Tri Bread wrote:
devashish_paul wrote:
Steve, that Globe and Mail is typical Canadian smugness towards Americans. If any Canadians look at the real numbers, just take out New York New Jersey, Mass and for the other 47 states Canada is generally doing worse than the average. I don't think our prime minister and premiers are doing that much better than many US governors.
All the numbers for USA get skewed by 3 states that accrued 40,000 deaths. Take them out and the other 47 states are the source of the other 40,000. On that math, rest of USA is much better than almost all of Europe and Canada.I didn't find the article to be at all smug. It said "While Canada looks good compared with the U.S., other countries rank well ahead of us. "
If you want to take out 3 of the hardest hit states and then compare statistics then why not take out Quebec as well?I guess because Canada has a lot of coordination at the Federal + Provincial level where as the USA does not have coordination between Federal and states to anywhere close to the same degree. In terms of the writer of the article being smug about what is going in Canada vs the USA, well he did sweep the entire US with a massive brush in terms of its potential impact on Canada, which is why I said, it does not make sense. A trucker bringing goods across the border at Washington state to BC has no where the same impact as trucks crossing at Windsor-Detroit for automotive industry.
In any case. Canada is not a superhero nation at fighting this. Australia, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo, Nigeria, Kenya, UAE....all doing way better and with our advanced notice going in relative to Iran and Europe, we're not coming out of this and dropping off numbers like the hardest hit European nations (or Iran)....so careful about how much we pat ourselves on the back. We had 2 months advanced notice on China and surpassed China in deaths yesterday and we MAY pass Iran in 10 days.
A month ago we were 1:5 ratio vs Sweden on deaths per 1M and now we are closing that gap and down to 2.47:1 while we acquired a quarter trillion of debt in the last 6 weeks. Sweden and Canada both had their 1000th death on April 14th yet we have now blown past in absolute and ratio. Our deaths per million are blowing well past Florida on deaths per million after they opened up and are massively larger than Texas (partially open) and California
Maybe our overall Canadian strategy will pan out strongly a year from now or even months from now. I actually trust it will because largely our population is good at conforming and we the financial depth to take some care of the poor who can also access health care (thank you (thanks Prime Minister Pearson for your 1965 election platform for universal medicare...we're benefiting).
I don't think anyone really has the final number on all jurisdictions but these articles questioning other countries are not helpful while patting ourselves on the back. Whats good in Canada in most areas we ended up with a decent ICU capacity, but it also meant scheduled surgeries from which people would potentially end up initially in ICU have all been deferred and some have died from not getting surgeried , while we had capacity at hand.
Lots of Canadians are questioning US strategy (like in this article), but if you look state by state, most states are doing better than Canada. Sure, if you want to take Quebec and Ontario out do compare your province with a US state. It should look pretty good which is why many provinces are opening back up.
What hurt Quebec and Ontario the most is our strong connections with the USA North East and the timing of spring breaks. But we can't benefit from our connection to them in good times while blaming them in bad times...and our tight connections with UK and France too. First place when flights come back in Toronto or Montreal.
We will need all those connections and more to the US North East and Europe for the economic recovery side. The article is like New Zealand wanting to keep the rest of the world out. We have to work with the USA. Its not an option. Other counties can choose long term isolation. We have too many people that the place will just collapse under the financial load of not working with the USA. Imagine if California stopped working with the rest of USA and that's the equivalent of what this guy is ranting about.