Thought of the Day - April 8 2021 - US Warning: Very High Level of COVID in Canada

Well, what goes around comes around. As talked about in previous posts ( Thought of the Day - March 19 2021 - Meanwhile in the US of A , the US had a dramatic drop in case counts early in the year in part due to their changes in testing practices, but it should be noted, unlike Canada, their case counts have been fairly flat since. This means the two countries are rapidly converging in the number of new COVID cases per capita.

Hospitalizations and deaths do not quite tell the same story, but the convergence is still there.

This week social media was a-buzz with the story that the US CDC has Canada at their highest alert level, stating that even "fully vaccinated people" are at risk.

It should be noted that this has been the CDC's assessment of Canada for quite some time now. If you look on the CDC site you will see that they classify most of the world as red already (South-East Asia and a few counties in Africa being the exception, oh and Greenland as everyone knows this is where people should go when there is a global disaster).

The US State Department, while it does acknowledge the CDC rating, still has us at a Level 3. I guess their agenda and audience are more about trade than health.

In any event, this rating does put the brakes on the lobbying, by interested US parties, to reopen the border. The current restriction expires on April 21st, and I see no reason why it will not be extended.

The Wilson Task Force, connected with the US Wilson Centre Research Group, has been studying the impact of the border closure and is now discussing how to re-open the Canada-U.S. border. The Task Force members include former politicians, Jean Charest and Anne McLellan from Canada, as well as Christine Gregoire and James Douglas from the U.S. They are expected to deliver a reopening plan in April. It will be interesting to see what they propose.

Cheers

Cliff