Health committee  It isn't a yes, no, zero.... We know that it does well against the alpha, the beta and the delta and it does modestly well against the omicron one. Omicron doesn't do well against any of the others. They come from two different phylogenetic trees. The big thing we worry about is

Health committee  Okay. I need to answer that, though can't be as simple as I'm sure you would like me to be. The problem is that for the original Wuhan strain, when you were immunized, it actually totally decreased transmission as well; it did not completely eliminate transmission, but dropped

Health committee  We need some more different vaccines that can help to decrease transmission. Also, I was answering the question about the masks: Wear your mask. You will decrease—

Health committee  Got it. I'll try to squeeze one more question if I can. Dr. MacDonald, on March 31, you co-authored an op-ed in The Globe and Mail. You said: A lack of vaccine acceptance is a symptom of ongoing mistrust that is our collective colonial lineage. Acknowledging

Health committee  I would hope those mandates would be done in collaboration with indigenous physicians and health care providers, so that they can literally—and I'm putting this in quotation marks—“translate” why this is being done and how it fits with indigenous views on health and well-being. I

Health committee  They have tried and, in a number of places, have been quite successful. In others, we simply don't have enough indigenous health care providers to be able to do what needs to be done.

Health committee  Thank you, Dr. MacDonald. Thank you, Mr. Davies.

Health committee  Thank you, Dr. MacDonald.

Health committee  That's exactly my point. That's why I'm saying we've never seen politics intrude so much in health policy decision-making as we've seen throughout COVID. Do you know what? Most politicians don't have the science background to sift through that information and make evidence-based

Health committee  Dr. MacDonald, I’ve been advised that I have about one minute of speaking time left. Among young people, there seems to be a new interest in studying vaccines. Some think that vaccines protect us, while others think they don’t. Some people think they protect us against one

Health committee  We think these vaccines are actually going to last longer than what we had originally anticipated. We do know that on the fourth doses that have been given to those over 70, it was not to boost them above the level they were at before, but to get them back up to that higher lev

Health committee  Thank you. Thank you to all of the witnesses for your patience. Dr. MacDonald, the WHO has recently confirmed that there are hundreds of probable cases of severe acute hepatitis in children under investigation worldwide and that these are not caused, it appears, by the usual

Health committee  The data I've looked at from WHO would suggest—I'm going to say this so carefully—that it's not due to COVID. Because of the huge numbers of COVID disease even in children, if this were really related to COVID, we should see it. I want to turn that 90 degrees to say that some pe

Health committee  Thank you very much, Mr. Chair. I would like to take this opportunity to thank all the witnesses for their very comprehensive and interesting presentations. I am very grateful to them. I have a very simple question for Dr. MacDonald. It is perhaps a little naive. I wonder

Health committee  I've been asked this many times and it's not simple. We would love it if it became endemic, didn't mutate further, and moved to being a “meek and mild” virus. It hasn't quite gotten to meek and mild. We still have people dying from omicron. We still have people being hospitalize