City
Morning Brew: H1N1 Claims Two Young Lives, Leafs Finally Win a Game, Kensington Cat Burglar, The New National, No Garbage Fee Hike
Photo: "munch" by christian jackson, member of the blogTO Flickr pool.
What's happening in the GTA (and sometimes beyond):
Still not convinced? A young girl in Cornwall with no known pre-existing medical conditions died of H1N1 this weekend, and new reports suggest that a 13-year old boy died here in Toronto as well. I'm not for pushing the fear agenda, but I'm also not engaging in increasingly pedantic arguments about the vaccine. I'm simply getting it as soon as I can, and hoping that it protects me and those around me.
The Leafs have won their first game of the season. I got a giggle out of ivortossell's tweet: "Pity about the Leafs. The only thing they could have excelled at was failure, and they blew that too." We'll see how they fare on the rest of this 5-game road trip.
A cat burglar appears to be targeting single women's homes in Kensington Market. Ground-floor dwellers in the sketchy neighbourhood really shouldn't be leaving windows and doors unlocked.
In school news, the fate of some 37 low-enrollment schools in the city is going to be decided soon. Amalgamation makes a lot of sense, because it'll allow for a better allocation of resources and will save money, but having to travel farther to school will not be fun for parents and students.
City council voted down Mayor Miller's proposal to increase garbage collection fees, instead opting to offset the increase by using a portion of the money saved during the summer municipal workers' strike. Although it's a symbolic gesture (given that it amounts to about $5 per household), I'm glad we're not paying a little more when we got far less.
And the CBC unveiled the new and improved version of The National last night. The most obvious changes include a standing and roving (rather than sitting) Peter Mansbridge, lots of in-studio monitor picture-in-picture style lead-ins, and sleek new graphics. While the changes didn't fully impress some folks, I like the changes... and am especially glad to see that they are still allowing viewers to watch the entire program online every night.
Discussion
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That said, I'd make sure my ground-level apartment were secure regardless of where in Toronto I was.
So I uh...know which street to avoid
Hmmm we can say "in Little Italy" or "close to Kensington Market".
Which sounds more sketchy? GO WITH THAT.
IT WILL PLEASE JOE PANTALONE.
GO LEAFS GO!!!
As to the locality just don't say it's near Chinatown or you'll have Adam Vaughan on your racist racist ass.
How are the arguments against the vaccine pedestrian? I assume this is how you meant the word pedantic seeing as the other definitions don't fit in this context. I agree some of the objections border on silly but there are many good reasons to investigate for oneself whether they would take the vaccine or not. In fact it shows a herd mentality on your part by regurgitating the rather pedantic line "I'm simply getting it as soon as I can, and hoping that it protects me and those around me". You are having a virus injected into your body in the hopes it can protect you? I don't admonish anyone to get or not get the vaccine but to diminish the concerns of others merely because you don't feel they are correct is ridiculous. There is a lot of evidence of people getting sick and expiring after the mass H1N1 flu vaccine project in 1976 in the USA, and not from the flu but from the vaccine. The USA has paid out over $1.794 billion in compensation through the national Vaccine Injury Compensation program since 1989. Additives such as Thimerosal which is ethyl mercury can be dangerous to our health. One can go to the CDC site and see in past years in the USA people got the measles even after being vaccinated (82% in '95 for example). The testing groups that I have read about for the vaccine have been very small and seem to lack control subjects. The list of concerns goes on. One only needs to remember how many other drugs that were touted as safe and fine for us turned out horribly wrong (Thalidomide and Rofecoxib for two).
In short, there are good reasons to debate the efficacy and safety of these vaccines before injecting them. It has been shown that assurances of safety and efficacy can be dead wrong or intentionally misleading. Big Pharma doesn't care about your health and so needs to be viewed with suspiscion. I am not advocating or down-playing the H1N1 vaccine but I want to know more for myself. Who are you to dismiss such concerns?
I really hope that more people learn to do their own research when it comes to their health and decisions regarding such. It is your body and you have a responsibility to know your rights and reasons.
I'm not saying that I agree or disagree with vaccination programs, BUT you should never base your decision to do so solely because a specific governing body says so.
Yes. But how about people really shouldn't be going into others' homes uninvited?