Canadian COVID-19 News

[Lake-Effect]

Originally Posted by redhead

I think I was a Canadian in a former life.

Many of you were Brits at one point... that counts.

[Mike OReilly]

CBC: Molecular testing requirement for COVID-19 to remain as land border opens: Blair

Canadians will still need to take a molecular test, like the expensive PCR test, in order to return to Canada from the United States after the land border reopens to fully vaccinated travellers in November.

I'm surprised. I really thought/think it's an untenable position for Canada to maintain. I think we should start a pool to bet on when this will be reversed.

[Scorpius]

Originally Posted by Macblaze

It's the maple syrup connection

I don't know. In my limited experience in the east I detected significant speech accent differences between Canadians and Americans between the maritimes and New England. On the west coast you have to have a REALLY good ear to detect any differences between Canadian and PNW US residents.

[desodave]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

CBC: Molecular testing requirement for COVID-19 to remain as land border opens: Blair

I'm surprised. I really thought/think it's an untenable position for Canada to maintain. I think we should start a pool to bet on when this will be reversed.

It certainly appears that way at first blush, but I believe is the proper stance to protect Canadians. If the USA wants to let people into their country without testing, that is their decision ... it might allow vaccinated Canadians to carry covid into their country. Requiring a test on the way into Canada says we don't want anyone bringing covid into Canada.

[Scorpius]

If the test is taken 72 hours before returning Canada there's still lots of opportunity to become infected before actually crossing the border - but it does dramatically reduce the chances of bringing the virus back.

But what I don't understand is that I believe Canadians have every right to enter Canada regardless. You can be arrested as you cross the border - but you can't be stopped. So what happens if you are Covid positive, or don't have the test in hand when you hit the border. I don't believe you can be turned back into the states.

I find it interesting that the US, with a far higher infection rate and a far lower vaccination rate, is (relatively) throwing their borders open whilst we are being much more restrictive about it.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

I don't know. In my limited experience in the east I detected significant speech accent differences between Canadians and Americans between the maritimes and New England. On the west coast you have to have a REALLY good ear to detect any differences between Canadian and PNW US residents.

It's interesting, eh? There are accent differences between Atlantic provinces -- even between people in the same province. In the province I know best (Newfoundland) there are massive differences in accents between people who live in the same small region. I swear, there must be a dozen different accents in the Newfoundlanders living around the Bay of Islands (Corner Brook).

It's interesting how homogenous the rest of the English part of the country is vs our Atlantic brethren.

[desodave]

I should have said "bringing more covid into Canada". Lots of Lower Mainland people like to cross-border shop or take day/weekend trips south. I'm not sure that we want to promote that type of population intermingling at this point in time. Requiring a test for re-entry to Canada discourages that type of activity ... it's not going to stop someone snow-birding or going for longer trips.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

If the test is taken 72 hours before returning Canada there's still lots of opportunity to become infected before actually crossing the border - but it does dramatically reduce the chances of bringing the virus back.

I'm sure it does prevent some importation of the virus, but travellers have never been shown to be a major vector for the virus. Obviously, foreign variants had to have come in from elsewhere, but the data I've seen has never indicated travellers are a large primary driver of infection.

Given that the US will soon allow people to cross the land border with no test at all (only proof of vaccination), I just can't see this position standing for long.

Originally Posted by Scorpius

But what I don't understand is that I believe Canadians have every right to enter Canada regardless. You can be arrested as you cross the border - but you can't be stopped. So what happens if you are Covid positive, or don't have the test in hand when you hit the border. I don't believe you can be turned back into the states.

My niece is fully vaxxed. She flew to Montana a month ago to meet her new in-laws (she just married an American with permanent Canadian residency). She got Covid-19 while there. Her PCR test showed it. She had no problem coming home. She was order to quarantine for 10 days, but there was no follow up to confirm she did (she did).

So the PCR test was good because it caught her infection before she was symptomatic, and potentially spreading it to others. But she was certainly not prevented from coming home.

[TrentePieds]

Quote: "On the west coast you have to have a REALLY good ear to detect any differences between Canadian and PNW US residents."

Hm... Near me there is a "conurbation" - if I dare call it that - that straddles the border. On the US side it is called Sumas while on the Canadian side it's called Huntington. The whole shebang is less than half a mile north to south. In Huntington people speak standard "BC", in Sumas people speak "Murrican" so thick you can cut it with a knife!

My Beloved, somewhat younger than I, has retained her North Vancouver accent. And similarly I, while I can HEAR the different Canadian accents, which MyBeloved can not, will never be able to shake the vestiges of my native Danish. That, overlaid on the Midlands/Birmingham English I picked up in my youth, makes me sound South African :-)!

When I was a lowly instructor at a local uni, I could frequently tell from which of the many Vancouver high schools first year students had come. Not so much accent, really, as particular turns of phrase that seemed to be high school specific.

Compare the speech of such as "Fireside Al" - the late Al Maitland of the CBC - with current CBC announcers such as, say, Ian Hanomansing, and the difference between Canadian as spoken half a century ago and current Canadian is striking.

A wonderful example of American accent in the PNW is Starla Sampaco of KCTS in Seattle. A lovely young woman, I'm sure, but the accent - Oh, my Lord :-)!!!

TrentePieds

[sv_pelagia]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

I don't know. In my limited experience in the east I detected significant speech accent differences between Canadians and Americans between the maritimes and New England. On the west coast you have to have a REALLY good ear to detect any differences between Canadian and PNW US residents.

Not me. EASY to tell!

Then again, I spent 10 (long) years in New York, and my colleagues here in BC still like to suggest I sound American. (For all of those 10 years, my American colleagues wouldn't stop "commenting" on my Canadian accent... correcting me constantly.)

So I'm sensitive (sensitized?) to it.

[GordMay]

Originally Posted by Scorpius

... But what I don't understand is that I believe Canadians have every right to enter Canada regardless. You can be arrested as you cross the border - but you can't be stopped. So what happens if you are Covid positive, or don't have the test in hand when you hit the border. I don't believe you can be turned back into the states ...

You will be instructed to quarantine, for at least 14 days.
➥ https://www.canada.ca/en/border-serv...to-canada.html
➥ https://www.canada.ca/en/public-heal...ion-sheet.html

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by Copacabana

I've always found Vermont to be the most "Canadian" state in the US.

I have written a number of high school geography textbooks over the years and I remember in one having an exercise for the kids based around the concept that Canada is an east-west country in a north-south continent, the latter it terms of physical geography and the economic geography that followed. If you take a part of Canada and look at the adjacent parts of the US you see it.

[Mike OReilly]

Originally Posted by AiniA

I have written a number of high school geography textbooks over the years and I remember in one having an exercise for the kids based around the concept that Canada is an east-west country in a north-south continent, the latter it terms of physical geography and the economic geography that followed. If you take a part of Canada and look at the adjacent parts of the US you see it.

It's often been suggested the continent was divided wrong. It should have been more north-south rather than east-west.

[GordMay]

Pfizer asks Health Canada to approve COVID-19 vaccine for kids 5 to 11 years old

The doses are about one-third the size, given to adults and teens, age 12 and up.

"We also understand from Pfizer that this actual formulation has shifted," chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, said Friday. "This is a next generation formulation, so that is something that needs to be examined by the regulator."

Pfizer already submitted clinical trial data for its child-sized dose to Health Canada at the beginning of the month, and made a formal request for approval to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration last week.

The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine has also been tested on children as young as six months old. Topline data for children under five years old is expected as soon as the end of the year.

[AiniA]

Originally Posted by Mike OReilly

It's often been suggested the continent was divided wrong. It should have been more north-south rather than east-west.

That was the basic idea of the exercise I created.