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Canada’s new COVID test rules: Targeting travellers from China will not stop globally circulating Omicron subvariant

Canada’s new COVID-19 testing requirement for travellers arriving from China is unlikely to prevent the spread of new subvariants.

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Cathay Pacific crew members who worked on a flight from Hong Kong arrive at Vancouver International Airport. Canada now requires air travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau to have a recent negative COVID-19 test result. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

In a throwback to January 2020, when the novel coronavirus SARS-CoV-2 began to be detected outside of China, many countries have again adopted measures targeted at travellers from China. These measures include flight restrictions, pre-departure testing and blanket entry bans.

As of Jan. 5, 2023, air travellers from China, Hong Kong and Macau over two years of age entering Canada must provide proof of a negative COVID test prior to departure.

This latest round of travel measures is in response to a dramatic surge in new coronavirus infections in China.

Following widespread protests against the prolonged zero COVID policy in November 2022, the Chinese government dismantled its strictest COVID-19 rules with remarkable speed. This included permission for Chinese nationals, who were largely banned from travelling abroad during the pandemic, to leave the country as of Jan. 8.

The abrupt change in direction, combined with low population immunity, led to a spike in infections and deaths. This unfolding tragedy, amid limited transparency and data sharing by the Chinese government, is stoking fears worldwide of a potential new variant of concern.

Although governments have justified the measures as science-based, consensus on effective border management during this pandemic remains elusive. Chinese officials were swift to dismiss the new measures as politically motivated. This is difficult to dispute given that previous measures targeting select countries were ineffective in preventing introduction of globally circulating new variants such as Omicron.

Effective use of testing as a travel measure

Available evidence shows that testing combined with other measures can reduce SARS-CoV-2 introduction from a high- to a low-incidence setting, if applied early, universally and stringently.

Testing must be aligned with the evolving science about the accuracy of different tests and the incubation periods of different variants. Testing must also be appropriately combined with other proven measures, notably quarantine and contact tracing, to prevent onward transmission.

A plane silhouetted against a gray sky
The introduction of pre-departure testing alone, for selected travellers arriving from targeted countries, is unlikely to reduce the spread of new variants. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Jonathan Hayward

The introduction of pre-departure testing alone, for selected travellers arriving from targeted countries, will not advance these goals for several reasons. By the time a variant or subvariant is identified as concerning, the volume of human mobility worldwide means it will have already spread to other countries not targeted.

The two known Omicron lineages driving the surge in infections among a low-immunity Chinese population — subvariants BA.5.2 and BF.7 — are described as “known and… already circulating in other countries” during much of 2022.

Should a new variant emerge, targeted measures like those now being applied would still have limited preventive effect. This is because global patterns of travel mean passengers mix with large numbers of other people along their journeys, often transiting through several countries.

Moreover, reliance on a single 48-hour pre-departure testing window overlooks variable incubation periods, false negatives, or new exposures during the time window prior to departure.

Finally, it makes little sense to test selected incoming travellers to slow introductions while lifting public health measures and allowing uncontrolled domestic transmission.

How should travel measures be used now?

Following the uncoordinated and often chaotic use of travel measures worldwide, our research at the Pandemics and Borders Project identifies lessons for their use three years into the COVID-19 pandemic.

First, there is unlikely to be capacity or political will to test travellers universally and repeatedly to prevent the introduction of any new variant of concern. Instead, randomized testing of all travellers, with genomic sequencing of positive test results, would provide critical surveillance data points at a time when the virus is rapidly evolving and moving about through travel.

This should be supplemented with testing of wastewater from, for example, airplanes and cruise ships. Testing of travellers for population and sentinel surveillance would support early warning of new variants of concern.

A child wearing a face mask and riding on a scooter passes by a worker in protective suit
A worker in protective suit on his way to collect COVID samples from the lockdown residents in Beijing, on Dec. 1, 2022. (AP Photo/Andy Wong)

Second, proven travel measures should be reframed as practices to enhance risk mitigation, enabling rather than restricting travel. Public health messaging should challenge populist-stoked narratives that, for example, wearing masks during a flight is a violation of individual liberty. Instead, appropriate use of testing, masking and vaccination enhances personal freedoms by creating a safer environment for all travellers.

Read more: I was ensnared in Canada's harsh and unscientific African travel ban

Finally, travel measures should be applied in ways that enhance — rather than deter — data sharing. The use of targeted travel restrictions against southern African countries in 2021 did little to slow the Omicron variant. The restrictions may have allowed politicians to reassure their constituents at home that something was being done but, in practice, reporting countries were simply punished for alerting the world to an already globally circulating variant.

Similarly, insufficient data sharing is currently cited as a key reason for travel measures targeting Chinese travellers. Rather than complying, however, the Chinese government has begun to retaliate by restricting short term visas for travellers from South Korea and Japan.

With the virus continuing to change and circulate globally in the foreseeable future, governments would do well not to repeat past mistakes. Instead they should seek ways to improve how decisions are made on the use of travel measures during the current and future public health emergencies.

Jennifer Fang is funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund and the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society receives funding from the BC Ministry of Health.

Julianne Piper is funded by the New Frontiers in Research Fund, the Canadian Institutes of Health Research for her work on the Pandemics and Borders project. The Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society receives funding from the BC Ministry of Health.

Kelley Lee receives funding from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research, New Frontiers in Research Fund, and Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada for work related to global health governance. The Pacific Institute on Pathogens, Pandemics and Society receives funding from the BC Ministry of Health.

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Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Authored by Jordan Schachtel via ‘The Dossier’…

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2 hours ago

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March 21, 2023

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Three Years To Slow The Spread: COVID Hysteria & The Creation Of A Never-Ending Crisis

Authored by Jordan Schachtel via 'The Dossier' Substack,

Last Thursday marked the three year anniversary of the infamous “15 Days To Slow The Spread” campaign.

By March 16, yours truly was already pretty fed up with both the governmental and societal “response” to what was being baselessly categorized as the worst pandemic in 100 years, despite zero statistical data supporting such a serious claim.

I was living in the Washington, D.C. Beltway at the time, and it was pretty much impossible to find a like-minded person within 50 miles who also wasn’t taking the bait. After I read about the news coming out of Wuhan in January, I spent much of the next couple weeks catching up to speed and reading about what a modern pandemic response was supposed to look like.

What surprised me most was that none of “the measures” were mentioned, and that these designated “experts” were nothing more than failed mathematicians, government doctors, and college professors who were more interested in policy via shoddy academic forecasting than observing reality.

Within days of continually hearing their yapping at White House pressers, It quickly became clear that the Deborah Birx’s and Anthony Fauci’s of the world were engaging in nothing more than a giant experiment. There was no an evidence-based approach to managing Covid whatsoever. These figures were leaning into the collective hysteria, and brandishing their credentials as Public Health Experts to demand top-down approaches to stamping out the WuFlu.

To put it bluntly, these longtime government bureaucrats had no idea what the f—k they were doing. Fauci and his cohorts were not established or reputable scientists, but authoritarians, charlatans, who had a decades-long track record of hackery and corruption. This Coronavirus Task Force did not have the collective intellect nor the wisdom to be making these broad brush decisions.

Back then, there were only literally a handful of people who attempted to raise awareness about the wave of tyranny, hysteria, and anti-science policies that were coming our way. There were so few of us back in March in 2020 that it was impossible to form any kind of significant structured resistance to the madness that was unfolding before us. These structures would later form, but not until the infrastructure for the highway to Covid hysteria hell had already been cemented.

Making matters worse was the reality that the vast majority of the population — friends, colleagues, peers and family included — agreed that dissenters were nothing more than reckless extremists, bioterrorists, Covid deniers, anti-science rabble rousers, and the like.

Yet we were right, and we had the evidence and data to prove it. There was no evidence to ever support such a heavy-handed series of government initiatives to “slow the spread.”

By March 16, 2020, data had already accumulated indicating that this contagion would be no more lethal than an influenza outbreak.

The February, 2020 outbreak on the Diamond Princess cruise ship provided a clear signal that the hysteria models provided by Bill Gates-funded and managed organizations were incredibly off base. Of the 3,711 people aboard the Diamond Princess, about 20% tested positive with Covid. The majority of those who tested positive had zero symptoms. By the time all passengers had disembarked from the vessel, there were 7 reported deaths on the ship, with the average age of this cohort being in the mid 80s, and it wasn’t even clear if these passengers died from or with Covid.

Despite the strange photos and videos coming out of Wuhan, China, there was no objective evidence of a once in a century disease approaching America’s shores, and the Diamond Princess outbreak made that clear.

Of course, it wasn’t the viral contagion that became the problem.

It was the hysteria contagion that brought out the worst qualities of much of the global ruling class, letting world leaders take off their proverbial masks in unison and reveal their true nature as power drunk madmen.

And even the more decent world leaders were swept up in the fear and mayhem, turning over the keys of government control to the supposed all-knowing Public Health Experts.

They quickly shuttered billions of lives and livelihoods, wreaking exponentially more havoc than a novel coronavirus ever could.

In the United States, 15 Days to Slow The Spread quickly became 30 Days To Slow The Spread. Somewhere along the way, the end date for “the measures” was removed from the equation entirely.

3 years later, there still isn’t an end date…

Anthony Fauci appeared on MSNBC Thursday morning and declared that Americans would need annual Covid boosters to compliment their Flu shots.

So much of the Covid hysteria era was driven by pseudoscience and outright nonsense, and yet, very few if any world leaders took it upon themselves to restore sanity in their domains. Now, unsurprisingly, so many elected officials who were complicit in this multi-billion person human tragedy won’t dare to reflect upon it.

In a 1775 letter from John Adams to his wife, Abigail, the American Founding Father wrote:

“Liberty once lost is lost forever. When the People once surrender their share in the Legislature, and their Right of defending the Limitations upon the Government, and of resisting every Encroachment upon them, they can never regain it.”

Covid hysteria and the 3 year anniversary of 15 Days To Slow The Spread serves as the beginning period of a permanent scar resulting from government power grabs and federal overreach.

While life is back to normal in most of the country, the Overton window of acceptable policy has slid even further in the direction of push-button tyranny. Hopefully, much of the world has awakened to the reality that most of the people in charge aren’t actually doing what’s best for their respective populations.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/21/2023 - 18:05

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Spread & Containment

Honey, the 3D print–I mean, dessert–is ready!

New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace…

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March 21, 2023

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New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace conventional cooking appliances such as ovens, stovetops, and microwaves. But will people want to use a 3D printer–even one as beautifully designed as a high-end coffee maker–on their kitchen counters to calibrate the exact micro- and macro-nutrients they need to stay healthy? Will 3D food printing improve the ways we nourish ourselves? What sorts of hurdles will need to be overcome to commercialize such a technology? 

Credit: Jonathan Blutinger/Columbia Engineering

New York, NY—March 21, 2023—Cooking devices that incorporate three-dimensional (3D) printers, lasers, or other software-driven processes may soon replace conventional cooking appliances such as ovens, stovetops, and microwaves. But will people want to use a 3D printer–even one as beautifully designed as a high-end coffee maker–on their kitchen counters to calibrate the exact micro- and macro-nutrients they need to stay healthy? Will 3D food printing improve the ways we nourish ourselves? What sorts of hurdles will need to be overcome to commercialize such a technology? 

Columbia mechanical engineers are working to address these challenges in Professor Hod Lipson’s Creative Machines Lab. In a new Perspective article published today by npj Science of Food, lead author Jonathan Blutinger, a postdoctoral fellow in the lab, explores these questions and more, discussing with Professor Christen Cooper, Pace University Nutrition and Dietetics, the benefits and drawbacks of 3D-printed food technology, how 3D-printed food compares to the “normal” food we eat, and the future landscape of our kitchens. 

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/AhVfU71tb2k 

Food printing technology has existed since Lipson’s lab first introduced it in 2005, but to date the technology has been limited to a small number of uncooked ingredients, resulting in what many perceive as less than appetizing dishes. Blutinger’s team broke away from this limitation by printing a dish comprising seven ingredients, cooked in situ using a laser. For the paper, the researchers designed a 3D-printing system that constructs cheesecake from edible food inks — including peanut butter, Nutella, and strawberry jam. The authors note that precision printing of multi-layered food items could produce more customizable foods, improve food safety, and enable users to control the nutrient content of meals more easily. 

“Because 3D food printing is still a nascent technology, it needs an ecosystem of supporting industries such as food cartridge manufacturers, downloadable recipe files, and an environment in which to create and share these recipes. Its customizability makes it particularly practical for the plant-based meat market, where texture and flavor need to be carefully formulated to mimic real meats,” Blutinger said.

To demonstrate the potential of 3D food printing, the team tested various cheesecake designs, consisting of seven key ingredients: graham cracker, peanut butter, Nutella, banana puree, strawberry jam, cherry drizzle, and frosting. They found that the most successful design used a graham cracker as the foundational ingredient for each layer of the cake. Peanut butter and Nutella proved to be best used as supporting layers that formed “pools” to hold the softer ingredients: banana and jam. Multi-ingredient designs evolved into multi-tiered structures that followed similar principles to building architectures; more structural elements were needed to support softer substrates for a successful multi-ingredient layered print.

“We have an enormous problem with the low-nutrient value of processed foods,” Cooper said. “3D food printing will still turn out processed foods, but perhaps the silver lining will be, for some people, better control and tailoring of nutrition–personalized nutrition. It may also be useful in making food more appealing to those with swallowing disorders by mimicking the shapes of real foods with the pureed texture foods that these patients–millions in the U.S. alone–require.”

Laser cooking and 3D food printing could allow chefs to localize flavors and textures on a millimeter scale to create new food experiences. People with dietary restrictions, parents of young children, nursing home dieticians, and athletes alike could find these personalized techniques very useful and convenient in planning meals. And, because the system uses high-energy targeted light for high-resolution tailored heating, cooking could become more cost-effective and more sustainable. 

“The study also highlights that printed food dishes will likely require novel ingredient compositions and structures, due to the different way by which the food is ‘assembled,’ ” said Lipson. “Much work is still needed to collect data, model, and optimize these processes.”

Blutinger added, “And, with more emphasis on food safety following the COVID-19 pandemic, food prepared with less human handling could lower the risk of foodborne illness and disease transmission. This seems like a win-win concept for all of us.”

About the Study

Journal: npj Science of Food

The paper is titled “THE FUTURE OF SOFTWARE-CONTROLLED COOKING.”

Authors of the paper are: Jonathan David Blutinger 1, Christen Cupples Cooper2 , Shravan Karthik1 , Alissa Tsai 1 , Noà Samarelli1 , Erika Storvick1 , Gabriel Seymour1 , Elise Liu1 , Yorán Meijers1,3 and Hod Lipson1
1 Department of Mechanical Engineering, Columbia Engineering
2 Department of Nutrition and Dietetics, Pace University
3 Department of Food Technology, Wageningen University, Netherlands.

The study was supported by NSF AI Institute for Dynamical Systems, grant 2112085, and by a grant from the Redefine Meat Ltd.

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest. 

###

LINKS:

Paper: https://www.nature.com/articles/s41538-023-00182-6
DOI: 10.1038/s41538-023-00182-6

VIDEO: https://youtu.be/AhVfU71tb2k 

PROJECT WEBSITE: 
https://www.creativemachineslab.com/laser-cooking.html
https://www.creativemachineslab.com/digital-food.html

###

Columbia Engineering

Since 1864, the Fu Foundation School of Engineering and Applied Science at Columbia University has been a resource to the world for major advances in human progress. Today, Columbia Engineering is the top engineering school in the Ivy League and New York City. As a nexus for high-impact research, the school convenes more than 250 faculty members and more than 6,000 undergraduate and graduate students from around the globe to push the frontiers of knowledge and solve humanity’s most pressing problems

###

 

Journal

npj Science of Food

DOI

10.1038/s41538-023-00182-6

Article Title

The future of software-controlled cooking

Article Publication Date

21-Mar-2023

COI Statement

The authors declare no financial or other conflicts of interest.

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“An Extraordinary Change”: Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

"An Extraordinary Change": Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

Last we heard from former Blackrock…

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7 hours ago

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March 21, 2023

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"An Extraordinary Change": Labor Data Reveals Shocking Drop In Workplace Attendance Following Vax Campaign

Last we heard from former Blackrock portfolio manager Ed Dowd and his deep-dive partners at Phinance Technologies, the rate of Serious Adverse Events reported during Covid-19 vaccine trials closely tracked a spike in disabilities reported following the vaccine's official rollout.

In their latest analysis, Dowd and crew use data from the Bureau of Labor Statistcs (BLS) to reveal a shocking spike in both employee absence and lost worktime rates, which they believe is due to vaccines - either from primary vaccine injuries, or because of weakened immune systems due to the jab, and not long covid caused by the virus itself.

Via Phinance Technologies

"It’s not a stretch to conclude from this data that the vaccines are causing death, disabilities & injuries due to a degradation of individuals' immune system," Dowd says. "The rate of change is not explained by the long Covid trope. Ask yourself where is funding for such studies?"

For those who want to dive right in to the analysis, follow the below links:

Part 1 - Overview of the Data

Part 2 - Analysis of Absence rates

Part 3 - Analysis of Lost Worktime rates

For the cliffs notes version, Dowd has dropped the following Twitter thread summarizing their analysis:

And for those who fell asleep in statistics class;

As one commenter notes, data from the UK reveals that firms are coming under increased pressure due to rising staff sickness, particularly among those over the age of 50. 

More to come next week...

Dowd explained his views how he reacted to the pandemic to Tucker Carlson. Now he, and his partners, spend their time poring through data to shine a light on harsh realities.

Tyler Durden Tue, 03/21/2023 - 12:00

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