How're We Doing?

"Most people had assumed there would be a trade-off between health and the economy; that if you imposed restrictions to limit the virus's spread and keep deaths down, your economy would be hurt -- and the tougher the restrictions the worse for the economy."

"But not so. Countries that imposed restrictions early and severely, keeping deaths per million low, also had a low decline in GDP."

"By contrast, countries that applied restrictions haphazardly, letting deaths reach high levels while hoping to protect jobs, had among the biggest declines in GDP."

"It turns out the best economic policy was successful aggressive action to limit COVID's spread."

George Fallis, professor emeritus, economics and social science, York University, Toronto

Sweden had decided on the advice of their chief medical officer of health, not to impose  restrictions on its population, hazarding the belief that Swedes would behave sensibly, following basic guidelines of a level of social distancing and protective hygiene. Swedes for the most part, acted accordingly, and voluntarily limited activities while they went about their normal lives and trusted that their government's reliance in their population's good sense would lead to a better outcome than that of their neighbours who had gone in the opposite direction; lockdowns.

 

People walk near a trash can with a sign reading “The danger is not over — Keep your distance” in Uppsala, Sweden, in October. Photo by TT News Agency/Claudio Bresciani via Retuers files

The lack of formal restrictions in Sweden led to a large number of deaths early on, and the situation        failed to improve as time wore on. Swedish politicians were determined to forge ahead with no restrictions on trade and business; the idea was to proceed as normal; perhaps not taking into account in their deliberations that with their largest trading partners -- their neighbouring states -- closed down, the faltering economy that hit their neighbours would also impact on them. In the end, they gained nothing and lost more lives than did their neighbours.

 

High-income advanced economies with reliable health-care systems represented by 20 OECD countries came out of their ordeal with the global pandemic with mixed results. Using Canada as an example, its government faltered in initial decision-making, fluctuating between cautious instructions to its population, to eventual lockdown after downplaying the emerging seriousness of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. The federal government's attitude toward securing its borders was lax, it denied the usefulness of mask-wearing, instead championing testing, tracing and isolating.

 

Pedestrians in downtown Toronto during the start of the city's second lockdown in November. Photo by Cole Burston/Bloomberg files

But even these practices were poorly executed in comparison to the take-up rate of their counterpart nations in other OECD countries. One thing all countries had in common, however, despite their modern, technically advanced economies and excellent health-care systems, was unpreparedness. Along with a critical lack of PPE and other related hospital-medical equipment. This, despite more than ample warning that just such a threat as a global pandemic hovered on the near horizon. This, despite that SARS-1 had proven itself to be a deadly virus the world handled poorly, offering a lesson in the necessity of proactive preparation.

 

The first entry of the novel coronavirus took the world by surprise as it swept through the globe following its initial emergence in Wuhan, China. Which Beijing initially played down, giving inadequate and incorrect information to the WHO, delaying the declaration of a pandemic. The world looked on, fascinated and disbelieving as China then took draconian measures to cope with a dread new virus with the intention of isolating the infection and stopping its spread. Despite which COVID appeared to experience little trouble escaping the boundaries set up to contain it as it spread virulently.

 

When the winter of 2020 merged into spring, it began to appear as though much of the world had succeeded in controlling the spread of COVID, and restrictions that were imposed were relaxed while the number of cases dwindled and a sense of optimism prevailed. Until the Northern Hemisphere entered fall, then winter and the fearsome second wave of infection re-entered. Monetary stimulus, support for businesses and workers were activated by governments even as GDP shrank and the death count rose. 

Some countries had moved expeditiously and severely to limit the first wave while others struggled to contain that huge entry of infections, with mixed results. South Korea as an example experienced a mere 4.4 percent decline in GDP, with eight deaths per million population, while the U.K. took a 21.8 percent decline in GDP, and suffered 595 deaths per million. It was soon realized that those countries with the largest GDP decline experienced a larger bounceback with the mid-year decline of COVID infections.

Austria Denmark, Finland, Germany, South Korea, New Zealand, Norway and Switzerland experienced a smallish decline in GDP and a lower death rate per million, while Belgium, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom were hit much harder in both metrics. On the other hand other countries came off better in one metric and worse on another; France, Ireland,Netherlands, Japan, Sweden and the United States. Among these countries many committed errors in judgement, now facing a larger second wave of cases.

European countries -- in particular those that performed poorly during the first wave and lockdowns, have faced distinctly high daily death rates due to COVID-19. Severe lockdowns were re-instituted by early November and in some countries daily deaths are on the decline, while others remain struggling with ongoing high death counts. Austria, Belgium and Switzerland's death rates have been horrifically high. But it is in the United States where throughout the nine months of the coronavirus onslaught its spread was never brought under control, resulting in ongoing daily death rise surpassing levels seen in the first wave.

Those countries that realized partial successes in controlling the coronavirus are continuing to perform well at present, including South Korea, Japan, Norway, Finland and Denmark, where death rates have been kept at a relatively low rate. Australia and New Zealand are stand-outs for their success in avoiding a second wave entirely. What has been proven to be highly successful is a protocol of strict lockdowns maintained until low levels of cases are realized, then held there with tighter border controls. Testing-tracing-isolation regimes on a large scale has become a tool of necessity.

 

 

Compehending COVID-19

"Where an epidemic is first detected does not necessarily reflect where it started."

"Research conducted in China and elsewhere since the COVID-19 pandemic began has shown that a range of animals -- including wild and farmed species -- are susceptible to infection, but when and where SARS-CoV-2 spilled over to humans, and from which animal, remains unknown."

World Health Organization report

"Asymptomatic people are probably especially important because from the studies that have been done so far people who have been asymptomatically infected, their antibody levels are lower and they may not be high enough to confer protection [without receiving an inoculating shot]."

"It's very misleading to discuss the overall case fatality rate because there is so much variability between populations and age groups."

"It tends to be the case that viruses that cause really, really high death rates are not well adapted to spread in humans."

Dr.Matthew Miller, associate professor, infectious diseases and immunology, McMaster University, Hamilton

"We should pause to remark that COVID-19 is extraordinarily successful epidemiologically, precisely because it is not extremely lethal."

"[Ebola, by contrast] is a rather stupid virus: It kills its host -- and itself == too quickly to spread far enough to reshape other species' life-ways to cater to its needs."

Dr.Samuel Paul Veissiere, Psychology Today, cognitive scientist, assistant professor of psychiatry, McGill University

There are no longer any reported cases of COVID in the city of 11 million inhabitants, Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged. There, life is resuming a normal pace. While globally the rest of the world struggles with seemingly vain attempts to control the contagion that has taken so many lives worldwide. Globally countries and their cities have experienced several 'waves' of the viral contagion, necessitating lockdowns, while their economies have been shattered, their people demoralized and fearful.

 

There remains two days left in the memorably cursed year of 2020, and when the midnight hour of 31 December arrives ushering in the next year, there will have been 1.8 million deaths worldwide, caused by SARS-CoV-2, and growing day by day. When the initial reports began circulating of a mysterious new respiratory illness, a puzzling, killing pneumonia appearing in hospitals in Wuhan, experts in the field sat up and took notice. China denied there was anything unusual happening, China informed the WHO there was no evidence of person-to-person transmission.

 

Then China closed ingress and egress to Wuhan, effectively locking the city of almost 12 million souls into itself, to contain a disease with frightening potential. Those experts looked on with growing trepidation. The coronavirus had no intention of being locked into Wuhan with its population and soon news coming out of Italy shocked the world as a warning of what was soon to appear on their own unready shores. New York quickly learned what Italy was going through and before long the virus swept the United States.

Chinese President Xi Jinping in Wuhan March 2020

Xie Huanchi Xinhua / eyevine / Redux

"As Washington falters, Beijing is moving quickly and adeptly to take advantage of the opening created by U.S. mistakes, filling the vacuum to position itself as the global leader in pandemic response. It is working to tout its own system, provide material assistance to other countries, and even organize other governments."

"The sheer chutzpah of China’s move is hard to overstate. After all, it was Beijing’s own missteps—especially its efforts at first to cover up the severity and spread of the outbreak—that helped create the very crisis now afflicting much of the world. Yet Beijing understands that if it is seen as leading, and Washington is seen as unable or unwilling to do so, this perception could fundamentally alter the United States’ position in global politics and the contest for leadership in the twenty-first century."

Kurt M. Campbell and Rush Doshi March 18, 2020, Foreign Affairs

 Irrespective of the numbers of people whom COVID-19 has affected it is still not as lethal as an infectious disease as we commonly think it to be, given the horrendous number of victims it has taken. If it is any comfort to anyone at all, SARS-1 was far more deadly, with its one-in-three chance of killing those it infected. Even so, it failed to kill as many people as COVID has for the simple reason that the more lethal a virus is, it succeeds in killing their hosts and with it the virus itself, the opportunity to spread denied it as a result of its very virulent deadliness. 

 

COVID is different and it has behaved differently, its strategy is far more successful in that it kills fewer and infects greater numbers. Numbers so great that the kill-rate far outdistances that of the more deadly viruses that have gone before it. COVID thrives in those it infects and because it is less deadly it is more contagiously opportunistic, adept at transmission in a way that SARS-1 failed to be. Given the numbers it infects it demonstrates that though less deadly it has become more lethal simply through strength of numbers. 

The most common symptoms of infection; shortness of breath, loss of taste and smell, cough, fever and tiredness is a giveaway of the virus's presence. Those failing to show any symptoms are still capable of infecting others, even as asymptomatic carriers' impact on infection spread is still an unknown. Roughly one in five people with COVID have no symptoms, representing around 20 percent of all cases. "But researchers are divided about whether asymptomatic infections are acting as a 'silent driver' of the pandemic'", according to a study in the Nature Journal.

And according to the WHO, "The virus can spread from an infected person's mouth or nose in small liquid particles when they cough, sneeze, speak, sing or breathe heavily. These liquid particles are different sizes, ranging from larger 'respiratory droplets' to smaller 'aerosols'." No longer does science believe that surface contamination is the threat it was made out to be at the beginning of the pandemic; transmission is primarily through respiratory droplets and aerosols.

 

A man with what was then a mystery illness is brought into a Wuhan hospital in January this year. Photograph: Héctor Retamal/AFP/Getty Image

 

A study in ScienceMag illustrates that viruses in droplets "can be sprayed like tiny cannonballs onto nearby individuals", with virus-laden aerosols capable of remaining in the air for hours. COVID is able to remain active on a surface for several hours, even days, yet unless that surface is touched, and hands then reach out for eyes, mouth or nose, there is no threat as long as awareness and simple hygiene methods are followed; the use of antibacterials or rigorous handwashing.

There is relief on the horizon. Vaccines which are rolling out and beginning to be distributed since gaining official permission to proceed. Inoculations are taking place targeting the most vulnerable within society with plans to expedite vaccines for distribution and vaccinating entire populations. That may take as long globally as the length of time the world has been coping with trying to contain the outbreaks. Which is good reason to understand that populations must continue to distance themselves physically, wear masks, observe good hygiene and avoid crowded indoor spaces.

In the interim, other treatments of COVID are being explored. As long as the danger of contracting     COVID continues, alternate treatments fill a necessary gap, and may in fact continue to have applications useful to ward off the effects of COVID. Among them convalescent plasma which consists of using blood from people who have recovered from illness to aid others by using their protective antibodies as a new COVID-19 therapeutic protocol.

Canada has instituted a convalescent plasma trial with a need to recruit new blood donors to study whether the proposed therapy actually works as it is meant to do theoretically. Therapeutics such as this are yet to come to market, but what is available is a few drugs that help overcome the most severe cases of COVID: Dexamethasone, a steroid acting as an anti-inflammatory, proven effective on the most ill patients, and remdesivir, an antiviral which is able to prevent the virus from replicating in a person sick with severe infection.

Lastly, there is 'proning', considered effective in hospitals by reducing the high demand for ventilators with the process of turning a sick individual from their back to their stomach for improved oxygenation.

As far as the World Health Organization is concerned, COVID-19 should be considered a test run. A serious virus that has managed to upturn the world as we know it, but not as lethal as a viral pestilence can conceivably become. The WHO has warned and continues to warn of a severely deadly strain of virus that may eventually arrive. That the discoveries made by science in coping with and trying to fully comprehend the SARS-CoV-2 virus causing COVID may better prepare us for the Big One.

"This is coming at the virus from a different way. It's almost boosting the patient's own immune system by giving them additional antibodies [through administering convalescent plasma]. Like a foot soldier to essentially fight off the infection."

"We're 100 percent reliant on people who have had the infection and have recovered to become blood donors."

Dr.Donald Arnold, associate professor of medicine, director, McMaster Centre for Transfusion Research 

Beijing Playing Prison Warden on the World Stage

"You may have a very small chance of being the one they decide to detain, but it's years of your life."

"I have lots and lots of friends and relatives in China, as well as a business. But I feel like it's just not worth the risk."

"[The company has however compartmentalized information to protect the organization on the ground], because you never know what can be construed in the wrong way."

"We’ve become very careful about that sort of thing [unintentionally arousing Beijing's ire, and facing arbitrary detention in China]. And we didn’t used to be."

Anne Stevenson-Yang, co-founder J Capital Research, Northeast U.S.

"Beijing's record of detaining individuals in retaliation for the perceived transgression of their home government should be a geopolitical risk on the radar of every C-suite executive."

Hugo Brennan, Asia analyst, risk consultancy firm Verisk Maplecroft

"We have received calls from member companies about the possibility of arbitrary detention."

"Our view is that the risk is small, but it's not zero."

Ker Gibbs, president, American Chamber of Commerce, Shanghai

 

"It works because, while it is shocking, deeply harmful for the detainee and places enormous political pressure on the foreign government, it is also judged by foreigners as sufficiently rare as to be a manageable risk, something that doesn’t really disrupt profitable business for China."

David Mulroney, former Canadian ambassador to China

Increasingly, Westerners with business interests in China are beginning to reassess the risks of travel to a country that has increasingly made use of 'detention diplomacy' to register its displeasure with other countries' attitudes toward Beijing's policies and behaviour and specifically that of the Chinese Communist Party ruling elite. Business executives now consider the risk of being carried off by security agents in China, to become yet another casualty of geopolitical tensions that have emerged between Beijing and the West, most specifically the United States.

The arbitrary detention and charging of two Canadians with espionage and endangering the security of China when they were taken into custody in 2018 following hard on the detention of Huawei CFO Meng Wanzhou on an extradition warrant by the United States which saw the RCMP arrest Ms.Meng at a stopover at Vancouver International Airport in December of that year appears to have initiated a new strategy for China, of coercive diplomacy.

Michael Kovrig and Michael Spavor remain imprisoned, subject to human rights violations imposed by the CCP, including denial of access to a lawyer, while Meng Wanzhou is free on bail to live in her two luxury Vancouver mansions while her extradition case winds its way through the court in accordance with Canadian and international law. Since the detention of the two Michaels other countries have had to deal with their nationals taken into detention in China, Australia among them. 

This new way of 'influencing' and demanding the attention of other countries to China's growing clout through the world community has not endeared it to the countries being targeted who also have raised the issue of human rights violations with respect to Chinese Uyghurs' detention and brain-washing, and Beijing's hard-handed anti-democracy clamp-down of Hong Kong, along with its threats to Taiwan, added to Beijing's assertion of rights-of-possession in the South China Sea and its territorial aggression against India.

Anne Stevenson-Yang of J Capital Research has realized riveting reservations around returning to China to advance her business interests as research director of her company, prepared now to give up her frequent business trips to China. The risk of being taken in by security agents and imprisoned on charges having nothing in relation to reality fails to appeal to her sense of self-preservation. She and her husband and children moved to the U.S. six years ago from China, now she fears the risk of returning for any reason, personal or business.

A dozen executives, diplomats, consultants and academics have given their opinions in interviews, asking their names be withheld for security purposes, many of them believing an increased risk in travel to China will instruct them in future plans to avoid making themselves vulnerable, with the potential of ending up in prison. Passage of a security law in Hong Kong has failed to reassure that China's closed justice system can be relied upon to mete out justice, as it were. 

Police, prosecutors and courts are known to hew the Communist Party line. Under Chinese law authorities are able to arrest 'suspects' and maintain incarceration for prolonged periods without trial under the newer and increasingly wide-ranging national security laws. Chinese citizen Haze Fan, a Bloomberg News staffer, was recently detained in Beijing with China confirming that she is being held by the Beijing Municipal National Security Bureau on suspicion of 'endangering national security', but authorities refuse to release details of her case. Mostly, without doubt, since there are none.

Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp representing the largest chipmaker in China was placed by the Trump administration on a blacklist along with over 60 other Chinese companies, leading the Chinese Ministry of Commerce to threaten retaliation to the move denying Chinese companies access to American technology, from software to circuitry. A move that has increasingly soured China on all relations with Western sources. 

China maintains it is being maligned by the label of "hostage diplomacy", being "totally groundless". No one, they stress, who respects the law of the land would have any reason to fear arrest. In turn Chinese executives express concern at the visit of spokeswoman Hua Chunying, U.S. Foreign Ministry spokeswoman this month, claiming Meng Wanzhou's arrest to be "100 percent a political incident". Zhao Lijian, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman hinted political intervention lifting proceedings against Meng "could open up space for resolution to the situation" of the two Canadian Michaels.

Data on eight categories of "coercive measures" was compiled in a recent report produced by the Australian Strategic Policy Institute noting actions such as those Beijing has embarked upon have sharply risen in the past few years through arbitrary detention, execution, popular boycotts, pressure on specific companies, state-issued threats and restrictions on official travel, investment, trade and tourism. Beijing's novel initiatives on how to make friends and influence countries.

"I know a lot of business people who are out of China now and are very afraid of going back", one executive asking for anonymity, stated; he and others, in particular former government officials working as consultants have become increasingly wary. The U.S. State Department warned American citizens they face risk of arbitrary arrest and exit bans; to avoid unnecessary travel to China -- and the Canadian Foreign Affairs department has issued a like warning. Little wonder relations are frayed.

The Panopticon Is Already Heren  The Atlantic

Xi Jinping is using artificial intelligence to enhance his government’s totalitarian control—and he’s exporting this technology to regimes around the globe.

When Life Isn't Life

"You executed the defenseless Mr. S. in a cowardly way. Unlike you, he didn't retreat into his childhood bedroom — he worked, he enjoyed football, he got qualifications."

'[You are a loner living in your childhood bedroom at the age of 27, soaking up] crude conspiracy theories [on the internet and building weapons]."

"You are a danger to humanity [showing no remorse and when in court only repeated] absurd [ideology]."

"You are a fanatical, ideologically motivated lone perpetrator. You are anti-Semitic and xenophobic."

"You showed no indication of remorse. On the contrary, you repeatedly made clear that you wanted to continue your fight."

"Consequently, we have decided that society must be protected from you."

Judge Ursula Mertens, regional court, Hlle, Germany

 

"The verdict makes clear that murderous hatred of Jews meets with no tolerance." 

"Up to the end, the attacker showed no remorse, but kept to his hate-filled anti-Semitic and racist world view."

Josef Shuster, head, Germany’s Central Council of Jews

 

"None of the hate-filled conspiracies that this man has voiced are new."

"We’ve heard them all before. And we know where they lead. We know what happens when this propaganda and this speech goes unchecked."

"Germany knows it. I know it."

Talya Feldman, synagogue attack survivor

Accused Stephan Balliet stands in the courtroom of the regional court at the beginning of the trial in Magdeburg, Germany, Tuesday, July 21, 2020. (Hendrik Schmidt/dpa via AP)

"Inmates live in rooms and sleep in beds, not on concrete or steel slabs with thin padding. They have privacy -- correctional officers knock before entering. Prisoners wear their own clothes, and can decorate their space as they wish. They cook their own meals, are paid more for their work and have opportunities to visit family, learn skills and gain education."

"[The cells are] more like dorm rooms at a liberal arts college than the steel and concrete boxes most U.S. prisoners call home."

Visiting American Justice and Corrections authorities, Vice

This is a description of the German penal system accommodation for federal prisoners sentenced to prison for any number of serious crimes against society, including murder. A similar type of confinement and opportunities in a 'humane' prison system can be found in Norway.  German law has it that the purpose of criminal confinement is a method that leads to rehabilitation. The theory being that someone has gone temporarily astray in psychotic acts against society's best interests and must be gently led back to their natural inclination to live in peace and solidarity with other citizens of Germany.

 

Mourners outside the door of the synagogue in Halle, Germany, last year.Credit...Jens Schlueter/Getty Images

This is called forward-looking liberal penology. Advanced nations of the world sympathizing with the plight of the pathologically criminal element among them, the sociopaths and the psychopaths; viewing them all as salvageable, to return them to a pacific state of psychological well-being and acceptance of their role in a well-oiled society through acts of kind solicitation for their welfare. The victims, on the other hand, must accept that those who sinned against them were momentarily bereft of their senses and are deserving of rehabilitation, not ongoing punishment.

Take the case of Norwegian mass murderer Anders Behring Breivik, the far-right extremist who killed 8 people with a bomb and later shot 69 other people -- including many teens -- dead on a island nearby Oslo in July of 2011, serving Norway's maximum sentence of 21 years. He was given a room of his own with all the comforts that German prisons offer, but attempted to sue the state arguing that strict conditions imposed upon him through isolation violated his human rights. 

 

Eligible to seek parole after serving the first ten years of his sentence term of 21 years in July 2021, it will be left to the courts to make the determination whether such a release is appropriate. "I have at his demand sent a request for parole. This is a right that all prisoners have and that he wants to use", said his lawyer, Oeystein Storrvik. "I feel quite safe that the Norwegian judicial system will do the right thing", tweeted Vegard Wennesland, a survivor of the attack on Utoeya island.

 

In Germany on Monday a regional court imposed the most extreme penalty available; life imprisonment for Jew-hater Stephan Balliet who last year on Yom Kippur in the city of Halle attempted to storm a synagogue to shoot to death the 51 congregants gathered within to pray. A special budget exists for the protection of synagogues through the German federation but no special precautions for Yom Kippur, the solemn Day of Atonement had been taken. The synagogue, however, had installed a thick wood entrance capable of withstanding a violent onslaught.

The synagogue's locked gate and CCTV system were all that stood between the attacker and worshippers inside

 

Determined to gain entrance while the Jewish congregants watched on security cameras as he shot repeatedly at the door without success Bailliet shot to death a 20-year-old woman passing by then rampaged through a kebab shop nearby where he confronted and shot to death a disabled 20-year-old man who begged for his life. He wounded two other people before he fled the scene. He was outside Halle when police caught up to him and confiscated a camera mounted on a helmet that recorded his actions which he obviously meant to post on social media.

Most criminals who stand trial in Germany are treated to a 'faint hope' protocol. And most of those who received "life" sentences become parole-eligible in 15 years. And lucky man, rehabilitation efforts are in his future, hope not denied the man whose plan was to slaughter as many Jews as he could manage. His punishment won't be hard to take for a man who lived as a recluse, with an increasing number of German states permitting restricted internet access for prisoners.

What is so very fascinating is that Germany is concerned with quality of life for its malefactors, with offering them a rainbow of hope for their futures; yes, they may be incarcerated for unspeakable crimes but all is not lost, they are given the opportunity to reclaim their futures by accommodating themselves to the penal authorities' efforts to lead them toward repentance and rehabilitation. This is the same nation that saw fit a lifetime ago to incarcerate Jews en masse in ghettoes preparatory to sending them to forced labour, gas chambers and death.

But at the present time, judges sitting in an atmosphere of liberal penology insist that the penalty for a crime must not be without limits much less absolute, where the potential for diminished sentences exist, crimes of horrendous nature not excluded. Whereas judges during the period of the Third Reich officially stamped their approval over the removal of citizenship and human rights for Germany's Jews, agreeing them to be sub-human, a pestilence upon the nation.

In December 1959, two members of the Deutsche Reichspartei (DRP) right-wing extremist party painted swastikas and the words "Germans demand: Jews out" on the synagogue in Cologne. Anti-Semitic graffiti emerged across the country. The perpetrators were convicted, and the Bundestag passed a law against "incitement of the people," which remains on the books to this day.

Ethically Challenged Canadian Corporate CEOs Double-Dipping on the Taxpayer's Dime

"The orthodoxy is that executives owning shares is absolutely the proper corporate governance because it aligns the philosophy, the risk and the performance period with payouts."

"What's interesting is that when you bring dividends into play and the ability of an organization to determine dividend payouts based on a government subsidy, it does raise questions about that linkage and the optics of that linkage."

"By the time you actually own a physical share, it's considered an after-tax investment the same way it would be if you bought mutual funds [there has never been a requirement to directly disclose figures relating to dividend payouts publicly]."

Christopher Chen, managing director, Compensation Governance Partners

 

"You may be less willing to suspend dividends because you have an interest in receiving the dividends. To say [CEWS] is different money or the left hand doesn't know what the right hand is doing I don't think addresses that conflict that certain CEOs have seven digits in dividends at the same time they're accepting the government subsidy."

"What you could do is voluntarily take a haircut so your net total compensation remains the same ... and say we're not going to benefit financially during receipt of taxpayer money."

Richard Leblanc, York University professor, governance consultant

There is nothing illegal about companies claiming emergency benefits while continuing to pay dividends. But the findings raise all kinds of questions that are worth debating. Photo by Peter J. Thompson/National Post files

There may be nothing illegal, strictly speaking about wealthy corporations lining up to receive government benefits out of taxes imposed on citizens, during the economic hardships of SARS-CoV-2 causing a global pandemic, but that is only because the government in its haste to send out cheques to individuals and corporations claiming to have been deleteriously impacted by the pandemic, in a bid to soften the blow and give aid to those in need, overlooked cautionary principles in flux when greed equals need, and failed to specify certain conditions be met to qualify for the handouts.

That wealthy corporate interests have taken advantage of the situation claiming Canada Emergency Wage Subsidy benefits to enable them to meet payrolls and avoid laying off personnel, when in fact they faced questionable such emergency reactions to the COVID situation, speaks volumes of their lack of principle and perspective. Seeking to enrich themselves at the expense of the taxpayer may be a common enough human lapse in judgement but it hardly excuses them, and nor does it earn any plaudits for government either.

An investigative report by journalists at one of Canada's leading national newspapers revealed that the chief executive officers of 68 Canadian companies that proceeded to pay out dividends to their shareholders while at the same time taking possession of the special pandemic wage subsidy, saw those same executives earning an estimated $30 million in dividends personally during the quarters where their firms accepted the wage subsidy.

The investigation revealed a minimum of 68 companies receiving over $1 billion in CEWS, designed as a subsidy giving aid to companies seeing a revenue drop due to the coronavirus impact -- to enable them to cover payroll costs, and who then chose to nonetheless pay out over $5 billion in total to shareholder dividends in the past two quarters. Nothing in the CEWS program as it was designed prevents companies from paying out those dividends.

 

Toronto's financial district is seen on Friday. CBC News analyzed the financial statements of 53 public companies that disclosed receiving more than $10 million from the Canada emergency wage subsidy program. Collectively, these companies dished out nearly $2 billion to shareholders between April and September. (Evan Mitsui/CBC)

 

 

Pierre Karl Peladeau of Quebecor, known to be close to the Liberal government of Justin Trudeau, earned close to half of the group's total in shareholder dividends personally, estimated at $14 million. K.Rai Sahi, CEO of four companies on the investigated list earned $3.1 million in dividends, with his company receiving over $22 million in CEWS payments. Quebecor claimed its telecom business failed to qualify for CEWS while its media subsidiaries did. 

 

According to Christopher Chen, companies have made it a requirement that executives own shares for the past several decades, as the gold standard of good governance, but the dividend earnings of the executives now has him rethinking a practise once taken for granted. Government to date has paid out over $52 billion to 359,880 applicants through the CEWS program, extended recently to June 2021.

Millions were received by other CEOs on the list of dividend recipients.

 

York University professor Richard Leblanc stated executives owning shares has always represented a "small-c" conflict of interest for the fact that the executives and board members deciding what gets paid out in dividends may themselves be recognized as among the largest beneficiaries of those payments.  The issue of dividends is characterized by many companies as necessary, arguing their dividends represent stability for investors. Suspending paying out dividends, they argue, would break the cycle of trust and might lead to a stock price downturn.

As Frank Li from the Ivey Business School explains, an executive's compensation should be linked to the firm's performance but when funds like CEWS become introduced into a company, injected into revenue and net income figures they tend to exaggerate performance metrics. This leads to higher compensation while facilitating payouts like dividends, in other words 'compensating' CEOs at taxpayers' expense. It is "luck or taxpayer money" that has resulted in executives collecting dividend income, not that they succeeded in leading their companies to good financial outcomes.

"If you perform badly, then you are fired, but in this case, they performed badly, they received [CEWS] and executives still enjoy high pay and high compensation."

"That's not an efficient corporate governance mechanism."

Frank Li, finance professor, Ivey Business School, Western University

 

The Bearer of Bad News

"Against this backdrop of rising infections, rising hospitalizations and rising numbers of people dying from coronavirus, it is  absolutely vital that we act."

"We simply cannot have the kind of Christmas that we all yearn for."

"This virus [a new mutation of COVID-19 appearing in South Africa] is highly concerning because it is yet more transmissible and appears to have mutated further than the new variant that's been discovered in the U.K." 

"Thanks to the impressive genomic capability of the South Africans, we’ve detected two cases of another new variant of coronavirus here in the UK."

"Both are contacts of cases who have travelled from South Africa over the past few weeks."

"This new variant [from South Africa] is highly concerning, because it is yet more transmissible, and it appears to have mutated further than the new variant that has been discovered in the UK."

British Health Minister Matt Hancock

 

"[The new variant in the UK] is very different to the variant in South Africa, it’s got different mutations."

"Both of them look like they’re more transmissible. We have more evidence on the transmission for the UK variant because we’ve been studying that with great detail with academic partners. We’re still learning about the South African variant."

:[Vaccines that have already been developed should be effective] because the vaccine produces a strong immune response and it’s broad and acts against lots of variation in the virus."

Susan Hopkins from Public Health England

There is no current evidence to suggest that the new variant is affected any differently by vaccines  Reuters

The SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19 appears incorrigibly immune to every human-inspired effort to bring it under control. The virus almost appears to taunt scientific efforts to better understand its viral properties, much less to invent new protocols that might have the effect of diminishing its predatory advances. All viruses mutate over time; it is why vaccines produced annually for the seasonal flu can only partially address all the altered elements of any season's flu virus; the vaccine producers wait until the last possible moment to assess as accurately as possible all of the most current flu viruses' qualities before finalizing their vaccine for distribution for that year.

Experts were aware of a number of SARS-CoV-2 mutations, tracking them and evaluating their effects. The two issues of greater infectability and more potentially serious effects of infection uppermost concerns. At least one of those concerns has now been realized in a new strain that has hugely accelerated infectiousness in the U.K. Authorities are trying to cope, just at a time when it was hoped that measures could be eased for the holiday season; instead areas of high infection have had to return to lockdown.

 

The UK has now been effectively placed in quarantine by the international community.’ The closed ferry terminal at Dover. Photograph: Kirsty Wigglesworth/AP

 

Countries in Europe and North America and Asia have closed off flights and other modes of travel from Britain in light of the current situation; the nightmare of all countries already coping with desperate numbers of infections, hospitalizations and deaths is an exacerbation caused by another viral strain brought in from an outside source. Ironically, Britain, struggling to contain its own mutant strain, now realizes that an even more seriously infectious mutant strain has already infiltrated the country, one that originated in South Africa.

Leading to huge swaths of Britain being placed under strict COVID-19 restrictions responding to a highly infectious virus variant now sweeping the country, raising infection cases to record levels. Almost 40,000 new infections of the mutated variant of the coronavirus, estimated to be up to 70 percent more transmissible, has been responsible for case numbers and hospitalizations to soar. Deaths, numbering 744, also represents the highest figure since April.

London, southeast England and Wales are now seeing tight social mixing restrictions, reversing plans to ease curbs over Christmas across the nation. From December 26, additional parts of southern England are set to be among those added to the highest level of social mixing restrictions where 16 million already have been placed in Tier 4 restrictions. Those parts of the country locked into lower tiers are also slated to face tighter curbs.

 

Passengers wait in line at the Eurostar terminal at St Pancras International, amidst the spread of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) pandemic, in London [Hannah McKay/Reuters

 

Nearly everyone in Scotland and Northern Ireland has seen their governments announce entire populations to be subjected to the highest level of restrictions following Christmas. On average, according to the health minister, 1,909 COVID hospital admissions take place every day, with 18,943 people in hospital with the virus at the present time, levels rivalling the situation in April when the coronavirus took Europe by storm.

All this, and coincidentally the discovery by British scientists of another, more virulent variant having arrived leading Britain to place new restrictions on visitors from South Africa, calling on those who recently had been in the country or in contact with anyone recently arrived, to self-isolate immediately. The public being assured that all such measures are temporary until such time as officials are better able to understand the variant and what it portends.

Last week, officials in South Africa announced the detection of a  new variant by their scientists, appearing to be fuelling a rapid rise in infections in the country. Now, even as Britain is grappling with a steadily increasing outbreak linked to a variant originating in England, they must as well turn their attention to a South African variant. One, Minister Hancock announced, that might be more contagious even than the U.K. variant, both of which are "out of control" in the country.

People walk and cycle in London [Hannah McKay/Reuters]