What if…drug patents were scrapped? by Husna Rizvi

Husna Rizvi writes in New Internationalist...

In 1955, virologist Jonas Salk was asked about the intellectual property rights of his polio vaccine. To which he responded: ‘There is no patent. Could you patent the sun?’ Salk’s choice to make the vaccine patent free ultimately beat back the US polio epidemic by 1962.

COVID-19 Canada - Whither Ontario?

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Data: CTV News https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102

Ontario's trajectory has regressed rather badly.
Deaths lag new infections by 2 to 3 weeks but in the absence of effective testing, deaths and ICU occupancy make the most reliable metrics.

COVID-19 Deaths/Day Canada as at 29 Apr '20

Remember that deaths trail new infections by 2 to 3 weeks.
From Data published by CTV News

Long-Term Care Homes Were Short-Staffed Before Coronavirus

There is so much more to improving quality than increasing inspections - and inspections need to focus on what really matters: management responsibility. In the Sixties, Seventies and Eighties of the last century W. Edwards Deming was teaching auto manufacturers that you cannot inspect in quality, it has to be built in. Catching defects at inspection is too late. The Japanese listened and their auto industry overtook the American industry in quality, sales and profits - in that order. Quality drove sales which in turn drove profits.

Nathan Denette/Canadian Press

A Glimmer of Hope for Canada

Given that deaths lag new infections by almost 3 weeks I am actually starting to feel a solid glimmer of hope that Canada is starting to turn the corner, although Quebec is far from out of the woods still.




The gray plot indicates how many days it took to double the total number of deaths. It is currently around 6 or 7 days to double total number of deaths; up from 3 and 4.



Using data provided by CTV News: as at Tuesday, April 21, 2020 6:19PM EDT
https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/tracking-every-case-of-covid-19-in-canada-1.4852102