Saturday July 20, 2024 | VICTORIA, BC
Sociopolitical analysis by Mary P Brooke, B.Sc. | Island Social Trends
Voters may wish to be clearly informed about the underbelly of the BC Conservatives ‘bring back (fired) healthcare workers’ promise.
This past week, Conservative Party of BC Leader John Rustad launched his first election platform issue, choosing health-care for that next step in the provincial election campaign toward the October 19, 2024 election. He’s calling it Patients First: a new model for healthcare.
Among the health-care workers that a BC Conservative government would hire back (including many within the home care worker sector) are those who refused to be vaccinated against COVID-19.
It should be noted that the formation of a BC Conservative government is no way guaranteed. That decision is up to voters. Polls this spring and summer still show the BC NDP as having a strong lead, though with Conservatives running a respectable second. The BC United Party (formerly BC Liberals) is struggling to define itself, and the BC Greens still have only 18 candidates across 93 ridings.
Community immunity:
Arguably, it was the COVID immunization program in 2021 and 2022 that brought the British Columbia population up to a tolerable threshold of community immunity against SARS-CoV-2 (aka COVID-19). After the pandemic year of 2020 where no vaccines were yet available, widespread vaccination against COVID allowed social and economic things to mostly get back to something resembling the functionality of the 2019 pre-COVID society and economy.
People who chose then — and continue to choose now — to not get vaccinated against COVID are protected by the community (aka herd) immunity achieved by the COVID immunization program. It wasn’t a perfect strategy by any stretch (notably young adults were left to last in the immunization queue which has led to a high incidence of long-COVID in that population group).
But immunization reduced the severity of illness for those who became infected, and reduced the number of deaths from COVID. People who have underlying health vulnerabilities are generally more susceptible to infection of any type. That group was given additional access to immunization.
NDP and Dr Henry:
The BC NDP — in sticking to their guns in supporting their Provincial Health Officer Dr Bonnie Henry on the journey to community immunity — ushered this province through a challenging and dangerous time. Throughout all that was Health Minister Adrian Dix as the political leadership, backed up by then-Premier John Horgan.
Dix enjoys wide accolades among elected and other community leaders for his work through the pandemic. BC’s COVID journey is widely seen as a success story across North American health-care communities.
The SARS-CoV-2 virus (aka COVID-19 or COVID) still makes people sick year-round. It does not appear to be behaving in a seasonal way as do other viral agents such as influenza, respiratory syncytial virus (RSV) and rhinovirus (aka ‘the common cold’) that lead to more infections in the fall and winter months.
In hospital without additional risk:
Receiving care in hospital or any other health or medical facility shouldn’t unduly expose any patient to COVID. It’s already widely known that hospitals increase exposure to other infections (e.g. ‘superbug’ infections) simply by the nature of the environment.
It has been a BC NDP government health care baseline, held to by Dix, that COVID exposure should not knowingly be happening in hospitals or other health-authority-owned facilities.
Ask your local BC Conservative candidate:
Given the high profile that the Patients First platform has received in recent days, those who are considering tipping their vote to the BC Conservatives in the October 19, 2024 election, may wish to ask the BC Conservative candidate in their riding about their position on the issue of the COVID immunization requirement for health-care workers, as well as the overall health-care crisis (e.g. shortage of doctors, long wait-lists to get into Urgent Primary Care Centres, etc).
In particular, these five BC Conservative candidates have professional health care training; they may have mixed views on the party’s political stance on rehiring unvaccinated health-care workers:
- Bruce Banman (candidate in Abbotsford South) – Chiropractor. Email: bruce.banman@conservativebc.ca
- David Busch (candidate in Saanich North and The Islands) – Biochemistry & Nursing. Email: david.busch@conservativebc.ca
- Marina Sapozhnikov (candidate in Juan de Fuca – Malahat) – Medical Doctor. Email: marina.sapozhnikov@conservativebc.ca
- Dupinder Saran (candidate in Surrey-Panorama) – Registered Nurse. Email: dupinder.saran@conservativebc.ca
- Jody Toor (candidate in Langley-Willowbrook) – Doctor of Integrative Medicine (PhD) and Doctor of Humanitarian Services (PhD). Email: jody.toor@conservativebc.ca
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===== RELATED:
- BC Conservatives launch platform depth with health-care first (July 18, 2024)
- BC election ‘already in the history books’, says Rustad (June 19, 2024)
- Recruiting & retaining health-care workers: next steps in west shore strategy (June 12, 2024)
- BC Conservatives tilting at every day’s issue, still short on policy announcements (May 31, 2024)
- Health Minister Adrian Dix on COVID four years later (March 13, 2024)
- Colwood council explores partnership with private health care companies (January 16, 2024)
- Health Minister Dix gives shout-out to health-care workers (April 18, 2021)