Category: Politics

She lived in the bush outside of Thunder Bay. A single mom with twelve kids (one disabled) and no job.

Her late husband Sam had invested in boat tickets, packed their things in a small trunk, and sailed his family to claim free land west of the Lakehead, in Northern Ontario.

In 1904, he became the first farmer from a family of English fishmongers.

Stalwart Peasants

Parliament needed to settle Canada quickly or lose it to the Americans. Sir Clifford Sifton, Minister of the Interior 1896-1905, advertised for sturdy immigrants.

Sifton thought that, “a stalwart peasant in a sheep-skin coat, born on the soil, whose forefathers have been farmers for ten generations, with a stout wife and a half dozen children, is a good quality.”

Sam, “a stalwart peasant,” claimed his land-locked plot of mosquito-infested swamp and softwood outside of what is now Thunder Bay. He moved his clan into a tiny shack and started ‘farming.’

Thunder Bay is Canadian shield. That means rocks, stunted trees, and very little topsoil. For a few years, Sam dragged, rolled, and piled enough rocks to create chest-high windrows around little plots of bare ground.

Then he died. Continue reading “Go Ahead, Celebrate Canada!”

Imagine an asteroid flying towards earth. Is this a political event?

The asteroid might burn up before impact. If it hits the earth, many will die. If it burns up, we see lights in the sky but not much else.

As Prime Minister, what would you do?

Once impact is obvious, who do you save first: the old and frail? White collar workers or blue? How about first responders?

Whom do you let die, when aid runs out? Whom do you send out of the ICU?

Ethicists finally have a new debate. We can forget about runaway trains killing people on track A versus those on track B. Now, we can debate about all the patients killed from treatment denied, for boring things such as cancer, versus those saved from new and exciting things such as COVID-19.

Political  Events

Pandemics need public health for populations, medicine for sick patients, and for politics to stand down.

Canada took the opposite approach. PM Trudeau made the pandemic all about politics. If we were in his political shoes, we may have done the same.

The point is not about bad decisions. It was that Trudeau tried to make decisions. He politicized the pandemic and tried to put his party on the right side of it.

Infections and outbreaks are not political events.

Having politicized a response to the threat, politicians cannot depoliticize the outcome. Now, they work to spin the outcome in their favour. Continue reading “COVID-19: A Political Event?”

The COVID shutdown was never meant to save lives directly. It was meant to save the medical system, and hopefully, save lives in the process.

Many people sounded the alarm on COVID in January and February. I raised concerns on Feb 2nd and received virtual pats on my head and supercilious smiles.

The Canadian government took the calm and rational approach. That is, do almost nothing.

Planeloads of passengers continued to pour in from countries at the epicentre of the pandemic. We pointed at America, stuck out our tongues, and made funny faces at the orange man, when he banned foreign travel.

COVID Shutdown

When we finally decided to do something, we closed down the whole country. Families now get fined for rollerblading in empty parking lots.

We had asked government to do what it cannot: save us all.

Hospitals and medical clinics have had time to develop new treatment paths, screening clinics, and to ramp up virtual medicine. We are now ready for nuclear fallout, the zombie apocalypse, and World War Z, let alone a major respiratory outbreak.

Treatment Worse Than Disease?

Our too late, and possibly too aggressive, response is now causing harm. Our system could barely cope with the long waits for care, before the shut down. Patients were already dying waiting for care (see here also). Continue reading “Time to End the COVID Shutdown”