paul_Shepherd

Well that was the UK governments original plan wasn't it, but I don't think they knew enough about the virus then...still don't really, but they will.

I think lockdown can only work in the short term to prevent the initial wave from spiraling out of control, its not feasible in the long term, I agree it will do more damage than the virus. We need a plan to get us through to the vaccine and herd immumity could be the solution, for all we know some countries could be well on their way to it, I think many people (younger people) have had this virus and didn't know it. Unfortunately older people will have to remain isolated, but herd could be our semi normaility on way to the vaccine. Id assume the only way to confirm this though is to test everyone, is that even feasible?