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'Ugly' third wave of COVID-19 around April 'inevitable' for Ontario, expert says

TORONTO -- An infectious disease expert says he believes that highly contagious variants of COVID-19 will trigger an "ugly" third wave of the pandemic around April that could send Ontario into a third lockdown.
"The third wave is inevitable," Colin Furness, an expert in infectious disease epidemiology from the University of Toronto, told CTV News Toronto. "And I think the third wave is the big one for us."
Earlier this week, the Ontario government revealed the framework for the regional reopening of the province as COVID-19 case numbers declined to levels not seen since last year.
But as a stay-at-home order is expected to be gradually lifted across Ontario over the next two weeks, Furness worries that COVID-19 variants, including the strains first identified in Brazil, South Africa and the U.K., will be difficult to slow down.
Ontario health officials have so far discovered 228 cases of the U.K. variant, also known as B.1.1.7, and three cases of the South African variant, also known as B.1.351.
"I am really nervous about reopening in the middle of winter," Furness said.
Furness pointed to the deadly COVID-19 outbreak at Roberta Place, a retirement home in Barrie, Ont., where the B.1.1.7 variant spread rapidly through the facility, as evidence of how dangerous the strain can be. Health officials said that the variant played a role in how quickly the disease spread between staff and residents, which ultimately lead to the deaths of at least 69 people.
"If you also look at what happened in Ireland, the U.K., the curves are pretty clear," Furness said. "What seemed safe enough, ended up not being safe enough and that it (the U.K. variant) spread really rapidly … It's anywhere from 35 to 60 per cent more transmissible. That's a lot."
He said he worries the public health measures Ontario is taking now won’t be enough if the COVID-19 variants become the dominant strains in the province.
According to provincial modelling data released in late January, the U.K. strain of COVID-19 is expected to become the dominant source of infection by March in Ontario.
Furness said he believes that sometime around April, Ontario's case numbers will rise high enough that the province will need to close schools and go into lockdown once again. But he said the summer could be better for Ontarians.
"My gut tells me April is going to be the ugly month," he said. "Hopefully it will be brief because by then vaccinations will start to pick up speed."
So far, 412,119 initial doses of the COVID-19 vaccine have been administered in Ontario. The vaccine requires a booster shot and, as such, 125,725 vaccinations have been completed as of Wednesday.
Furness said he believes the severity of a potential third wave could be diminished if Ontario takes more preventive steps like increasing COVID-19 surveillance and completing widespread testing of students.
"Every time you find an infected kid, you find an infected family, and you force numbers down," he said.
Meanwhile, Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious disease specialist at Toronto General Hospital, said he believes it's "very challenging" to predict what will happen over the coming weeks and a lot will depend on how much contact people have with each other.
"With schools opening up, with parts of the province slowly opening up, there is certainly the possibility we could have another wave," Bogoch said.
He said he hopes officials use the emergency brake tool wisely, because it could help to prevent a spike in infections. The mechanism allows the government to put a region immediately back into lockdown if infections increase.
"A third wave is preventable, it is totally preventable, the question really is will we do what it takes to prevent it?"
Last week, Simcoe Muskoka Associate Medical Officer of Health Dr. Colin Lee also warned Ontarians to "be prepared for a third wave."
"Variant or not, we should be prepared for a third wave," Lee said. "The question is whether or not the variant will take hold and speed up that timeline."
'We're in for a positive summer': Furness
Furness said he believes that by the summer the impact of COVID-19 vaccines will start to make a significant dent in case numbers across the province.
"I think the summer will be where we start to open up and start to internalize that we aren't locking down anymore," Furness said. "It's not going to be a normal summer but it will be moving permanently in the right direction."
"I feel like the worst is immediately in front of us and then it slowly gets better and stays that way."
https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/ugly-third-wave-of-covid-19-around-april-inevitable-for-ontario-expert-says-1.5303510
submitted by Sarb99 to CanadaCoronavirus [link] [comments]

Am I (Retail Investor) an Investing Genius or Just Lucky?

Originally published February 5, 2021 on www.TheCannalysts.ca
Having sat through a cannabis gold rush before, and the ensuing fallout, we have some thoughts on the sequel to 2017-18.
The level of “loud voices” is growing louder. And lord, some of the loudest and most bombastic could not find an MDA if their life depended on it. (And that isn’t a euphemism, that happened yesterday with an argumentative and opinionated loud voice on social media).
“Buy this”… because I own it. “Here are the reasons (the company) says I should invest in (the company) ….”
“Don’t buy that”… because I don’t own it. “Here are the hot takes that I have decided to parrot from others in social media”.
Molly laid out a warning yesterday about the level of noise and bullshit investors are being bombarded with on our subReddit yesterday. Great reading!
We are in a hype environment. Fundamentals of companies have not changed dramatically but the perception has. The regulatory landscape is now more welcoming in USA, but still very much unknown as to final state and timing.
Interestingly, those chiming in on how a Republican Senate would allow “moat building” are now full-on “legalization is coming, let’s dance in the streets!”.
States will be allowed to do their thing within their borders, pretty much as they have been. But if you want your product to cross a border it will have to abide by Federal rules when dropped and operationalized. (Medical has preceded recreational in almost all jurisdictions, and the thinking is it will in US federal too). Should this happen it will impact cultivators and processors more than retail shops.
Retail shops may have their own issues. “Social Justice” issues have held up Illinois rollout, and it will be interesting to see what federal views (FDA), legislation and state response are to the Democrat lead initiatives.
Do fundamentals matter? Not right now. When the tide goes out, they will.
In Canada, we have two money incinerating companies back stopped by strategic cash. Neither has shown much in the way of operating efficiency/competency. Yet, investors are assured that this time Daddy took the keys, or the oversight is better now. Oversight was the same as the day the cheque from the strategic investor cleared and their proxies installed on the board and in the c-suite. Until signs of change manifest in the financial statements it is all words. The HOPE of being profitable in the US of A, and the big cash balance they can deploy, seems to suffocate thoughts of past stumbles and ongoing ineptitude.
One of the lone company’s to be showing promise has to buy sales to keep their facilities churning at levels to keep them +EBITDA. You can talk about synergies, Europe, CPG extensions, but the bottom line is they (and many others) built too large of a footprint for Canada and exports. Hindsight is 20-20.
The next group of Candian companies have diluted the crap out of investors and have yet to stem the bleeding. This latest stock price surge has allowed a new load of cash to come in. The i-banks have unloaded on retail yet again. And retail fell for it, yet again.
Zombies will be staggering around even longer now. Much to my chagrin. It isn’t fun spreading crap and finding bodies under the rug.
TheCannalysts believe rec sales are stalling (listen to the next Inside the Ropes, we go through it). The last big “catalyst” was the ramp to 80 stores a month in Ontario. A drop in January (potentially double digits) after a likely reasonable December holiday buying season is a possibility. A 28-day February follows. The media will likely not differentiate that the $ drop is due to three less days than January (which is one of the reasons we run the daily purchases metric). Back-to-back monthly “decreases” could spook investors.
We might not see an uptick in Canada until March, which will be reported in late May by StatsCan, but those March quarter ends will tell the story by mid May. (Canopy year end is March 31, so financials will drop by end of June). Aphria Feb 28 Q, due by mid April, will include SweetWater revenue. This might occlude a soft to negative Canadian recreational figure with December sell in compensating for soft mid to end quarter sales. The Ontario covid December through February and counting lockdown ennui, limiting retailers to click and collect and delivery, might provide further headwinds.
IF that happens, what will happen with perception on the Canadian names?
The US is different, in that the companies’ viability is further along than in Canada. But does the viability support the stock price? What needs to happen that is not within the companies control for them to support the price? Will regulatory meteors strike, like they have in Canada. (Hey, New York state is on its third year of “this year we are legalizing”). Have founders ensconced themselves with long dated warrants and options?
(An aside… Molly and I have been discussing the impact of long dated in the money warrants and options. It is interesting to note if a company issues a convertible debenture and the strike is in the money, the company reacts quickly to take the further increases to the debt holder – who has funded the operations – off the board. But when the same c-suite, entrenched by multi voting super shares to ensure matters of control, are deep in the money -off the backs of new shareholders and paid out converts – there’s a lack of the same urgency (I dropped a Q on Molly unannounced on the latest Inside the Ropes – which is in edit – on the subject).
But you are saying: “Blue, that’s fundamentals. It doesn’t matter.”
Agreed, right now it doesn’t. Not one lick. You know how I can tell? The flotsam and jetsam of Canada and US cannabis are ALL rising.
In the USA there are going to be Harvest One, Maricann, RavenQuest, CannTrust, Aleafia Health, WeedMD, Hexo, Organigram, VFF, Supreme, Sundial … type of companies. There are going to be Aphria’s, Aurora’s, Canopy’s and Cronos’. And there will be better ones too.
Every flavour you can imagine.
Molly’s slog through Tier 3 operators confirms that the US has its share of slugs. And those slugs’ stock prices are also benefiting right now.
We harp on fundamentals. This a “fundamental” store. If you are looking for technical analysis, you are in the wrong spot. In the short term the best fundamentals may not equate to the best stock price.
Our subReddit Community members hated when we harped on the operating metrics of Aurora and Canopy in 2017-2019. The outcries were loud and often…
Wait until rec!
Wait until 2.0 formats launch!
Wait until Ontario opens more stores!
We are in 2021, third year of adult use, they are still trying to get their Canadian operations fixed. (I was chuckling with Molly and Cyto the other day upon reading comment upon comment of “my faith in (insert company here) has paid off” when said company has delivered a Golden Sombrero or even a Platinum Sombrero of negative gross margins.)
Others hated that we “favoured” Aphria operationally. (We certainly favour good operators, regardless whose name is on the masthead. Numbers and trends speak to us.) Operationally they have outperformed a very weak peer group.
Canada is like Triple AAA sports (Major Junior Hockey for us Canadians or NCAA football and basketball). A great player in Triple AAA might go on to be Hall of Famer, might be average or a flop. Only time will tell. Some, by virtue of being a high draft pick and a big signing bonus (think… those who got strategic money), will get a shot at the majors given they have been invested in. But generally, a dog in Triple AAA becomes a dog in the majors, if they get there. They could be “coached up” but those that need coaching up after being a high draft pick probably have some missing ingredients, or had some blemishes that were apparent yet overlooked when they were younger.
Did Aphria and Tilray double their stock price (insert every other Canadian company and their increase) in two months because of fundamentals? Hell no! They are riding a wave. The questions become: how much higher is the wave AND how far out will the water level recede?
Big bets. Big risk. Big returns or Big bags?
In a hype market, retail investors seem to be oblivious to the difference between fundamentals and hype. You can make a lot of money in a hype market. Thinking you are a genius because you hit the lottery seems to be common theme for retail investors.
But when that crazy hype cools, and the tide goes out, we see that folks get very uncomfortable in their positions that they were previously boldly trumpeting their “unrealized gains”.
Aphria was three years between $20 stock prices. And if you account for dilution, Aphria is not yet at the 2018 $20. Three years is forever for many. And I can say that I am surprised how quickly it climbed (and that goes for most of the Canadian industry).
I have scaled down my Aphria position rather substantially from its peak and still hold an oversized chunk. BUT, when hype overran my comfort zone, I sold in January 2018 and took out my entire initial investment and let the unrealized gains ride. I rebuilt the same number of units just shy of what I sold on de-risking events through 2018-2020, all but one purchase sub C$8.50. I have sold that accumulation and then some. I am three years closer to retirement right now, thus that, coupled with knowledge gleaned since the start of this journey in March 2016, has me more cautious now.
I have set stop losses for more units, but I am willing to let a portion ride. That is a benefit of being in at a low price. Would I add here? Not a chance.
For those riding the USA wave. Change takes time. Legislation takes time. Sometimes you get stupid regulations (I am looking at you Health Canada and most of the provinces) that hobble progress.
In Canada it took from 2015 to October 2018 from Trudeau being elected to first legal gram sold. The USA, at the federal level, will likely take that much time to implement.
This is not a “set and forget” industry to invest in. “If you believe in the industry just jump in” is the biggest load of horseshit out there.
I hold around 30 Blue Chips, a few in each sector. I have started selectively adding from my cash position after a long hiatus, save for a March 2020 sector rotation. My target right now, solid performers who should do well in the continuing covid environment.
I do a hundred times more due diligence on weed stocks than I do on my Blue Chips.
But as I always harp… my reality is not yours. My portfolio, age and risk appetite are very likely not yours. And they certainly are not the wallstreetbets gamblers reality.
Right now, putting new money at risk comes with a lot of uncertainty. In the cannabis sector or any other overheated sectors.
Don’t get me wrong. We want you to be rich and successful. If your “at risk funds” stress you out while the market is going up, they will be a load if it should go south. Cannabis investing can change your life for good as well as for bad. I witnessed in 2018 an entrepreneur who went all in Aphria at $12-14, after selling his business that he built over decades, bailed at a loss, loaded into Cronos and it dropped… I wonder how he is doing. He went from the biggest cheerleader to very very bitter in a very short time.
Know what is unknown. There are going to be a ton of opinions on the “unknown”, and in the current environment those opinions are leaning on heavily bullish scenarios. Don’t get in over your head. As I don’t know if I can take three years of pissing and moaning, again. The couch got worn out last time.
And, slowly circling back to the title of the post … I was lucky (stock rebounded faster than I thought possible), knowledgeable (I baby sit my cannabis investment like an eagle on a nest. I know what is in the financials and MDA because of the level of analysis we do), I de-risked (when hype overran fundamentals in 2018 I took out my initial investment, and sold again now as the merger, combined debt, need for dilution, slowing of sales has me wickedly thankful for a $20 exit on a portion of my position), I reloaded as events de-risked (as Aphria was stringing “Progress Quarters” together and de-risking events like Diamond license happened), I was patient (but Progress Quarters allowed that to happen), and importantly early.
Best of luck to all.
The preceding is the opinion of the author and is in no way intended to be a recommendation to buy or sell any security or derivative. The author has a position in Aphria and will not start one or divest (EXCEPT FOR IN PLACE STOP LOSS) in the next five days. The author has no position in any of the other mentioned companies and will not start one or divest in the next five days.
submitted by GoBlueCdn to TheCannalysts [link] [comments]

Realities of a Minor's Life on the Road

Thanks to u/jouscat for providing the inspiration for this post with her amazing post, Realities of a Woman's Life on the Road. That was a couple months ago, but I figured my experiences and what I've learned could help people, hopefully as much as Scat's. Also, thanks to her and Pokebert (u/2717192619192) for reviewing this post and providing some great suggestions.
From the beginning my parents just didn't care. My dad was an abusive meth addict, often hitting me, but I never let him hit my sister. My mom was less on the abusive side and more on the passed-out-heroin-addict side. From the time I was 11 or so, I could disappear for days on end without them caring or sometimes even realizing, and the summer after 8th grade, I decided to use that to my advantage. I wrote a quick note telling them that I'd be back within a month or two, packed up a bag, read through all the vagabond advice posts I could find, and then hopped a boxcar out from my little town near Sacramento. Right as it pulled out, the door slammed shut, almost taking my finger with it. The train ended up taking me to Elko, Nevada, where I wandered around town for a couple hours before figuring out to hitchhike.
Since then I've been all over the West, and also last summer I did a big circuit around the east, from New Orleans to Atlanta to Asheville to New York and then back to the land of cowboys and dust via a high-priority train that took me from Chicago to Denver. I've had some great experiences, and some horrible ones, which I'll be talking about here. My aim for this post is to prepare you youngsters for what's waiting for you once you run away, so I won't spend much time on the good part.
To Run Away or Not to Run Away?
I ran away because I hated living at home. I wasn't abused too much (not exactly a ringing endorsement), just completely fucking ignored. There were sometimes streaks of several days where I didn't talk to my parents despite being in the same little house as them. I had a couple friends at school, but I was an outcast for the most part. If I had the chance to relive that time in my life with everything I know now, I don't know if I'd run away again. The abuse started out not so bad, but it started to get worse, so I ran. If you're not getting badly hurt or abused, which is better than a lot of people can say, stay at home. Running away is only justified in very abusive situations, whether physical, mental, or emotional. It's a life-altering decision. But if you've got that itch to go, there's nothing I can say that could stop you. When I left there was no fucking way I could've been talked out of it.
Don't take the decision lightly, though. Read through this post and all the other great resources on this sub and vagabond, hear all the shit that's happened to me over just three summers on the road, and then decide. Does it sound worse than what's happening to you? If so, think long and hard about it. Could it get worse? Better? What are your other options? If it sounds like a piece of cake compared to your home life, go for it.
How to Run Away?
I honestly can't help you with the emotional side of this one. I just got up and left, no shits given. As I said in the first paragraph, I just left a short note for my parents, and then a longer one for my sister. My friend, on the other hand, did. I'll call her Annie (not her actual name), I'll let her tell her story.
I've been in and out of the foster care system since I was 9. I ran away from every home they put me in after a couple months. Sometimes I didn't even unpack my bag. At first I'd just jump out the window at night and then bike to the next town over, mostly just to make a point, but then they got smart and made it so I couldn't open the window more than a couple inches. After that, I would sneak out and open the front door. I got caught a couple times like that. At first my attempts to run away weren't very successful. People pay attention to a 10 year old on the streets. But around 12 or 13, I was able to stay away for longer. I could take a greyhound to the nearest big city and get lost there, and after a month or a couple they'd find me or I'd come back, and it would start all over again.
When I was almost 14, I was placed into a foster home that I genuinely liked. The "mom" and "dad" were caring and provided for us well, and the other kids told me it was good. But as time wore on, I saw that it wasn't at all perfect. One of the kids was involved in drug dealing, and was tangled up with a gang, and the "parents" sometimes let their anger break through, and would sometimes hit me or the other kids. Two days before the last day of school, the "mom" sent me out to find the kid that was into drug dealing, since he hadn't come home for dinner. I knew he spent a lot of his time in this one alley downtown, so I went there. I turned the corner and practically ran into him. He pulled out a switchblade and stabbed me.
It didn't look like he realized who I was until a couple seconds later, then he tried to comfort me. Apparently I'd ran into a big drug deal, and he was on edge. On edge enough to stab me, at least. He got me in the boob, so I wasn't too badly hurt. I decided that I couldn't take it any more, so I went back home, grabbed a few things, and told them I was spending the night at a friend's house. Instead I spent the night out by the creek, and then the next day at school, I asked the author of this post (who I was already really good friends with) if I could come with him. He said sure, and here I am now. I haven't entered a foster home since I picked up a change of clothes after school that day. My wounded tit is an object of much curiosity from everybody who sees me topless, for anyone who was wondering.
What to Bring?
As for gear and transportation, I'm more well-versed in that. The first time I left home, I went extremely bare-bones. To put all of my shit in, I brought a medium-sized hiking backpack that I got from Goodwill. It wasn't one of the fancy ones from Osprey or whatever, just a canvas sack. You need to think about the essentials first, not fancy trinkets. That means food, water, and shelter. I would bring a sleeping bag and a tarp (shelter), canned foods and other high-nutrition foods (food), and a milk jug full of water. Don't start out trainhopping, but if/when you eventually do (after getting a mentor), bring two or more full gallon jugs full of water. Also don't bring a tent. They're bulky, heavy, expensive, and they attract attention. I find a tarp to be much more useful.
Beyond the essentials, there's things that you could live without, but are good to have.
Protection
As I said earlier, I always have a pocketknife. I've got a leather holster strapped to my belt that I can easily pop open. Like jouscat said, it's no use if you can't get to it. At points in my "career", I've carried a hunting knife, bear spray, a switchblade (for a couple weeks in LA), and coins in a sock. DO NOT CALL ANYBODY'S BLUFF. If you're in a sketchy neighborhood or jungle, keep your knife in plain sight, but do not pull it on somebody unless you are prepared to use it. When I was 15, I pulled a knife on a crackhead in Missoula who was acting threatening and insane, as crackheads will. Bad idea. I woke up an hour later after he punched me in the side of the head and left me in the gravel. It could've been much worse. I woke up because a train was roaring by. He could've put my head on the rails. He could've dragged me back to his shack in the woods, and I would've been dead to the world, or for real dead. I could never use a knife on another person, thus the bear spray. I walked straight to downtown Missoula after I woke up and bought a can of bear spray. I usually keep it out when I'm in grizzly country, otherwise it looks out of place and suspicious. I have not had to use it yet.
If you're hitchhiking with somebody who's starting to look threatening, pull out an apple and slice it very carefully and deliberately. This is the oldest trick in the book, but it works.
Prostitution
According to the US Justice Department, "1/3 of teenagers on the street will be approached by a pimp within 48 hours of leaving home". I cannot stress this enough, DO NOT DO PROSTITUTION. I once met a prostitute in LA, who had been pulled into it at age 16 after she ran away from home because her stepfather was raping her. She said that running away was the worst thing that ever happened to her. She attempted to commit suicide after 6 months of it, but it just fucked her with a lot of hospital bills. As far as I know she's still a prostitute. Read this article about child prostitution in NYC (I think there's a paywall if you're on mobile). There's also this one that provides many very in-depth articles/videos about how people get sucked in, how they are kept in, and how they can get out. If anybody has more experience with this type of thing, comment, or post on runaway. I think it's not talked about as much as it should be.
My mother ran away from home at 16, a fact that I just learned recently. She was from Mexicali, crossed the border illegally and went up to Seattle, and then to Alaska. In Anchorage, she got addicted to heroin, and prostituted herself to survive. She eventually tried to go back to Mexico, but got waylaid 100 feet from the border by my dad, recently released from prison. Well, a year later, my dad moved 3-month old me and my mom up to Bakersfield, where he immediately got sent back to prison for beating my mom. She moved to Nevada with me, and of course wound up doing prostitution again. She never talked about it, but it must've been horrible. I wouldn't wish that on anybody, no matter how much pain they've caused me.
Where to Sleep
When it comes time to bed down, you may just want to crash wherever. But put some thought into your choice of location. If I'm hopping trains, I like to sleep at the edge of the yard. Usually there's some woods, or even just a patch of shrubs, that provide some visual protection. Don't sleep in jungles (hobo camps). Some people there are pretty insane. I'll spend the evening with them or whatever, but then sneak off to my own quiet corner of the yard so that I won't find myself robbed blind and with a knife in my back in the morning. If I'm hitchhiking, I'll ask them to drop me off next to a creek somewhere, preferably with some trees. I like sleeping next to creeks. Even if they're too polluted to drink from (always filter your water either way), they're still nice. Unless they attract mosquitos. That sucks.
If you can sleep on government land, that's the best, but I don't really worry about who owns the land. Leave no trace, and everybody's happy. BLM/State/National Forest land is the best, though, because it's legal, and usually prettier than some farm. Unless you're sure of your camping and defense skills, don't go too far out into the wilderness. There are weird people out there, and nature isn't forgiving.
Sleeping in town is no fun. Let's start from the outer ring and go in to the middle. If you sleep at the edge of town, you are likely to be stumbled upon by a bunch of drunk, possibly horny dudes who are trying not to get caught drinking by their wives. If you sleep in the suburbs, you are likely to get reported by some Karen for disturbing her perfect little world. If you sleep in an older part of town, you're likely to run into some illegal activity, and possibly get mugged. And if you sleep in the downtown/inner city, you'll be one of a thousand other homeless people, many who are mentally ill, and all who are competing for a limited number of benches, porches, doorsteps, and parks.
A note on abandoned houses. If there's not a whole lot of graffiti, and it's not very easily accessed, I'd go for it. Make sure to position yourself in a place where you can get out easily, though. If it has tons of graffiti, litter, old needles, etc., get the fuck out.
But if you do find a good spot, make sure to scope it out before going to bed. Are there multiple escape routes? Sketchy characters hanging around? Shit like that. If all is good, go right ahead. Don't make a fire in the western states during the summer unless there's a fire ring or you have a can or a barrel or something. Grass catches fire easier than you think, and starting a fire around here is a good way to start a hundred-thousand-plus acre fire.
Transportation
Start off hitchhiking. If you're running away, get as far away as you need to, and then you can try other ways to get around. Go to a freeway exit or a gas station and hold out your thumb. If you see somebody with a license plate from a state where you're trying to go, or near there, maybe walk up to them and ask for a ride. It might feel weird at first, but you'll get the hang of it. Also, be careful of who you ride with. Do they look threatening? Deranged? An addict? Don't go with them. The best people to go with are nice old ladies or young couples. Rarely ever do either of those people pick up hitchhikers. Usually I get rides with single dudes, often middle aged, even more often truckers. If you're a girl, the risk is even more elevated. I would not recommend hitchhiking if you don't think you could defend yourself from a big redneck with lots of experience getting in bar fights. There are too many creeps out there. Trust your instincts.
The summer of 2019 was the first (and only so far) time I traveled with a partner full-time. Annie and I were looking for a ride in Twin Falls, Idaho in September, and not having much luck. It took a day and a half, but finally we got a ride with an old dude who said his name was Benny and he was bound for Portland. Well, we went with him, because we really had no choice, even though I had a weird feeling about him. All was good until the stretch of nothingness in between Ontario and Baker City. He pulled off a highway exit called Weatherby, saying he had to go to the bathroom, but instead he turned up a one-lane gravel road and pulled out a gun, saying he'd shoot if we tried to flee. He took us way back in the woods to a hidden cove about 20 miles off the freeway, where he tried to tie me up. Thankfully, he turned his back on Annie, and she kicked him in the crotch and then in the head. Let me tell you, you do not want to be kicked anywhere on your body with steel-toed boots. We took his truck back to the interstate and then begged a ride with a trucker at the rest stop. I don't know what became of Benny, but that was a fucking horrible experience. He was after Annie, not me, and I don't think he was going to play patty-cake with her.
Trainhopping. Is dangerous. Is unreliable. But I love it. Get a mentor, and don't almost lose a finger like I did. Head on over to the advice directory on vagabond, there's some amazing stuff over there.
Hiking is slow, but great when you're in a remote, beautiful area. In 2019, I took 6 days to hike from Silverton, Colorado, to Monte Vista. 124 miles. It was insanely tiring though, even for two very fit teenagers.
Biking is faster than hiking, by quite a bit. I once biked from my hometown near Sacramento to Truckee in two days. After that I ditched the bike (it was free from the side of the interstate) and hopped a train out. Too much uphill travel, from 0 feet above sea level up to 7,500, and then back down to 6,000. All in about 120 miles.
By far the most novel method of travel I've tried is by boat. I floated/motored down the Mississippi River in 2019 from Memphis to New Orleans, almost 650 miles. I had a tiny metal rowboat with an outboard motor that worked maybe half the time. Annie and I averaged about 65 miles a day, stopping in pretty much every little village along the way and taking turns sleeping at night. It was kind of like Huck Finn, but with a noisy and finnicky motor. If I were to do it again I'd do it more Huckleberry-like, taking my time with a raft, and maybe an electric motor. Still, it was a great experience, and I'd recommend it if you can get your hands on a boat.
There are others, but I won't talk about them here.
People are Weird and Creepy and Horrible
Adults are pedophiles. Just assume that every adult will try to make an advance on you. Sorry to all y'all great adults, but it's better safe than sorry. Even as a 6'1" male, I've had random dudes and even a woman once try to seduce me. Annie and the other female partners I've traveled with have it even worse. When you're trainhopping and hitchhiking, it's unavoidable that you'll be travelling through the bad part of town. Almost every city has it, but especially cities in California and the Rust Belt. I don't have much experience with the East Coast, but I saw some pretty bad ghettos in Baltimore and Philly during my short stay there. NOLA has it really bad. The neighborhoods there have gotten a triple gut punch - they were already ghettos, they're mostly black, meaning society ignores their issues, and they were devastated by Hurricane Katrina in 2005. The ghettos anywhere have trafficking, murders, muggings, crazed homeless dudes, and more. Keep a low profile and stay away from shady characters (drug dealers/gang members).
If you get a bad feeling from someone, just nope the fuck out. Walk away if you're in a railyard or a gas station, or ask to get out if you're hitchhiking. Usually they'll let you out, but if they don't, say something about how you forgot that you were supposed to meet your (big stocky club bouncer) friend at the last freeway exit, and if you don't, they'll get worried. Works 9/10 times.
I'm going to let Annie write a section here on some of her experiences with creepy adults.
The summer of 2019 was the first time I had vagabonded. I needed to get away from my foster home, and I knew what SugarBowlSkier (Let's call him Jimmy) was doing, so I asked to come along with him. He said ok, and we left a couple days after the last day of school. We took a bus to Reno (had gotten almost free tickets from an old road buddy of Jimmy's who had to cancel). We were walking around a sketchy warehouse area east of the downtown, on our way to the Sparks yard, and Jimmy had ducked behind a building to take a leak. Some dude who had been in the shadows somewhere walked out and grabbed my boob. I punched him and yelled, and Jimmy came running back. I got out of that one fine, but I was fucking scared after that. Just 5 hours after leaving home. It might seem like I'm writing this easily, but it's fucking painful to talk about it.
Jimmy mentioned the horrible experience with the motherfucker named Benny. That was by far the worst thing that's ever happened to me. I cried for days after that. The trucker who we got a ride with from the rest stop took us back to Nampa, where we hopped a train to Pocatello. We stayed in a motel there for almost a week, just collecting ourselves. I didn't hitchhike any more on that trip, but I have hitchhiked a couple times since that time.
In a rail jungle in Atlanta, one of the guys in the jungle pulled out his dick in my face. He was tossed out of the camp.
There have been other incidents, but not as bad as those.
-"Annie"
That's all true. I have to mention one thing about the time in Atlanta. The guy was literally thrown out of the camp. Four people grabbed each of his arms/legs and tossed him. Don't fuck around like that creep did.
The Law
Running away is illegal. No question about it. Stay away from cops, for more reason than one. A cop tried to arrest me for being a "public nuisance", whatever that is, in Billings once. I was sleeping in a park during the daytime. I just ran. Thankfully the cop was fat AF, so it was easy to run around the corner and jump a fence into somebody's backyard. If you're black, cops are 90% of the time your worst enemy. Even more so if you're black and homeless. I'm a white guy (technically half Mexican, but I didn't learn that until recently), so I can't offer any advice on that, and I won't try to. Just stay safe, whatever that means. If you're a runaway and trainhopping, that's double illegal, so work even harder to keep a low profile. Don't do drugs, even marijuana (even if it's legal, cops don't like it), don't drink (do as I say not as I do), and if you see anything illegal going on get the fuck out. The fuzz will suspect you if you're near the scene of a crime, and even if they don't you'll be questioned, and then they'll most likely realize you're a runaway.
A note on alcohol: I am not a good example for this. I have drank my fair share of alcohol, and so has Annie. I'm praying my sister doesn't think to look on my phone/computer, because she has no idea. I almost got alcohol poisoning after drinking multiple bottles of tequila (I don't really remember) a couple weeks ago. Alcohol will put you out of your misery... until the next morning. Then all your problems will come right back even worse then before, and you'll be fucked. Also, if you get caught, you're going down. So don't drink, kids.
Phones
I don't bring a phone while on the road. To me it's just another thing that ties me to our fucked up society, and a distraction. Also you can be tracked with a cell phone even if you turn location data off. I know that my parents wouldn't try to track me, but I am very worried that the government might try to put me, my sister, and Annie in a foster home if they realize our situation.
Housing
This might seem like a weird section to put in a post about being on the road, but the reality is that you won't be able to run away forever. The first time I ran away, I came back in late August and lived with my parents and sister for a winter. That's probably not an option for most runaways. The next summer I was on the road again, and then I came back to live with them again. Around Christmas (when else) I had to go down to Fresno for a week for a job, and when I came back my parents had kicked out my sister and skipped town. I flipped out and drove to where she said they had moved to (I'm not going to reveal the location because it's a very small town), and got in a bad fight with my dad. He was on some sort of drug, so he wasn't very coherent, but I gathered that he and my mom had split up. He went to the tiny town, and she went to Vegas, where it seems like every fuck-up in the world ends up. I went back home and tried to figure out what to do.
My sister and I slept in the bed of my truck for about a month, and I ended up getting a distant family member to rent a tiny apartment for me and my sister, with me paying. I only did it that way because you can't rent a house as a minor. I lived there with my sister for the rest of the winter, but when summer came my sister told me that I had to go on the road. She saw how overworked and depressed I was, being cooped up in my little town, while balancing school and a job to support two people. Bless her soul for that. She went to live with some relatives for the summer while Annie and I went on the road. When school started but I was still gone, she went back home and lived with a friend until I came back. After that summer, I rented another house, this time slightly bigger, but still tiny by anybody's standards, and Annie moved in with us. It's a lot nicer now that there's two people with jobs in the household. I won't let my sister get a job for various reasons. She's too young to have all that responsibility.
It's hard living like this, but we make do. When my sister and I first rented the house, we could've moved somewhere else and rented for several times less, but I wanted to stay in my hometown. For all it's faults, it's where I was raised, and it's where my few friends are. I could be living like a king in Bakersfield, but here I am, doing my math homework with pencils scavenged out of the gutter. I have second thoughts about staying almost every day, but it was the right choice for my family. Now, I'm facing eviction, and that whole plan has been turned on it's head.
Suggestions on housing. Get something as cheap as possible, even if it's in a bad neighborhood. The first apartment I rented was in a pretty average neighborhood. When we had to upsize slightly to accommodate Annie, we moved to a dumpy little road in the country. The people here are pretty nice, though. It has the major disadvantage of being far from town, and without a reliable car, I have to get up at 3:00 every morning to bike to town and make my 5:00 AM shift at my job, which ends at 8. I'm sometimes late to online school, but what can you do? I end up working about 8-10 hours a day on weekdays, about 14-16 on Saturday, and then Sunday is my day off, only 6-8 hours.
I also will do landscaping jobs whenever we're hurting for money, but that's less reliable and hard to fit into my schedule.
Annie works (at a different place than me) from 8:00 PM to 4:00 AM every weekday. We're both insanely sleep-deprived and overworked 24/7/365, but still pretty much broke. Remember, this is "Realities", not "Dreams". If you want to support yourself, you'll have to work at least 60 hours a week, most likely more. I get paid minimum wage at both my jobs (gas station and farm), Annie slightly above. If you're alone, you should try and find an organization that will take you in. I've got a family member on the board of directors of a boy's home, and although they struggle a lot, it sounds better for the boys than being on the streets.
I guess we're kind of like parents to my sister, although we aren't romantically involved. It sure is a taxing job to be a parent to a rebellious teenage girl. I could write a whole article on unconventional parenting situations, but I'll save it for another time.
School
Don't kid yourself. You will not be able to go to school while running away. It doesn't matter what the law says, you will be reported and sent home if you try to enroll in school. I don't know about online school, however. I'm not anything of a tech wizard, so I have no idea if they'd be able to track you if you keep logging on. I try to be on the road only when school is out, but it doesn't always work out that way. In 2019, I didn't get back home until early October. That kind of sucked, because I missed over a month of school.
Here at home, I get by with school, even though I work 74+ hours a week and get maybe 5 or 6 hours of sleep a night. I never skip classes, and usually pull low B's and sometimes high C's. It's not going to get me into Harvard, but then again I won't be able to afford even community college. One of my two jobs (the non-farm one) is at a gas station, and I can tell you that working the graveyard shift at a gas station in a small town is the MOST. FUCKING. BORING. Job ever. It does give me a lot of time to do homework, browse Reddit, and listen to punk music. So if you ever walk into a gas station near Sacramento and hear The Offspring quickly being shut off, say hi to me.
I don't know if anybody at school beyond my one or two closest friends knows my situation. It's not exactly a secret, but I don't go shouting around the halls about it either. I don't care much for the whole popularity thing, but if I did I'm sure living in a half-abandoned house with no parents and working at a gas station would not win me any favors. My sister is more worried about that shit, I can't fathom why. But she does it without being a jerk like many popular kids, so I can't judge.
Crossing Borders
This may seem kind of off-topic, but for one reason or another, it's something that I've found comes into play quite a bit when you're on the road.
State borders are easy. 90% of the time you'll just drive right over them. On busy roads in some states (like my state of California) they have agricultural inspection stations, where they prohibit you from bringing most vegetables, nuts, and fruit into the state to avoid these. There's no real danger to get found out with these, as long as you do what they said and don't panic. It's literally just telling them, "No sir, I do not have any produce with me."
National borders are trickier. I've got no experience legally crossing national borders, but I know that you need your passport in 99% of places (I think San Diego and Tijuana might have some arrangement). I have, however, snuck over both the Canadian and Mexican border briefly. I'm not going to tell you how to do it, because it's highly illegal, but I will say this: don't do it. This is another thing where you should do as I say, not as I do, because if you are caught on the other side of the border without a passport, you will be sent to jail and then tried.
My mom was an undocumented immigrant. She ran away from Mexicali at 16, and ended up in Anchorage, a prostitute and a heroin addict. I only learned this a couple days ago, and I haven't seen her in years, but if I ever do see her again, I would like to ask her about her experience. I know that it was successful, though.
Another reason not to cross the Mexican border: Mexico is fucking dangerous. In Agua Prieta, I heard way more gunshots in the two nights I was there than the two nights I spent right outside of Skid Row in LA. In Piedras Negras, I swam across the Rio Grande just to say I'd done it, and although I was only over there for about 6 hours, I saw the most poverty that I've ever seen. My last border experience was perhaps the worst. A couple days after Piedras Negras, I wanted to try it out again, so I swam from Laredo to Nuevo Laredo. It was hard avoiding the border patrol, who were hidden all over, but I managed to get across OK. I wandered around Nuevo for a while, and then realized it was getting dark, and I didn't want to be there during the night. I walked the mile or so back to the river, but it was swarming with US and Mexican government people. My best guess is that there was a crime or something, or maybe somebody drowned.
Either way, I couldn't get back that way, so I figured I'd have to walk either north or south out of town. I didn't want to be walking around at night, though, so I chose to sleep in a nice-looking park next to a hospital. At around 2:00 AM, I was woken up by screaming, and then a couple minutes later sirens. I was sleeping without a sleeping bag or anything since the low was above 80 degrees that night, so I was able to get the fuck out in about 30 seconds. I ran/walked the 2 or so miles to a golf course next to the river, which I snuck across and then swam across the river. It was fucking crazy. I never found out what happened at the park, or what caused the patrollers to be all over the area. It would've been mid-July 2018, I think. Anybody know anything? All three of those times were in 2018, and I haven't crossed into Mexico since, and I don't plan to again.
Mental Health
Being on the streets is lonely. It helps if you're with a partner, but if you're alone, you can go weeks without any meaningful contact with others. I like that, but I know it can be hard for people. I saw somebody make a very good point in a thread here recently. When you're hitchhiking, you're kind of acting as that person's anonymous therapist. They will never see you again, and neither of you have any idea who the other is, so they're free to pour their heart out to you. It can be hard hearing about that. I've ridden with people who were falsely charged with murder, have attempted suicide, and even a man with terminal cancer.
For me though, being on the streets helps my mental health more than it hurts it. I've been very depressed at points in my life, and several times the only thing standing in between me and suicide was the thought that my sister would have nobody to support her. Being sedentary sucks, and I try not to let it get to me, but it does. I've been at home for almost 500 days due to COVID, with only two or three opportunities to get out. Late winter and spring were the hardest, but surprisingly the pandemic made it better. I didn't have to be an outcast at school every day, and I had more time to work, meaning we were in a better financial situation. I can't express how thankful I am that I wasn't laid off of either of my jobs, as so many people were. We'd be in a bad fucking situation if that happened.
Another thing that can bring you down mentally is seeing the underbelly of our society. You'll be walking through the metaphorical and literal back alley of wherever you are. You'll see all the things that make the world bad: junkies, gangs, extreme poverty, trafficking, you name it and it will be encountered. The worst I've experienced this was in Stockton, one of the most dangerous and poor cities in the US. Every alley holds a junkie shooting up on their poison of choice, gang violence has decimated the south part of the city, and parts of South Stockton look worse than Detroit. Even if this doesn't affect you physically, it really takes a toll on you mentally.
Overview
Running away is dangerous, hard, and illegal. You should only do it if it provides a better situation than the one you are in. Carry protection, probably a knife, but don't call people's bluff. Don't get involved in prostitution, no matter how desperate you are. Trust your instincts about people. If they give you a bad feeling, get away from them. If you are a girl, you most likely will be sexually harassed, and possibly raped. Stay away from cops, don't do anything illegal, and especially don't cross borders. You won't be able to go to school on the road. Eventually you'll have to settle down somewhere, so have a plan for that. Will you be 18 by then? If so, that makes it a lot easier.
I've been dumb. I've made bad decisions. Many of them. That's probably led to me having a worse-than-average experience. But I hope that y'all can learn from my mistakes and do it better.
I know that there are going to be people who go through my whole account just to shut me down, so I'm just going to say that you will find discrepancies. I don't mention my situation unless it's called for. People feel sorry for me, and I hate it. If a person is going to take the time to search my post history, they deserve to know my story.
I'm going to finish with a quote from my second grade teacher and pretty much everyone since: "Life isn't fair."
submitted by SugarBowlSkier to runaway [link] [comments]

Auxly Cannabis ($CBWTF): I've Bought the Dip for 3 Years. Why You Should Consider it Too.

I am here to share my research behind Auxly Cannabis Group (https://www.auxly.com). It trades on the TSXV exchange in Canada under $XLY.V and in the US OTC as $CBWTF. I was inspired by what went on with $GME and am now seeing the effects of this flow into $CBWTF, which I have been buying on its way down from over $2 to under $0.15 over the last 3 years.
Auxly Cannabis Group was originally started as Cannabis Wheaton around 2016 by Chuck Rifici and Hugo Alves. Chuck Rifici was the co-founder of a company originally called Tweed Marijuana, and now is known as Canopy Growth Corp, the largest marijuana company in the world. After a falling out with his co-founder of Tweed, Bruce Linton (the last CEO of Canopy), Chuck left Tweed, the company was re-named Canopy, and Chuck set out to create a cannabis "streaming" company that would take minority ownership stakes in small cannabis companies to help them scale and grow. Auxly co-founder, Hugo Alves (current Auxly CEO), is a lawyer who was previously a partner at the law firm Bennett Jones and brings a wealth of regulatory knowledge to Auxly. The vision was to build a vertically integrated, low overhead cannabis company built around financing that would be ready by the time cannabis became legalized in Canada.
When marijuana was legalized on October 17th, 2018, the only product that was legal to be sold was cannabis flower. At this point Auxly had already made numerous financing deals and acquisitions of growers, processors, and retail stores and was prepared for a wide range of products. However, as the flower market (cannabis 1.0) struggled to have a large amount of success and with the next wave of cannabis products, such as edibles, topicals, concentrates, and vapes (cannabis 2.0) not becoming legalized until 2019, Auxly looked to be in not a great place. A number of large greenhouse deals Auxly had fell through as the industry quickly moved to shut down excess flower growing capacity. Luckily Auxly had opted for a vertically integrated, low overheard model from the very beginning, unlike other companies in the industry who had spend tons of money scaling capacity for growing. This allowed Auxly to scale down their cannabis 1.0 rollout plan and pivot their business model to prepare more for the cannabis 2.0 legalization, which they expected to be more popular among consumers.
Fast forward to October 17th, 2019. This day marked the end of the first year of marijuana legalization and also the legalization of a second wave cannabis 2.0 products. At this point, Auxly had hit some major milestones, financing deals, trimmed some fat, and has secured a handful of wholly owned subsidiaries that act as cornerstone assets that are outlined below:
Imperial Brands Partnership
Auxly secured a $123m CAD investment from Imperal Brands ($IMBBY) a UK based tobacco company behind popular brands such as Blu vapes, Winston cigarettes, and Backwoods cigars (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/09/25/1920885/0/en/Auxly-Closes-C-123-Million-Investment-and-R-D-Partnership-with-Imperial-Brands-and-Strengthens-its-Board.html). This deal had given Auxly the money they needed to prepare to have products ready for the first day of cannabis 2.0 legalization and also gave them access to use Imperial Brands vape technology.
Kolab Project
Kolab Project (https://kolabproject.com) is one of Auxly's wholly owned subsidiaries that participles in the 1.0 market by selling flower and pre-rolls and also in the 2.0 market with vapes and edibles. This brand has a partnership with the Ontario College of Arts and Design and is focused on building the relationship between cannabis and art, design, and culture (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/23/2020833/0/en/Auxly-Announces-Kolab-Project-Partnership-With-OCAD-University.html). This brand also has started the first vape cartridge recycling program in Canada (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/08/11/2076282/0/en/Auxly-s-Kolab-Project-Partners-with-Greentec-on-Industry-Wide-Vape-Recycling-Program-for-All-Cannabis-Retailers.html).
Dosecann
Dosecann (https://dosecann.com) is Auxly's next major wholly owned subsidiary. Dosecann is a cannabis product manufacturing facility that has been recently expanded and currently can produce vapes, chocolates, gummies, oils, hard candies, capsules, and sprays. The Dosecann brand is focused on creating a line of products that are natural, high quality, safe, and with researched backed formulations. The Dosecann brand itself focuses on oils, sprays, and capsules for both the medical market through a supply deal with Shoppers Drug Mart (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/04/15/2016328/0/en/Auxly-s-Subsidiary-Dosecann-Signs-Key-Supplier-Agreement-With-Medical-Cannabis-by-Shoppers.html) and the recreational market. The Dosecann facility also produces products for all the other Auxly brands, produces white label vapes for other cannabis brands such as Dosist (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/24/2052636/0/en/Auxly-s-Subsidiary-Dosecann-Enters-into-Manufacturing-and-Distribution-Agreement-with-dosist-an-Award-Winning-Wellness-Company.html), and engages in research for cannabis 3.0 wellness products that utilize their exclusive deal to use Ahiflower Oil for cannabis products (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/11/23/2131692/0/en/High-Potency-Plant-Based-Wellness-Dosecann-Introduces-Cannabis-Capsules-With-Omega-Rich-Ahiflower-Oil-A-Truly-Differentiated-Product-for-the-Wellness-Consumer.html).
KGK Science
KGK Science (https://www.kgkscience.com) is Auxly's wholly owned subsidiary for clinical research for health and wellness. KGK Science is licensed by Health Canada to participate in human trials of cannabis and is now also one of a few companies that have obtained an institutional research license that allows them to conduct cannabis studies without having to receive individual licenses for each project. (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/12/23/2149938/0/en/Auxly-s-Subsidiary-KGK-Science-Receives-Institutional-Cannabis-Research-Licence-from-Health-Canada.html). This enables KGK to be one of the best cannabis research companies in Canada and in the world. KGK has since began to study the effects of cannabis on COVID-19 (https://www.kgkscience.com/kgk-launches-virtual-clinical-trial-to-test-the-efficacy-of-a-natural-health-product-to-ease-symptoms-of-covid-19/) and very recently won a contract to begin researching the effects of psychedelic Mescaline through a contract with a company called Nutritional High (https://finance.yahoo.com/news/nutritional-high-advances-psychedelics-business-130000727.html).
Robinson's
Robinson's (https://robinsonscannabis.com) is Auxly's final wholly owned subsidiary, and is a growing project with legendary cannabis grower, Andrew Robinson. Robinson's is located in the lush Nova Scotia Annapolis Valley region and is a producer of small batch, high quality craft cannabis. Robinson's consists of a Health Canada licensed indoor grow facility and a recently licensed outdoor grow facility (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2019/11/15/1947958/0/en/Auxly-Announces-Outdoor-Cultivation-Expansion-Through-the-Launch-of-Robinsons-Outdoor-Grow.html). Robinson's currently has produced 4 unique cannabis strains that have been popular on the cannabis 1.0 market due to their high quality and strength.
SpiritLeaf
Spiritleaf (https://innerspiritholdings.com/invest/) is one of the largest cannabis retailers in all of Canada (https://finance.yahoo.com/finance/news/inner-spirit-holdings-announces-75th-140000591.html) with 75 stores open and over $100m in total network wide sales. Auxly currently owns 10% of the company and also has an exclusive deal to provide Spiritleaf with up to 50% of their annual inventory requirements of any cannabis, cannabis-infused or cannabis-derived products to be sold at its retail dispensaries with a mutually agreeable profit-sharing arrangement relating to any such cannabis product sales (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/02/07/1335316/0/en/Cannabis-Wheaton-Income-Corp-Announces-Closing-of-Inner-Spirit-Holdings-Ltd-Transaction-and-Exercise-of-Pre-Emptive-Right.html).
Lotus
Lotus Cannabis (https://lotuscannabis.ca) is a very high quality cannabis grower. Auxly funded the completion of their facility and currently owns approximately 25% of Lotus and has first rights to purchase up to 50% of their grows with the ability to purchase more if available (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2018/09/11/1569041/0/en/Auxly-and-Lotus-Ventures-Announce-Investment-and-Signing-of-Definitive-Long-Term-Purchase-and-Sale-Agreement.html). Lotus and Auxly recently launched their first product together through Auxly's Kolab Project with the strain Kalifornia (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/09/02/2087603/0/en/High-Quality-Cannabis-Grown-with-Passion-Introducing-Kolab-Project-Flower-a-New-Dried-Flower-Collaboration-Between-Kolab-Project-and-Craft-Growers-Lotus-Cannabis-Co-Available-Now.html). Lotus has proven to be one of the highest quality growers in Canada and should be an great asset to Auxly going forward as a source of high quality cannabis.
Sunens
Sunens (https://careers.sunens.com) is Auxly's final major asset that I feel is worth highlighting at this time. Sunens is a 1.1 million square foot purpose built indoor cannabis grow operation that was formed as a joint venture between Auxly and Peter Quiring, a well know greenhouse builder, grower, and creator of Nature Fresh Farms (https://www.naturefresh.ca/peter-quiring/). This facility has been licensed for the first phase of operation which is 350,000 square feet of the total 1.1m square feet that it will be eventually expanded to (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2020/06/15/2047969/0/en/Auxly-s-Joint-Venture-Partner-Sunens-Farms-Receives-Cultivation-Licence-at-Large-Scale-Facility.html). This project is fully automated and set up to efficiently and cheaply produce high quality indoor grown cannabis. This facility will act as Auxly's main source for cannabis for a wide range of products as it is expanded to its full capacity.
Now that I have laid out the foundation of Auxly's operations, lets move on to where they are as of today. As of now, Auxly has been selling cannabis 2.0 products since day 1 of legalization and is currently the top 2.0 producer in all of Canada with a 19% share of the total vape market and 12% share of the total edible market (https://www.globenewswire.com/news-release/2021/01/19/2160487/0/en/Auxly-in-Top-Spot-for-2-0-Products.html). Auxly's most recent quarterly sales were $15m (Q3 2020) and since releasing them, have consistently rolled out multiple new product SKUs to market under all their brands, and even launched a new value price vape brand called Back Forty. Auxly is also sitting in one of the top spots for gross margin amongst all Canadian licensed producers with around 30% gross margin. Auxly's plan from the very beginning to be a lower overhead producer has paid off by having some of the best margins in the industry, and will continue to increase as production and cultivation continues to scale. Auxly management has taken initiative to try to drastically reduce Capex and SG&A and is currently guiding that they will be cash flow positive by the first half of 2021.
Auxly has a great management team, a strong foundation of assets, funding, and partnerships, has one of the largest market share of 2.0 products, and is expanding their 1.0 market participation in a safe and efficient way. With launching new product SKUs, rapidly increasing revenue (~$800k to $15m in one year), guiding for profitability first half of this year, and some of the best margins in the industry, I feel as though Auxly is the most exciting and undervalued company in the Canadian cannabis industry.
It is crazy to me to see Auxly finally getting some attention and love after 3 years of being crushed by poor performance and dilutive funding. While, there are a lot of shares outstanding due to the dilutive funding, I feel as though the company is undervalued and I am looking forward to continuing to hold the shares I have bought over the last 3 years (which has accumulated to quite a large amount), and see Auxly grow into one of the top cannabis recreational, medicinal, and wellness companies in the world through domination in the 2.0, 3.0, and 4.0 cannabis markets.
Edit: Most recent Auxly investor deck, which gives a great overview of the company, explains all their product brands, and other info I didn't provide, can be found here: https://www.auxly.com/investors/#investor_presentations
submitted by DeepFuckingWeedValue to auxlycannabis [link] [comments]

Be careful with the CERS -- the CRA is not as helpful as you might think

In Ontario, we have been ordered to close for lockdown. In order to control public outrage, the Canada Revenue Agency (CRA... Canada's IRS) has released public statements about supporting small business with a Rent Subsidy. But here's what they're really doing:
  1. They don't actually pay your rent; they give you a percentage of your rent based on how much your sales went down by. Not profit, sales. Top end, they'll give you 25% of your rent. Okay... at least that's something, right?
  2. They made 4-week time periods instead of using months. In order to get your rent subsidy for these periods, you input your sales (and year over year decrease in sales) for the two months during which the period falls. For example, the Sep-Oct period uses your September and October sales data. Okay, so far, so good.
Except: The Dec-Jan period doesn't use your December and January sales. It uses Nov and December, just like the Nov-Dec period did. Why? Because they've had us locked down since late December and everyone's sales drop would be too high. Oh, and the Jan-Feb period? That one uses December sales too.
In the previous lockdown, they shut us down March/April/May and gave us a rent subsidy only if our combined total sales were down 75%... but they made us use April/May/June to qualify. June we were fully open, so, as long as you did normal sales in June, is was impossible to qualify. They're doing a similar thing here. just thought I'd post to let you all know.
Also: Ever try to get the CRA on the phone? It's a long time on hold even without COVID. Except today. I filed my CERS (Rent Subsidy) for Dec-Jan using my December & January numbers and got a phone call within MINUTES telling me that I had to use November & December. MINUTES. They called me.
TLDR: The CRA is intentionally skewing the numbers to avoid helping small business.
submitted by Farexer1 to SmallBusinessCanada [link] [comments]

1st time Rad-140 & Cardarine cycle

Hello all, looking to start my 1st Cardaine & Rad 140 cycle. I will try to update weekly with my dosage, weigh-in, activity level, thoughts, etc etc.
A bit of background info first, 36-year-old male, 5'8, 190 lbs, 25% (or so) body fat, been working out on and off for past 15 years or so and play sports every other day. I have a pretty clean diet, 400 grams of beef/chicken/seafood, 400 grams of sweet potato, 200 grams of rice, lots of veggies and fruits, 2 - 4 L of water, around 2000-2300 cal per day, I don't drink, smoke or do any type of drugs, no desserts or junk food (yes, I am boring like that...). COVID hit us all and hit us all differently, for me it was packing on unnecessary fat and that's one of the main reasons why I want to start this cycle.
The reason for Cardarine is the endurance and to help with fat loss, since I do sports weekly (4 times a week or so) I figure this would help not only with my performance while playing but also help with the fat loss. And since Cardarine isn't a true SARMS (at least from what I have researched), it doesn't have as many side effects as some of the other SARMS.
For RAD 140, of course, it's one of the strongest SARMS out there, so I am hoping to see some gains while I am losing fat and also it does also have the fat loss effect so it should work well with Cardarine. This is as we all know will have some side effects so I will be keeping them low in terms of dosage.
Now, in terms of the dosage, I am planning on doing the following Feb 10 - Feb 17 - 10 MG of Cardarine (this is about a week, just to test out how my body will react to it), then from Feb 18 - Apr 15 - 20 MG of Cardarine (if I have no issues for the 1st week then I will up the dosage to 20 MG and see how my body reacts, I will lower or stop the dosage if my body tells me to fuck off...)
I will be receiving my RAD 140 next week, which kinda works out cause it'd give my body a week to adjust to Cardarine first (at least it makes sense in my head). I will start with 10 MG of RAD, I am unsure if I will up the dosage even if my body is adapting well simply because I don't want to deal with the unnecessary side effect that might come with a higher dosage.
Overall, I will be keeping this at an 8-week cycle and will try to update daily to reflect an accurate account of the journey. And of course, since this is my 1st cycle and that I am new to the SARMS world, I am sure to be missing things or simply not knowing things, so please feel free to comment or leave me with constructive criticisms.
Last but not least, I am in Canada, and I have gone with Gym Array for the Cardarine and RAD 140, their products are pills, not tablets or powder or liquid form. This is not to endorse them and I'm not sponsored by them, but simply as more information for you, the readers.
Thank you for reading the whole thing, and wish me luck lol.
UPDATE - FEB 12
I thought I'd update on my current workout and supplement list to give everyone a better idea and please feel free to comment if you think I should change anything.
With the gyms being closed in Ontario so far, and the province are reopening next week, I haven't had much chance to do serious cardio in the form of sports. I do have a bowflex max trainer at home that I use for cardio but the last time I had some sport type of cardio was before xmas. Currently I am doing a 5x5 workout at home since I have a half rack, but I will be heading back to the gym next week once everything opens up and hope to do 5x5 on Mon/Wed/Fri while working more on lighter weights and specific body parts on Tues/Thurs. Cardio via sports will be 4-5 times a week and about 2 hours or so per session.
As for my supplement list so far, I am doing the following
I was also using the following but decided to stop for now, what do you guys think?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 1 - Feb 10 - Took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning, did not feel anything different, but also didn’t get a chance to do any cardio.
Day 2 - Feb 11 - Morning weigh-in - 189.9 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, only did 30 mins, could feel that endurance is up but didn’t push myself more.
Day 3 - Feb 12 - Morning weigh-in - 189.2 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins first then did my 5x5 workout, felt that I was not winded or anything, actually felt like I could do more from an endurance point of view, then did another 30 mins of cardio post-workout, still felt I could go on, except I did feel my legs were getting a bit tired. Also, didn’t want to push myself too much just yet. I could say for myself, I can feel my endurance is up, before I would be winded after an hour on my Bowflex Max Trainer but now I feel I can do 2 hours or more without being winded.
Day 4 - Feb 13 - Morning weigh-in - 188.4 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins on Bowflex Max, no workout today, did not feel winded, however, legs do feel fatigued, especially calves since I haven't done much cardio since Xmas as I have mentioned previously.
Day 5 - Feb 14 - Morning weigh-in - 190 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins on Bowflex Max, no workout today, similar to yesterday, endurance is no issue, I do need to find better ways to recover with the muscle fatigue but hopefully, my body will adjust in a week or so.
I am also going to push back RAD for about 2 weeks, as I have no access to a gym for another two weeks due to provincial covid regulations, so I will be on 10 mg of Cardarine this week, 20 mg for the next 2 weeks and then it'd be the combination of 20 mg of Cardarine with 10 mg of RAD 140 for week 4. Overall I will be doing 12 weeks of Cardarine and 8 weeks of RAD.
submitted by 102684dzhou102684 to cardarine [link] [comments]

KNR - Kontrol Technologies DD (detects covid in the air)

KNR – Kontrol Technologies –(CSE:KNR)(OTCQB:KNRLF)(FSE:1K8)
Despite how good any investment looks at one point in time, it is totally possible that it looks the complete opposite tomorrow, or a week from now. This has been the case with KNR. In September this company had some exciting news RE: detection and authentication of that technology and it looked like only a matter of weeks before the profit would be raining in from the skies. https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-covid-19-technology-receives-192000201.html
Fast forward to early November, and we had achieved CSA/US equivalent approvals, lower detection limits, and patents waiting to be filed ( which have now been filed), yet with the release of the vaccine news the share price had retracted ~50%. All in a matter of a few weeks. KNR has been a rollercoaster, which is not unlike many of its peers on the OTC exchange.
CSA Approval https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-receives-csa-standards-approval-182500733.html
UL Approval​​​​​​ https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-receives-ul-standards-approval-130000528.html
Lower Detection Limit https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-establishes-lower-detection-limit-110000134.html
Distribution Agreement https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-provides-biocloud-enters-distribution-130000377.html
Files Patent – (November 30th 2020 – 90 dispute period) https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-energy-files-patent-applications-130000660.html
It is my humble opinion that the progression towards some path of normalcy will involve vaccines, and other complimentary technologies. I don’t think any 'one' thing will reverse what Covid has done to society thus far. I believe that viral detection products will be part of that future. Whether KNR has a role, is truly anyone’s guess. But IMO, I think this world will one day in the future (distant or not) be detecting airborne pathogens with regularity. Maybe not to the extent of carbon monoxide, but I do not see us having the capability of detecting airborne pathogens and not using it.
KNR is a very interesting company. They, as I am sure you have heard by now have two things:
  1. a core business that has the potential to grow on its own, which is only getting amplified with the publicity around Biocloud.
  2. a product (Biocloud) that detects airborne viral pathogens, which currently is targeting the SarsCoV2 virus (Covid 19). There are other players in this space, but KNR would appear to be the furthest along in their developments. Fun fact – the BioCloud chamber can be changed to detect a wide array of other viral pathogens, should this be only the first of many more pandemics to come.
Please do your own DD. Lots of interviews with Paul Ghezzi on youtube, and there is no shortage of stock estimates on the forums. The math is ABSOLUTELY STAGGERING and all points to a severely undervalued stock.
https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/ontario-government-invests-2-million-153000034.html
The above link is what sent this stock parabolic last Thursday. The Ontario government provided $2M to CEMSI (CEMSI a London, ON based subsidiary of Kontrol Technology) to “commercialize and accelerate production of Kontrol BioCloud, a Covid-19 detector”. With Ontario's support, CEMSI plans to increase production capacity to 20,000 units per month. ONE BIOCLOUD IS $15K USD – however they have openly stated they will give discounts on large orders.
So let’s say Biocloud is ~65% off and retails for $6,000 CAD (to be ultra conservative)
20,000 (max monthly capacity) x $6,000 a unit = $120,000,000 /month
120M x 12 months = ~ 1.4B in revenue.
Lets, say this is the only company ever to not be valued on a multiple of earnings (even though competitors in the space are valued at 3-4 re-occurring revenue)
$1.4B / 40,000,000 (o/s shares – only ~ $17M available to the public) = $35/share Its $5.18 as I write this. Jesus Fucking Christ.
What a time to be alive.
Also, they have have an uplisting in the works now as of this morning : https://finance.yahoo.com/news/kontrol-technologies-engages-digital-offering-130000613.html
Never invest in speculation with more than you can afford to lose ... Not a financial advisor.
submitted by ultimafan87 to CanadianInvestor [link] [comments]

1st time Rad-140 & Cardarine cycle

Hello all, looking to start my 1st Cardaine & Rad 140 cycle. I will try to update weekly with my dosage, weigh-in, activity level, thoughts, etc etc.
A bit of background info first, 36-year-old male, 5'8, 190 lbs, 25% (or so) body fat, been working out on and off for past 15 years or so and play sports every other day. I have a pretty clean diet, 400 grams of beef/chicken/seafood, 400 grams of sweet potato, 200 grams of rice, lots of veggies and fruits, 2 - 4 L of water, around 2000-2300 cal per day, I don't drink, smoke or do any type of drugs, no desserts or junk food (yes, I am boring like that...). COVID hit us all and hit us all differently, for me it was packing on unnecessary fat and that's one of the main reasons why I want to start this cycle.
The reason for Cardarine is the endurance and to help with fat loss, since I do sports weekly (4 times a week or so) I figure this would help not only with my performance while playing but also help with the fat loss. And since Cardarine isn't a true SARMS (at least from what I have researched), it doesn't have as many side effects as some of the other SARMS.
For RAD 140, of course, it's one of the strongest SARMS out there, so I am hoping to see some gains while I am losing fat and also it does also have the fat loss effect so it should work well with Cardarine. This is as we all know will have some side effects so I will be keeping them low in terms of dosage.
Now, in terms of the dosage, I am planning on doing the following Feb 10 - Feb 17 - 10 MG of Cardarine (this is about a week, just to test out how my body will react to it), then from Feb 18 - Apr 15 - 20 MG of Cardarine (if I have no issues for the 1st week then I will up the dosage to 20 MG and see how my body reacts, I will lower or stop the dosage if my body tells me to fuck off...)
I will be receiving my RAD 140 next week, which kinda works out cause it'd give my body a week to adjust to Cardarine first (at least it makes sense in my head). I will start with 10 MG of RAD, I am unsure if I will up the dosage even if my body is adapting well simply because I don't want to deal with the unnecessary side effect that might come with a higher dosage.
Overall, I will be keeping this at an 8-week cycle and will try to update daily to reflect an accurate account of the journey. And of course, since this is my 1st cycle and that I am new to the SARMS world, I am sure to be missing things or simply not knowing things, so please feel free to comment or leave me with constructive criticisms.
Last but not least, I am in Canada, and I have gone with Gym Array for the Cardarine and RAD 140, their products are pills, not tablets or powder or liquid form. This is not to endorse them and I'm not sponsored by them, but simply as more information for you, the readers.
Thank you for reading the whole thing, and wish me luck lol.
UPDATE - FEB 12
I thought I'd update on my current workout and supplement list to give everyone a better idea and please feel free to comment if you think I should change anything.
With the gyms being closed in Ontario so far, and the province are reopening next week, I haven't had much chance to do serious cardio in the form of sports. I do have a bowflex max trainer at home that I use for cardio but the last time I had some sport type of cardio was before xmas. Currently I am doing a 5x5 workout at home since I have a half rack, but I will be heading back to the gym next week once everything opens up and hope to do 5x5 on Mon/Wed/Fri while working more on lighter weights and specific body parts on Tues/Thurs. Cardio via sports will be 4-5 times a week and about 2 hours or so per session.
As for my supplement list so far, I am doing the following
I was also using the following but decided to stop for now, what do you guys think?
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Day 1 - Feb 10 - Took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning, did not feel anything different, but also didn’t get a chance to do any cardio.
Day 2 - Feb 11 - Morning weigh-in - 189.9 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, only did 30 mins, could feel that endurance is up but didn’t push myself more.
Day 3 - Feb 12 - Morning weigh-in - 189.2 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins first then did my 5x5 workout, felt that I was not winded or anything, actually felt like I could do more from an endurance point of view, then did another 30 mins of cardio post-workout, still felt I could go on, except I did feel my legs were getting a bit tired. Also, didn’t want to push myself too much just yet. I could say for myself, I can feel my endurance is up, before I would be winded after an hour on my Bowflex Max Trainer but now I feel I can do 2 hours or more without being winded.
Day 4 - Feb 13 - Morning weigh-in - 188.4 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins on Bowflex Max, no workout today, did not feel winded, however, legs do feel fatigued, especially calves since I haven't done much cardio since Xmas as I have mentioned previously.
Day 5 - Feb 14 - Morning weigh-in - 190 lbs, took 1 pill (10 mg) of Cardarine this morning then went to do cardio while fasting, did 30 mins on Bowflex Max, no workout today, similar to yesterday, endurance is no issue, I do need to find better ways to recover with the muscle fatigue but hopefully, my body will adjust in a week or so.
I am also going to push back RAD for about 2 weeks, as I have no access to a gym for another two weeks due to provincial covid regulations, so I will be on 10 mg of Cardarine this week, 20 mg for the next 2 weeks and then it'd be the combination of 20 mg of Cardarine with 10 mg of RAD 140 for week 4. Overall I will be doing 12 weeks of Cardarine and 8 weeks of RAD.
submitted by 102684dzhou102684 to rad140 [link] [comments]

Intro! + So happy to have found this group

I stumbled upon this group while talking with a friend of mine who benefited a lot from the baby bumps group!
I’m 29 and living in Ontario, Canada. My husband is 31 and he’s been ready to have a baby since last year. But truth be told I’m so scared of labour and delivery, losing my identity as a woman and missing out on lots of kid-free travel. But on the flip side I feel like as a couple we are ready for this next step. My husband and I both thankfully have great jobs, own a home and we both maintain an active and healthy lifestyle. I’ve been on the IUD (Kyleena) for over 7 years now and while my husband keeps reminding me about making an appointment to remove it, I can’t help but to worry. Once I remove the IUD I’m entering this point of no return 😅
I’m such a planner and I’ve asked a few of my friends who have kids (there isn’t many of them..which adds to my worry that I would be alone) when they felt ready to be a mom and they all told me that you ever truly feel “ready”. Also, this might be really silly but I’ve always imagined a pregnancy where I can see others freely, have strangers open doors for me, host a baby shower without the worry of covid. Being locked up in your home for almost a year affected my mental health so I can’t imagine what it would be like if I was pregnant.
My husband is an amazing partner. He respects my worries and has recently stopped pestering me about my IUD removal appointment lol. I am gearing myself up for a May preconception/IUD removal and then trying for a baby this fall.
Has anyone else also experienced this flip-flopping of emotions? One day I see young families in my neighbourhood taking walks and immediately want to remove my IUD, and other days I’m almost in a “mourning” phase of my life without kids. Reading the posts on this group has really opened my eyes to so many different perspectives and I have to believe that I can’t be only one feeling this way!! Right?! 😬
submitted by Ok-Dragonfruit4190 to waiting_to_try [link] [comments]

Want some real stories - unorganized townships

My wife and I currently live in London, ON, and since we've been together (going on 9 years now), we've wanted to escape city life. I know, cliche right? Nothing new there I imagine. We're 30/31 years old and hoping to make this a 10 year plan and "retire" from city life. We want to learn to hunt for ourselves, fish, and grow our own food...eventually. We have a lot to learn.
We're considering buying 10-100 acres of land in Northern Ontario, but there are some things I'd like to get some perspective on from locals before we start really looking in earnest.
For some additional context, this is a summary of our plan: buy land (exact location we aren't sure, we're not opposed to Thunder Bay but we'd like to be within 8 hours of London so something north of or around Sudbury or Sault Ste. Marie is our preference), build an off-grid tiny home (likely something prefab or built by someone else since we really aren't builders, but we'd like to learn more), and use the property as a summer vacation spot, perhaps renting the home or land when we aren't using it for some additional income.
Then, overtime, we'd like to build up the property to the point that we can start making it sustainable and livable for ourselves in the long term. We eventually want to upgrade from a tiny home to a proper small cottage and continue renting out the tiny home.
Our ultimate dream/goal would be to start an alpaca fiber hobby farm that might eventually become our main source of income (breeding or manure plus yarn and knitting clothes), but until then, at least one of us can likely work remote (since COVID has opened up opportunities for my office to go permanently remote), but this has lead me to a few questions that I think personal experience would best answer:
  1. Unorganized vs organized: I understand the general concept of this, but what is it really like building in an unorganized township? The lower taxes and less strict building requirements seem appealing, but with respect to our eventual goal to start a farm and set up an off-grid infrastructure, what inspections or permits might we expect to still need? We want a mix of solar and propane (likely would need a 500 gallon tank installed in the long term), and we'd use a drilled well, compost toilet, and grey water system rather than septic. There is some solid land in organized townships too - are the processes for building the same as in a city then? How much do permits cost usually? What are the differences in property taxes? Is it less than a city since it's rural, even though it's organized?
  2. Road access: a big thing we want is road access, we aren't looking at the land that is surrounded by crown land and only accessible by ATV. I know this will make our a search a little harder, but while we want off-grid, with plans for renting and agritourism, we want to be on road access. For example, one piece of land we were looking at was adjacent to a part of the Trans-Canada Highway, how busy do these roads tend to be?
  3. Internet: how bad is it really? If we are already looking for road access, can we expect okay internet since we'd be a bit closer to other infrastructure? I put in the postal code of some of the land available, and it told me I could get 300 down cable internet through VMedia. It was just north of Englehart. Is this fairly common if you're close-ish to an established town? Or should we expect worse options?
  4. Starting a farm for income: are there any restrictions to this with respect to organized vs unorganized townships? I understand the need to register our livestock, get a business license, paying HST, all that sort of stuff, but is it any more challenging than starting up any other type of business?
  5. Hunting, fishing, and owning land: let's say we have some land with a pond or body of water and maybe a forested area with small game or even if a deer or something wanders through, are we allowed to fish and hunt on our land during the regular hunting seasons? Are we allowed to hunt or fish year round on our land? Or do most people venture out to crown land for that? We've never gone hunting, but we watch a lot of sustenance living and hunting YouTube channels and TV shows, and we really want to learn how to do all those things for ourselves.
I think that's it! But if anyone has any stories to share about a similar experience or just life in Northern Ontario, I'd love to hear it!
submitted by vampirelupus to northernontario [link] [comments]

I'm afraid my friends think I'm a covid denier

Background Information: I'm an early twenties male living in Ontario, Canada. Currently nearing the end of a 2nd lockdown that began on boxing day (should end Feb 16th).
Since early on in the pandemic I was skeptical of lockdowns, I thought the costs outweighed the benefits depending on length/severity. However, I accepted the first lockdown because of all the unknowns and at first I like most people thought it worked. Our case numbers dropped significantly and we had a somewhat normal summer. I saw friends regularly with little to no risk and despite some things being different generally enjoyed myself and thought I could live this way for the time being.
Unfortunately, in July there was an incident involving my then group of friends which left me pretty much alone (was my fault don't want to get into it). I ended the summer with only a couple of people in my circle and was looking to find a new group to get through the rest of the pandemic with. I was lucky enough that my one friend introduced to his hometown friends on Halloween and I clicked with them really fast. I was so grateful for a second chance. We pretty much hungout every weekend for the next 6 or so weeks, just a small group that don't see that many other people. I knew that if I just had that I could get mentally through the remainder of the pandemic with little issue. I've never been someone that needs much to get by, just some close family and friends is enough for me to enjoy life.
Anyways, around the middle of November my suspicions surrounding lockdowns started to grow very high. I have a degree in Math and Statistics and quickly noticed case curves that had been growing for a while, start to trend down with varying levels of restrictions (most notably states in the Midwest). This began to lead me to the conclusion that NPI's are far less effective than most people give them credit for and it's more so that a region having a general seasonal curve is the biggest factor. This has now strengthened with pretty much all of North America in a downward trend lockdown or not.
Ontario got put in a 2nd lockdown on Dec 26th and needless to say, I was crushed. My mental health deteriorated rapidly while in this lockdown. I knew I was perfectly capable of living a mostly happy life under the moderate restrictions we previously had (some I agree with, some I don't but overall it didn't impact my quality of life too much). As long as I had a few people I could see from time to time, I'd be fine. That was gone on Dec 26th. I went back to my parents place before Christmas and stayed there until today. My friends and I video chatted sometimes and while nice, it just isn't the same.
Today our government announced that the regions in which my friends and I lived would be moving back to our "framework" on Feb 16th. Now, my friends are not doomers or sensationalists or anything but they're more so just casually informed on covid, like they may read or watch a bit of MSM but that's it. I, due to my skepticism surrounding lockdown and some other NPIs have been keeping track of trends worldwide for the last few months to get a better idea of what actually is going on. For the last little while, I've been trying to inform them on some of the stuff I've been discovering in the hopes of opening their minds to the inefficacy of lockdowns. Unfortunately, a lot of the time I'm met back with some repeated claim from the MSM with no evidence (such as opening will cause cases to 'spike' despite numbers going down in other open regions).
Last time we all video chatted, a couple of my friends unprompted said they want to hang out as soon as the lockdown ends and internally I was so excited that I didn't have to wait much longer. However, today after I shared a photo in our group chat of me on the way back home from my parents, one of my friends did a complete 180 and says he doesn't want to hang out for a little longer. I ask "Why is that? Our covid numbers are lower than the last time we hung out. None of us see very many people and we've been locked down for 7 weeks." It just didn't seem logical to me. A little later he messages me accusing me of pressuring the others to hang out and calling me selfish and that I don't care about the pandemic. I get that they want to be "covid safe" but the logic behind not wanting to see each other when the lockdown ends is really confusing me especially when our numbers are even lower than they were when we last hung out. I just feel so disappointed that I waited this long to get the one thing that's been getting me through this back and now I may have to wait even longer?
Can anybody help me out with this issue? I don't want to lose a really great group of friends over a disagreement about covid.
submitted by guy_4815162342 to LockdownMHsupport [link] [comments]

Draining job search after layoff

Context: 26M living in southern Ontario, Canada (nearby Toronto)
Two months ago, I was laid off from a junior software developer job that I have had for three years. This was a part of a mass layoff. Java and SQL were the two languages predominantly used in that job, and it was my first job in this field. I have already applied for unemployment.
Since the layoff, I have applied to developer related job openings, mainly on Indeed. However, my efforts have not produced any results save for one Zoom interview where I should receive a follow-up by next week at the latest. Two other applications resulted in rejection, but no response from anywhere else. The radio silence could mean anything from rejection to hiring freezes due to covid.
The longer this job search goes, the more I feel like giving up and that there won't be a better job out there. Resorting to retail or customer service in general is out of the question due to my history with anxiety and depression combined with my 5 month experience as a call center advisor in 2017.
What can I do to improve my chances of landing another developer job? Is my resume the problem, or are there companies out there that are undergoing hiring freezes due to the pandemic?
submitted by GlitteringFail1 to cscareerquestions [link] [comments]

Toronto Daily - Feb 9th 2021

Welcome to the Toronto Daily Thread.

This thread serves two purposes:
1) To collect and make visible new posts in smaller Toronto based subreddits.
Feel free to visit, comment and be generally helpful in posts indexed below. Please also remember to stay on your best behaviour when travelling outside of /toronto.
2) To act as a general off-topic conversation hub for the day.
To that end, use this thread to talk about whatever is on your mind, regardless of whether or not it's related to Toronto.
No matter where you're posting, please remember to be excellent to each other.

/AskTO

Post Title Author Comments
Looking for beard\barber supplies. ScotGerCaJ 0
Tesla Real world distances Bonobo77 4
Moving to Toronto, do I bring my car? pulolthicpat 19
Single people - what percent of your monthly salary goes on car and rent? (Including insurances + utilities) randomguy9722 18
About job termination (Ontario) New_Astronomer_282 5
Recommendation for home phone alldressedC 6
Any LGBT+ friendly doctor recommendations kernalkernal 0
Call for Muslim Mental Health Stories ohanasunshine 4
Small brands looking for photographers/designers in DT? Banchukman 2
Where’s a good place to view trains without leaving the car? MoreGaghPlease 12
Tailor in the East end for a custom suit? (Danforth/Greenwood) mcbaindk 3
Office workers of Toronto - can you share where your workplace gets their office supplies from? joseeclem 24
Toronto rents notafancyname123321 28
I keep finding dog booties on the ground. Is there a local website to reunite lost dog booties with their rightful owners? TorontoJD 8
Canadian virtual phone number Mroddfigures 9
all of my iD is expired. What is the fasted one i can get? SuperHeefer 7
COVID financial assistance youichiis 3
Where to go to get my masters in political science? edgy_secular_memes 13
Does anyone know if iHalo is open at Vaughn Mills? Pristine_Mall2510 0
First-time renter looking for advice Soslickzzz 8
Condo common area damage jayk10 11
Canada Goose Langford or North Face McMurdo and why? Jaxisthecool1 5
Internet in junction/high park strangesadboiclub 4
Allergy-friendly Chinese food in/near DT? raging_dingo 7
Where can I rent/buy a Microsoft Hololens 2 in Toronto/The GTA? ProfessorDogHere 0

/TorontoJobs

Post Title Author Comments
[For Hire] Small Business Marketing Help for You mantramarketing 0
[[For Hire] Senior Mobile App Developer HealthCare Logistics
[For Hire] One-Stop-Shop for All Your Writing Needs Try-Mission 0

/TorontoEvents

Post Title Author Comments
Easy Marketing Tips for Solopreneurs to Gain More Customers sittin_dock_bay 0
[Toronto Public Library programs February 8-14](https://www.reddit.com/Torontoevents/comments/lfcyao/toronto_public_library_programs_february_814/) TPL_on_Reddit

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Selling: Polaroid Impulse Portrait Camera - Refurbished by Polaroid and Working Great (Recent Samples Included) - Purchased for $140, Selling for $100 DanFromDorval 0

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Lost small black leather bag with important docs in it. CinthyaPoila 0
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submitted by thetorontobot to toronto [link] [comments]

What’s with sending packages from montreal through Ontario, when that is not the route it’s suppose to be directed toward?

So 2 weeks before Xmas I sent packages to family. One got there pretty late but the other one seemed to be lost. I was losing hope but at least it was insured. Finally, it got there about a week ago and was shipped from montreal on the 11th, somehow went to Scarborough on the 30th with no tracking update, then returned to Montreal on the 16th, then took another two week transit in montreal before it was shipped to its destination, and was received two days later on the 2nd of feb.
Now, I shipped another box within that time frame and I’m assuming that CP employees don’t know where Quebec is, even if they are based in Quebec because, I’ve lost another package that was suppose to be delivered a week ago. No tracking updates, nothing. Like it’s been wiped off the face of the earth. This one was just a bunch of documents so I didn’t put any insurance on it, but it did need to get there within a reasonable timeframe so I sent it a week early. Now it’s a week late from what they said it will be. Opened a service ticket a week ago and no updates. Asked for a refund and due to the delivery guarantees not being applied during the time of covid, not only am I late on the projects I was just about in completion of, but I’m out 141$.
“Due to covid”... meh, don’t give me that lazy excuse when it’s one stop to it’s destination and you guys have the time to send packages to Ontario!
Claim some responsibility, you incompetent fools.
submitted by Historical_Walrus_82 to CanadaPost [link] [comments]

Website design in Leicester and around the East Midlands

Website design in Leicester and around the East Midlands

How to accelerate ecommerce growth

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https://preview.redd.it/l03jrbu7z0g61.jpg?width=900&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=8a58b371085b8f69457fc3dc569739614c48f861
How to accelerate ecommerce growth. To enable speed in e-commerce, companies need to get a bewildering number of things right. But we’ve found that three elements are particularly important: a test-and-learn culture, operations to support rapid reaction, and a customer-first commitment.

Testing and learning

Research shows that more than 50 percent of companies whose revenue growth is in the top 10 percent are more effective than their industry peers at testing ideas, measuring results, and executing changes to products, services, and ways of working. A prerequisite of successful testing and learning is an acceptance of failure as the cost of uncovering new knowledge. Recent McKinsey research shows, in fact, that respondents at successful organizations are more than twice as likely as their peers elsewhere to strongly agree that employees are rewarded for taking an appropriate level of risk. Digital natives have this mindset as part of their DNA and support it in three ways.

Embed learning

A culture of learning has to extend to every corner of an organization, but it starts with leadership. At top-performing companies, senior leaders continuously scan for new tools and practices that can accelerate performance, taking the time to learn a new solution at least monthly, compared with quarterly at slower-moving companies. They also take steps to spread knowledge. When Procter & Gamble set about building a digital culture, the consumer-packaged-goods (CPG) giant, founded in the 19th century, started with learning. It created an array of platforms, programs, and training modules to broadcast knowledge and extend training throughout the organization. Its Digital Genius Academy, for example, aimed to upskill everyone in the company in online sales and marketing fundamentals. Another program paired middle and senior managers with digital-subject-matter experts, who were usually junior, to ensure knowledge traveled both up and down the hierarchy.

Reward experimentation, even when it fails

A cornerstone of digital culture is the ability to continuously improve and innovate. Teams are empowered to test, learn, and improve without the need for a cumbersome approval process, allowing them to test new go-to-market approaches, improve the e-commerce platform, or even get new products to market first. Incentives need to be in place to support this approach. At ShopRunner, for example, executives are asked in their reviews to describe recent failures. If the failures hadn’t cost the company money, the executives didn’t get their bonuses. Incentives include providing employees with ownership and decision rights. Atlassian, an Australian enterprise-software company, hosts quarterly ShipIt Days, in which employees have 24 hours to work on anything innovative they want, provided it relates to an Atlassian product, and then present the work to the company. The company also allows employees to spend 20 percent of their time developing their own innovative ideas.

Rapid-reaction operations

Truly digital players have fully integrated e-commerce and digital sales with the rest of the value chain. This allows them to quickly react to new customer demand, adapt existing offerings, introduce new products and services, and deliver them to customers fast.
Doing this well starts with being able to spot opportunities quickly. That requires good data and a commitment to using it. Nearly half of the best-performing companies in a recent survey, in fact, collect and analyze customer data at least weekly, compared with just 16 percent on average. Companies then need to have the operational flexibility to move quickly to go after those opportunities. Take Vistaprint, a global e-commerce company that produces customized marketing materials for small businesses. Driven by the COVID-19 pandemic, in late March, Vistaprint supported a local fire department in Ontario, Canada, in developing face shields for frontline workers. By early April, after this successful run, it had reconfigured its Ontario manufacturing site and produced its first 3,000 shields for the Ontario health system. Learning from the experience, it has now scaled its mask-making operations, offering customized, stylish face masks globally.
Agility in operations and supply chain has a cumulative strategic advantage. By the time a competitor shows up with a me-too product, the first mover will have rolled out scores of improved versions and already established a solid go-to-market approach. We found that during the crisis, many companies were able to make changes to their e-commerce front-end capabilities but struggled to adapt their logistics to support the surge in demand.
Walmart, known for its ubiquitous big-box stores, has invested heavily in digital operations over the past decade. Its digital process has been put to the test during the COVID-19 crisis. When its 45 online fulfillment centers were pushed beyond capacity, the retailer turned its physical stores into mini warehouses, which allowed the company to expand its “ship from store” offer to 2,500 retail locations.
These tasks are never “done.” It’s important to continually monitor and measure results and push for improvements.

Action focused on delighting customers

One reason that focusing on the customer accelerates a business’s pace is that it helps to provide clarity and focus about what is needed and cuts down on doing things that don’t add value.
Successful digital innovators treat customer satisfaction as a primary business goal. In practice, that means investing heavily in analyzing and mitigating any customer friction points and embracing a zero-defects mentality. How do they do that? The best companies intimately understand their customers’ experience, focus on the details of what their customers really want, and layer in data to fill out the picture. To drive this focus, they use data and analytics to synchronize the e-commerce experience with physical stores, social media, inside sales, customer care, and other customer-facing channels, making it seamless for the customer to shift among them.
A good example of this focus on what the customer wants is Best Buy, a US consumer-electronics retailer. When COVID-19 hit, customers could no longer come to Best Buy stores, but they were still shopping online and wanted their products quickly. So, in just 48 hours in March, Best Buy built and rolled out a contactless curbside pickup service that has since been extended to 1,000 stores. The effort included everything from new staging areas in the stores to new roles for sales associates. Best Buy’s US online sales increased more than 250 percent, and about 50 percent were fulfilled via curbside pickup.
For businesses today (both B2C and B2B), omnichannel has become a cornerstone of great customer experience. A recent research study says 40 to 65 percent of consumers intend to continue using contactless services, such as buy online and pick up in store and curbside pickup, even after the crisis is over.

How to make the change

Becoming a fast-moving e-commerce company requires a lot of things to happen at most large companies. However, we have found that executives should focus on getting three things right.

Understand what good looks like

As simple as this may seem, many executives have real trouble knowing what excellence is in the digital realm. Even for the most experienced executives, it is crucial to step out of the day-to-day, look outside the organization, and reimagine the business. That can happen in many ways, from setting up an internal group of experts, or “tiger team,” to review the business independently to visiting top-performing companies to see how it’s done. One large consulting firm decided it needed to move away from using a cost-plus pricing model to becoming a digital-enabled solutions provider. This involved a hard look at what other forward-thinking firms were doing to serve their customers and what actions the company would need to take in order to carry out the internal shift.

Be comfortable testing your way to the answer

Even when a company has a vision of where it wants to go and what good looks like, leadership may find it difficult, even impossible, to chart a direct path to get there. In digital, so much is unknown that traditional planning—sizing up a potential opportunity and developing the capabilities to seize it—isn’t possible. This is where a test-and-learn mindset is most valuable. By creating a safe place for line leaders to “test the ground” through small pilot programs and learning from their success or failure, leaders can course-correct until the best path forward becomes clear. When done well, this begets an iterative cycle of testing, learning, and planning—for example, developing a series of A/B tests or testing minimum viable products in the marketplace.
Because executives are uncomfortable with uncertainty and unfamiliar with the idea of testing their way to a plan, however, they often either starve the effort of the necessary resources or recklessly throw money and time at it without any guardrails. The test-and-learn approach is most effective when it has some basic disciplines combined with the appropriate investment and freedom to fail and succeed.

Walk in your customer’s shoes

Most executives will say that their companies are customer-centric, but often the reality is that business pressures, stakeholder demands, and market forces are top of mind. Even when leaders do commit to trying to better understand the customer (think Undercover Boss), they generally just end up experiencing the employee’s perspective, not the customer’s. For example, visits to the front line to listen to customer complaints or serve customers in stores may provide a window into employee–customer interactions, but they fall short of developing deep customer insights.
Instead, we’ve found it’s much more eye opening to analyze individual customer journeys in depth for one to two hours with six to eight company leaders. This allows executives to really question each step of the process and understand what the customer is experiencing. At one company, executives listened to a single interactive-voice-response (IVR) experience and learned that it wasn’t until 45 seconds into the call that the customer was able to make the first choice. That simple example with a single customer drove home the nature of the pain point. The team prioritized streamlining the IVR process so that the first interaction could happen within ten seconds.
Any effort to quickly scale e-commerce requires significant resources, from new kinds of talent to data analytics to IT infrastructure. While those resources are critical, we continue to believe that a learning mindset that values speed over perfection, embraces failure as much as success, and empowers team members is even more critical, and you can start the change today. Without that mindset, all the resources in the world will not result in a truly digital organization.

We hope you enjoyed this article, intended to help improve our client’s profitability. It reflects the care SwiftERM offer. If you haven’t already done so, then please enjoy a FREE month’s trial and let us know what you think. Register

submitted by SwiftERM to u/SwiftERM [link] [comments]

HRV + Geothermal System + Honeywell Steam Humidifier = $500/mth electric bill

I bought a 4000 squarefoot house that came with a Lifebreath 200Max HRV, a waterfurnace3 with DHW option and an induct waterwheel humidifier. I live in southern Ontario in a zone 5.
The house was built in 1994 so meets relatively modern building codes.
The first thing I noticed was the HRV was unplugged. So I opened it up, cleaned out the 6 dead mice and tons of debris and fired it up. Which immediately led me to notice the second problem, whoever originally installed it had ducted it wrong and the fresh air intake came from outside and the stale air intake also came from outside. I switched the ducting so it worked properly. That's when I noticed the HRV was constantly calling for activation until I disconnected the remote wires. Turns out somewhere in the house they shorted together all of the control wiring, I checked all the mechanical timers and they were fine.
Realizing the HRV had never functioned properly I pulled the humidifier to check it's functionality to find it was basically a solid block of black mold. So I replaced that with a honeywell whole house steam humidifier. And installed a UV filter in the return air ducting.
I've read that with modern construction houses are so airtight that the HRV should be set to run all the time anyway at its lowest setting and only turned up when the timers call for it. Well because the timers are out of commission until I can find the short i just left it running on its lowest setting 24x7.
So my house maintains 40% at 70F year round whether the outdoor temperature is -30F or 130F. The downside is that because the HRV is running nonstop in the wintertime at least, the geothermal can only maintain the house temperature with it's 1st stage engaged and won't warm up without the 2nd stage. Auxiliary heat never kicks in. This is sucking down about 3.2kwh 24x7 and the steam Humidifier is sucking down another 3kwh about half that time since all my humid air is getting blown outside and no humidity being recovered.
Even with reduced electricity cost due to covid-19, my electric bill is 400-600 a month because of all the energy the two systems are using.
Geothermal is supposed to be amongst the most efficient ways of heating and cooling, but if my HRV is just dumping all that conditioned air outside I think I'm losing most of that efficiency in the name of fresh air... None of the bathrooms have standard exhaust vents because they all have HRV ducting in them.
I've currently got the HRV on a smart plug and scheduled it to come on for 2 hours three times a day when it's most likely to be filling with cooking or bathing odors/humdities, but the bathrooms don't have the luxury of dumping stinky air outside on demand now.
Can anyone offer advice on what I should do? Even if I find the short and repair it, the system is still going to be running on low speed 24x7 which leads to the 400-600/mth electric bills.
Should it not be on 24x7 and only run when needed? Each bathroom and kitchen have mechanical timers (currently disabled) so should I find the short and the system be set to manual only?
Edit: The house has 2 kitchens and 4 bathrooms. According to CAN/CSA-F326-M91 that means the house needs 294 cfm continuous exhaust? Am I reading that right? That's above the maximum setting of my unit 200cfm. If I was blowing that much air in/out 24x7 I don't think my geothermal would ever shutdown and backup heating would probably kick in, at the lowest setting it is about 90cfm which tends to drop the temperature house wide about 2 degrees in about an hour causing the geothermal to kick on the 1st and 2nd stage heating.
submitted by waltwalt to hvacadvice [link] [comments]

Covid-19 Update for February 4: 582 new cases (421 today), 580 recoveries, 13 deaths

Data is taken from the Covid-19 portal and today's media availability by Dr Deena Hinshaw. Dr Hinshaw's next availability will be Monday.
There are currently enhanced measures in effect for the province of Alberta. This link provides a quick summary of which ones are in effect for the province. Alberta is currently on "Early Steps", with the goal of reaching Step 1 on February 8th.
Top line numbers:
Value Current Change Total
Total cases — +582 125,672
- From today — +421 —
- From yesterday — +161 —
Active cases 6,588 -11 —
Cases with "Unknown source" 1,066 (36.7%) in last 7 days +159 (+4.2%) —
Tests — +17,778 (~3.27% positive) 3,213,391
- From today — +11,512 (~3.66% positive) —
- From yesterday — +6,266 (~2.57% positive) —
People tested — +4,391 1,765,546 (~403,923/million)
Hospitalizations 517 -22/-30 based on yesterday's post/portal data 5,495 (+17)
ICU 93 -1/-2 based on yesterday's post/portal data 885 (+2)
Deaths — +13 1,684
Recoveries — +580 117,400
Recoveries and Deaths
Age Bracket New Recoveries Total Recoveries New Deaths Total Deaths
<1 +3 646 +0 0
1-4 +19 3,702 +0 0
5-9 +29 5,146 +0 0
10-19 +80 13,774 +0 0
20-29 +88 22,258 +0 8
30-39 +91 22,702 +0 8
40-49 +92 18,812 +1 20
50-59 +68 14,078 +1 54
60-69 +46 8,556 +2 170
70-79 +27 3,926 +3 332
80+ +37 3,760 +6 1,091
Unknown +0 40 +0 1
Vaccinations
Value Change Total
Vaccinations +3,047 112,388 (~25,712/million)
Albertans with 2 vaccinations +2,824 21,794 (~4,986/million)
Reported UK and South Africa Variants
  • The value is updated by Alberta Health twice a week
  • Last update: February 2
  • Today, Dr Hinsahw reported there have been 68 known variant cases. All 11 new cases are B.1.1.7
Variant Change since last update (January 29) Cases
United Kingdom (B.1.1.7) +19 50
South Africa (B.1.351) +1 7
Effective Reproductive Number (R, or Rt)
  • The value is updated by Alberta Health on Mondays
  • Last update: February 1
  • What % the confidence interval represents isn't stated
Zone R Value (Confidence interval) Change since last week
Province-wide 0.83 (0.81-0.87) +0.02
Edmonton 0.74 (0.70-0.80) -0.07
Calgary 0.83 (0.80-0.89) +0.00
Rest of Province 0.90 (0.85-0.96) +0.13
Spatial distribution of people tested, cases, and deaths:
  • All other values are compared with respect to yesterday
Zone Active Cases People Tested Total New Cases Total New Deaths Total
Calgary 2,710 (-7) +1,701 714,488 +242 48,312 +5 526
Central 645 (+14) +437 157,250 +51 9,052 +2 94
Edmonton 2,117 (-30) +1,223 585,465 +181 51,887 +5 876
North 811 (+16) +524 165,919 +82 10,362 +0 115
South 288 (-2) +340 109,073 +28 5,934 +1 74
Unknown 17 (-2) +166 33,351 -2 125 +0 0
Spatial distribution of cases for select cities and regions (cities proper for Calgary and Edmonton):
City/Municipality Total Active Recovered Deaths
Edmonton 42,319 (+143) 1,685 (-27) 39,904 (+168) 730 (+2)
Calgary 40,606 (+188) 2,329 (+4) 37,807 (+179) 470 (+5)
Red Deer 1,926 (+17) 206 (+10) 1,699 (+6) 21 (+1)
Lethbridge 1,754 (+10) 147 (+5) 1,594 (+5) 13 (+0)
Fort McMurray 1,702 (+7) 65 (-3) 1,634 (+10) 3 (+0)
Brooks 1,363 (+1) 2 (+1) 1,347 (+0) 14 (+0)
Grande Prairie 1,216 (+15) 136 (+0) 1,059 (+15) 21 (+0)
High River 677 (+0) 3 (-4) 668 (+4) 6 (+0)
Mackenzie county 570 (+10) 44 (+7) 511 (+3) 15 (+0)
Medicine Hat 527 (-1) 10 (-1) 503 (+0) 14 (+0)
Cardston county 504 (+11) 70 (+3) 427 (+7) 7 (+1)
I.D. No 9 (Banff) 443 (+3) 44 (+2) 399 (+1) 0
Wheatland county 234 (+1) 9 (-1) 225 (+2) 0
Warner county 157 (-1) 1 (-2) 154 (+1) 2 (+0)
Wood Buffalo municipality 131 (+0) 7 (+0) 124 (+0) 0
Rest of Alberta 31,543 (+178) 1,830 (-5) 29,345 (+179) 368 (+4)
Other municipalities with 10+ active cases is given at this link
Schools with outbreaks are listed online.
Quick numbers (changes since yesterday):
  • 152 school are on alert (2-4 active cases) (+6)
  • 24 schools are on outbreak with 5-9 active cases (+0)
  • 6 schools are on outbreak with over 10 active cases (+1)
Spatial distribution of hospital usage (change as of yesterday's post):
  • Hospitalization zone are where the patient is receiving care, not zone of residence
Zone Hospitalized ICU
Calgary 169 (-8) 38 (-1)
Edmonton 215 (-8) 32 (-3)
Central 38 (-8) 7 (+2)
South 36 (+0) 8 (+0)
North 59 (+2) 8 (+1)
Statements by Dr Hinshaw
Alert of Phone Fraud
  • AHS has received reports of some people 75+ receiving calls saying they can book Covid-19 immunization for a fee. This is a scam
  • Vaccine will be free of charge - no provider will ever ask for payment
  • Please hang up immediately and report to non-emergency line of local law enforcement
Cases
  • Due to a technical issue, ~6,000 tests were not included online yesterday
  • Issue was resolved and included today
  • 304 schools (~13%) have active cases with 763 cases combined
Variants
  • 68 variant cases. Of 11 new cases (All UK variant), 7 have no known travel link. Investigation underway.
  • Two new cases that are travel related may have exposed two additional schools in Calgary Zone. Individuals followed protocol
  • In the previous schools with potential exposure to variant, no spread has been detected
  • Accessing literature to determine if additional changes are needed
Vaccine Safety/Variant Implications
  • Continue to monitor adverse evens. No significant increase in severity of reactions
  • 53 severe reactions were reported, on par with pneumococcal vaccination
  • 11 were allergic reactions and are under consultation with allergist
  • Other reactions: swollen lymph nodes, rash, diarrhea, vomiting
  • Current stats indicates vaccines are safe and outweighs risk
  • Health Canada reviewing additional vaccine candidates
  • Encourages immunization for all Albertans
Variant Implications on Vaccines
  • Evidence still emerging on vaccine's effectiveness on variants and much we don't know
  • Early results suggest current vaccines may be somewhat less effective against some new variants for preventing all symptoms of Covid-19
  • Even against variants, they appear to be extremely effective at reducing severe cases, hospitalization, and deaths
Q&A - Variant Outbreaks
  • Why did it take weeks for parents to be alerted to a variant case?: One case did take a while for it to get screened. Thinks timeline is important: at end of December, learned of concern regarding the variant. It's remarkable to ramp up to such quick detection. Wasn't able to rapidly screen when case first came in. Time frame will be improved going forward now
  • Followup: Are families now in quarantine following protocol?: School contacts would have completed 14 day quarantine as they didn't live with cases. Being offered testing as a precaution
  • Update on Daycare variant outbreak?: Can identify it is in Edmonton Zone. All have been contacted. Additional testing underway
Q&A - Variant Protocol, Relaunch, and Projections
  • Is it fair to say UK variant is in the community?: Has had community spread since first small number of cases not associated with travel. Currently able to test almost every positive case for variants to determine level of spread. Has been able to limit spread to date with interventions that are in place
  • Would variants delay Feb 8 relaunch?: No hard number. Would need to see increased transmission rate, which hasn't happened. Good thing that we're detecting cases so we can prevent their spread
  • Response to Ontario's variant projections?: Will need to be cautious going forward and will be looking at case rates to access restrictions. Measure that already exist for Covid are also effective at reducing variant's impact
  • (Dr Hinshaw also took exception to the reporter claiming that Alberta has more variant cases than Ontario. Alberta is testing almost all positive cases and hoping to expand further. She argues that it is more accurate to suggest Alberta has detected more cases)
  • Should rules with be changed because of these variants?: Notes that all returning traveller will required to be tested (once at arrival, then at day 10). Has also introduced tougher isolation protocol for home isolation
Q&A - Other
  • Previous Chief Medical Officer has been critical of relaunch plans. Response?: No one right way through pandemic and a variety of perspectives. Neighbouring provinces have roughly similar per capita rates and have similar frameworks. Wants to look at experiences in other regions. A small step forward doesn't mean a full reopening and will be evaluated over 3 weeks
  • Would you consider restarting asymptomatic testing/rapid testing in schools?: Looking at expanding use of rapid testing...specifically, congregate settings (they are useful primarily for symptomatic individuals). Accessing feasibility of options
  • Details from conversations with gym and fitness owners?: Heard about how difficult restrictions have been, especially in fitness. Has also spoken to small business owners. Best chance at opening them will be to show how each step has kept trend of cases/hospitalization downwards
Additional information will be logged below:
submitted by kirant to alberta [link] [comments]

what's opening in ontario covid video

Coronavirus is now in 13 countries outside China - as ... What Actually Happens If You Get Coronavirus? - YouTube [LIVE] Coronavirus Pandemic: Real Time Dashboard, World ... YouTube COVID-19 (Coronavirus Disease 19) March Update- causes ... Coronavirus Is A PANDEMIC....Technically - YouTube Doctor Fact-Checks Media On Coronavirus - YouTube CORONAVIRUS What Is Coronavirus? Coronavirus Outbreak ... How coronavirus spreads outdoors vs. indoors - YouTube

A spokesperson with the Ontario government told CityNews that no announcement has been scheduled regarding the reopening of the economy amid the COVID-19 pandemic, even though Premier Doug Ford said there likely would be. Ford made the comments during a photo opportunity at Toronto’s Pearson International Airport on Wednesday afternoon. The premier said he is […] Learn about Ontario’s plan to reopen businesses, services and public spaces as the fight against COVID-19 continues. As of September 8, 2020, Ontario is pausing any further loosening of public health measures or reopening of businesses, facilities or organizations. Learn about coronavirus (COVID-19) cases in Ontario and how the province is keeping people safe. A provincewide shutdown is in effect as of Saturday, December 26, 2020 at 12:01 a.m . Learn about the restrictions and public health measures that are in place. COVID-19 covid 19 (coronavirus) in Ontario. Get the latest case data and updates, learn how to protect yourself and others and get advice on what to do next if you think you might have COVID-19 covid 19. What’s open in Ontario? Search our COVID-19 dashboard to track where lockdowns are being lifted. Ss. By Star staff. Fri., June 12, 2020. A haircut, a day at the beach, a trip to the mall and a Ontario will begin collecting race and socio-economic data during COVID-19 testing on a voluntary basis. The province has entered its fourth day of downward-trending new daily case counts,...

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Coronavirus is now in 13 countries outside China - as ...

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