We are smashing it Canada!

Three hundred and eighteen cases today in Ontario today; a slow but gradual decline but still a decline.

Will we get to zero? Maybe but, maybe not. Will we get to 80 % or more people in the country double vaccinated? You bet we will and that, my friends, is what counts. COVID-19 may be with us for a long time to come but we will be protected by vaccines from both death and serious illness. The variants may continue to mutate, shift and change as variants do, but the vaccinated will move towards a normal life with no restrictions. We may get a mild version of COVID-19. We may need to isolate if we do and we may need to get a COVID booster shot at intervals. That may be the new normal but our lives will return to much the same as they were before for the most part. Canada, my home and native land, you are crushing it. Today's national rolling average for new cases of COVID-19 is 984 ( first time under 1,000 since mid- September). That's a 90 % drop from the height of the third wave in April. NINETY PERCENT in just 2 months. Hospitalizations have dropped 73% and the number of national daily deaths have dropped by 61 %. Three quarters of all Canadians have received one dose of vaccine and 20 % are fully vaccinated, a huge milestone we reached this weekend. THANK YOU CANADA! Some important facts: 1/ The Pfizer and Moderna vaccines are both mRNA vaccines. They are biologically the same and they produce the same antibody response making both equally effective. “These are interchangeable,” said Dr. Peter Jüni, director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table. If you had Pfizer for your first, take Moderna for your second if the Moderna is offered to you. Absolutely anything you have heard about Moderna being a lesser vaccine is absolutely, absolutely false. See that. I am so certain of this that I used 'absolutely' three times in this paragraph ( that's four actually)! 2/ If you received AZ as your first dose, the National Advisory Committee on Immunizations now recommends that if a mRNA vaccine is available, take it over a second AZ vaccine. This combination is proving to be more effective than any other combination of vaccines. That's right. More effective than two mRNA vaccines or two AZ vaccines. But......if you have already received two AZ vaccines, you have received an excellent vaccine serious that has a 30 - 40 % efficacy against the delta variant after the first dose and 60 -80% efficacy after the second plus you are at very low risk for serious illness or death after two doses. It's the same as Iphones. My Iphone 10 is by all intents and purposes, just as good as the new Iphone 13; fewer bells and whistles but the pictures it takes are amazing and it gets the job done. Get your second dose. That is key. YOU DO NOT HAVE ENOUGH PROTECTION AGAINST THE VARIANTS OF CONCERN, specifically the delta variant, if you have had only one vaccine. 3/ We are in the early days of resuming travel. There are no hard and fast rules from country to country yet but there might be. Look carefully at requirements from other countries before travel and be prepared for shifting rules. It may take time for countries to accept each others data around vaccines but we will catch up to one another. It will be very difficult for the USA, for example, to shut out people who have had the AZ vaccine since millions have received it in the UK, India and Canada. ( Bruce Springsteen took back his AZ rule for concert goers. Thanks for setting the world right, Bruce). 4/ Starting in early June, a new feature of the ArriveCan app will go live. The app will allow travellers to take a photo or upload a snapshot of their vaccine documentation before going through customs. Some may not feel comfortable with 'vaccine passports' but most experts agree, they will become necessary as countries open up their borders to travel. 5/ Cases of myocarditis in young people after vaccination with a mRNA vaccine may be a true side effect of these vaccines with a incident rate of 1:800,000. This is being followed very closely in many countries. At this point, if the side effect occurs it leads to chest pain, shortness of breath and a loss of exercise tolerance leading to a short hospital admission followed by a full recovery and it appears to be happening manly in young men between the ages of 19 and thirty. These vaccines are not without rare complications. We all know that now. No medical intervention is without risk. It is all about a risk-benefit analysis: do the rare, serious complications of the vaccines outweigh the illness and death caused by COVID-19 in the unvaccinated.....ABSOLUTELY, NOT! Signing off on this beautiful father's day. A happy day to you and yours whether your father is still with you or not. And blessings to all those who lost their dad in the last year. Heading out to my garden. It's a good one this year and.....the carrots are up!! Anne-Marie Please share For non-Facebook users, you can find this post here: https://braceletofhope.blogspot.com/ And if you'd like to help Bracelet of Hope work towards making sure that Lesotho has access to these vaccines, donate here: https://www.braceletofhope.ca/ways-to-