Andrew Nikiforuk has chronicled our failure to deal with COVID. The consequences have been disastrous:
As the pandemic evolves, the failure of current public health policies now shines clearer than a midnight star. The assumption that hybrid immunity — vaccines combined with infections — would end COVID’s relentless evolution has fed the pandemic, not starved it.
If getting infected, vaxxed, or vaxxed-plus-infected actually made us safe as COVID circulates, Canada wouldn’t be recording its highest death rate of nearly 20,000 this year.
Yes, COVID has vanquished more Canadians this year than in 2020 or 2021. And the virus has sent more Canadians to the hospital this year than in previous ones, too.
We have simply refused to do what we know works:
The solutions are not hard or onerous. They do not involve lockdowns. Or even major rule changes.
The key is to simply and systematically reduce viral transmission with clear messages that get the job done to protect the general health of our citizens, children and elders.
Providing schools and work places with good ventilation and filtration is doable and even cheap, given that Canada has spent $9 billion on COVID hospitalization costs alone this year.
Why isn’t it happening?
Putting on a N95 mask or a respirator in public spaces radically reduces transmission and protects everyone.
Why isn’t the government providing N95 masks for free to encourage their widespread use?
Isolating when sick, an old-fashioned courtesy, reduces the spread of disease.
Why did we abandon this basic communal kindness?
Providing access to testing gives everyone information about viral movement and prevalence. It also invites proper treatment or respectful isolation.
Why have we retreated from medical accountability?
Public health officials have a duty to advance health and serve the common good. They abandon that responsibility when they kowtow to the short-term needs of cowardly politicians with an eye only on election cycles and disease of power.
The reason we have not dealt with COVID is that there is a more viscous virus than COVID. It's called political cowardice.
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14 comments:
Political cowardice, yes but a lack of empathy and even imagination as well. I do not think that a number of our politicians, some provincial premiers come to mind, seem so distant from the general population that they cannot grasp what is happening in the world. It seems clear that the new premier of Alberta is so far down the Alt-Right/Conspiracy/Trucker Convoy rabbit hole that we cannot expect her or her merry band of cabinet crazies to make rational decisions.
Doug "Edsel" Ford seems to lack the imagination and "world knowledge" to understand the implications of many of his actions. He, also, seems a bit lacking in intestinal fortitude. His back-down over changes to autism funding in 2019 and his abject retreat in the Bill 28 seem to illustrate both.
I, occasionally, have to give Justin Trudeau a bit of credit here. He and his handlers can be astonishingly maladroit at times—that vacation it Tofino was madness— but he seems to understand some of the needs and concerns of people who are just scraping by while admitting he comes from a slightly privileged background.
Smith and Ford are guilty of political malpractice, jrk. Justin has a tendency to shoot himself in the foot.
I'd say it goes further than cowardice and into recklessness, gross negligence and abdication of the duty to protect the public. In Alberta, for instance, the premier has ignored the pleas of doctors and nurses for mask mandates, and insisted she's all about individual choice.
In Ontario, after political interference prolonged the SARS crisis, the chief medical officer of health was given independent authority to issue public health directives. Yet last week Dr Moore inexplicably ruled out further mask mandates. Despite the death toll and the collapsing healthcare system, Moore is content to encourage the belief that the pandemic is over. He's recklessly playing with the lives and health of Ontarians, and ensuring there will be much a much greater strain on the healthcare system down the road as the spread of Covid leads to increased heart and stroke cases and other adverse health effects.
The short-term thinking is truly unbelievable, especially when the cost of a mask mandate is so low.
Cap
This really isn't rocket science, Cap. But when you refuse to acknowledge facts, you head over the cliff.
One of the foundations of public health protection is empathy and concern for the well-being of others. Emboldened by the head-in-the-sand approach taken by cowardly politicians and chief medical officers of health, many people seem happy to selfishly cast aside their responsibility to others, Owen.
Ayn Rand argued that selfishness is a virtue, Lorne. Unfortunately, many people have bought into that fraud.
"Why isn’t the government providing N95 masks for free to encourage their widespread use?"
Why don't local pharmacies stock and sell Canada approved N95 masks? Where is corporate Canada?
Good question, Toby.
I'm not convinced it's political cowardice. I think there must be something to gain from letting 'er rip -- maybe taking out a big chunk of the boomer generation collecting pensions and using up healthcare?? I have no idea. I sat through a school board meeting with delegates from the public carefully explaining to us the many ways that masks are killing our kids. Their sources appear to include Action4Canada.com, CanadianCovidCareAlliance.org, and flippin' Dr. Moore who recently implied that masks are harming the immune system of children. When the CMOH adds to this level of misinformation with such conviction, it can't just be his own stupidity, can it??
It might just be stupidity, Marie. An old vice principal I worked for once told me that "Stupidity is its own curse."
There is a very strange and inexplicable negative position on N-95's taken by the political caste that has even caused them to be frowned upon in healthcare settings. In BC, Bonnie Henry has never recommended them and was a late adopter in mask mandates and protections in schools. Mixed messaging and terrible communication since 2020 has been a major contributor to the never ending infections and climbing death rates. Anti-vaccine messaging and public health sabotage was never met with any kind of coordinated effort and was allowed to flourish, and ruined the careers of many health care professionals who bought into the disinformation campaigns. I shudder to think what will happen in the next pandemic. BC Waterboy.
I suspect that in the next go around we'll march -- like lemmings -- over the cliff, waterboy.
Are we in any way surprised that sick days are frowned upon by the Bean counting executives at all corporate entities. COVID was definitely a wake up call, but the lesson is quickly being forgotten; especially in anti-vax, anti-mask Alberta (the jurisdiction to which I pay my Provincial tax levy).
It's much easier to whine and moan about perceived slights from the federal government than to actually manage the system that is supposed to deliver quality health care for all.
Never forget that the current UCP has much less in common with the old Lougheed government and a lot more in common with the Aberhart Social Credit party. Hence the totally appropriate removal of the term progressive from their name.
Bemused Lurker
Anger is not a strategy for solving problems, Lurker. Unfortunately, a lot of us have confused anger with competence.
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