WEF DAVOS 2023
A Catastrophic Mutating Cyber Event Will Strike the World in 2 Years, Report Says

A World Economic Forum report says business leaders believe a catastrophic, COVID-like cyber event is coming in 2 years.© Getty Images

Story by Tim Newcomb • 

A World Economic Forum report says business leaders believe a “catastrophic cyber event” is coming.

Cybercrime will grow from a $3 trillion industry in 2015 to a $10.5 trillion industry by 2025.

The unpredictable nature of cybercrime increases threats.

The 2023 World Economic Forum (WEF) in Davos, Switzerland, has filled us with lots of uplifting predictions, like how companies will soon decode our brain waves. The latest warns of a global catastrophic cyber event in the very near future.

“The most striking finding that we’ve found,” WEF managing director Jeremy Jurgens said during a presentation highlighting the WEF Global Security Outlook Report 2023, “is that 93 percent of cyber leaders, and 86 percent of cyber business leaders, believe that the geopolitical instability makes a catastrophic cyber event likely in the next two years. This far exceeds anything that we’ve see in previous surveys.”

Add in the extreme unpredictability of these events—Jurgens cited a cyberattack recently aimed at shutting down Uranian military abilities that unexpectedly also closed off parts of electricity production across Europe—and the global challenges are only growing.

“This is a global threat,” Jürgen Stock, Secretary-General of Interpol, said during the presentation. “It calls for a global response and enhanced and coordinated action.” He said the increased profits that the multiple bad “actors” reap from cybercrime should encourage world leaders to work together to make it a priority as they face “new sophisticated tools.”

One country that recently saw a massive cyberattack, Albania, is now working with larger allies in warding off the criminals, serving as a laboratory of sorts for folks to realize what is coming.

Edi Rama, Albania’s prime minister, spoke during the presentation, saying that the growth of the cybercrime industry—from $3 trillion in 2015 to an expected $10.5 trillion in 2025—means that if cybercrime was a state, it would be the third largest global economy after the U.S. and China.

That means the crime coming could truly be catastrophic.

Rama cited the global response to COVID-19 and said a cyberattack could be much more substantial:

“Let’s imagine an exponential multitude of viruses that mutate everyday exponentially while not threatening our body, but the bodies we live in, our organizations, our countries, our system, then, you know, it could be just apocalypse. It’s about viruses that can not only block our way of living, but can control it and deviate it.”

Bank of Canada: rising female participation helping tackle labor shortage

OTTAWA, Jan 25 (Reuters) - More women have joined the Canadian workforce recently, helping offset labor shortages, and one reason could be a program by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau's government to cut child-care costs, the Bank of Canada said on Wednesday.


Bank of Canada Governor Tiff Macklem conducts an end of year fireside chat in Vancouver© Thomson Reuters

The central bank said the annual growth of the labor force had shrunk to about 0.9% over the 2020-2022 period from 1.4% in 2017-2019 because of an aging population and the interruption of immigration flows in 2020.

"The recent rise in the participation of prime-age Canadians, especially women, has somewhat offset the effect of aging," it said, noting the participation rate for prime-age women was at a near record high 84.9%, and the increase had been notable for women with young children.

This could in part be due to a multi-billion dollar program the federal Liberal government introduced last year to cut the costs of child care and encourage more women to work, it said.

"The increase in the participation of prime-age women has expanded the labor force by almost 100,000, helping ease firms' labor shortages and hiring challenges," the bank said in its quarterly Monetary Policy Report.

Immigration is another factor helping mitigate the effects of a tight labor market. About 480,000 newcomers joined the labor force between December 2020 and December 2022.

"Increased immigration alone cannot eliminate an economy-wide imbalance between labor supply and demand," it said, citing the increase of labor supply and the number of consumers.

(Reporting by David Ljunggren, editing by Steve Scherer; Reuters Ottawa bureau, +1 647 480 7921; david.ljunggren@tr.com)

Harry Rakowski: The science behind why COVID variants are better and better at evading vaccine immunity

Opinion by Harry Rakowski • Thursday - National Post

After three painful years, COVID-19, while not over, is finally a manageable, endemic disease, yet debates surrounding its origin and how it’s being managed are still highly politicized. It is therefore not surprising that there is an ongoing, politicized debate about the cause of the unusually frequent viral mutations that are now occurring and the value of ongoing bivalent boosters.

There are two important issues at play here: Why are the new bivalent boosters not performing as well as hoped in reducing the number of new infections? And is vaccination somehow driving the evolution of the virus to more easily evade antibody neutralization?

Allysia Finley, a member of the Wall Street Journal editorial board, recently wrote a column stating that, “Growing evidence … suggests that repeated vaccinations may make people more susceptible to XBB and could be fuelling the virus’s rapid evolution.” She concludes that, “The Biden administration’s monomaniacal focus on vaccines over new treatments has left the highest-risk Americans more vulnerable to new variants.”

Yet this not an accurate description of the present situation. Boosters aren’t fuelling the pandemic. They don’t cause the virus to mutate, the virus just outsmarts the antibodies produced and new mutations lead to more breakthrough infections.

There are important lessons to be learned from understanding how this virus is unique. The SARS‑CoV‑2 virus is a never-before-encountered coronavirus belonging to a large family of viruses named after the crown-like spikes on their surface.

Previous coronaviruses generally caused colds, but rarely resulted in death. Only twice before have coronaviruses caused much more serious disease, namely in the SARS outbreak of 2002 and MERS, which was identified in the Middle East in 2012.

In neither case was vaccination available, nor was rapid viral mutation a worrisome feature that might facilitate frequent reinfections or ongoing worldwide spread. To get a sense of why SARS‑CoV‑2 is different, it is helpful to understand the course of the 1918 Spanish Flu pandemic and how it ended.

The U.S. Centres for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that the 1918-19 Spanish Flu pandemic infected about one-third of the world’s population and resulted in 50-million deaths worldwide, including 675,000 in the United States. A unique feature was its high mortality rate in healthy people.

The Spanish Flu was caused by an H1N1 influenza virus. With no available vaccines, the pandemic lasted two years and finally petered out as the high number of infected people led to herd immunity. The virus simply ran out of people it could continue to infect who could then spread it further. As well, cellular immunity from previous infection protected against future bad outcomes. The virus never went away , it simply became one of the causes of the much more benign seasonal flu.

Every so often, new variants, perhaps as the result of cross-infection from animal hosts, has led to more severe, but limited, flu outbreaks. This is what happened with the H1N1 virus that caused the swine flu pandemic of 2009.

Jeffery Taubenberger, one of the scientists who studied the Spanish Flu virus, determined through genetic sequencing of preserved pathology specimens from 1918 that, “Every single human infection with Influenza A in the past 102 years is derived from the one introduction of the 1918 flu.”

While this pattern will likely also eventually happen with SARS‑CoV‑2, there are still questions over how vaccines have influenced new variants.

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The mRNA vaccines produced by Moderna and Pfizer initially appeared to work well in preventing infection. The antibodies produced in response to two vaccine shots could bind to, and neutralize, invading viruses, thus reducing the chance of infection by 95 per cent, in human trials.

The story didn’t end as expected, though. Antibody levels produced by either vaccine, or in response to an infection itself, waned over a period of around six months. Then new, more contagious variants arose and spread rapidly. Yet the initial variants that fuelled new outbreaks didn’t just arise from countries with high levels of vaccination.

Influenza viruses commonly mutate and evade the benefit of annual flu shots. In a similar way, the original Wuhan strain also evolved and mutated in an attempt to infect more people. While many mutations had a neutral effect, those in the spike protein allowed easier cell entry and viral replication and thus dominated.

As new variants of concern developed, they were assigned Greek letters. The first variant of concern, the Alpha variant, which originated in England, was associated with more infections, even in vaccinated people, but memory cell-based immunity continued to protect against hospitalization and death.

Then the Delta variant, which originated in India before many people there were vaccinated, quickly became dominant. It was both more contagious and more deadly. During this phase of the pandemic, Delta became COVID on steroids and a disease of the unvaccinated. The response was to give booster shots of the original vaccine to bump up antibody levels. Yet as the virus continued to mutate, booster protection from infection again fell dramatically.

In the fall of 2021, the Omicron variant, which was first detected in South Africa, a country with low vaccination rates, became dominant, since it was the most contagious variant yet. This led to most people in North America becoming infected, or re-infected, regardless of vaccination status. The response was to produce Omicron-specific boosters, initially targeting the BA.1 Omicron variant, then the BA.4/5 variants that arose.

The hope was that these boosters would produce antibodies both for the original viral strain and the rapidly mutating Omicron variants and would thus provide significant protection from infection. Unfortunately, the ability of the boosters to prevent human infection proved to be dramatically lower than with previous strains. The benefit became even smaller as newer Omicron variants sprung up, especially now with the dominating XBB.1.5 mutation.

The reason for the continuing decline in bivalent boosters limiting infection is likely due to “immune imprinting,” the idea that the immune response to either previous infection or to receiving a vaccine limits an individual’s future response to new variants. The immune system thus prefers to recall existing memory cells rather than produce new responses when the old and new variants are closely related. We produce antibodies that fight the older strains more effectively than the evolving ones that now dominate.

Thus, new strains that develop will continue to rapidly evade the antibodies produced by repeated vaccinations and we will continue to get diminishing returns. The more we try and prevent new infections with more and more booster shots, the less effective they will likely become in preventing infections themselves.

What is critically important, however, is that vaccination continues to greatly decrease the risk of hospitalization or death, despite the rise of ever-mutating new Omicron sub-variants. Despite what Finley suggests, viral mutations happen naturally and are not directly caused by vaccines.

The XBB family of mutations likely originated when two forms of the virus combined in an individual to form a new strain. This new strain started to dominate because it was more immune-evasive. Vaccination is unlikely to have played a major role in this process, as evasion from immunity can come from both the declining benefits of vaccination and natural infection.

We can’t panic when the press hypes every new variant. While they cause more infections, only a small percentage of people have bad outcomes. In healthy people who have been infected in the past, or previously vaccinated, most will now only develop cold- or flu-like symptoms.

We have to now accept that ongoing vaccination will have limited benefit in preventing infection from ever-mutating viruses and hope that they continue to provide protection against bad outcomes. Hopefully, the lesson from the end of the Spanish Flu is that this virus will eventually become little more dangerous than a common cold or a typical flu. Ongoing vaccination for those older people or those at higher risk is reasonable. Ongoing vaccination for younger, healthier people is of limited value.

We need to focus on improving the capacity and resilience of our health-care system, rapidly develop new antiviral therapies to protect the vulnerable once infected and take the fear and politics out of the process.

National Post
Dr. Harry Rakowski is an academic Toronto cardiologist and commentator.

Secwépemc land defenders, arrested for opposing TMX, receive outpouring of support in ‘Vancouver’

Story by The Canadian Press • 


Eight land defenders who are facing jail time for opposing the Trans Mountain pipeline expansion project (TMX) in unceded Secwépemc homelands are receiving support from allies in “Vancouver.”

Gathering at a community hall in Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh territories, Indigenous leaders, artists and Youth took part in a fundraiser event to help with legal fees for two ongoing court cases stemming from arrests in October 2020.

The total money raised during the Secwépemc Sovereignty Fundraiser on Jan. 19 is still being tallied, but organizers estimate about $5,000 is being added to an existing fund to support land defenders during sentencing — scheduled to take place in the Tk’emlúps (Kamloops) court from Feb. 21 to 24.

Rueben George of Tsleil-Waututh Nation, who has spent years fighting TMX in his community’s own unceded homelands, expressed his gratitude for his fellow land defenders standing up against colonial forces.

“I’m proud of you,” he said, adding that the land defenders are putting their own freedom on the line to try to make things better for others.

“It’s the elements that we’re fighting for — the water, the earth, the land and everything that exists that carries a spirit,” he said.

“That’s what we know and understand. But they don’t. And we’ll teach them.”

The event included performances by Indigenous Youth and artists including Manuel Axel Strain, who is Musqueam, Simpcw and syilx, and Kwiis Hamilton of the Nuu-chah-nulth and Sto:lo First Nations.

Following the performances, the eight land defenders took to the stage to express their gratitude for the support from the crowd that packed the hall’s main space.

During their nearly three years in court, the land defenders have been self-represented. But some are now planning to hire lawyers for the sentencing and appeal processes, with the intention of also completing a Gladue report, said Secwépemc Hereditary Matriarch Miranda Dick.

“The impacts that we’re facing are just so detrimental to our salmon and our way of life,” said Dick.

“The way that we look at it, everything floats down river, meaning that we’re protectors of our sacred waters and our headways of the salmon.”

In November 2022, during a talk at UBC Okanagan, Dick highlighted “Canada’s” colonial infringement of breaking ancient Secwépemc law by building the pipeline that would cross 518 km of the nation’s homelands.

“When we say that they have no jurisdiction, you look at Canada as wanting to impose law onto us,” she said.

“We never signed, ceded or surrendered our territories.”

Dick, along with her father, Hereditary Chief Saw-ses, are each looking at one to three months of jail time. Land defenders such as Secwépemc Matriarch April Thomas and Red Deer Billie Pierre of Nlaka’pamux Nation are looking at three to six months.

Despite the sentence that she’s facing, Pierre said that she was thankful to be a part of the salmon, water and land ceremonies that ultimately led to her arrest.

“One day, I’m sure all of our descendants are going to be thankful for what we’ve all done,” said Pierre.

“Whatever or however we slowed this down, how much extra we’ve made this project cost — all our work has been a labour of love.”

For Thomas, she said that it means a lot to her to see the support from so many people from different walks of life.

“It shows that I’m not alone. As long as one of us has that spirit inside of us, they can’t ever kill our people,” said Thomas. “And they won’t, because our next generation’s coming up.”

Thomas outlined a number of different ways that allies can continue to support land defenders and contribute to the cause: preparing meals, collecting medicines, fundraising, assembling legal strategy, and more.

“If we all just put our minds together and put our ideas out there and contribute, I know we can shut this pipeline down,” she said.

Aaron Hemens, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, The Discourse

What if an Indigenous woman was the face of Canada’s $20 bill?

Story by The Canadian Press • Yesterday

The Queen is dead. Is it now time for an Indigenous woman to take her place on the $20 bill?

The Native Women’s Association of Canada (NWAC) is asking that question through its new art exhibition, “Change the Bill.” The concept for the exhibition began following the Queen’s death, as the decision of changing the figure on the back of the Canadian dollar loomed near, Irene Goodwin, NWAC's director of policy and programs, culture and art, told Canada’s National Observer.

An Indigenous woman has never been represented on a Canadian banknote, Goodwin explained.

The exhibition, which runs from Jan. 20 to 28 at The Local Gallery in Toronto, is a call to action to promote reconciliation through art, according to an NWAC press release. Art pieces are also available to be viewed and purchased online, with all proceeds going to the artists.

The exhibition is on display as part of Design TO’s 2023 festival. NWAC also enlisted TAXI, a leading brand experience agency, to emphasize underrepresented and marginalized Indigenous women in Canadian society, the press release added.

Each piece in the exhibition is a different artist’s reimagination of the $20 bill in both its background design and historical figure. Each artist decided which woman they wanted on their bill as well, Goodwin said.

Some figures include child welfare activist Cindy Blackstock, water protector and Elder Josephine Mandamin and former Chief, Elder and Air Force veteran Margaret Pictou.

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“If the $20 bill was to be reimagined, it would be to highlight the significant contributions of Indigenous women to the development of Canada, as well as highlight the Indigenous artists that we have,” Goodwin said.

NWAC reached out to several artists towards the end of 2022, a quick turnaround for the art exhibition, and Goodwin says artist contributions continue to roll in. For the exhibition, each artist was asked to celebrate an Indigenous hero without any parameters, Goodwin said.

Some artists chose historical figures like Pictou. Another artist, Mando Littlechild, chose her Kokum (grandmother) who was a residential school survivor, which is “an important story” to tell, Goodwin said.

Goodwin thinks the exhibition isn’t merely about putting an Indigenous woman on the banknote as an end in itself; instead, it’s a celebration and recognition of the significance of the contributions of Indigenous women.

It’s an act of reconciliation to promote both the women on the banknotes and the artists who composed them, Goodwin explained.

“Educating future generations about the contributions of Indigenous women and fostering a deeper understanding and appreciation of their significance creates a more just and equitable society for all Canadians,” Lynne Groulx, CEO of NWAC, said in the press release.

Matteo Cimellaro / Canada’s National Observer / Local Journalism Initiative

Matteo Cimellaro, Local Journalism Initiative Reporter, Canada's National Observer

Murray Mandryk: Sask. Government misses history lesson from First Nations

Opinion by Murray Mandryk • Yesterday 

Opposition First Nation Metis Relations critic Betty Nippi-Albright holds eagle feathers as First Nations people demand honest dialogue of Crown land leasing.© Provided by Leader Post

As First Nations leaders came to the podium in the Opposition caucus conference room Monday to speak to why the Saskatchewan Party government is wrong to auction off Crown land without proper consultations, each was handed eagle feathers to hold.

Traditionally in many First Nations cultures, the eagle feather is a powerful religious object obligating the holder to speak the truth.

The problem, it seemed, is no one from government was there to hold the eagle feathers.

Especially after last fall’s introduction of the Saskatchewan First Act, there seems little trust among First Nations people that this government abides by traditions of truth telling.

“What I hear are empty words spoken with a forked tongue,” said Ochapowace Nation Chief Margaret Bear told the Monday gathering as she lambasted Premier Scott Moe and demanded the immediate repeal of the Saskatchewan First Act.
 
“That’s what I hear — saying one thing and doing another.”

Her words were passionate and sometimes stinging. But like other First Nation speakers from across the province who travelled to the legislature Monday, Bear spoke with a great deal of knowledge about treaty history. It’s too bad no one from government was there to listen and learn.

Much of recent treaty history in Saskatchewan has revolved around finding ways to make modern-day things like Crown land leases work within the historical treaty agreement framework.

“That’s part of our history,” Bear said. “That’s part of your history.”

As such, a “duty to consult” matrix has been established to have meaningful dialogue before any Crown land is leased or sold for agricultural purposes — something likely to alter the environment and the historic First Nations use of the land.

That hasn’t happened in this most recent land lease/sale proposal, First Nations argued, vowing to take government to court over it.

While there had been notices of preliminary discussions, Onion Lake’s duty to consult co-ordinator Terri Quinney said her First Nation was not informed of the upcoming lease auctions and might not have known about them had she not seen an online posting in December.

“Duty to consult is an obligation that flows from the honour of the Crown,” said Onion Lake Cree Nation Chief Henry Lewis. “The goal is to listen to the views and concerns of those affected groups and where necessary and possible, modify the actions.”

But as frustrating as this ongoing battle over duty to consult has been, palpable in the room was frustration over what has simultaneously happened with last fall’s Saskatchewan First Act.

Calmly, Bear explained why the act was unacceptable and far beyond the Crown land lease dispute.

Much of Canada’s economy was built on the extraction of natural resources as the federal government unilaterally transferred control of the First Nations land and natural resources to provinces pursuant to the 1930 Natural Resources Transfer Agreement, Bear explained. “We have always maintained this transfer was unlawful.”

As per the wording of the treaties, First Nations never relinquished the rights to natural resources, Bear explained.

“We wanted to share our beautiful land — our Mother Earth — with our newcomers,” she said. “At that time, we shared only the top six inches of the ground or the depth of a plow for agricultural purposes. Nothing deeper.”

Adding to this maddening situation is Moe’s suggestion Sept. 30 on Truth and Reconciliation Day that his government believes in “economic reconciliation.”

That was great to hear at the time,” Bear said. But then came the Saskatchewan First Act that Moe and Justice Minister Bronwyn Eyre maintain required no input from Saskatchewan’s First Nations.

This act has been carried forward by a minister who questioned the portrayal of white pioneers in classroom treaty teachings. There’s plenty of reason for First Nations not to trust this government.

At the very least, they do seem to have an argument that the Sask. Party government has moved away from its commitment to better teach treaty history.

Perhaps it’s time for government to pick up the eagle feather.

Mandryk is the political columnist for the Regina Leader-Post and the Saskatoon StarPhoenix.

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Manning COVID review to cover off work of long-promised Alberta public health panel

Story by The Canadian Press • 

EDMONTON — Alberta Premier Danielle Smith’s promise to assemble a panel of medical experts to deliver ongoing advice on public health and COVID-19 will be covered off by former Reform Party Leader Preston Manning’s pandemic review, her office said Wednesday.


Manning COVID review to cover off work of long-promised Alberta public health panel© Provided by The Canadian Press

“The central role of the (Manning) panel will be to review legislation and recommend amendments to better enable the province to respond to future health emergencies,” Smith’s spokesman Taylor Hides said in a statement, responding to questions on when the science panel would be announced.

“The panel’s full membership is being finalized but will be announced as soon as possible.”

Hides did not respond to followup questions to explain how the Manning review fulfils the previously stated, divergent mandate of Smith’s promised ongoing public health science advisory panel.

Earlier Wednesday, Opposition NDP leader Rachel Notley asked whether the science panel as promised by Smith would ever appear.

"I’d begin by looking at the concept of the panel with a great deal of skepticism — skepticism that it even exists at all or that we will see such a thing.

"Our premier does say things that aren’t true quite regularly, and, in fact, she’s operating within a context of overall chaos and incompetence in terms of failing to move forward on ideas.”

Last week, Smith announced Manning would head up a $2-million inquiry reviewing legislation and decisions to improve how Alberta could handle the next pandemic.

Manning will be paid $253,000 and report back once, in November. He will pick the other panel members subject to approval by Smith.

The panel's online portal is active. Those who sign on are invited to respond to one question: "What, if any, amendments to legislation should be made to better equip the province to cope with future public health emergencies?''

The science advisory panel promise dates back to Smith’s first day in office when she announced she was assembling a group of public health advisers while replacing Dr. Deena Hinshaw as chief medical officer of health.

Smith has blamed Hinshaw and Alberta Health Services for failing to provide the best advice and resources to the government during the pandemic, forcing it to impose restrictions.

“I will be developing a new team of public health advisers,” Smith told reporters shortly after being sworn in on Oct. 11.

Since then the promised panel has been beset by confused messaging.

In early November, Smith suggested at a public forum that the advisory team was in place and was contacting controversial experts such as Paul Alexander.

"I've got a group of doctors advising me and I know that they've already reached out to Dr. Paul Alexander, so I'm interested in hearing what he has to say,” Smith told a debate forum for the Brooks-Medicine Hat byelection on Nov. 3.

Alexander, an adviser to former U.S. president Donald Trump, has been an outspoken critic of the effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines and the usefulness of health restrictions while expounding on herd immunity to handle the pandemic.

He has dismissed COVID-19 vaccines as "bioweapons."

Two days later, on Nov. 5, Smith’s office stated the advisory team was not in place.

"The premier is in the process of consulting with Health Minister Jason Copping on putting together a qualified and diverse group of medical experts to advise the government on a range of health issues,'' spokesperson Becca Polak said in a statement at the time.

"This group of health advisers will be announced before the end of the year after the necessary vetting and selection process is complete."

By year’s end, the team had not been announced.

Two weeks ago, when asked by reporters about the team, Smith said she expected to announce it within days.

Smith leveraged support from United Conservative Party members to win the leadership last October by promising to redress what she has termed medically questionable violations of personal rights and freedoms — such as masking, gathering and vaccine mandate rules — during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Smith has long aligned herself with those questioning the mainstream science approach to the pandemic.

She previously endorsed debunked treatments, such as ivermectin and hydroxychloroquine, and embraced fringe views of the pandemic such as the Great Barrington Declaration, which calls for protecting the elderly and frail but otherwise letting COVID-19 run free to build up herd immunity.

Manning, like Smith, has publicly questioned the COVID restrictions. He has said the rules affected the long-term mental and physical health of Canadians while eroding their Charter rights.

This report by The Canadian Press was first published Jan. 25, 2023.

Dean Bennett, The Canadian Press

CANADA

COVID-19 misinformation cost at least 2,800 lives and $300M, new report says

Story by Darren Major • CBC

The spread of COVID-19 misinformation in Canada cost at least 2,800 lives and $300 million in hospital expenses over nine months of the pandemic, according to estimates in a new report out Thursday.

The report — released by the Council of Canadian Academies (CCA), an independent research organization that receives federal funding — examined how misinformation affected COVID infections, hospitalizations and deaths between March and November of 2021.

The authors suggest that misinformation contributed to vaccine hesitancy for 2.3 million Canadians. Had more people been willing to roll up their sleeves when a vaccine was first available to them, Canada could have seen roughly 200,000 fewer COVID cases and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations, the report says.

Alex Himelfarb, chair of the expert panel that wrote the report, said that its estimates are very conservative because it only examined a nine-month period of the pandemic.

"It's pretty clear that tens of thousands of hospitalizations did occur because of misinformation," Himelfarb told reporters. "We are confident that those are conservative estimates."

Himelfarb also said the $300 million estimate covers only hospital costs — the study didn't include indirect costs associated with factors such as delayed elective surgeries and lost wages.

A number of studies have found that getting vaccinated can reduce the risk of COVID infection and hospitalization. But only 80 per cent of Canadians have been fully vaccinated, according to the latest data from Health Canada.

The CCA report defines two groups of vaccine-hesitant individuals: those who were reluctant to get a shot and those who refused. It says that reluctant individuals expressed concerns about vaccines in general and questioned the speed with which COVID vaccines were developed.

Vaccine refusers, on the other hand, were more likely to believe that the pandemic is a hoax or greatly exaggerated, the report says.


A COVID-19 vaccine clinic for children age five to 11 at École des Belles-Rives elementary school in Gatineau, Que. on Nov. 29, 2021.© Jacques Corriveau/Radio-Canada

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Beyond the health impacts, misinformation is depriving people of their right to be informed, said Stephan Lewandowsky, a professor at the University of Bristol's School of Psychological Science in the U.K. and one of the report's authors.

"In a democracy, the public should be able to understand the risks we're facing … and act on that basis," he said. "But if you're drenched in misinformation … then you're distorting the public's ability — and you're denying people the right — to be informed about the risks they're facing."

The report says misinformation relies on simple messages meant to evoke emotional reactions. It says misinformation is often presented as coming from a credible source, such as a scientific publication.

Ideology can play a role: authors

The authors also suggest that misinformation can be driven by someone's personal worldview, ideology or political identity.

"Denial of collective action problems is going to be very [prevalent] among people who don't like collective action," Himelfarb said, noting that misinformation can flow into political messaging.

"When misinformation becomes tied up with identity and ideology, political leaders will often look to misinformation as a means of building their coalition," he said. He did not point to any single politician.

People's Party of Canada Leader Maxime Bernier, a vocal opponent of COVID-19 public health restrictions and vaccine passports, appeared to unify a portion of the electorate that views pandemic policies as government overreach when he finished with roughly five per cent of the vote in the 2021 election.

Lewandowsky said social media can contribute to the spread of misinformation, but policies to counter such misinformation — such as requiring labels on inaccurate information — could help.

Himelfarb said it's important to balance tackling misinformation with freedom of expression.

"Finding that sweet spot is a challenge," he said.

Lewandowsky said one way to strike a balance would be to make sure reliable information is more widely available and to give people tools to identify misinformation.

"The people who do misinform us have a certain repertoire of rhetorical techniques … and we can identify those," he said.

COVID misinformation may have caused thousands of deaths in Canada: report

Story by Sharon Kirkey • National Post

A protest against COVID-19 vaccine passports and mandatory vaccinations in Vancouver on September 1, 2021. 

Beliefs that COVID-19 is exaggerated or an outright hoax, that vaccines can alter a person’s DNA or cause other “covered-up problems” cost Canada an estimated 2,800 lives and thousands of hospitalizations over nine months of the pandemic, according to a new report.

The estimates, based on models, are conservative, the authors said, because they don’t capture all the “flow-on consequences” of misinformation, such as postponed surgeries, doctors’ billings, the cost of treating long COVID or “the social unrest and moral injury to healthcare workers.”

“Misinformation is an urgent societal concern that affects us all,” reads the expert panel report from the Council of Canadian Academies, the latest group to raise alarms over an “infodemic” of falsehoods that spread as widely and rapidly as COVID-19.

According to the far-ranging report, between March and November 2021, misinformation helped sway an estimated 2.4 million people in Canada to delay or refuse to get vaccinated against COVID. Had they been vaccinated as soon as they became eligible, by the end of November 2021, there would have been nearly 200,000 fewer cases of COVID and 13,000 fewer hospitalizations.

Who or what is to blame? A “perfect storm of actors,” Alex Himelfarb, the expert panel’s chair, told a media briefing Wednesday.

They include bad-faith actors on social media; conspiracy theories that offer up something, or someone to blame; the politicization of misinformation; and a “multi-decades long decline in trust,” in one another and institutions that were seen in the past to be reliable sources of information, Himelfarab said.

“Myth and misperception, lies and deception are not new — they’re probably as old as human communication,” said Himelfarb, a former Clerk of the Privy Council and professor of sociology at the University of New Brunswick.

“But something different is afoot,” he said. Pundits have labelled ours a “post-truth” era, he said, “where the very idea of truth seems to be under attack, and where misinformation is tied in with ideology and identity and arouses great passions.”

As part of their report, Fault Lines, the 13-member panel set out to estimate the effects of COVID-19 vaccine hesitancy. How much faster would uptake have been if there was no misinformation? What did it mean for infections and deaths?

They reviewed peer-reviewed publications, government information and statistics and media reports. They also commissioned a model, plugging in “real world” data on the number of vaccinations, cases, ICU visits and deaths between March 1 and Nov. 30, 2021.

The model tracked everyone aged 12 and older over two waves of COVID.

It also drew on data from an Abacus survey at the time that found that 14 per cent of adult Canadians were either vaccine-reluctant (seven per cent) or vaccine-refusers (seven per cent.)

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Reluctant people reported lower trust in government, preferred to avoid vaccines in general and questioned how quickly COVID-19 vaccines were produced and approved.

Among the vaccine refusers, 85 per cent believed that vaccine harms are “covered-up” and 73 per cent believed COVID is fake or overblown.

Overall, the survey suggested that 2.1 million Canadians agreed with COVID misinformation beliefs.

The panel then looked at different hypothetical scenarios, including what happens to COVID vaccination rates and case numbers if the proportion of people who believed COVID is a hoax or vaccines caused hidden dangers were vaccinated as soon as they became eligible.

According to their analysis, if those who believed COVID was a hoax had been vaccinated once eligible, over 2.3 million additional people in Canada would have been vaccinated, resulting in roughly 198,000 fewer cases, 13,000 fewer hospitalizations, 3,500 fewer people needing intensive care, $300 million saved in hospital costs and 2,800 fewer deaths.

The report doesn’t contain recommendations. The CCA’s reports don’t, by design. The goal is to inform policy, not to direct government, a spokesperson said.

But misinformation matters, Himelfarb said, because an “abundance of evidence” shows it causes preventable illness, preventable death and makes people “vulnerable to financial exploitation.”

It also holds. “It’s sticky,” he said. An Abacus poll in June 2021 found that 19 per cent of 1,500 adults surveyed, the equivalent of 5.6 million adults, believe “COVID vaccines have killed many people which has been covered up.” Eleven per cent believed the vaccines contain secret chips “designed to monitor and control human behavior.”

But scientific research is also fallible, the panel report notes. “Misinformation can be the product of systemic failures in science and medicine, and in the communication of scientific knowledge and research findings,” it reads. Finding that don’t replicate and weak methodologies are among the reasons why “no one study can be treated as definitive.”

Some claims represented initially as “information,” become “misinformation” as new knowledge emerges, the report said.

Maya Goldenberg, a University of Guleph philosophy professor and expert in vaccine hesitancy, said public institutions that are supposed to keep the public safe have a responsibility to foster and maintain trust. “A lot of people felt abandoned during this pandemic — public outreach did not reach them; their needs were not met — and the response was to turn away and reject all public health communications, and even to respond and protest angrily,” Goldenberg said.

The panel is committed to the freedom of expression, Himelfarb said. But things can be done to combat misinformation, he said.

Media platforms could be more transparent “about the algorithms that may actually promote misinformation,” because misinformation gets traffic. More could be done to help people better “identify and reject” misinformation, he said, and promote digital literacy and critical thinking, starting with young school-age kids. Leaders must learn how to better communicate health and science information, including finding “trusted messengers” who can reach diverse communities and be open about uncertainty.

Like every model, the model is only as good as the data that went into it, Himelfarb said. But he said the estimates are conservative, they only focus on the two waves of COVID before Omicron emerged and they only looked at a narrow range of costs.

“It’s pretty clear that tens of thousands of hospitalizations did occur because of misinformation,” he said.

The non-partisan panel tried deliberately to stay out of politics. But it matters when political leaders “endorse (and) further promote misinformation,” Himelfarb said. “It accelerates the spread, it matters, it makes it harder to correct.”

“When it becomes tied up with identity and ideology, political leaders will often look to misinformation as a mean of building their coalition. It has become a tool in politics,” he said, and a threat to democracy.

Panel member Timothy Caulfield said the “grim data” were disappointing, but not surprising. “Canada has a reputation of being perhaps a little bit more removed from the polarizing discourse that permeates our neighbour to the south,” said Caulfield, a University of Alberta professor of health law and policy.

“But as we’ve seen over the past three years, we’re not immune to the harms that misinformation brings.”

Canada considering sending 4 Leopard tanks to Ukraine: sources

Story by Peter Zimonjic • Yesterday - CBC

Canada is considering contributing four Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, senior sources told CBC News — but no decision has been made.

The government could announce the donation of tanks as early as Thursday, the sources said.

CBC News is not identifying the confidential sources because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

One source said Canada is likely to send Ukraine the A4 variant of the tank — the oldest in the Canadian military's inventory. Canada bought the A4s from the Netherlands during the Afghan war.

The Globe and Mail first reported the number of tanks that Canada may send to Ukraine's war effort.

Earlier Wednesday, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said his government will provide more support to Ukraine but declined to join allies in announcing a donation of German-made tanks to fend off Russian forces.

One military expert said Germany's announcement that it's sending Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine puts pressure on Trudeau to follow suit.
 
"We will continue to be there to give whatever support we can to Ukraine," Trudeau said. "I won't be making an announcement today but I can tell you we're looking very, very closely at what more we can do to support Ukraine."

Trudeau made the remarks in Hamilton, Ont., where he is attending a cabinet retreat in advance of the return of Parliament.

For weeks, Ukraine has been asking its allies to supply it with up to 300 German-made Leopard 2 battle tanks. Several allies have those tanks in their inventories but were unable to donate them unless Germany gave its approval for the vehicles to be transferred to a third party.

Earlier Wednesday, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz announced that his country would provide Ukraine with 14 Leopard 2 tanks from his own military.

German Defence Minister Boris Pistorius said that Germany advised several allies of its plan ahead of the announcement, including Canada.

"Germany will always be at the forefront when it comes to supporting Ukraine," Scholz said later in an address to lawmakers in the German federal parliament.

Allies step up

Germany made the announcement on the same day U.S. President Joe Biden told reporters in Washington that the United States will send 31 M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.

Germany, which was reluctant to incur Russia's wrath alone by sending tanks, had said the Leopards would not be sent unless the U.S. put its Abrams on the table.

The U.K. announced last week that it would send 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine.

Related video: Peter MacKay calls on Trudeau government to send tanks to Ukraine (cbc.ca)
Duration 8:18
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cbc.ca Tanks for Ukraine a 'significant' move, says analyst
7:42


Reuters reported Wednesday that Norway's defence minister announced his country also would donate Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, joining Poland, Finland, Spain and the Netherlands.

One of the old Soviet armoured vehicles Ukrainian soldiers are using in the field.© Stephanie Jenzer/CBC News

Walter Dorn, a professor of defence studies at the Royal Military College, said the donations announced by other countries ramped up the pressure on Canada to do the same.

"I think there will be pressure from the United States for Canada to pony up on the Leopard-2 tanks, because Leopard-2s will be the mainstay of the Ukrainian tank forces," he said.

Dorn said that the Abrams tanks are very different from the Leopard-2 tanks and allies likely want Ukraine to have a more uniform fleet of vehicles to ensure they can be supported with parts and repairs on the battlefield.

Maintenance challenges

Dorn said the German announcement is significant because it allows Ukraine to counter Russian advances into Ukraine and launch attacks of its own.

"It's potentially a game-changer because it adds much more punch to the Ukrainian forces," Dorn told CBC News. "They are an entire generation better.

"The Western weapons are heavier, they've got better armour, they can pack more punch, they have the capacity to take territory more easily. Really, the [Russian] T-72s can't stand a chance against these more modern weapons."

Dorn said that while Ukraine has asked for 300 tanks, having just 100 of these vehicles would make a significant difference on the battlefield.

Germany said the tanks will not be battle-ready for several months.

Dorn said it will take time to train crews and build the maintenance facilities required to keep the tanks operational.

The Canadian Armed Forces has 112 Leopard 2s in its inventory. They include 82 designed for combat and 30 that are used for engineering purposes and recovering disabled vehicles. Many are not battle-ready because of maintenance issues.

According to a paper published last year by the Royal Military College, "the poor serviceability rate of the Leopard 2 main battle tanks is an endemic issue and a strategic-level concern since implementation."

The paper blamed the maintenance problems on a lack of infrastructure, technicians and spare parts.

Forces won't say how many tanks are battle-ready

Retired lieutenant-general and former Canadian Army commander Jean-Marc Lanthier said in an interview with the Canadian Press that any donation almost certainly will have to balance the needs of Ukraine against the potential impact on Canada's military.

"Getting rid of any tanks — because we have so few, and so few that are actively working — would have an immediate impact on the level of readiness of the Army," said Lanthier, who served as an armoured officer.

"Is that something that should stop us from sending tanks? I think we have a moral responsibility in terms of the immediacy of the requirements of the Ukrainian Armed Forces and the Ukrainian people. They are fighting a war. We are not."

Canada bought its Leopards from Germany during the war in Afghanistan. They are notionally divided into squadrons of 19 tanks each, with two squadrons in Edmonton and a third at CFB Gagetown, N.B. Most of the rest are at the armour training school in Gagetown.

"And normally you keep a bunch of them at a depot ready to be deployed, but that's not something we're doing necessarily because we don't have the numbers," said Lanthier.

Department of National Defence spokesperson Andrew McKelvey would not comment Wednesday on what percentage of the military's Leopard 2s are currently battle-ready, and how many are out of service for maintenance or other reasons.

"Tank maintenance is similar to aircraft maintenance, and the status of the fleet at any given moment depends on a comprehensive maintenance, repair and overhaul schedule, which is tied to specific requirements for training or operational employment," he said.

"For operational security reasons, we cannot specify how many Leopard 2s are being maintained at any given time or give indication of their maintenance schedule."

The question facing the government will be whether the benefit of sending tanks to Ukraine outweighs the impact on the military, Lanthier said. If it does, another question will be whether those tanks would be replaced — and if so, how quickly.

Antidepressants could fuel the rise of superbugs, lab dish study suggests

Story by Nicoletta Lanese • 8h ago

Antidepressants may drive bacteria to develop resistance against antibiotics, despite being a completely different class of drugs, a new study finds.


Antidepressants can spur the development of antibiotic resistance in bacteria in lab dishes.© Rodolfo Parulan Jr. via Getty Images

"Even after a few days exposure, bacteria develop drug resistance, not only against one but multiple antibiotics," Jianhua Guo, the study's senior author and a professor at the University of Queensland's Australian Centre for Water and Environmental Biotechnology, told Nature magazine.

This effect was only observed in petri dishes, so more research is needed to show whether antidepressants help fuel the rise of superbugs in the environment or the human body, experts told Nature.

In the study, published Monday (Jan. 23) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Guo and his colleagues exposed the bacterium Escherichia coli to different doses of five common antidepressants: sertraline (Zoloft), duloxetine (Cymbalta), bupropion (Wellbutrin), escitalopram (Lexapro) and agomelatine (Valdoxan). Throughout the two-month exposure period, the team tested the bacteria's susceptibility to 13 antibiotics, representing six classes of the drugs.

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All the antidepressants pushed the E. coli to develop antibiotic resistance within the exposure window, but sertraline and duloxetine had the most pronounced effects and generated the highest ratio of resistant bacterial cells to normal cells, the researchers reported. Guo's lab previously found that antidepressants can kill or slow the growth of certain bacteria; under this stress, the bacteria may adapt strategies to overcome the drugs, and subsequently, they also fare better against antibiotics, Nature reported.

The higher the dose of antidepressant, the faster the E. coli developed resistance, and the more classes of antibiotics they came to resist within the two months. Notably, bacteria raised in well-oxygenated lab dishes gained resistance faster than those in poorly oxygenated dishes; the latter experiments may better represent the environment of the human intestine, where E. coli typically grows in the body.

The resistant cells produced toxic molecules called "reactive oxygen species;" activated pumps that help them push antibiotics out of their membranes; and mutated faster than normal E. coli, which raised their chances of acquiring drug-resistant gene variants. Sertraline also prompted bacterial cells to swap genes with one another, a key process in the spread of antibiotic resistance, Nature reported.

More research is needed to know whether antidepressants exert these effects on bacteria in the human body. "Strikingly, the antidepressants sertraline and duloxetine at clinically relevant concentrations in colon (e.g., 50 mg/L) caused an effect after only 1 d of exposure," the researchers reported; in other words, there may be high enough concentrations of the drugs in the human gut to drive resistance.

It's less clear whether antidepressants could spur these effects in wastewater, where antidepressants can be detected in lower concentrations. Read more in Nature.