TORONTO —
Since the start of the pandemic, Canadian officials have continuously used the threat of a “second wave” of COVID-19 infections in order to remind people to adhere to public health guidelines.
The term second wave has been used repeatedly by politicians, economists, and medical experts alike to warn the public of the threat of a resurgence in cases if they’re not careful.
Both Prime Minister Justin Trudeau and Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam have repeatedly cautioned Canadians about an impending second wave with Tam suggesting there was the possibility for an “explosive” second spike in new infections.
So, what exactly constitutes a second wave? And if there is one on the way, can it be prevented? CTVNews.ca spoke to several experts to find out.
WHAT IS A SECOND WAVE?
Epidemiologists have been using the metaphor of waves on the sea to describe the rise and fall in the number of cases, or the “curve” of an outbreak, for years.
During the Spanish Flu of 1918, officials documented three distinct waves of illness beginning in March of that year. The second wave of that pandemic, which was far deadlier than the first, hit in the fall of 1918 before it subsided for almost a year and resurged again in the fall and winter of 1919.
Since then, the metaphor has been used on multiple occasions in reference to other influenza outbreaks throughout the 20th century, including more recently during the 2009 H1N1 pandemic.
Steven Hoffman, a professor of global health, law, and political science at York University in Toronto and director of the Global Strategy Lab, said a “wave” is an imprecise term that is used colloquially to highlight the overall shape of an epidemic curve in terms of the number of new cases per day.
“There’s nothing so precise about it. It’s more just a helpful communication tool,” he told CTVNews.ca during a telephone interview on Wednesday.
Infectious disease specialist Dr. Isaac Bogoch agreed there is no exact threshold of new daily cases that needs to be reached to be able to determine if a second wave is occurring.
If they are plotted on a graph, for example, Bogoch said the number of new daily infections would be seen rising before peaking and then decreasing again when there are no or few cases for a sustained period of time. The second wave would begin when the cases begin to rise again for continued period.
“It’s as simple as that,” he said during a telephone interview from Toronto on Wednesday. “You’re not going to have an exact definition.”
HOW DO WE KNOW THE FIRST WAVE IS OVER?
Part of the confusion around the usage of the term second wave is determining when the first wave actually ends and a new wave begins. While some countries including Canada, South Korea and Australia saw a fairly obvious increase in new infections that eventually peaked before decreasing again, that’s not always how an outbreak develops.
In the United States, for example, there hasn’t been a dramatic drop in new cases that marks a clear end to the first wave. Since the outbreak began, the country has seen more of a bumpy curve with periodic spikes and no sustained period with few or no cases. Since mid-June, the U.S. has had some of its highest number of recorded cases leading some to believe they’re experiencing a second wave.
However, American health officials including the country’s top infectious disease specialist Dr. Anthony Fauci have been reluctant to label it as such, because the curve of news cases never flattened.
“You’re sort of seeing the first wave rolling into the second wave, a much bigger one right now,” Hoffman said. “I mean, did they ever get through the first wave? Not really.”
Bogoch said he doesn’t think the semantics really matter because, whether it’s a continuation of the first wave or a second wave, an increase in cases should elicit the same response.
“Is this a second wave or a blip? Or a spike in our first wave? Like, who cares? Really,” he said. “There might be some academic epidemiologists that don’t agree with me on that, but that’s OK. From a practical standpoint, it doesn’t matter.”
Bogoch said countries should focus on whether they have a population susceptible to the virus and if they have good policies in place to prevent further spread.
WILL THERE BE A SECOND WAVE?
No matter the label, Hoffman says a second wave of infections will likely hit Canada.
“We’re almost certainly going to get it because there’s such infectious potential out there, there’s so much of this virus that is present around the world,” he said.
Save for a few recent spikes in some parts of the country, Bogoch said Canada is currently seeing low transmission overall, which he said indicates the first wave is coming to an end in this country.
As for the prospect of a second wave on its way, Bogoch said he agrees it will very likely arrive in Canada in the fall. He said a number of factors may contribute to a resurgence in cases at that time, including schools and workplaces reopening, and cooler temperatures keeping people indoors more.
“We’ve really learned a lot about how this virus is transmitted and where it’s most likely to be transmitted,” he said. “So any settings where people are in an indoor environment in close proximity for prolonged periods of time, we know that that’s a perfect setup for this virus to be transmitted.”
Hoffman added that it’s really anyone’s guess when the second wave will come, however. He said it will be dependent on public health guidance and people’s adherence to those policies in the coming weeks.
“There’s nothing stopping a second way from happening much earlier if we’re not careful,” he said.
CAN A SECOND WAVE BE PREVENTED?
While both Hoffman and Bogoch are confident a second wave will likely hit Canada, they both said the severity of that surge can be mitigated with the proper response.
Bogoch cited South Korea as an example of a country that had a dramatic spike in cases early on, but they were able to largely suppress it through the extensive use of testing, isolating, and contact tracing.
When cases numbers began to creep back up again in June, South Korea halted further relaxation measures and relied on a program of aggressive tracking, tracing, and testing for the virus to bring the numbers down again in what the government described as the country’s second wave.
Bogoch said that type of speedy reaction will be needed to tamp down on localized outbreaks if Canada wants to prevent a wave of new infections.
“It’s like a game of Whac-A-Mole,” he said. “Infections are going to pop up and we’re going to have to smack them down and the key thing is we have to rapidly identify them and quell those outbreaks as quickly as possible before they morph into larger outbreaks.”
Hoffman said, without the development of a vaccine or treatment for COVID-19 or a scenario where everyone contracts the virus and there is herd immunity, Canadians will have to continue to physically distance from each other, wear masks, and practice good hygiene to avoid devastating second, third, or even fourth waves of infection.
“We need to be ready for when that second wave likely comes and ideally be able to react and stop it so fast that it hardly look like a wave at all,” Hoffman said.
WASHINGTON (AP) — An Alaska man accused of sending graphic threats to injure and kill six Supreme Court justices and some of their family members has been indicted on federal charges, authorities said Thursday.
Panos Anastasiou, 76, is accused of sending more than 465 messages through a public court website, including graphic threats of assassination and torture coupled with racist and homophobic rhetoric.
The indictment does not specify which justices Anastasiou targeted, but Attorney General Merrick Garland said he made the graphic threats as retaliation for decisions he disagreed with.
“Our democracy depends on the ability of public officials to do their jobs without fearing for their lives or the safety of their families,” he said.
Anastasiou has been indicted on 22 counts, including nine counts of making threats against a federal judge and 13 counts of making threats in interstate commerce.
He was released from detention late Thursday by a federal magistrate in Anchorage with a a list of conditions, including that he not directly or indirectly contact any of the six Supreme Court justices he allegedly threatened or any of their family members.
During the hearing that lasted more than hour, Magistrate Kyle Reardon noted some of the messages Anastasiou allegedly sent between March 2023 and mid-July 2024, including calling for the assassination of two of the Republican-appointed Supreme Court justices so the current Democratic president could appoint their successors.
Instead of toning down his rhetoric after receiving a visit from FBI agents last year, Anastasiou increased the frequency of his messages and their vitriolic language, Reardon said.
Gray-haired and shackled at the ankles above his salmon-colored plastic slippers, Anastasiou wore a yellow prison outfit with ACC printed in black on the back, the initials for the Anchorage Correctional Facility, at the hearing. Born in Greece, he moved to Anchorage 67 years ago. Reardon allowed him to contact his elected officials on other matters like global warming, but said the messages must be reviewed by his lawyers.
Defense attorney Jane Imholte noted Anastasiou is a Vietnam veteran who is undergoing treatment for throat cancer and has no financial means other than his Social Security benefits.
She told the judge that Anastaiou, who signed his own name to the emails, worried about his pets while being detained. She said he only wanted to return home to care for his dogs, Freddie, Buddy and Cutie Pie.
He faces a maximum of 10 years in prison for each count of making threats against a federal judge and up to five years for each count of making threats in interstate commerce if convicted.
Threats targeting federal judges overall have more than doubled in recent years amid a surge of similar violent messages directed at public officials around the country, the U.S. Marshals Service previously said.
In 2022, shortly after the leak of a draft opinion overturning Roe v. Wade, a man was stopped near the home of Justice Brett Kavanaugh with weapons and zip ties.
ROME (AP) — Canadian and Italian dignitaries on Thursday marked the successful recovery of a photo portrait of Winston Churchill known as “The Roaring Lion,” stolen in Canada and recovered in Italy after a two-year search by police.
At a ceremony at the Canadian Embassy in Rome, Italian carabinieri police handed over the portrait to the Canadian ambassador to Italy, Elissa Goldberg, who praised the cooperation between Italian and Canadian investigators that led to the recovery.
The 1941 portrait of the British leader taken by Ottawa photographer Yousuf Karsh is now ready for the last step of its journey home to the Fairmont Château Laurier, the hotel in Ottawa where it was stolen and will once again be displayed as a notable historic portrait.
Canadian police said the portrait was stolen from the hotel sometime between Christmas 2021 and Jan. 6, 2022, and replaced with a forgery. The swap was only uncovered months later, in August, when a hotel worker noticed the frame was not hung properly and looked different than the others.
Nicola Cassinelli, a lawyer in Genoa, Italy, purchased the portrait in May 2022 at an online Sotheby’s auction for 5,292 British pounds. He says he got a phone call from the auction house that October advising him not to sell or otherwise transfer the portrait due to an investigation into the Ottawa theft.
Cassinelli, who attended Thursday’s ceremony, said he thought he was buying a regular print and quickly agreed to send the iconic Churchill photograph home when he learned its true story.
“I immediately decided to return it to the Chateau Laurier, because I think that if Karsh donated it to the hotel, it means he really wanted it to stay there, for the particular significance this hotel had for him, and for his wife too,” Cassinelli told The Associated Press.
The famous image was taken by Karsh during Churchill’s wartime visit to the Canadian Parliament in December 1941. It helped launch Karsh’s career, who photographed some of the 20th century’s most famed icons, including Nelson Mandela, Albert Einstein and Queen Elizabeth.
Karsh and his wife Estrellita gifted an original signed print to the Fairmont Chateau Laurier in 1998. The couple had lived and operated a studio inside the hotel for nearly two decades.
Geneviève Dumas, general manager of the Fairmont Château Laurier, said on Thursday she felt immensely grateful.
“I would like to extend my deepest gratitude to everybody involved in solving this case, and ensuring the safe return of this priceless piece of history.”
Police arrested a 43-year-old man from Powassan, Ontario, in April and have charged him with stealing and trafficking the portrait. The man, whose name is protected by a publication ban, faces charges that include forgery, theft over $5,000 and trafficking in property obtained by crime exceeding $5,000.
CULIACAN, Mexico (AP) — Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador blamed the United States in part on Thursday for the surge in cartel violence terrorizing the northern state of Sinaloa which has left at least 30 people dead in the past week.
Two warring factions of the Sinaloa cartel have clashed in the state capital of Culiacan in what appears to be a fight for power since two of its leaders were arrested in the United States in late July. Teams of gunmen have shot at each other and the security forces.
Meanwhile, dead bodies continued to pop up around the city. On one busy street corner, cars drove by pools of the blood leading to a body in a car mechanic shop, while heavily armed police in black masks loaded up another body stretched out on a side street of the Sinaloan city.
Asked at his morning briefing if the U.S. government was “jointly responsible” for this violence in Sinaloa, the president said, “Yes, of course … for having carried out this operation.”
The recent surge in cartel warfare had been expected after Joaquín Guzmán López, a son of former Sinaloa cartel leader Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán, landed near El Paso, Texas on July 25 in a small plane with Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
Zambada was the cartel’s elder figure and reclusive leader. After his arrest, he said in a letter circulated by his lawyer that he had been abducted by the younger Guzmán and taken to the U.S. against his will.
On Thursday afternoon, another military operation covered the north of Culiacan with military and circling helicopters.
Traffic was heavy in Culiacan and most schools were open, even though parents were still not sending their children to classes. Businesses continue to close early and few people venture out after dark. While the city has slowly reopened and soldiers patrol the streets, many families continue to hide away, with parents and teachers fearing they’ll be caught in the crossfire.
“Where is the security for our children, for ourselves too, for all citizens? It’s so dangerous here, you don’t want to go outside,” one Culiacan mother told the Associated Press.
The mother, who didn’t want to share her name out of fear of the cartels, said that while some schools have recently reopened, she hasn’t allowed her daughter to go for two weeks. She said she was scared to do so after armed men stopped a taxi they were traveling in on their way home, terrifying her child.
During his morning press briefing, López Obrador had claimed American authorities “carried out that operation” to capture Zambada and that “it was totally illegal, and agents from the Department of Justice were waiting for Mr. Mayo.”
“If we are now facing instability and clashes in Sinaloa, it is because they (the American government) made that decision,” he said.
He added that there “cannot be a cooperative relationship if they take unilateral decisions” like this. Mexican prosecutors have said they were considering bringing treason charges against those involved in the plan to nab Zambada.
He was echoed by President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum, who said later in the day that “we can never accept that there is no communication or collaboration.”
It’s the latest escalation of tensions in the U.S.-Mexico relationship. Last month, the Mexican president said he was putting relations with the U.S. and Canadian embassies “on pause” after ambassadors criticized his controversial plan to overhaul Mexico’s judiciary by requiring all judges to stand for election.
Still, the Zambada capture has fueled criticisms of López Obrador, who has throughout his administration refused to confront cartels in a strategy he refers to as “hugs not bullets.” On previous occasions, he falsely stated that cartels respect Mexican citizens and largely fight amongst themselves.
While the president, who is set to leave office at the end of the month, has promised his plan would reduce cartel violence, such clashes continue to plague Mexico. Cartels employ an increasing array of tactics, including roadside bombs or IEDs, trenches, home-made armored vehicles and bomb-dropping drones.
