Nearly two months ago, a health-care adviser to two U.S. presidents burst out in frustration when asked whether Americans would see a quick spike in new COVID-19 cases as states reopened.
Zeke Emanuel, who served in the Obama White House and has informally advised President Donald Trump, expressed exasperation that people kept looking for an immediate effect.
Launching into a sermon about the mathematical realities of exponential growth rates, Emanuel said the disastrous consequences of reopening too early would only emerge around early summer.
“Two months, not two weeks,” Emanuel said in early May. “That’s likely when you’ll see the effects of what we’re doing today. … That’s when people will recognize, ‘Wow, now we’ve got 1,000 cases today, 3,000 cases tomorrow, 6,000 the next day.'”
He predicted the country would awaken to the disaster around mid-July.
It’s happening ahead of schedule.
Few people wear masks as they walk on the beach pier in Oceanside, California, on Monday, despite rising COVID-19 case numbers in the state. (Mike Blake/Reuters)
The U.S. has surpassed 127,000 deaths and case counts are rising rapidly in numerous states, mainly in the south. An alarming surge has forced Texas to pause its reopening plans. Hospitalizations have hit record highs in Arizona and in California.
Florida has backpedaled on its reopening bullishness. A governor who recently accused the media of fear-mongering over COVID-19 — wagging his finger at reporters over what he characterized as “black helicopter” conspiracy theories — was forced to announce Friday that bars would close again as Florida experienced an astronomical spike in positive tests.
“This is what happens when you reduce social distancing measures and you have community transmission ongoing and those two things collide and it just spreads,” said Jason Kindrachuk, an assistant professor of viral pathogenesis at the University of Manitoba in Winnipeg and Canada Research Chair of emerging viruses.
Kindrachuk said that Canadians would be well-advised to take lessons from the American response to the pandemic.
“We can take that information and posit here in Canada that as we reduce social distancing, especially in regions that are more population-dense, we’re likely going to see a resurgence in cases, because ultimately the virus is still in our communities and it’s still able to spread.”
U.S. South hard-hit
On Friday, the troubling trendline in the U.S. prompted the White House to resume its previously suspended coronavirus press conferences. Vice-President Mike Pence maintained the country is largely better off than a few weeks ago, but said 16 states have rising case totals and, more worryingly, a rising percentage of positive test rates.
While this virus is an evolving phenomenon, rendering any broad conclusions risky, here’s what we know about the places in the U.S. experiencing outbreaks: they’re mostly in the south; mostly in states that reopened early and aggressively and resisted the widespread use of masks; and mostly run by Republicans, unlike an earlier wave that primarily struck northern, Democrat-led states.
The rapid increase in cases and hospitalizations is due to the push to reopen states without first establishing proper systems of tracking and treating cases, said Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician and senior scholar at the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security.
“It’s never been a question whether or not we would get more cases when people started to socially interact,” he said. “The question always was, could we keep those cases occurring at a pace that was manageable?”
Adalja said, “clearly in those states that are under stress right now, there hadn’t been enough preparation for these cases.”
He said states facing a strain on their health-care systems squandered opportunities during lockdowns to expand their capacity and prepare for a spike in cases.
People line up to get tested for COVID-19 at a drive through testing site in Phoenix, Ariz. on June 20. (Matt York/Associated Press)
“From the very beginning, this outbreak has really been mismanaged in terms of what the government response should have been,” he said. “People thought that they could get away with going back to the norm – not realizing the virus was still there.”
Adalja said some parts of the U.S. that were spared large outbreaks of COVID-19 early in the pandemic wrongly assumed they wouldn’t be hit hard after lifting lockdown measures — or that they could adequately handle the number of new cases.
He said that’s the main takeaway for Canada as provinces hit hard by COVID-19, like Ontario and Quebec, move to lift lockdown measures.
“What you can learn is that the virus hasn’t disappeared, that social interaction is going to drive new cases,” Adalja said. “The key thing is: Can you handle those new cases?”
U.S. testing more, finding more cases
The initial debacle over the lack of testing in the U.S. is well-documented, as are Trump’s boasts about the amount of testing and his later suggestions that the government should reduce tests, because they only reveal more positive cases.
Another story about U.S. testing is less well-known. It’s that the U.S. has surged ahead of Canada in testing per capita, thanks to public-private partnerships.
In Canada, all COVID-19 testing is done through the health-care system at hospitals or designated testing sites. But in the U.S., different people have different access to tests.
For example, Washington, D.C., resident Carlos Sabatino said he got a test in 20 minutes. Feeling some symptoms, he went to a drive-thru at a CVS Pharmacy, was handed a kit, told how to perform a nasal swab, cleaned the kit with sanitary wipes and gave it back.
Three days later, he went online and got the results, which declared him COVID-free. His health insurance covered the cost. “The whole experience, door to door, took 45 minutes,” he said. “I was surprised how efficient it is.… Frankly, I was impressed.”
Sabatino learned about the pharmacy’s testing after giving up trying to get a test from the city government. He was deterred by the brutally long lines and the news that he would only get results by mail, in a week.
But Sabatino is one of the lucky ones. Disparities in U.S. health care are a constant problem.
Some Americans have access issues, while others describe ghastly insurance bills. Video from some locations in the U.S. south shows huge lineups.
WATCH | Large lineups at U.S. testing sites:
Traffic is seen at a standstill as drivers wait at drive-thru COVID-19 test sites in the U.S. 1:11
This pandemic has exposed deep inequalities in U.S. health care, with Black Americans less likely to access care and far likelier to become critically sick.
This week, a former U.S. health-insurance executive said the system had failed and he apologized for previously disparaging Canadian public health care.
Amid America’s <a href=”https://twitter.com/hashtag/COVID19?src=hash&ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw”>#COVID19</a> disaster, I must come clean about a lie I spread as a health insurance exec: We spent big $$ to push the idea that Canada’s single-payer system was awful & the U.S. system much better. It was a lie & the nations’ COVID responses prove it. The truth: (1/6)
Testing capacity was slow to ramp up in the U.S. early in the pandemic, leaving the virus ample time to spread across the country before it could be exposed. Even now, testing shortages are being reported in the latest hot spots.
That’s why experts say the percentage of tests turning up positive results in the U.S. is drastically higher per capita than in Canada. If you test early and often, you identify cases quickly. If you test late, early cases will be missed and the positivity rate will be higher.
For each positive case in Canada, an average of 110 people are being tested. In the U.S., that number currently sits at about one for every 17 tests.
“When I look at the U.S. scenario, it’s … almost like watching a train wreck in slow motion, because a lot of it is quite predictable, mostly because they were really, really behind on getting testing started,” said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious disease physician at the University of Alberta.
“They’re expanding their testing now, but the percent positivity of their test is still going up, which is horrifyingly scary.”
A month after DeSantis said this, the Florida Department of Health reports 8,942 new cases of Covid-19 today: the highest single day of reporting. <br><br> <a href=”https://t.co/soXHGFK2cZ”>pic.twitter.com/soXHGFK2cZ</a>
Saxinger said that leaves only one tool to address the rising case numbers in the U.S. – reinstating lockdown measures, which is what Texas and Florida have done.
“The problem that I see coming is if you open when you don’t have the capacity to control things, it’s really hard to get the genie back in the bottle, because the populace is not down with that,” Saxinger said.
“I don’t know how well the reinstitution of public health measures will go if a place has had the more stringent measures, releases them and then goes back.”
In U.S., masks turn political
One difference between the Canadian and American experience is that partisan politics has infected the U.S. response.
Seemingly every aspect of this pandemic has taken on a partisan tinge, from social distancing to medicine — for instance, being for or against hydroxychloroquine, once thought to be an effective COVID-19 treatment, became a proxy for whether Americans were pro- or anti-Trump.
Masks have also become something of a political status symbol.
Even masks have become political. Joe Biden, left, always wears one in public. Trump, right, has mocked Biden and a reporter for wearing them. (Jim Bourg/Reuters, Drew Angerer/Getty Images)
“There is a sense of, ‘This is the US of A and I can do whatever I damn well please,'” said Dr. Linsey Marr, an expert in the transmission of viruses by aerosol at Virginia Tech. There are “certain segments [of the population] that are very anti-government, that don’t want to be told what to do.”
That much was acknowledged by the country’s largest movie chain: AMC Theatres said masks had become politicized and would not be mandated for moviegoers. In the ensuing public uproar, it reversed course.
A Pew survey this month found a 23-percentage-point gap between Democrat and Republican voters on whether they claim to wear masks in stores all or most of the time.
WATCH: Trump holds controversial rally in Tulsa, Okla.:
U.S. President Donald Trump’s first campaign rally in months didn’t have the attendance he bragged about, but the Tulsa, Okla., event was a glimpse at what animates supporters and at Trump’s playbook for re-election. 2:27
The president’s own statements helped shape that conversation. They include early predictions that COVID-19 would quickly disappear, mockery of politicians and reporters for wearing masks and his repeated demands that states reopen faster than recommended by the White House’s own guidelines.
Coronavirus deaths are way down. Mortality rate is one of the lowest in the World. Our Economy is roaring back and will NOT be shut down. “Embers” or flare ups will be put out, as necessary!
In battling the spread of COVID-19, masks may be a game-changer. An investigation by the Philadelphia Inquirer found a strong correlation between a state’s mask rules and its recent case rate.
“The irony here is that if everyone were willing to put on a mask, I think we could get back closer to normal without having this huge spike in cases,” said Marr. “Otherwise, we’re all going to be restricted in our movements and the economy.”
Trump rally exposes divide
When it comes to masks, staunch Trump supporters made their feelings clear at a recent indoor rally in Tulsa, Okla.
A minuscule percentage of the crowd wore masks — this despite a surge in cases in that state and news that a handful of Trump campaign staffers had tested positive.
Event organizers were even handing out masks. Most attendees took one. Few put them on.
U.S. President Donald Trump held a campaign rally at the BOK Center in Tulsa, Okla. on June 20 while infection rates in the state continue to rise. (Win McNamee/Getty Images)
“Science [has come] out to show this coronavirus is a lot less deadly than people thought it was going to be,” said rallygoer Jason Yeadon. “I think the numbers are overblown and data will show that in the end.”
He blamed the “supposed professionals” for pressuring elected officials to shut down the economy and insisted governments overreacted in the first place.
‘I’m not a prophet’
The current spike in cases across the U.S. comes as no surprise to Zeke Emanuel, the former Obama health-care adviser.
“Anybody who’s studied two weeks of epidemiology could have predicted this,” he said in a follow-up interview this week. “I’m not a prophet — this was entirely predictable.”
Saxinger said given the high percentage of the population in both the U.S. and Canada still susceptible to COVID-19 infection, neither country is out of the “line of fire” when it comes to major outbreaks of the disease.
“Although we might be feeling like we dodged that bullet, that bullet is still possible in a lot of places in Canada,” she said.
“People are just so hungry for everything to be normal and so they’re acting like it is – but it clearly is not. The virus is not gone and as soon as you start mingling, it starts going up.”
OTTAWA – Members of Parliament studying the federal government’s decision to buy a $9-million luxury condo in Manhattan are preparing to recall Canada’s consul general in New York to answer more questions about his involvement in the purchase.
The Conservatives put forward a motion on Tuesday to have Tom Clark return to the House operations committee. The move was supported by other opposition parties after new information emerged that contradicted his previous testimony.
Clark told the committee in September he had no role whatsoever in the purchase of the new condo, or the sale of the previous residence.
But reporting from Politico on Tuesday indicated Clark raised concerns about the old unit two months after he was appointed to his role as Canada’s representative in New York.
Politico cited documents obtained through access-to-information, which were then shared with other media by the Conservative party.
A May 2023 report from Global Affairs Canada indicates Clark informed government officials the residence needed to be replaced.
“The current (consul general in New York, head of mission) expressed concerns regarding the completion of the … kitchen and refurbishment project and indicated the unit was not suitable to be the (consul general’s) accommodations,” the report reads.
“It does not have an ideal floor plan for (consul general in New York) representational activities.”
The final call on whether Clark will face further questions has not been made, however, because the committee adjourned before the motion went to a vote. The committee’s next meeting is next week.
Tuesday’s meeting featured Foreign Affairs Minister Mélanie Joly as a witness, and she faced questions about Clark’s involvement in the purchase.
“This was not a political decision because this was an operational decision,” Joly told the committee in a testy exchange with Conservative MP Michael Barrett.
“(The committee) had numerous people, officials of mine, that came to see you and said that. So, these are the facts.”
Joly later told the committee she only learned of the decision to purchase a new residence through media reports, even though her chief of staff was notified weeks earlier.
“The department informed my chief of staff once the decision was taken. Because, of course, it was not a political decision,” Joly said.
Shortly before Joly was excused, Conservative MP Stephanie Kusie put forward the motion to recall Clark for two more hours to answer more questions.
Bloc MP Julie Vignola proposed instead to have him testify for only one hour — indicating she would support the motion with that change.
“One hour is more than enough to know whether he lied to us,” Vignola told her colleagues in French.
NDP MP Taylor Bachrach also said he would support the move, given the contrast between the new report and Clark’s testimony about whether he spoke to anyone about a desire to move into a new residence.
“What really irks me is the consul general was so clear in response to repeated questioning at committee,” Bachrach said.
“Mr. Clark said, ‘Never.’ One-word answer, ‘Never.’ You can’t get more unequivocal than that.”
The Liberal government has argued that buying the new residence will save Canadians taxpayers millions of dollars and reduce ongoing maintenance costs and property taxes while supporting future program needs for the consul general.
The former official residence is listed for sale at $13 million, but has yet to be sold.
In her remarks Tuesday, Joly told the committee other like-minded countries have paid more for their Manhattan residences than Canada has — including $11 million for the U.K., and France’s $19 million purchase in 2015.
Joly said among the countries that have residences in New York, only Afghanistan and Bangladesh were not located in Manhattan.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
TORONTO – An Ontario judge says any outstanding issues regarding a proposed $32.5 billion settlement between three major tobacco companies and their creditors should be solvable in the coming months.
Ontario Superior Court Chief Justice Geoffrey Morawetz has released his reasons for approving a motion last week to have representatives for creditors review and vote on the proposal in December.
One of the companies, JTI-Macdonald Corp., said last week it objects to the plan in its current form and asked the court to postpone scheduling the vote until several issues were resolved.
The other two companies, Rothmans, Benson & Hedges and Imperial Tobacco Canada Ltd., didn’t oppose the motion but said they retained the right to contest the proposed plan down the line.
The proposal announced last month includes $24 billion for provinces and territories seeking to recover smoking-related health-care costs and about $6 billion for smokers across Canada and their loved ones.
If the proposed deal is accepted by a majority of creditors, it will then move on to the next step: a hearing to obtain the approval of the court, tentatively scheduled for early next year.
In a written decision released Monday, Morawetz said it was clear that not all issues had been resolved at this stage of the proceedings.
He pointed to “outstanding issues” between the companies regarding their respective shares of the total payout, as well as debate over the creditor status of one of JTI-Macdonald’s affiliate companies.
In order to have creditors vote on a proposal, the court must be satisfied the plan isn’t “doomed to fail” either at the creditors or court approval stages, court heard last week.
Lawyers representing plaintiffs in two Quebec class actions, those representing smokers in the rest of Canada, and 10 out of 13 provinces and territories have expressed their support for the proposal, the judge wrote in his ruling.
While JTI-Macdonald said its concerns have not been addressed, the company’s lawyer “acknowledged that the issues were solvable,” Morawetz wrote.
“At this stage, I am unable to conclude that the plans are doomed to fail,” he said.
“There are a number of outstanding issues as between the parties, but there are no issues that, in my view, cannot be solved,” he said.
The proposed settlement is the culmination of more than five years of negotiations in what Morawetz has called one of “the most complex insolvency proceedings in Canadian history.”
The companies sought creditor protection in Ontario in 2019 after Quebec’s top court upheld a landmark ruling ordering them to pay about $15 billion to plaintiffs in two class-action lawsuits.
All legal proceedings against the companies, including lawsuits filed by provincial governments, have been paused during the negotiations. That order has now been extended until the end of January 2025.
In total, the companies faced claims of more than $1 trillion, court documents show.
In October of last year, the court instructed the mediator in the case, former Chief Justice of Ontario Warren Winkler, and the monitors appointed to each company to develop a proposed plan for a global settlement, with input from the companies and creditors.
A year later, they proposed a plan that would involve upfront payments as well as annual ones based on the companies’ net after-tax income and any tax refunds, court documents show.
The monitors estimate it would take the companies about 20 years to pay the entire amount, the documents show.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
OTTAWA – The Federal Court of Appeal has dismissed a bid by the Prince Edward Island Potato Board to overturn a 2021 decision by the federal agriculture minister to declare the entire province as “a place infested with potato wart.”
That order prohibited the export of seed potatoes from the Island to prevent the spread of the soil-borne fungus, which deforms potatoes and makes them impossible to sell.
The board had argued in Federal Court that the decision was unreasonable because there was insufficient evidence to establish that P.E.I. was infested with the fungus.
In April 2023, the Federal Court dismissed the board’s application for a judicial review, saying the order was reasonable because the Canadian Food Inspection Agency said regulatory measures had failed to prevent the transmission of potato wart to unregulated fields.
On Tuesday, the Appeal Court dismissed the board’s appeal, saying the lower court had selected the correct reasonableness standard to review the minister’s order.
As well, it found the lower court was correct in accepting the minister’s view that the province was “infested” because the department had detected potato wart on 35 occasions in P.E.I.’s three counties since 2000.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Nov. 5, 2024.
