Monday June 8, 2020 ~ VICTORIA, BC
Guest Editorial by Keith Sketchley | Editor: Mary Brooke, West Shore Voice News
BC Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry’s first major mistake dealing with the SARS-cov(2) virus causing COVID-19 illness was to put blind faith in projections from the theories called ‘models’, instead of listening to experienced epidemiologists who advise that those calculations always exaggerate.
‘Modelling’ depends on accurate complete data, which will never exist for an infection that many people shrug off and for which cause of death is recorded and reported quite differently even within the same fiefdom, and on factors such as the bizarre situation of care aides working in more than one residence. Read articles linked from http://www.moralindividualism.com/cv19lnks.doc for learned recommendations.
Ms. Henry then proceeded to ignore reality – the knowledge of who is vulnerable from Italy’s experience (for example, that region had very high levels of industrial air pollution and a very high per-capita population of elderly). In contrast, Florida considered that knowledge, acted to protect long-term care residences, and succeeded without ‘lockdown’.
Note the many experienced epidemiologists who advise that ‘lockdowns’ do not work and may actually be counter-productive. Though to be fair, Dr Henry has always emphasized that she never advised for a full lockdown; BC has closed various sectors at various times during the COVID-19 pandemic in BC. Florida was assertive with care residences and hospitals whereas BC was not.
Editor’ s note: West Shore Voice News did ask Dr Henry twice in recent weeks about whether long term residents should, for now, go back to private homes with family, as a way of avoiding exposure to COVID-19. Responses from Dr Henry have included that seniors who contract COVID-19 in long term care have the option to be relocated to hospital (with the potential for admission to intensive care), and that improving the system is her preference over sending people home (if and when that is possible). BC Health Minister Adrian Dix worked hard to apply the single-site employment approach throughout the long-term care and assisted living sector, a process which is nearly complete in over 500 such facilities.
Dr Henry overlooked that Italy’s shortage of hospital space resulted from shoving anyone infected into hospital thus taking a bed someone critically needed. She had the benefit of Italy going first, but did not use it, despite saying that she had studied the Italian experience as well as the actions of other countries in response to COVID-19.
Dr Henry advocated a general overall lockdown (with the noted untouched sectors such as essential transportation, classrooms for the children of essential workers, grocery and pharmacy retail, banking, etc), apparently changing her mind from earlier work. This approach which may end up killing more people than COVID-19 – such as people are dying while waiting for surgery. Dying from fear of going to hospital until it’s too late. [Editor’s note: Health Minister Adrian Dix began opening up surgeries again once the hospital COVID-response scenario was adequately sorted out, today announcing that compared to the “high period of the pandemic in mid-April” that as of last Thursday, June 4, there were 5,100 surgeries done system wide, up from about 3,800 the previous week.]
People have been and will be dying from suicide due to despair over economic or social circumstances. And eventually from the effects of poorer health from working harder or sliding into poverty because of job loss, and into booze which the BC government considers ‘essential’ so kept peddling it.
Meanwhile BC showed trouble with decision-making about outbreaks in care residences, a shortage of personal protective equipment (PPE) while for a long while its bureaucracies claimed not wearing a mask was better than a homemade one for lesser medical needs, and delays with achieving a meaningful list of COVID-19 symptoms.
Choosing politicians:
Worse in the long run have been the attempts by politicians to reduce what feeds and protects them – freedom, and the emotionalism that was not prevalent in past pandemics such as Hong Kong flu, swine flu, and SARS the original.
[Editor’s note: at the outset in January-February 2020, the scope of COVID-19 to affect a broader population was less well understood than it is just a few months later.]
Voters! If you truly care about your health you should find and help elect candidates who will be effective stewards of the public trust, not erratic do-gooder control freak meddlers who’ve panicked themselves and the rest of us into an economic Depression.
We need politicians who can more appropriately interpret information that they are advised by public health officials, and who can trust the majority of people to act sensibly. Though it’s disappointing that even with advisories and ‘guidance’ about physical distancing, people went ahead anyway and participated at anti-racial mass gatherings in recent days without regard for the spread of COVID-19 which now see Dr Henry advising that they get tested for the disease.
===== About the writer:
Keith Sketchley is an independent socio-political critic based in Saanich, BC. His catch phrase is: Humans are inherently good, but to thrive need protection against coercion by those who err.
===== Links:
Public health and politicians: delicate dance toward a new post-COVID normal (analysis by Mary Brooke, B.Sc., April 19, 2020)