Ontario is in its sixth wave of COVID. And, Bruce Arthur writes, the province's chief medical health officer has disappeared:
Where is Dr. Kieran Moore? Ontario’s chief medical officer of health hasn’t been seen in public since St. Patrick’s Day, a week after his final regular pandemic briefing, four days before masks became optional, right around the time the wastewater signal started to really rise, and two-and-a-half weeks before COVID was sloshing around everywhere. An interview request for Moore to the Ministry of Health Monday was politely shuffled into oblivion. The doctor, publicly, is out.
The answer, of course, is that why would you trot out the province’s top public health official if you didn’t think there was a public health crisis, or even the prospect of one? Premier Doug Ford keeps using an imaginary number of 3,000 ICU beds, when ICU staff availability determines the real number, and Monday called this “a little spike” that the province can manage. Maybe, even without almost any meaningful public health interventions, it can.
The evidence speaks for itself:
Hospitalizations are up 30 per cent in a week, though the ICU is relatively steady. There were no COVID deaths reported Monday, which is terrific, but enough cases and the virus will find the vulnerable. This wave may be smaller than the previous Omicron wave due to more vaccination and more post-infection antibodies, but the prospect of quick reinfection may complicate that. As ever, the vulnerable will suffer most.
It’s a trade: the removal of a mild inconvenience before it’s necessary in exchange for the lives and health of some of society’s most vulnerable citizens. That’s all.
Dr. Moore has disappeared. And Christine Elliott, Ford's Minister of Health, won't be running in the next election. That's the way things go in Ontario.
If you're a lawyer who works for Donald Trump, you get disbarred. If you're a medical health officer who works for Doug Ford, you fade away.
Image: The Toronto Star
