Health committee  It has some of it, but it is not good against delta, for example. It's wimpy against delta, okay? There are two phylogenetic trees that have come off: the omicron branch, blah, blah, blah, and the one that had alpha, beta and delta off of it. They are quite far apart in terms o

Health committee  The reason that people don't want to just do an omicron variant vaccine is because we know that's not the last variant we're going to have. We want to try to be protective against that whole family. They're now working on trying to get a COVID-family vaccine that would protect yo

Health committee  The big takeaway is that we need more research money, and that means we need to give more money to CIHR and the other tri-councils.

Health committee  Yes, but let me explain. The companies have been looking very hard about putting together a vaccine that would have two pieces in it: one that would have the spike protein that was in the original Wuhan virus, which is in the the vaccine that we've been using on millions and mil

Health committee  It has gone through significant mutations, but there are a lot of places that it hasn't changed. When you respond, it's to all of the different pieces that are on the spike protein. That's why it still works against serious disease, against omicron, if you have been immunized. Yo

Health committee  Bad language about people who don't accept vaccines is totally unhelpful.

Health committee  Yes, that would be helpful. Let me reframe it for you. Is it better to prevent the fire or get to the fire early? It's always better to prevent the fire, if we can. Paxlovid is only trying to put the fire out when it's already burning. Yes, sometimes it works. Yes, it can decre

Health committee  I think the problem there comes back to what Dr. Paes was saying. It really would be better if it were widely available in pharmacies. It probably never will be, in terms of where it needs to be—that one simply needs to have a positive test that is confirmed. We don't want this t

Health committee  First of all, we needed much better communication out there. Communication experts know what they're doing, but they have to know the science behind it to know what it is they need to be doing. That's the general communication or the media communication. I think your comments ar

Health committee  Okay. If you had never been immunized and you got omicron, you are not as well protected as if you'd had your two doses of vaccine, because we know that for omicron, when we test it, your antibody response to that doesn't take out delta very well if another delta variant comes al

Health committee  Yes, but—

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  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