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Thread: 2. Opening Comments of Chair

  1. #1
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    Default 2. Opening Comments of Chair

    Let us welcome our president Vladimir Drkulec

  2. #2
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    I would like to thank the voting members for your service as voting members. Many of you will be continuing as incoming voting members though some of you will not. The past year has been a trying one for the CFC and for Canadian society as a whole thanks to the COVID pandemic. Unfortunately it doesn't look like we are safely out of those dark woods yet as COVID is likely to be with us for some time yet. It is becoming increasingly clear that even with all the vaccines that you can still catch Covid even after the requisite two doses. If there were any doubt we just have to reference the cases of the runaway legislators from Texas or the governor of Texas who were all vaccinated and yet diagnosed with the COVID virus. If those are too far away examples, I just learned that a young family member has tested positive for COVID, despite having the first and second vaccine shots that family member is suffering some cold-like symptoms and the nasal swab test has given a verdict of COVID infection.

    The CFC is still financially sound due to prudent spending over the years. We recently held an online CYCC which attracted on the order of 360 players. It replenished the youth fund in the case that we are unable to have a CYCC and have to send a team to a world event like the world youth or world cadet chess championship though I wonder when world events will be back. An olympiad or world youth does not seem possible where you would have to bring together so many players from so many countries, many of which do not have a well developed health care system nor a well developed vaccine program like we have in Canada.

    Fred McKim and Bob Gillanders will likely provide the results of the last fiscal year which were somewhat better than I expected with the pandemic raging.

    I think the online CYCC with two cameras and robust Fair Play analysis is a model that we will likely have to follow if we want to resume rated play until we are able to fully return to in-person play.

    The current opportunity is that there are more people in Canada playing chess than there ever were in the past. The challenge is to convert some of those people into CFC members.

    In the past year we had an online olympiad and are about to take part in another one in a little over two weeks from now. We took part in the online continental with a number of Canadian players advancing to the next stage where we had hybrid events which proved challenging. Ontario Boards of Health have been quite a pain to deal with aside from the Peel Region Board of Health which should be a model for the rest of the province. They actually answer their phone. They listen to you. They help you. I can't say the same for a number of the other health boards in Ontario.

    Christina Tao has been doing outstanding work keeping the youth players interested and she will relate some of the triumphs and tribulations of the past year.

    Patricia Gamliel stepped up and helped host and even participated as an unpaid official in the hybrid continental event which allowed Bator Sambuev to participate in the continental hybrid from a board room at her law firm Dunton Rainville's Montreal office. Patricia has also been involved in the FIDE social commission and has been working actively to promote programs for troubled youth. She has leveraged her contacts to get buy in from some high placed judges in more than one province to extend opportunities for young people who have become caught up in the justice system. We hope that we will be able to extend such programs across Canada and give these youth more productive channels than what the correctional system currently provides. Hopefully we can get some of the grassroots organizers to help bring chess to these youngsters.

    I have been busy talking to communities about hosting chess events and I expect that the next several CYCC/Canadian Open tournaments will have come out of the contacts that we have made at Sport Tourism Canada. I expect that Hamilton will host 2022, Calgary will host 2023 and Laval will host these tournaments in 2024.

    I would like to thank Paul Leblanc for his many years of service as the rating auditor. He has been outstanding in that role and also in his role at the foundation which has been helpful in mitigating the losses with rating fees and CFC membership revenues falling.

    Anyway lets get to the meeting. We have much to talk about.
    Last edited by Vladimir Drkulec; 08-22-2021 at 12:18 AM.

  3. #3
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    Your comment with respect to vaccinated people getting covid is misleading. Yes vaccinated people can get covid, though usually in a much milder form, but statistics show that you are 20 times more likely to get covid if you are not vaccinated.
    Les Bunning

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    Quote Originally Posted by Les Bunning View Post
    Your comment with respect to vaccinated people getting covid is misleading. Yes vaccinated people can get covid, though usually in a much milder form, but statistics show that you are 20 times more likely to get covid if you are not vaccinated.
    Les Bunning
    I believe some latest observations on the delta variant(s) are vaccinated people are showing the same viral load as unvaccinated. However, vaccinated people show far less symptoms, and die far less. Widespread exposure seems likely.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Les Bunning View Post
    Your comment with respect to vaccinated people getting covid is misleading. Yes vaccinated people can get covid, though usually in a much milder form, but statistics show that you are 20 times more likely to get covid if you are not vaccinated.
    Les Bunning

    Lets just say that we have been shaken with cases of vaccinated people like the governor of Texas, those Texas legislators and a family member who is young getting COVID despite vaccinations. I am constantly talking to medical people about this because most of my family are in the medical field and one of them is on two hospital Covid committees. He caught Covid before there was a vaccine. He got the vaccine afterwards just so that he would be able to travel despite getting Covid being better protection than the vaccine. Sometimes you have to just go with the flow. For the most part the variants are not killing people like the original Covid infection did. Treatments are better. I am not anti-vax but based on the latest information from Israel and Vietnam the vaccines do not offer much in the way of protection after about six months to a year, hence the call for boosters. I still have to do some research but it looks to me that Covid will be with us for a while and so we should govern ourselves accordingly.

  6. #6
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    Quote Originally Posted by Aris Marghetis View Post
    I believe some latest observations on the delta variant(s) are vaccinated people are showing the same viral load as unvaccinated. However, vaccinated people show far less symptoms, and die far less. Widespread exposure seems likely.
    There is also a lambda variant. The good news is that all of the new variants have not been as deadly as the original likely in part due to more experience in the treatment of the disease and also due to simple evolution. If the variant is deadly to the host it can't spread as easily because it is killing off the population it needs in order to exist. I am not a doctor but I am talking to doctors all the time about this.

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