Added a link for those too young and/or uneducated to know that shameful time in US history. And I agree, this reeks of just that sort of witchhunt. From investigating claims the virus came from that Wuhan institute, when American scientists say those claims are unfounded, to asking about any contact with the CEO of Zoom, this looks like a fishing expedition riddled with hints of accusations that shouldn't be condoned in a free socienty.

Yeah, I came here to point that out too. That list was conveniently cut off before the USA's biggest trade partner's number came up - Canada is at 43/1m. USA even without NY is still 50% more deaths per 1M (or Canada is 33% less, if you prefer to turn the ratio that way). I don't think USA's numbers are something to be proud of yet.

I dunno, it goes below freezing at night in the winter. I think I'd want some heat in the office.

500k feet seems too high. The area of a triangle is base x height / 2. So a 500,000 foot high triangle with an area of 4,000,000 square feet would be only 8 feet wide at the bottom.

I don't know how tall a 1 gallon jug is, but I can tell you that a triangle that's a as high as it is wide with a volume of 4M is only 2828 x 2828 (ie: x*x/2 = 4M => x = sqrt(8M) ==> x = 2828.) If you make it twice as wide as it is high (picture it as 45% angles on the bottom corners and 90% at the top), then the height is an even 2000. So if a 1 gallon jug is 1 foot high, the pyramid would be 2-3 thousand feet high.

Healthcare in Canada is handled by the provinces (after many long-fought battles to get Federal money and keep their control of it). Each of the provinces has been enacting their own policies for the past couple of weeks, including travel restrictions, closing schools, quarantines, etc. Last week Ontario extended their March Break by two weeks. Alberta cancelled school until the end of the year. PEI decided everyone coming from out of country should quarantine themselves for two weeks (they're still figuring out how to enforce that, but Canada does have laws that will put you in jail if you break your quarantine, so I guess it's honour system with potentially harsh penalties if you get caught.)

I agree that a cohesive federal policy would have been nice a while ago, but it would have had huge push-back from the provinces if done before people saw the seriousness of the situation, because it would have been federal powers overstepping into areas the provinces control. There are a few parallels to the USA, where there's usually a clear divide between Federal and State powers.

Well, we do have the longest unmilitarized shared border in the world, and a huge number of people cross it daily. Like not just as tourists, but for work, shopping and to visit family. I expect they realized just how hard it would be to filter that border short of restricting it to only those with a Canadian passport, and decided this was the only actually workable policy.

As an aside, I'm really curious how they think they can handle the exemption for people with family in Canada. All other exemptions can be checked quickly at the border, but how do you check that one?

The article specifically addresses this. The researchers excluded from their study any beachings that had known or high likelyhood known causes (such as injury or malnutrition). Additionally, they mention that gray whales (the species studied) don't navigate the world based on sonar; and they discuss a recent beaching of a different type of whale that does use sonar and attribute it to US navy war games conducted at the time.