An infection control epidemiologist who publicly warned in July that New Brunswick was courting a COVID-19 outbreak by dropping public health restrictions too early doesn’t accept the province’s claims that its current health crisis could not be forecast.
“It was absolutely, absolutely abundantly clear in July that what they were doing was fundamentally wrong,” said Colin Furness, an associate professor at the Institute of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation at the University of Toronto.
“I’m getting sick and tired of government officials saying, ‘This was unforeseen, this was unpredictable, no one could have anticipated this.’ You can’t improve your performance or decision-making if you can’t be honest with yourself about the nature of mistakes.”
On Friday, during briefings to announce and explain the reintroduction of a provincial state of emergency and mandatory order to deal with a surging COVID-19 outbreak, New Brunswick political and health officials acknowledged the decision to lift public health restrictions at the end of July was a mistake. But they suggested they couldn’t have known the mistake they were making.
“Absolutely, all of us in this room right now, with the evidence of this rapid increase of delta virus in the province, would all agree that was not the right decision to make,” said Dr. Gordon Dow, an infectious disease expert with Horizon Health.
“But that’s with the benefit of in retrospect.”
Premier Blaine Higgs also agreed Friday that the July 30 reopening “could” have been an error. But he insisted danger signs were not apparent at the time.
“I have to reiterate that the decision we made at the time was based on the facts available and the situation our province was in, and how we would go forward. It’s always easy to look back,” he said
Vaccination rates among those under 40 in New Brunswick were below 50 per cent in late July when the province announced the ending of public health restrictions. (Rozenn Nicolle/CBC)
New Brunswick is in the middle of its largest COVID-19 outbreak of the pandemic. It has recorded more than 1,400 new cases since lifting public health restrictions in July, including 470 for the week ending last Friday.
That was the highest case count per capita in any province east of Saskatchewan for the week and has put sudden pressure on the province’s hospital system.
Furness claims that deterioration was predictable.
He said it was clear in July that New Brunswick did not have enough people fully vaccinated, especially among the young, to protect itself from an outbreak of COVID-19’s highly contagious delta variant.
COVID-19 hospitalizations in New Brunswick reached a record 33 on Sunday. Concern over rising cases overwhelming the province’s health-care system led to a state of emergency being reinstated on the weekend. (Nathan Denette/Canadian Press)
He believed at the time of New Brunswick’s July reopening that public health protections like mandatory indoor masking needed to be maintained to protect against what is happening now, and said so publicly.
“There was tonnes of data available, concurrent data available about what delta was doing,” said Furness
On July 23, Higgs announced the province would be dropping all public health restrictions at midnight on July 30 even though it had not reached its goal of having 75 per cent of the eligible population fully vaccinated.
At the time of the announcement, 64 per cent of those in the province over the age of 12 had received two vaccine doses.
That was problematic enough, according to Furness, but made riskier because the majority of vaccinations were concentrated in higher age groups.
Dr. Theresa Tam is Canada’s Chief Public Health Officer. (Adrian Wyld/The Canadian Press)
Among those under 40, just 48 per cent had been fully vaccinated at the time reopening was announced. On July 27, Furness said in an interview with CBC that New Brunswick was heading for trouble if it did not at least maintain rules requiring mask use indoors.
“People in their 80s are not serving tables in restaurants, they’re not working as grocery store clerks and they’re not going to heavy-duty parties. It’s the ones in their 20s who are. And that group is not protected,” he said
Furness was not alone in those concerns.
On July 30, just hours before New Brunswick dropped all of its mandatory public health restrictions, Dr. Theresa Tam, Canada’s Chief Public Officer of Health, recommended against abandoning masking rules until vaccination rates among the young improved.
“We have to be cautious about how we reopen,” Tam said in a national briefing about a detected rise in the delta variant in Canada that she said would soon assert itself “in every jurisdiction.”
Colin Furness, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, warned New Brunswick in July that it was courting a COVID-19 outbreak by dropping public health restrictions before raising its vaccination rates. (CBC)
“If the 18 to 39-year-olds can get vaccinated fully up to at least 80 per cent you can actually avert significant impacts on the health system.”
She said any province dropping public health restrictions risked having its hospital system overrun “if the vaccine rate going up is not as fast as the relaxation of measures.”
“Delta is a formidable foe,” said Tam. “We know what works. Continue masking, distancing.”
In July, the number of those fully vaccinated in New Brunswick between the ages of 18 and 39 was well short of the 80 per cent level Tam said was required to fend off the worst of a “delta driven” wave and is still below 70 per cent.
Furness said he finds excuses now that warnings were not clear enough in July are not credible.
“When you looked at the contagiousness of delta, you didn’t even need to know about vaccine effectiveness. Just looking at the spread pattern, just looking at the contagiousness, there was no way that [safely opening] was valid knowledge back then. Flat out no way.”
TOKYO (AP) — Japanese technology group SoftBank swung back to profitability in the July-September quarter, boosted by positive results in its Vision Fund investments.
Tokyo-based SoftBank Group Corp. reported Tuesday a fiscal second quarter profit of nearly 1.18 trillion yen ($7.7 billion), compared with a 931 billion yen loss in the year-earlier period.
Quarterly sales edged up about 6% to nearly 1.77 trillion yen ($11.5 billion).
SoftBank credited income from royalties and licensing related to its holdings in Arm, a computer chip-designing company, whose business spans smartphones, data centers, networking equipment, automotive, consumer electronic devices, and AI applications.
The results were also helped by the absence of losses related to SoftBank’s investment in office-space sharing venture WeWork, which hit the previous fiscal year.
WeWork, which filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in 2023, emerged from Chapter 11 in June.
SoftBank has benefitted in recent months from rising share prices in some investment, such as U.S.-based e-commerce company Coupang, Chinese mobility provider DiDi Global and Bytedance, the Chinese developer of TikTok.
SoftBank’s financial results tend to swing wildly, partly because of its sprawling investment portfolio that includes search engine Yahoo, Chinese retailer Alibaba, and artificial intelligence company Nvidia.
SoftBank makes investments in a variety of companies that it groups together in a series of Vision Funds.
The company’s founder, Masayoshi Son, is a pioneer in technology investment in Japan. SoftBank Group does not give earnings forecasts.
Shopify Inc. executives brushed off concerns that incoming U.S. President Donald Trump will be a major detriment to many of the company’s merchants.
“There’s nothing in what we’ve heard from Trump, nor would there have been anything from (Democratic candidate) Kamala (Harris), which we think impacts the overall state of new business formation and entrepreneurship,” Shopify’s chief financial officer Jeff Hoffmeister told analysts on a call Tuesday.
“We still feel really good about all the merchants out there, all the entrepreneurs that want to start new businesses and that’s obviously not going to change with the administration.”
Hoffmeister’s comments come a week after Trump, a Republican businessman, trounced Harris in an election that will soon return him to the Oval Office.
On the campaign trail, he threatened to impose tariffs of 60 per cent on imports from China and roughly 10 per cent to 20 per cent on goods from all other countries.
If the president-elect makes good on the promise, many worry the cost of operating will soar for companies, including customers of Shopify, which sells e-commerce software to small businesses but also brands as big as Kylie Cosmetics and Victoria’s Secret.
These merchants may feel they have no choice but to pass on the increases to customers, perhaps sparking more inflation.
If Trump’s tariffs do come to fruition, Shopify’s president Harley Finkelstein pointed out China is “not a huge area” for Shopify.
However, “we can’t anticipate what every presidential administration is going to do,” he cautioned.
He likened the uncertainty facing the business community to the COVID-19 pandemic where Shopify had to help companies migrate online.
“Our job is no matter what comes the way of our merchants, we provide them with tools and service and support for them to navigate it really well,” he said.
Finkelstein was questioned about the forthcoming U.S. leadership change on a call meant to delve into Shopify’s latest earnings, which sent shares soaring 27 per cent to $158.63 shortly after Tuesday’s market open.
The Ottawa-based company, which keeps its books in U.S. dollars, reported US$828 million in net income for its third quarter, up from US$718 million in the same quarter last year, as its revenue rose 26 per cent.
Revenue for the period ended Sept. 30 totalled US$2.16 billion, up from US$1.71 billion a year earlier.
Subscription solutions revenue reached US$610 million, up from US$486 million in the same quarter last year.
Merchant solutions revenue amounted to US$1.55 billion, up from US$1.23 billion.
Shopify’s net income excluding the impact of equity investments totalled US$344 million for the quarter, up from US$173 million in the same quarter last year.
Daniel Chan, a TD Cowen analyst, said the results show Shopify has a leadership position in the e-commerce world and “a continued ability to gain market share.”
In its outlook for its fourth quarter of 2024, the company said it expects revenue to grow at a mid-to-high-twenties percentage rate on a year-over-year basis.
“Q4 guidance suggests Shopify will finish the year strong, with better-than-expected revenue growth and operating margin,” Chan pointed out in a note to investors.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
TORONTO – RioCan Real Estate Investment Trust says it has cut almost 10 per cent of its staff as it deals with a slowdown in the condo market and overall pushes for greater efficiency.
The company says the cuts, which amount to around 60 employees based on its last annual filing, will mean about $9 million in restructuring charges and should translate to about $8 million in annualized cash savings.
The job cuts come as RioCan and others scale back condo development plans as the market softens, but chief executive Jonathan Gitlin says the reductions were from a companywide efficiency effort.
RioCan says it doesn’t plan to start any new construction of mixed-use properties this year and well into 2025 as it adjusts to the shifting market demand.
The company reported a net income of $96.9 million in the third quarter, up from a loss of $73.5 million last year, as it saw a $159 million boost from a favourable change in the fair value of investment properties.
RioCan reported what it says is a record-breaking 97.8 per cent occupancy rate in the quarter including retail committed occupancy of 98.6 per cent.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 12, 2024.
