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Arviat Nunavut is in the news today and they're having a little celebration. Why are they celebrating??? Because Nunavut did lockdown last spring. They closed their three borders tight and implemented two week quarantine periods in isolation hubs for any of their residents and non-essential employees looking to return the territory after being south. Ottawa, Winnipeg and Yellowknife were the designated sites and throughout most of the year the quarantines worked. Essential employees were also expected to answer to Public Health with regards to their own social distancing practices for the two weeks prior to travel into Nunavut. On a small scale, something much easier to evaluate than international travel in and out of Canada, Nunavut represented very well what travel restriction, quarantine, isolation and being responsible can do to thwart the spread of Covid. But then... a case did finally break through. Nunavut being one of the last places on earth to see a first case, they were quick to act. Sanikiluaq picked up the first couple cases of Covid, they identified the cases, did the contact tracing and locked the town down, especially isolating the positives. Poof!!!! Like that, no Covid. Then another person brought a case from Winnipeg into the airport at Rankin Inlet. Passengers moving onward landed in Whale Cove and Arviat. First positives identified, contact tracing complete and Poof!!! Whale Cove and the bigger hub of Rankin locked it down, did the tracings, isolated the positives and reset their case numbers to zero. Arviat on the other hand, being totally underserviced, one of the sickest populations in Canada and also the youngest, well... it took six weeks of hard work. A public health emergency team was deployed there, the Chief Medical Officer traveled there as well and, within about 6 weeks with case numbers in the town of 3000 or so people reached over 300, a lockdown, some big efforts and isolation of the positive cases reset Arviat right back to zero. Nowhere else in Canada has a case count affected about 10% of any single localized population within such a short time... Looking at Arviat and each other Nunavut community as a small scale version of what is to be the expected outcome of Covid case control, and, also looking at Nunavut's excellent border control as a whole, it's my view that lockdowns, Public Health efforts, healthcare efforts and personal protective practices can totally work. The problem for the rest of Canada is, not everyone can easily get on board with it for many different reasons. The one thing that I have found for certain is, that those people who could be on board but instead choose to whine, piss, whine, moan, complain and scream that it doesn't work, they are the biggest plague to bettering the health of Canadians and helping all just get through this.

...and for all the naysayers who say lockdowns are useless you are now proved wrong for the 3rd time. Not only have we bent the curve but we have already bent it downwards. This will likely be the last lockdown unless we have new strains in the winter. People will then be able to get a booster shot. Vaccinations are working and we will come out of lockdown probably sooner then originally predicted. Get your jab. Protect yourself, do it for your country. Herd immunity works. Vaccinations gets us there super quick. https://www.publichealthontario.ca/en/data-and-analysis/infectious-disease/covid-19-data-surveillance/covid-19-data-tool?tab=trends

As I understand it, anyone who has either started their trip or at any point were in India prior to landing in Canada are banned, for now. In-direct flights are included in the ban. I did get a call back from my MP's office this morning. The point was kinda moot given the announcement last night. HH

The lady that was cutting my hair until a year ago was a retired ICU nurse and when the virus got out of control she gave up her haircutting business and went back into the ICU to help save live. Darned impressive in my mind.

This graph literally shows that large cities with high population density suffer severely with the disease (New York city and Los Angeles) and places that disregard lockdowns/covid measures also have the most cases of disease (texas, Florida) therefore directly proving that covid safety measures/lockdowns do work. There’s loads and loads of data out there showing how disregarding covid measures ie not wearing masks and not locking down at all had the most significant negative impact those populations. Conspiracy theorists love to point to outliers like New York and LA...the places that are most dense with the most multi cutural population ended up with the most cases of covid. Look at the stats on the west coast where the population density is similar and it’s not cold all winter and see what comes up when comparing to Florida and texas. you’ll note the case’s per population are actually the lowest in the country aside from the middle grain belt states. Even California’s case count in relation to population is extremely low. by the way, I don’t know what the hell kind of “severe” lockdowns you are referring to in california. Great, their measures were severe by texas and Florida standards but if you follow basically anyone in LA on Instagram (almost any celebrity) it sure as hell doesn’t appear like there were any severe lockdowns. You want to see those, look at New Zealand and Australia and how they handled their lockdowns and how effective they were. Australia has basically not been locked down since last summer. as Bill pointed out, our lockdowns were implemented wrong, they allowed high powered businesses to disregard any measures and it really screwed up our system. Please don’t point to the United States as “the place that got it right” people quite literally died in the US at twice the rate of canada when looking at it comparison to their population. 570,000+ Dead now, That’s almost the entire population of New Brunswick. I would also argue that that number is severely understated because healthcare is not free. Heck a covid test in the United States cost $100+ so how can you tell me anything is accurate in regards to their figures. Furthermore you think the folks that live in poverty in the back woods of alabama and West Virginia are getting top notch medical care? another place that has no ability to lockdown simply due to population density and corruption is India. They opened everything up and look what’s happening, they are “reporting” 300,000 cases per day! Remember only the wealthiest of the population in that country receive medical care. You can only imagine how many people are actually infected in a place as unsanitary and densely populated. we’ve proven it 3 times in a row, lockdowns/stay at home orders work. 3 waves we’ve gone through and within a week case numbers begin to drop every single time. We are already dropping our cases in Ontario. And every time we get out of the lockdown our cases go up again.

100% totally WRONG. California now has the lowest infection rate of any state

walleye wings, anyone do it ? My first time and they were delish, tempura battered.

Brisket point and pork belly burnt ends, yum, also did home made beans but forgot to snap a pic. Burnt ends were butter tender and did not last long, also the wife made another batch of beef barley soup with the ojus and added lots of the brisket meat. Can ya'll see me getting fatter LOL

I used to work in the electronics industry and also operated a service center. Things have generally changed and failure rates after the warranty period are quite high for most brands. Reliability is not that good and serviceability is actually a thing of the past for most brands if not all. The bottom line is that it is not cost effective to repair electronics anymore unless it is a very minor repair. Looking back the traditional Japanese brands like Panasonic, Sony, Toshiba, Sharp, NEC, Sanyo, Mitsubishi etc. were the best. Then we started to see the Korean lower priced brands like Daewoo, Samsung, LG etc. come along and even some other more traditional low end brands like RCA. Some of these products were actually not to bad and were comparable to the more expensive Japanese products. Others had very poor reliability and service along and obtaining replacement parts was a problem. The result was that the Japanese products had to be less expensive to compete and that for the most part meant that cheaper components and overall quality had to come down. When it comes to TV's in todays market I would still buy a Japanese one over any LG or Samsung even though they are all fairly similar now. When they fail outside of the warranty period be prepared to scrap it and buy a new one. In the more recent past the LG TV was in my opinion better than the Samsung in terms of the circuitry and electronics but that may now have changed as well. Samsung has kind of climbed to the top with innovations, larger displays and aggressive sales and marketing etc. but it would not be at the top of my list if I was looking to purchase. I 100% agree with staying away from LG and Samsung appliances they are definitely unreliable and totally unserviceable. They should not be allowed to import and sell those products.

see and i would say this is proof that they DON'T work. If they did, why did we need 3 of them? In my opinion, all lockdowns do is slow the inevitable. These stats prove it. A virus will do what a virus will do. You can't stay locked down forever (unless you are retired!). So THAT is what they should have done...."lock down" the vulnerable, and let others carry on with their lives.

Lockdowns would work if they did them properly. It only took them a year to stop flights coming in from India and other high Covid areas...

Ontario should do like NWT You file a written application stating a valid reason to get in to the province and if accepted you quaranteen for 14 days. If you are essential how can you get time away from work...mind blown here too

So I just found out something absolutely incredible that makes me feel so friggin mad I can’t describe it. my brother is the COO of a distribution company based out of brampton. Luckily the company is not gigantic about 40 employees and ownership is 100% on board with doing everything in their power to keep people safe. They have provided full paid leave to any of the staff that have even been exposed never mind contracted covid. well anyways today my brother was describing the fact that he has one employee that is on a company mandatory quarantine after returning from his month long vacation in India. Another employee leaves Monday to go see family in India for three weeks. Both were working out scheduling with my brother and he found out that due to the fact that both of these employees are “essential” just like absolutely anyone else that is still working (check the essential list of businesses) you are exempt from the mandatory 14 day quarantine. I knew this was the case for truckers but I never put two and two together that it simply applies to anyone thats “essential” so this entire “14 day hotel thing” is entirely bogus and doesn’t actually exist except in the limited case where a foreigner comes here isn’t working. my mind is frigging absolutely blown. My brother has told the employees that they are both not allowed to return to work without quarantining and providing a negative covid test. But without his companies policy there’s literally no quarantine for people traveling to India, Brazil etc etc mind friggin blown

Shouldn’t be ANY planes coming in except cargo. Business travellers should work/meet online

Ended up with this unit. Looks well made. Free's up a lot of real-estate at the back of the boat.

The ICU's have always been full. Well before Covid. The Emerg has always been FULL, well before covid. I dislocated my hip 15 years ago and woke up in the public hallway back then, so this is NOTHING new to hospitals and our healthcare system. Our govt has never been accountable for the joke we call a health care system in Ontario. Understaffed for as long as I can even remember. S.

If you take proper safety precautions and are responsible like your supposed to be every single time you go out on your boat either to fish or for leisure then as far I’m concerned everyone will be fine. As far as ICUs being full they aren’t. Same Bull over and over. Last year this time my father was in the hospital with health complications and media was blowing up saying the icus were full. I went to icu and Covid unit at the hospital where he was staying. Ghost town. People can’t continue to have their lives and livelihoods ruined. If people are responsible and safe like they’re supposed to be every time you go out on the water then why shouldn’t they be allowed to. If you don’t want to fish stay home. More fish for us.

Ya your right, it’s not simple but wish they had done that or found a way to make that work better. I’m sure almost everyone lies about symptoms because they have to work and feed their families.

I might have left it on. On a high gunnel boat I like the idea of having a good solid ladder because hey, you never know. Not the first guy to go overboard reaching for something. Safety first.

For sure Pics. As I quoted above... " it's my view that lockdowns, Public Health efforts, healthcare efforts and personal protective practices can totally work. The problem for the rest of Canada is, not everyone can easily get on board with it for many different reasons." Many different reasons truly does include many different reasons.

That looks like it can work in a microcosm, where I'm sure not 10 of thousands drive hundreds of km's daily to transport the virus around. One sneeze or well placed booger on a doorknob here will probably go rampant just by the population numbers. Yellowknife, 20k people approximately, a mousefart worth of population compared to Canada's 3 major cities.

I'm on my 50" LG smart TV as I type this. Been one of the better TV's I owned and is on it's 10th year? The thing is on all the time; I use it as my computer screen, TV cable monitor; along with all the movie streaming I do. Did I get lucky with this one? With all the circuitry that's inside these things; it only take one soldered connection on one of the hundreds of boards to go open and shut the thing down. The labour involved in finding this possible open connection out ways the cost of replacing the unit. The only thing that I think is different between brands is the quality control at the factories that supply the companies that do the final assembly and slap their name on it. Just like the automotive industry. GM, Ford or Chrysler do not build the components that go into their vehicles. All that is subbed out to other companies to build whatever part to spec. The vehicle manufacturer then assembles those bought parts to build their vehicle. I should ask my son to post some of the horror stories he has to deal with working as an engineer at GM and is in charge of North American rear wheel drive mounting (engine, transmission & body) components. Sometimes what he has approved in a manufacturer's sample part; isn't exactly what shows up at the assembly plant. Talk about the "Ship High In Transit" (S.H.I.T.) hitting the fan. LOL Dan. Trivia. Ship High In Transit comes from when river barges use to transport manure in their holds. They didn't want the manure to get wet; so they labeled the bails with the words Ship High In Transit. That's where the acronym S.H.I.T. comes from. LOL

Satellite receivers have been like that for a long time. Echostar (bell) uses cheaper components that barely meet specs. I've repaired 3 of them over the years and every failure has been capacitors. 1 of them I had to use a good receiver and compare readings with a meter and 2 of them a visual inspection was all that was needed to spot the swollen cans caused by excessive heat. Those receivers are always on if plugged in and run quite hot all the time, both of ours are always removed from power every night. I have mine sitting on spacers to allow more air flow underneath. The last one I fixed had two bad caps. So the system runs on 5V and the caps are only rated for 6.3 volts. Add in a very hot environment and the cans swell and next thing you know you can't get a satellite signal. For a few cents more the could have used a higher rated cap to reduce failure rates but of course then they wouldn't sell as many replacements.

On October 30th 2010 I brought my new 50" Panasonic Plasma TV home from the store. It was the last one they had and was the floor model. It's got many 1,000's of hours on it and is my living room TV at the house. It gets lots of use every day and is still going strong 10 1/2 years later.

Just right for me. Its about time.

Who cares, the meat looks so good!

Just direct, everyone can still just take one flight elsewhere and then come in or drive to another place. It helps alittle, but about a year too late.

Well, that's something you don't see every day! Me likey! HH

Canada banning flights from India, Pakistan for 30 days https://globalnews.ca/news/7781588/canada-travel-ban-covid-variant-india/

So the US has a higher death rate...how do you know Canada will not catch up? The lockdowns slow things down...at the end of all this the death rates may actually be similar. We all will die some day (unless the world ends first!). In my work have first hand experience with all types of death. Almost every single covid death I have seen has been in people 80 and over...and almost every one of those, the family told me the person was in very poor health as it was. In other words, they were already near the end of their life. I think I have only seen one under the age of 70 (that person was 69, and also in poor health). So I am not "comfortable" with any death, but I do understand that death can not be beaten...it is inevitable. If I saw numerous younger people dying I would change my tune perhaps. But I have not seen that. What I HAVE seen is a ridiculous increase in overdose deaths during this pandemic...and I mean ridiculous...like more than one a week. For instance in the past month we have had one covid death (that person was over 90) but I have seen approx 10 overdose deaths, the oldest of those people was just over 50. THAT is a bigger issue than covid in my opinion. All deaths matter, but for us to think we can "beat" death, especially in people over 80, we are fooling ourselves.

And end up with what happened in the United States with people dying at 2x the rate that Canadians did. Curious, what number of dead people are you comfortable with? we’re at just over 20,000 so we bump that to 40k? Funny that’s the same number of Canadians that died in world war 2...that’s acceptable?

Check the Ontario Parks reservation site for the campground you want every day in the morning after 7am. People book their preferred site for 21 days ahead then after 1 month cancel out the time they do not want. You may have to move to another campsite during your stay.

We still can't go camping though right?

Just like their newly implemented closing of inbound flights from India and Pakistan for 30 days, okay, nothing stops them from flying out to those countries for 31 days and coming back infected and having bogus Covid negative tests. Flights should be closed both ways. And lets not forget Brazil with their brazillion cases.

Thats the problem, They would make the 15 hour drive. Close health zone borders. And ottawa is not a hot zone so no vaccines there till the rest of the province is covered...Sorry Justin

The U.S. resisted lock downs and had the most cases and deaths in the world; and among the worst on a per-capita basis. I am not seeing how that proves that lock downs don't work; however, I can see it being used as a pretty strong arguement for the exact opposite. They are doing better now that many of their people have been vaccinated. That doesn't mean that lock downs don't work, it means that vaccines do work.

I think I would like to see a bit of a bigger fence! HH

You should save this for future use

well there's the Not getting severely ill/dying from covid benefit. Let me guess, your immune system is awesome? You should tell that to Dan my 33 year old personal trainer life long friend who ended up hospitalized twice, or my 33 year old friend jake Wales national basketball team member who now takes a puffer daily after catching it last november? Really unhealthy old guys they are.

Ohh gawd, how much I would give if I was never directed to watch another damned youtube video giving me the REAL TRUTH. You can be certain after watching one that you will be misinformed. A vaccine is a jab that protects you. We have heard all this bull before they were even given that they won't work. The proof is in the pudding and the vaccines are working WAY better then imagined. All the rest is story telling. People pretending that they know what they are talking about but they don't. It's tiresome.

I don't even see a benifit to getting the vaccine right now. So, I get poked, but can still get covid, still spread covid, and still have no rights to do anything?? Yeah, sounds great to me. NOT. Then there is the risks involved with getting jabbed with something we don't even know anything about?? Yeah, NOT. I am going to trust my immune system, and my common sense on this one. S.

This is the thing people don't get. It's pretty easy to go fishing without making stops for fuel or Tim Hortons or anything else. If someone can't wrap their heads around this, then they definitely should be staying home.

It's smoooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooth!!!

https://ccforum.biomedcentral.com/track/pdf/10.1186/s13054-015-0852-6.pdf note icu beds capable of invasive ventilation 1,122

I was admitted to the ICU/Critical Care unit at the Brantford hospital a few weeks ago. It was full to the nuts with individuals parked in the hallway being cared for. There may be a time they are not full but according to staff in the Critical Care unit where I was 2 weeks ago they are full, having an open bed does hapen but 99% of the time they are full and at times overflowing.

We really should start an OFC DJ service, as we certainly have a lot of spin doctors here...

guys, I am 100% on your side that so much of this stuff doesnt make any sense. Without being political our politicians are 100% accountable for what is going on. But lets not get into the conspiracy theory garbage "the ICU's arent full" Theres quite literally only 1,200 ICU beds in Ontario. 750 of them are currently occupied with covid patients. That quite literally leaves 450 beds for every single other person that needs to go into intensive care in the entire province. Think about what you are saying for a second. Basically any person that is in danger of dying ends up in the ICU, what happens if a natural disaster, terrorist attack or any other form of mass casualty event occurs, i guess we are going to leave it once again on the doctors to decide who lives and dies? People pushing for us to not care until the ICU's are literally totally full so that in the event that you get in a car crash you will simply be left for dead because there is no space is a strange way to think. If you want to talk about the Covid situation being a mess, have at it, but lets not completely disregard what doctors nurses and those in the medical field are going through at the moment. My direct team member at work's wife is a nurse, she is not trained nor certified to work with intubated people with severe cases of covid, but guess where she started working this week due to staffing shortages. You guessed it, she has been assigned to the covid ward out of desperation. Please Please Please do not make light of the situation at our hospitals at the moment. I invite you to talk to any nurse/doctor or other healthcare practitioner working with covid patients prior to announcing that your hospital is totally fine on a fishing forum.

9 times out of 10 for me muskies suck. There’s always that 1 trip where it pays off. Surprisingly if I land a little 30” it’s ends up being 40” somehow by the end of my drive home.

hmmmm....an accident? One that leads to being in ICU? That is reaaally stretching it. I have been on thousands of trips and never once needed a visit to the hospital. With fewer people on the roads this would be even less likely! How many times have any of us ended up in ICU from a fishing trip? I am gonna put those odds at about 1 in 100 000. Far more end up in there from alcohol and drug use...yet that seems permissible Hospitals overwhelmed? When we were in lockdown last year I went to the hospital. I had injured myself playing hockey before lockdown, but I waited awhile to go because the hospitals were apparently overwhelmed. Finally when the pain wouldn't subside I went in. What I saw was a shock! Honestly you could have shot a cannon through the Guelph hospital! I have never been served so quickly in my life. Checked in, met a doctor, had an xray, met a doctor again to get the news, and then back in my car driving away in less than 45 minutes! There were tons of staff hanging out at the nursing station talking to each other. The hallways, meeting rooms and waiting areas vacant. I acknowledge I was in emerg not icu, but seriously...if icu was so stretched why did they not re-allocate some staff or room from emerg? Lakes will still be there in a month - I hope so! And if they are, I hope my dictator government permits me to use them. Even if they don't...I plan on finding a way

What if you get in an accident on the way to your 'essential' fishing trip? ICUs are almost full? What then? Its called a 'Stay at Home order' for a reason. Think of others, not yourself. Not an easy thing for us North Americans to do but its important. Fishing can wait a bit. The Lakes will still be there in a month. My boats back on axle stands till at least May 20th. I'm not happy about it but its the RIGHT THING TO DO. Try it.