Friday Takeaway: Counting down 5 things we learned this week

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions.

⇒ Issue #200 (In numerology, 200 will always stand for coexistence.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/24: 180,076,271*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/24: 3,902,018*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/24: 1,419,198*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/24: 26,162*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/24: 34,174,571*

June 24, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. Today the CurveFlattener presents a sneak peek of the Friday Takeaway, Chronicle's newest e-newsletter. Today and on subsequent Fridays, we'll count down five things we learned. The list below comes from the past 500 days of lockdown (and from assembling the previous 199 issues of the CurveFlattener.) In this edition, Chronicle’s Mitch Shannon offers "News Youse Can Use," curated from the past week’s organized assault on our collective senses and sensibilities.

5. The undeniable importance of companion animals

Beginning with the very first issue of the CurveFlattener, we’ve made a point of including updates on our editors’ pets, complete with photos. This series began with a pic of Kylie Rebernik’s best friend Snowy, and we’ll wrap up the CurveFlattener by featuring the same lovely feline face (left.) I’m still struck by how animals became a kind of lifeline for so many of us during this pandemic, including several previously pet-averse humans. My next-door neighbour, a somewhat taciturn heart surgeon, welcomed a small, furry person into his home late last year, a ginger toy poodle named Milo, who arrived directly from a kennel in South Korea at an obscene expense. Once, this unusual back-story might have invited some tsk-tsking around the block. Still, Milo is a welcome distraction from lockdown life here in Swansea, and he is invited to go ahead and shit on our lawn any time he deems it appropriate.

4. A bluffer's guide to how to be human: Reading for pleasure

Unlike Kylie, one of my best friends is not a cat, but a science guy, a doctor who once bragged to me that he has never read a work of fiction in his life. I challenged the assertion, and he stuck by his statement. What about assigned reading in high school English classes, I queried. Never did it, he replied. What about the dirty novels we’d all pass around when we were kids? Well, okay, he conceded; maybe he looked at those. My friend would disagree, but one of the positive things about the pandemic was the opportunity it provided to get around to reading some non-required books that have been collecting dust for too long. There’s one special treat I’ve been saving, and I’m going to enjoy it this weekend: a copy of an obscure 1971 Donald E. Westlake novel, I Gave at the Office, purchased in Seattle five years ago and never started. It’s time now. I feel sorry for the science guys who won’t take the occasion to enjoy this stuff prized by English majors. They’re missing a lot.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Ronnie Miller, boss of Roche Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

3. Curve-flatteners' Masterclass: How to eat lunch at home every day for 16 months

I’ve got happy memories of enjoying long, not especially productive restaurant meals with clients and friends. I’m certain I can find my way back to Les Deux Magots on Place Saint-Germain-des-Prés (left) if and when the time comes. I’ve also logged 16 months between visits to the closest Subway outpost near our office. Therefore, I cannot take a position on the recent controversy over whether their tuna sandwich actually contains any tuna. But one surprising consequence of the quarantine is the discovery that those President’s Choice frozen cod bites are actually pretty good if you have the patience to heat them thoroughly in the toaster oven. Power-users tip: Apply lemon wedge, if available. Share them with your spouse, and he or she might look at you with new admiration.

2. Everything requires care, maintenance, and periodic reinvention

That’s our prompt to introduce Chronicle’s two new e-newsletters. These will take the place of the CurveFlattener, beginning next month. Thursdays will now herald our “Women in Dermatology” newsletter, which will contain clinical and sociomedical items pertinent to female patients and the practitioners who treat them (as the title may imply.) 

And each Friday will offer “Chronicle's Friday Takeaway,” a curated list of five significant things our team learned during the week. If you received the CurveFlattener, both our new titles will begin to arrive in your inbox in a few weeks. Let us know if you like them, and please feel free to send along your ideas and suggestions.

1. You might see a McDonald’s drinking straw. He saw a medical breakthrough

Meet Dr. Ali Seifi (right). He's an internist and assistant professor at the University of Texas-San Antonio who took his kid to a Mcdonald's and ordered them both a McFlurry. So far, this will seem like an everyday occurrence in the Lone Star State. Then, Junior reached for a straw, the way McFlurry drinkers will do, and something happened to catch Dr. Seifi’s eye. That was his eureka! moment. From that everyday incident came the inspiration for a new medical device intended to cure – wait for this – hiccups. Dr. Seifi tells the Insider website: "For thousands of years, human beings, and all the mammals, they have hiccups, but nobody thinks that, 'Oh, this is a simple way you can stop the hiccup!'" With development dough from the Kickstarter crowd-funding site, he commercialized a medical device charmingly named HiccAway, which retails at US$14 on the company’s website. Dr. Seifi published a research letter on the science behind the HiccAway in the journal Complementary and Alternative Medicine. 

Chronicle's Friday Takeaway is published by Chronicle Companies: 555 Burnhamthorpe Road Suite 306, Toronto, Ont. M9C 2Y3. U.S. office: 701 Ellicott Street, Buffalo, NY 14203.  Mitchell Shannon, Publisher; R. Allan Ryan, Editorial Director; John Evans, Senior Editor; Kylie Rebernik, Jeremy Visser, Katherine Brenders, Editors; Cristela Tello Ruiz, Business Development; Catherine Dusome, Operations Manager, Peggy Ahearn, Consultant. Content is copyright (c) 2021, Chronicle Information Resources Ltd., except as indicated. Interested in contributing to this newsletter or in learning more about Chronicle’s services? Write to us at health@chronicle.org

A Farewell to CurveFlattening (Part I)

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. Your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives is published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #199 (In numerology, 199 suggests ever-present humanitarian potential.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/23: 179,639,390*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/23: 3,892,872*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/123: 1,418,467*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/23: 26,144*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/23: 33,585,366*

June 23, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. It’s Chronicle publisher Mitch Shannon at the keyboard today. You’re currently eyeballing edition number 199 of this publication. As we divulged earlier, tomorrow’s newsletter, number 200, will be the last issue. (One thing you learn in the freshman class at the Famous Publishers’ School is that it’s always best to schedule your exit around a nice, round number.) 

The CurveFlattener archives will be preserved at http://curveflattener.chronicle.org for future historians to cluck their tongues over. This statement assumes that there will be a place in the days to come for historians, along with some form of future – and we’ve seen what happens when we assume, haven’t we? Along comes something very much like a global pandemic to make an ass of you and me.

So, following that theme, I’ll ask the question: Where were you, reader, on March 17, 2020? 

I can tell you exactly where I was: sitting in the parking lot of the Loblaw store on Burnhamthorpe Road, a couple of blocks from the Chronicle office. Along with most of the community, I had been trying to buy a supply of toilet paper, and the shelves were bare. I settled for a giant box of No Name coffee pods and a machine-assembled turkey sandwich, which I wound up eating in my car. I realized it was getting past three p.m., and I’d forgotten about lunch. 

And there I was in my Mini Cooper, watching the panic-buying through the windshield, while talking on the phone to a business acquaintance named Smith, for the first time. The call went on for more than an hour. We gabbed about every conceivable subject. It started with some blarney about the need to defer St. Patrick’s Day, and it ended with reminiscences of past jobs we’d both had in midtown Manhattan. It was our first, and thus far, only conversation and a classic example of two strangers finding dozens of things in common, forming a bond brought about through general anxiety. We both seemed to feel, as much as know, that something was on its way, and it wasn’t anything good.

On that day, the Ontario government declared a provincial emergency ordering the public to remain at home for 14 days. As the Chronicle group packed up what we needed from our workplace and dispersed, many of us wondered how we might possibly manage through the next two weeks. 

What emerged is that most of our team would thrive, and, speaking frankly, several would not. We quickly found a collective middle-ground. Creating this newsletter, which sprang to life on March 30, became the first of a series of new collaborations and shared exercises we undertook using digital tools. 

We’ve enjoyed sharing our experiences with you through this forum. We appreciate the supportive feedback we’ve received. Tomorrow, I’ll summarize what we’ve learned through this 16-month experiment in deadline-writing that we called CurveFlattening. And you’ll get a preview of our two new e-newsletters, which will arrive next month.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Ronnie Miller, boss of Roche Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/24/21

• Vaccination rates continue to accelerate in Canada and have reached just under half a million shots daily, but the trend reverses in the Lower 48. The Politico website reports the U.S. was averaging more than 2 million shots per day six weeks ago, but that pace has fallen by half. As demand falls, the remaining unvaccinated population is proving resistant to persuasion, and it appears the Biden administration will not reach its stated target of having 70% of adults fully vaccinated by July 4. This provides a complication for those who would like to see the Canada-U.S.A. border reopened for personal travel. Ottawa indicated resumption of overland travel to the U.S. might begin when 75% of Canadians have been fully vaccinated. That target will be achieved in early August at the current pace. However, certain regions of America appear susceptible to the next wave of the Delta variant. Texas and Florida, which have both fully re-opened, have full-vaccination rates of 39% and 44%, respectively, while Georgia has only 34% of its population double-dosed. (How persistent will this vaccine-hesitancy remain in the U.S.? See next item.)

Migrant workers, seafarers and inmates go to the back of the vaccine line. It’s not fair, but it is also not smart

 

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. Your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives is published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #198 (In numerology, 198 resonates with a relaxed acceptance of life as it is)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/18: 177,483,286*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/18: 3,843,421*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/18: 1,413,840*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/18: 26,004*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/18: 30,885,092*

June 18, 2021—It’s Friday, and welcome to a new edition of the Curve Flattener. Today, Editorial Director Allan Ryan brings you the latest news from Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula, where migrant farmworkers travel every year to perform most of the tender fruit harvesting labour. These workers, even though they enter the country through official documented channels have not been well-treated in many cases, with crowded bunkhouses leading to Covid-19 outbreaks in several areas of the province.

But now vaccines are finally starting to reach this group. In Windsor, Ont., over 5,000 temporary foreign workers were vaccinated with their first dose of Covid-19 vaccine from April 28th to May 6th, 2021) and at an outdoor pop-up clinic (May 20th and 21st, 2021), according to this report.

The Workplace Wellness for Agri-Food Workers Taskforce, a collaboration of 16 community partners, reports that over 130 farms scheduled vaccinations for their temporary foreign workers and agreed to coordinate transportation, provide educational materials and address vaccine confidence. Other partners in the vaccination program included the Migrant Worker Community Program, the Consulate of Mexico in Leamington, Ont., The Windsor-Essex Bilingual Legal Clinic, The Neighborhood Organization and the Temple la Buena Semilla.

Others who are just now starting to receive Covid vaccines include seafarers on the Great Lakes. This article says 50 members of the Seafarers International Union of Canada, out of a total membership of about 1,700, have been vaccinated in the past few weeks.

“It’s a start. It’s a slow start,” said Jim Given, president of the SIU. “It’s been a struggle, but at least we see something happening, which is more than what we had before.” At the end of April, the union threatened that it would not crew ships unless the mariners were vaccinated. The vaccinations have proceeded at various Canadian ports on the Great Lakes, subject to the conditions of the local health authority.

The story is not as promising in jails and detention centres in Ontario and Nova Scotia, where, despite housing an at-risk population, some jails didn't offer prisoners vaccines until May, months after the vaccine was offered to the general public.

According to this report, more than 6,700 prisoners across Canada have tested positive for Covid-19—a figure that is 10 times greater than reported by CBC News one year ago, after the first wave of the pandemic. The recent CBC analysis of cumulative cases reported between March 2020 and June 2021, disclosed an average of 268 out of every 1,000 prisoners in provincial jails tested positive for Covid-19. In federal prisons, it's around 126 infected for every 1,000.

"We are a year-and-a-half into this. At this stage, they easily could have put in place safety measures, like rapid testing and proper protective equipment," one Ontario prisoner told the CBC. "If anyone gets Covid-19, it's the sole result of [the province] not ensuring we're safe."

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Ronnie Miller, boss of Roche Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/18/2021

• People who recover from mild Covid-19 are expected to produce antibodies for decades, according to this paper published in Nature. The researchers say that although viral variants could affect the ultimate degree of protection, antibodies produced by bone marrow plasma cells are long-lasting. The researchers note this finding also has implications for Covid-19 vaccines, suggesting they will also be long-lasting.
  

Children account for one-quarter of new Covid cases in one First Nations community

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. Your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives is published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #197 (In numerology, 197 stands for self-determination and humanitarianism)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/17: 177,138,102*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/17: 3,835,167*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/17: 1,412,737*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/17: 25,992*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/17: 30,701,255*

June 17, 2021—Good day, all you CurveFlatteners. Welcome to the next-to-last Thursday edition of the CurveFlattener. It's assistant editor Kylie Rebernik putting the keyboard through its paces today. 

 

Not only is my trustee sidekick Snowy (above l.) helping me report today's news, but her new fur-sister, the lovely Indy-not-"Mindy" (above r.), is along for the ride. Treats will come later, ladies.

As the curve continues to be flattened, with Covid cases in Ontario hot-spots dropping and the province reporting only 384 cases yesterday (06-16-21), one of Ontario's most vulnerable communities is being hit the hardest, despite the low numbers. 

Of the 384 active Covid-19 cases, 232 in Kashechewan First Nation, an Indigenous community in northern Ontario. According to Indigenous Services Minister Marc Miller, one-quarter of all active Covid-19 cases in Ontario are from this isolated community of 2,000 with children (12 and up) making up most of the active Covid-19 cases. 

The reason that children are most affected, according to Miller and Dr. Tom Wong, chief medical officer of public health at Indigenous Services Canada, is due to Canada's current age restrictions for vaccination. A majority of the Covid-19 cases in Kashechewan are in those who are not vaccinated yet. And although this means the vaccine works, it is still devastating to this small community, with the only grocery store being closed due to the outbreak. However, the racial disparities of Covid-19 are nothing new.

According to an article published in The Lancet (Feb. 01, 2021), "In Ontario, migrants represent just over 25% of the population but 43.5% of Covid-19 cases, mostly racialized visible minorities." 

StatsCan reports that "Covid-19 mortality rates were higher in Canadian neighbourhoods with a higher proportion of population groups designated as visible minorities."

Although the racial disparities in healthcare have always been present, Covid-19 has further exposed the gaps in the Canadian healthcare system, highlighting the need for change.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Ronnie Miller, boss of Roche Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/17/2021

• Covid-19 detected in Canada's wastewater: Scientists in Ottawa are monitoring wastewater as detected levels have changed since early June. According to Robert Delatolla, co-lead investigator of Ottawa's Covid-19 wastewater program, "the total concentration of that little genome, that RNA fragment that we tested in the wastewater, is going up. It coincided, unfortunately, with the reopening." Data has suggested that the Covid-19 levels in wastewater have been trending upward following a period of decline before reopening. 

We're finally envisioning a future beyond CurveFlattening

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #196 (In numerology, 196 is analytic and introspective. So, we'll go with that)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/11: 174,893,444*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/11: 3,774,138*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/11: 1,405,906*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/11: 25,849*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/11: 27,729,564*

June 11, 2021—Good morning, you CurveFlatteners. It’s the end of yet one more week of social isolation, and it's starting to feel like the beginning of a different epoch. Here in Ontario, Canada, extended lockdown measures are lifting today. Neighbouring Quebec and much of the U.S.A. have already resumed usual routines. Normalcy is returning in the form of outdoor restaurant dining, shop re-openings, and some public gatherings.

From the observation deck, it’s Mitch Shannon reporting today. On a personal note, this Monday I became part of an elite club: one of the 9.1% of the population known as FVCs, or fully vaccinated Canadians. On behalf of the other 3,421,995 hosers in this posse, allow me to comment: You ain’t going to like the side-effects much. But it nevertheless beats the heck out of a stay in the ICU.

As it becomes possible to realistically imagine getting on with life after Covid, some of the behaviours we have assumed during the past 15 or 16 months will begin to seem – what is the word? – no longer required. Outmoded, in fact.

That brings me to the subject of this newsletter. Chronicle launched this publication back in March 2020 as a means of staying in touch with our community of life sciences professionals during the pandemic. Honestly, we had no clue that circumstances would require us to carry on with this project for what has turned out to be a sustained period: long enough to have earned a graduate degree in some worthwhile field, such as Applied Pet  Counselling, or Practical Semiotics for the Non-semiotician.

Now, as we approach a new phase, the time has arrived to shut this sucker down. Therefore, issue number 200, which will appear on June 25, will be the last CurveFlattener – hopefully, the last in our lifetime. We’re planning to declare that the curve has been flattened and then move on.

There will be plenty of opportunities ahead to determine what exactly we’ve all been through, what we’ve learned, and what we can do better in preparation for the next set of challenges (and they will occur.) For now, let’s be grateful that we endured and that we shared this historical experience. It isn’t over yet. There will be no return to normalcy for the 26,000 Canadian families who lost a loved one during this crisis. And in the aftermath of 3.8 million casualties among our global human family, a number that’s sadly still growing, there will be social, economic, and health consequences that will follow. We will feel the repercussions in all aspects of our lives.

But, look. We are the lucky ones. We get to carry on. As for me and my house, we have four more editions of CurveFlattener to complete during the next two weeks before we turn off the virtual printing press. And we really are not going anywhere, because Chronicle is about to launch two exciting new e-newsletters in July, which we’ll tell you about in the weeks ahead. Meanwhile, there is still the day’s Covid news to serve up, and here it is.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Dr. Len Walt, VP Medical at SSI Strategy. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/11/2021

• Step right up: As marketers, we're familiar with the term “gamification.” And you’ve certainly heard the expression, “Playing games with your life.” However, it comes as a mild surprise that decisions formed by many Americans regarding whether or not they get a Covid vaccine may come down to the chance to win a prize. A recent article in Wired magazine examines why so many of the vaccine-hesitant can’t be persuaded by health science but have literally rolled up their sleeves in return for incentives such as lottery tickets, free beer and frequent-flyer miles. Ashby Monk, executive director of the Stanford Global Projects Center, tells the magazine’s Adam Rogers: “A fully rational economist from Chicago can’t figure out why people buy lottery tickets. It’s the same thing happening here. The expected value that people assign to the potential to win $1 million is far higher than the cost to the state.”
  

Is Canada’s Covid-19 Alert app a failure? You be the judge

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #195 (In numerology, 195 symbolizes the end of certain stages in your life.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/10: 174,462,353*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/10: 3,759,101*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/10: 1,404,443*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/10: 25,816*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/10: 27,257,774*

June 10, 2021—It’s Thursday, and welcome to a new edition of the CurveFlattener. Today, Editorial Director Allan Ryan brings you the latest news from the secret Chronicle base camp deep in the Effingham Short Hills of Ontario’s Niagara Peninsula. 

The Canadian federal government launched the Covid-19 Alert app with much fanfare on July 31, 2020. The app was designed to notify Canadians whenever they spent more than 15 minutes within a two-metre vicinity of someone who had been diagnosed with Covid-19 in the previous two weeks. 

Based on Bluetooth technology, the app's value was in doubt from the outset due to a variety of complicating factors. One, both parties need to have downloaded and installed the app on their mobile phones. Two, anyone with a positive Covid-19 test had to acknowledge that positive test on the app on their phone.  

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said at the time of the app launch that a 50% acceptance rate was necessary for the program to be effective. Doubts about reaching that lofty percentage circulated when B.C., Alberta, Nunavut and the Yukon did not even sign on to the program. Still, the feds shrugged and forged ahead, fashioning a budget of $16 million for the promotion of the app.

But now, more than 10 months after its launch, the reviews of the Covid-19 Alert app are mixed. It turns out that the percentage of mobile phone users who downloaded the app was only about 19%, less than half Trudeau’s goal of 50%. Even more concerning, fewer than 2% of people with coronavirus let the app know they had tested positive.

According to this CTV report, the app has been downloaded 6,548,411 times, and 33,168 one-time keys have been entered to trigger notifications as of May 25.

Dr. Colin Furness, an infection control epidemiologist in Toronto, says those numbers are “ludicrously” low but not shocking given the app's design.

“[The Covid-19 Alert app] is so designed for privacy, it creates a bit of a creepy feel to it and also if you get an alert…it doesn’t tell you when you were exposed, it doesn’t tell you when to get tested, all it does it create stress, it’s basically an alarm that says be stressed right now.”

Dr. Furness said the federal government should focus on helping provinces improve testing and contact tracing rather than sinking any more funds into the Covid Alert app.

“When we only see a small percentage, in this case under 10 per cent, under five per cent, of the population using these apps, they’re essentially completely useless,” Dr. Craig Jenne, an infectious disease specialist at the University of Calgary, told Global News.

In Saskatchewan, just over one in 20 people who tested positive for Covid-19 used the Alert app.

“That’s pretty abysmal, isn’t it? That’s a failure of the app itself,” said Johnson Shoyama Graduate School of Public Policy professor Dr. Tarun Katapally in this Star Phoenix article. 

“What else can we say about that?”

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Dr. Len Walt, VP Medical at SSI Strategy. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma.

COVID CHRONICLE 06/10/2021

• In a study that examined almost 47,000 U.S. healthcare workers, researchers at the Cleveland Clinic have determined the mRNA Covid-19 vaccines (Moderna and Pfizer-BioNTech) are 97% protective. The researchers also found that just one vaccine dose was 89.2% effective within just seven days. They are hopeful that this research on the efficacy of the vaccines will help to allay fears and vaccine hesitancy among some groups of people.
  

School's out. So, is this one more Covid hardship, or part of a larger scheme?

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here to keep on informing you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. 

⇒ Issue #194 (In numerology, 194 represents well-deserved new beginnings.)
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 06/04: 172,191,804*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 06/04: 3,702,736*
⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 06/04: 1,395,336*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 06/04: 25,627*
⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 06/04: 24,933,524*

June 4, 2021—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. It's Kylie Rebernik here behind the keyboard with your end-o'-week update. 

Parents across Ontario gave a collective groan this week as the province's premier, Doug Ford, announced on Wednesday (06/02) that students would not be returning to class for the last three weeks of school. His announcement came a week after seeking advice from different Ontario organizations and experts. According to CBC News, experts included public health officials and teachers' unions. Experts could not guarantee that Covid-19 cases would not spike, with modelling showing the possible increase in cases by six to 11%.

Premier Ford's decision not to send kids back to school was met with mixed reviews, with many critics slamming his choice, including provincial NDP Leader Andrea Horwath. She noted that Ontario is the only province without children in classrooms, and she opined, "There is a reason for that. It's not an accident. The government walked us right into the third wave, ignoring the advice of experts...kids in the classroom were supposed to come first. That was what was supposed to be the priority."

Ms. Horwath was not the only critic who made a statement expressing disappointment with Premier Ford's decision. The Children's Health Coalition said, "As leaders in children's health, we are deeply disappointed that Ontario has not acted upon the broad consensus for a regional re-opening of in-person learning. This consensus included children's healthcare, public health, scientific experts and teachers' organizations."

This is the part of this newsletter where I disclose that while I don't have any kids, my partner is an Ontario teacher. Therefore, I have my conflicts of interest and my biases to make clear. So please weigh that when I say that with Ontario being the only province not have kids back in class, you have to wonder if keeping children home is part of what some suspect is Premier Ford's scheme to keep virtual learning permanent. Please discuss this among yourselves. In the words of Alice Cooper, school's out for summer.

On an unrelated note, and further to Publisher Mitch Shannon's prediction that today will bring cat photos, here is my best friend Snowball, seen hanging out in a box, like the tiny princess she is. 

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Brigitte Sonier Ferguson of the Atlantic Cancer Research Institute. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 06/04/2021

• Is a fourth wave coming? Canadian experts say that vaccinating 90% of eligible Canadians against Covid-19 might be the only way to tip the scale and slow the possible fourth wave of more infectious Covid variants. Currently, the goal of people vaccinated is 75%. When this goal is reached, the more restrictive public health measures will be removed. However, experts say this is not good enough, and the threshold needs to be increased to at least 90% with modelling that shows that the risk of a more deadly fourth wave is significantly reduced by increasing the threshold.