Covid-19 Journal: 11 March, 2022: Learning to live (or die) with Covid, privatizing healthcare, sick grandchildren

Today is March 11, and marks the second anniversary of the imposition of Covid-19 lockdown measures in Ontario (March 11, 2020). At that time, I was living in Severn, Ontario (and still am) with my son Matt. My middle son David and his wife Vicky had come up to stay with us over March Break, and because of travel restrictions and other factors, wound up staying three months. During that time, Covid-19 got very much worse, there was a lot of confusion, and we all expected this to be over soon. Little did we know …

One defining characteristic of governmental reactions during Covid-19 has been a misattribution of cause and effect: Because of the economic consequences of the lockdowns, governments have treated Covid-19 as more of an economic problem than a public health problem and have rushed to reopen the economy with serious consequences (e.g., new waves of Covid-19). Yet they persist.

It is with more than a little alarm therefore, that I greet the news that almost all Covid-19 restrictions will be lifted as of the beginning of April?(Ministry of Health, 2022). Although the government claims that their decision is science-based?(Arthur, 2022a), many scientists dispute this, including Ontario’s Science Table (Arthur, 2022a), the Children’s Health Coalition?(childrenshealthcoalition, 2022), and others. Despite this, the government plans to forge ahead and remove mask mandates particularly from schools.

As mentioned in a previous post, I have two grandchildren. In the last post, I reported that the elder vaccinated child James had contracted Covid-19 but was recovering. Since then both his younger brother Stephen (4-years-old and too young to vaccinate) and his vaccinated mother have caught Covid-19. Both children are quite rigorous about wearing masks and even so, they managed to catch the virus. It would appear that removing mask mandates from schools is too early, but I suspect that the government won’t listen.

Figure?18.?Tweet from the Children's Health Coalition asking that masking in schools be maintained.?(childrenshealthcoalition, 2022)

Thus, we now have a new document from the Ministry of Health entitled, Living with and Managing Covid-19(Ministry of Health, 2022), a comforting-sounding title that minimizes the dangers that Covid-19 still presents. Citing data that indicate a drop in Covid-19 infections, they suggest that this is a valid approach. Truth to tell, the data do indeed indicate a considerable drop in hospitalizations and infections. However, as Figure 19 shows, there is a more nuanced view than plain numbers.

As can be seen in Figure 19, during January, there was a rapid rise in Covid-19 hospitalizations until we reached a point where we had?over 4,000 cases per day. At this point, lockdown restrictions were again imposed. These had the desired effect, and during February and March, we saw a steady decline in case numbers. However, about Feb. 26, we see a change: The steady decline changed to a less-steady, shallower decline, more of a levelling off at about 600-700 cases per day. Remember that back in August of 2020, we were told the medical system was in danger of overload if the case numbers weren’t reduced to below 100 new cases per day, and that was new cases, not hospitalizations. Yet somehow, levelling off at 600-700 hospitalizations per day is now cause for celebration. It’s strange how our perceptions have changed. What is a six-to-seven-fold increase over what we were told was dangerous in 2020 is now cause to remove restrictions.

Figure?19. Daily Covid-19 hospitalizations for 2022, Jan. 1 to Mar. 10.

Ed Yong has written an aptly-titled article called?How did this many deaths become normal??(Yong, 2022). Although the article is about the US and their death rate, higher?per capita?than that in Canada, he briefly discusses the Spanish Flu pandemic. He notes,

The same inexorable inuring happened a century ago: In 1920, the U.S. was hit by a fourth wave of the great flu pandemic that had begun two years earlier, but even as people died in huge numbers, ‘virtually no city responded,’ wrote John M. Barry, a historian of the 1918 flu. ‘People were weary of influenza, and so were public officials. Newspapers were filled with frightening news about the virus, but no one cared.’ (Yong, 2022 p. 1, emphasis added)

This appears to be what is happening in Canada. People are giving up, and more importantly, public officials are giving up, shifting the responsibility for public health away from the government, and onto less-well-informed individuals. As a result, high death tolls become normalized. This is what happens when one declares victory over an unvanquished enemy.

Figure?20.?Cartoon parodying George W. Bush's famous?"Mission Accomplished" banner announcing the end of the Iraq War ... prematurely by several years (History.com Editors, 2022).?(Moudakis, 2022d)

Frightening to me is that the government is now using Covid-19 as a smokescreen to privatize health care in Ontario. I have previously quoted Debusmann’s BBC article about why Canada’s death rate from Covid-19 is so much lower than that of the US?(Debusmann Jr., 2022). One of the principal reasons given is?“Unlike the US, however, Canada has a universal, decentralised and publicly funded healthcare system administered by its 13 provinces and territories” (p. 1). Given this, the move to privatize is baffling, until one realizes that for the Ontario Conservative party, privatization is an ideological cornerstone not to be swayed by evidence. Our hospitals are overwhelmed by Clovid-19, we have backlogs, and can’t find enough personnel. Therefore, of course, privatization is the answer, as it will somehow magically provide instant new facilities and trained personnel. The idea of increasing funding to our underfunded healthcare system seems anathema and won’t be considered, although this would be quicker, and wouldn’t require the building of expensive new facilities, just expansion of the current ones.?

That’s all I have for today. I will write again as things evolve.

References

Arthur, Bruce. 2022. "No politics involved? Ontario’s two-faced approach to the end of masking."?Toronto Star, 9 Mar. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/star-columnists/2022/03/09/no-politics-involved-ontarios-two-faced-approach-to-the-end-of-masking.html.

childrenshealthcoalition. 2022. Untitled. In?Twitter. Online: Twitter.com.

Debusmann Jr., Bernd. 2022. "Why is Canada's Covid death rate so much lower than US?". BBC News, Last Modified 15 Feb., accessed 17 Feb.?https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60380317

Ferguson, Rob. 2022. "I’ll wear a mask after COVID-19 mandates end, Doug Ford says."?Toronto Star, 10 Mar., Politics. Accessed 11 Mar. https://www.thestar.com/politics/provincial/2022/03/10/ill-wear-a-mask-after-covid-19-mandates-end-doug-ford-says.html?li_source=LI&li_medium=thestar_politics.

Ministry of Health. 2022. Living with and managing Covid-19. Edited by Ministry of Health. Ontario: Government of Ontario.

Moudakis, Theo. 2022. Mission accomplished. Toronto: Toronto Star Publishing.

Yong, Ed. 2022. "How did this many deaths become normal?"?The Atlantic, 8 Mar.

* As always in these journals, Figure numbers continue from previous posts.

[This is part of an ongoing series of journal posts about my life during Covid-19. Suggested by a museum colleague, it is intended to eventually be a minor historical document–an account of how life changed during the pandemic. I make no claim to drama or interesting detail, just life as I am living it].