Time to End the COVID Shutdown

Time to move forward?

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).

Now we need to balance those dying, while waiting for care, with those who may die from COVID.

So far, we’ve had around 1100 deaths in Canada, less than 1/4 the number of influenza deaths we have each year. And many of those deaths are people who could have died in a regular influenza season anyways.

We seem to have flattened the curve. Hopefully it stays flat. If governments have not ramped up the medical supports by now, they never will.

Move Forward

The scariest moment for a patient after surgery is getting out of bed. You wake up groggy, in pain, and then some evil nurse makes you stand up. She straps you to an IV pole and shuffles you down the hallway.

After twenty minutes, you realise you are not dying. It is the best thing for you. By the time you sit back on your bed, you worship the wonderful nurse who kicked you out of bed.

We have just done surgery on our whole country. Now it is time to get out of bed.

We need to get back to work. We need people out of their houses.

Even if government lifted restrictions on businesses, people are not going to just throw off their masks and start street parties.

Drop the fines. Allow a gentle return to activity as tolerated. Allow a trial of discharge. Monitor closely. Retrace as necessary.

At some point, more people will die from our treatment than from COVID.

It is time to end the shutdown.

64 thoughts on “Time to End the COVID Shutdown”

  1. I COULDN’T AGREE WITH YOU MORE SHAWN !!!!!!
    In my hospital,we are in the fourth week of shutdown,and have only 100 covid patients,including 20 in icu.There are 500 empty beds PLUS surge capacity.Surgeons are eagerly treating emerg cases,but it takes twice as long to anesthetize and wake them up,while turnover between cases takes forever.Efficiency has blown up,and the wait list of urgent/planned cases is even longer.How on earth will we ramp back up ?We’d better start before more non covid patients die at home.Hospitalizations/ICU admissions are NOWHERE near model predictions,and we can afford to start GRADUALLY reducing restrictions.We need to do this for the sake of our health care system and our economy.

    2. Well then let’s open back up so we can be like NYC and have dead bodies in the cooling trucks out back! No need to leave so many beds empty, eh? (BTW save at least 100 of them for the doctors and nurses who are going to be your sickest patients).

      1. Great response, Jodie.

        You are right–we cannot open up tomorrow. It seems to take 6 weeks before government finally moves in response to public pressure. If we wait until mid-May to ask for a change in direction, how many patients will suffer and die while their surgeries and treatments have been cancelled?

        Can’t we find a middle way? Can’t we start doing some surgery and treatment again?

        Thanks so much

          1. Great comment, Canadian Surgeon!

            Those I have talked with say that they have very few cases at most hospitals, and they have largely empty wards. No question, some hospitals are busy. Furthermore, delayed intubation seems to be suggested now, no?

            How can we start treating those patients in greatest need of surgery/chemo/etc who are harmed by delay?

            When will the harm of shutdown outweigh the (hoped for) benefit?

            Thanks so much!

            1. Great point, Zork.

              Looks like we are ready. Now, perhaps we should try to help all the patients who’ve had their surgeries cancelled?

        2. Agree we need to restart cancer surgery now. As far lifting all bans I think within 6 weeks we will have capacity to test hundreds of thousands people daily. The spartan cube being one of many coming on line. Only when we have this ability would I consider opening everything up.

  2. Shawn – I must disagree that it’s time to reduce the restrictions and get people out of the house in order to get the economy going. Compared to some countries, we have been relatively successful in reducing the prevalence of COVID with only 0.1% of our population testing positive. Early estimates calculated between 30-70% of people will eventually contract this virus with a mortality 10x greater than influenza. We have a huge reservoir of uninfected people that if prematurely exposed before the community viral load is reduced, will take us very quickly to replicate the situation in New York or Italy.

    Yes the economy is in limbo – don’t ask me about my portfolio (!!) Yes we have to allow some access to medically urgent services and not just the life and limb emergency stuff. Sweden has tried a hybrid approach but it seems their infection numbers are worse than countries that have locked down more strictly. It will be interesting to see what their economic numbers are by being less strict and how that pans out with their health care resources. Is this an opportunity to ask government to fix the system that was there pre-crisis? I think they’re too busy throwing our children and grandchildren’s tax money at the problem today to worry about LTC and hallway medicine. Ford’s solution to waittimes may morbidly present itself if we lessen COVID restrictions as there will be new openings for many ALC pt’s for placement… if they survive.

    I don’t know what the right answer is – let everything go and have the graph explode – then it will be over and done – rip the bandaid off quickly… Or drag things out over months or years… or something in between ?? Will a vaccine be an answer? If yes, then we must go slow to give us time to develop and vaccinate the non-infected – otherwise we’re only waiting for whatever fate has in store for each of us.

    1. Great comments, Rob!

      I look at this as an example of making an intervention then stepping back to see what happened. Just continuing to do what we have already tried does not seem like a rational approach to me.

      Thanks again!

  3. “ We are where we are, we go from here…” I recall reading about Wingate’s deep penetration Chindits parachuting behind Japanese lines in Burma…landing 20 miles on the wrong side of the Irrawaddy River there was no point shaking one’s fist at the pilots , no point complaining, “ we are where we are…” one picked up one’s kit and moved on in the required direction.

    So here we are…it took 10% of the intelligence of the affected countries’
    political/ bureaucratic classes to get their countries into their present plight …it will take 90% of their intelligence to get them out.

    We , unfortunately, have a “ diverse” Canadian government selected by genitalia and genital orientation as opposed to ability, experience and competence.

    This is a time for a Churchillian and Linconesque “ war cabinet” gathering the best minds in the country of whatever political denomination…Lord Beaverbrook ( Max Atken) , a Canadian , was appointed by Churchill as Minister of Air Production in 1940 to produce the fighters that won the air war and WWII.

    Surely we have his like who would be ready to serve.

    The much maligned President Trump is, at present, tapping the best minds in the USA, including those who hate him , to formulate an US OVID 19 exit strategy …Justin’s PMO simply doesn’t have the “ best minds” , the wisdom, the talent and capability to do the same for Canada.

    1. Provocative thoughts as usual, Andris!

      We need to stiumulate discussion towards the next step at least 6 weeks before we get there. I raised the alarm on Feb 2 and government didn’t do anything until mid March. Hopefully, government will make changes by mid-May, if we all start discussing it now.

  4. The sardine can, subway dependent urban areas may have to stay off line longer, but most of the country has built-in social spacing.

    Time to wake up. The food supply chain is in trouble.

    Milk was delivered to children by schools. Now schools are closed, so suppliers are dumping milk. But the kids don’t need it any less.

    Meat packing plants are based on workers on closely packed assembly lines. Therefore packing plants are closed. Farmers are euthanizing animals and holding off on the next generation. But we don’t need the meat any less.

    To repeat the obvious, food does not come from grocery stores. And it doesn’t matter how much money the govt. prints if there is nothing to buy.

    Best,

    Gordon Friesen, Montreal
    http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/

    2. A real crisis reveals who we truly are , reveals our true character and reveals who are truly essential .

      Maslow’s hierarchy of need is turned upside down…most important of all are our basic physiologic needs such as food, water, warmth and rest and all of those who provide them…followed by our needs for health , wellbeing , security , safety and wealth creating employment and those creatives who provide them ….that’s where the $’s should be invested …instead our $$$’s are being expended on the superfluous , on unproductive bureaucratic and political drones , on minstrels , jesters and on modern day circuses .

  5. Happy you have brought this up; somewhat less happy this is probably the shortest blog post I’ve read of yours. I try not to form opinions about issues I know little about, so I was selfishly hoping you might dive a little deeper into the rationale behind the title. I’m guessing, however, you kept the content sparse on purpose, to ignite the discussion. As such, I will anxiously await more comments from your readership – and your responses.

    Thanks for the spark.

    1. You are correct, Matt!

      I worry about the impact on those waiting for care, while we try to save those who may be harmed by infection.

      We already know that patients are coming to harm by waiting. Shouldn’t we worry about them?

      Thanks for reading!

  6. We have had far from sufficient testing. We have an extremely limited picture of who’s contracted the virus and who has avoided it by physical distancing. Yes, we know the elderly and those with certain pre-existing conditions are particularly vulnerable, but there are also cases in which apparently fit and healthy people without pre-existing conditions become critically ill and die. We need scientists—epidemiologists, infectious disease experts, and virologists—to weigh in. We need a frank, open, vigorous public discussion about how a (modified) return to work, school, social interaction can most safely occur based on what we know. Right now we haven’t tested enough people to even know how widespread Covid-19 is.

    1. Totally agree. Great points.

      Also, we have been hoarding testing equipment such that Ontario is only doing ~3500 tests per day but we have capacity to do 13,500. That signals businesses that we do not have any need for more swabs. Therefore, the pressure to increase the production of swabs gets muted. Therefore, we end up with a shortage of testing…etc.

      We need to let the people on the front lines test more.

  7. I think there is a disconnect between the reality of the situation and the stridency of those who fear that letting the genie out of the bottle will destroy all of us. Watching my local COVID reports in granular detail demonstrates we are past peak in new infections and at or near peak in deaths. The trend from here is downward it seems. We need only examine the earliest victims to see the future, China is opening up and its new infection rate is a schosh above zero. South Korea the same. The officials poo poohed the idea that spring will end this and yet the coincidence of trends is remarkable. This reminds me of chemotherapy – poison the patient and the cancer and hope the patient is better at surviving. And like chemotherapy, no one seems to know when to stop.

    1. Great comments, Ernest

      As I said in the article, I raised the alarm before anyone thought this was an issue. It is good to be cautious. We should prepare.

      Having said that, we also need to get to work on thinking about all the patients who come to harm through cancelled surgery etc. Putting all our attention on the COVID patients means we are ignoring all the other important and critical issues.

      Thanks again!

    2. You don’t have the data to confirm these ideas. Testing has been variable with mixed messages. I know because I do it. If you don’t know the denominator you have no idea what is really happening. The issue is dense areas. If you take your foot off the gas you have no way of knowing if a surge will happen. You shut down society. New York does not happen. Within a week of our strongest weapon showing effect the spin is now it wasn’t necessary and let’s rationalize opening up. Gonna wait for more cases to spike then shut down again? The icu admits haven’t left yet you know. The distancing clearly worked. That was the entire point. Be careful with the call to rush out of the trenches so fast. Still work to be done. Most people still not immune. Society cannot handle half ass measures. The fear is what made them buy in

      1. Good call for balance, Ksy11.

        All public policy benefits a few at the cost of many (concentrated benefits and diffuse costs). At some point, the cost becomes great enough to cause harm itself.

        We need a clear sense of what more we hope to achieve before opening up again. Waiting for treatment and vaccine seems an unreasonable bar, no?

        Thanks so much for posting!

    3. Ernest you say “ we are past peak in new infections”etc. You have no data to base that on. You have one treatment: extreme shut down. And your control group is New York. We have shown isolation reduces deaths ie lowers the peak. This is the first week we have shown it. You have no idea how high the peak will go if you ease restrictions. We are only past peak if we isolate. The rest remains unknown and anyone who says otherwise is just making it up based on rationalizing and hope. Bush in Iraq. We still may be out of ventilators, CPAP, within a few weeks. And PPE! The “peak” as you call it has still filled up our ICUs. What exactly will you open up. More laboured to spread it more since we have no tracing machinery?

  8. Shawn,

    It is most helpful that your criticism comes from an analysis of the medical benefits.

    The good doctor Fauci claims to speak for the “public health” interest, and also attempts to promote the assumption that public health should trump other concerns.

    But actually, Fauci is looking at the problem only from the narrow view of containing the pandemic. It is quite likely, as you intimate, that we are losing more people because of the implementation of the pandemic mitigation strategy. Therefore good medicine, and not mere, crass, economics, would demand we change course.

    More people should be aware of that.

    1. Thanks Gordon. Let’s be cautious, for sure, but let’s also not forget about all the patients harmed by shutting down the hospitals.

    2. Absolute numbers are similar but Sweden has 1/3 popn compared to Canada.. Hence their rate % is 3 x as high as ours…

      1. Correct, let’s fire it back up. Experience from other countries demonstrates imprisoning (ie lockdown) is not the most efficient solution.
        Small herd immunity in place, hospitals not overwhelmed and ready for treating all sick patients.
        Lock down long term care homes – screen extensively and subsidize workers and hold them to work at 1 home only.
        Keep grandma and grandpa and the frail/brittle/vulnerable isolated.
        Put kids back to school – they are the most durable and unaffected with this Wuhan virus – they are our pathway to herd immunity.
        Maybe the Feds can secure some PPE for Canadians – it’s not like we’ve not had a pandemic hit us before (SARS1 comes to mind)

        Sure, 20-20 hindsight – but we know now what we know now – analysis is paralysis as non-covid things overwhelm us

        ————————————————
        Canada total shut down and much greater harm (imo).
        Sweden, for the most part, did not shut down.
        Japan, for the most part, did not shut down.
        Singapore, Taiwan, S Korea, did not shut down – very targeted quarantines and comprehensive testing – better preparedness

        https://ourworldindata.org/grapher/total-deaths-covid-19?time=2020-04-15&country=OWID_WRL+CAN+SWE+SGP+TWN+KOR+JPN

        1. Great comments, rickk

          You have offered concrete steps that we could try. A nuanced approach. We need to start advocating for this now, so that, perhaps, governments might start implementing some nuance by mid-May.

          As uncomfortable as it feels for some, we need to start this discussion now.

          Thanks again

        2. Taiwan had the advantage of not being a member of the WHO (Communist China blocked it) and was not influenced by the misinformation formulated by the CCP through its well penetrated WHO .

          Instead Taiwan’s intelligence system picked up that something was going on in Wuhan, it didn’t know what but it went on the alert and started to screen incoming flights…the CCP informed the WHO on the 31 December 2019…the WHO then sat on it and spread misinformation…Taiwan was not deceived…Canada , venerating the WHO ( of 40-50 years ago) , was conned out of its socks.

  10. Well Canada is now committed to the WHO-driven agenda that Trudeau/PHAC have signed onto, even with increasing evidence that WHO is China-biased and gravely dropped the ball coming out of the chute way too slow/indecisively in January…Any Canadian MD who went through SARS2003 could have told you what was coming and what was needed, but Trudeau’s incessant waffling and abdication to his globalist ideology has now landed Canada in our current unprepared mess…and worse, there are no economists in his all-Liberal COVID team who should be forecasting the long game of sustained unemployment, widespread poverty/recession to come, etc., and it’s likely much-worse effect on Canadian national health than the current COVID deaths will reap, and likely much longer…But hey, that’s what you get when you elect (and inexplicably re-elect) an ideologue who surrounds himself with sycophant tokens rather than critical thinkers…

    1. Thanks, Suneel. Strong words that need to be thought about, for sure.

      You said exactly what I was trying to get at: “it’s likely much-worse effect on Canadian national health than the current COVID deaths will reap, and likely much longer.”

      “Stop everything” needs to have an end game. Stop to prepare seems reasonable. Stop to create new protocols, ramp up PPE/alcohol sanitizer, and figure out ways to treat everyone who was already waiting for necessary care.

      Thanks so much!

      1. Yah I get a little hot when it comes to Liberal failings, which seem ubiquitous, and it’s always Canadian citizens who suffer for it:
        1) India debacle = bad trade deal vastly in favour of India
        2) Trump insults = steel tariffs, etc.
        3) Crappy China policy/Meng detention (with no endgame) = Spavor/Kovrig hostage taking, retaliation against Cdn soya/canola/pork imports, etc.
        4) Climate zealotry = loss of hundreds of thousands of Western Canadian jobs with none of the proposed alternatives
        5) Weak aboriginal affairs management = fresh water crises, JWR demolition, native blockades on critical railway supply lines that cost Canada $63M per week…
        And on it goes…

        1. I can see why… Most of us forget your list. It is helpful to remind us every so often. Thanks!

    2. Dr Tam wrote the post SARS report…it went through committees…then through the hands of the bean counters and then ….shelved and the dust gathered.

      My lasting memory of SARS was that, months later, long after the crisis was over, boxes and boxes of the PPE’s that would have been useful during the crisis arrived at the office leaving us scratching our heads.

      Any rescuing cavalry sent by governments arrive long after the battle and prove to be useless.

      Today the TTC is going to supply masks to its drivers….it took a strike to get the attention of their managers and TTC bureaucracy.

  11. Right now we just don’t have the Testing/Tracing/Treatment infrastructure to reopen, but current measures are exerting a great public health cost as well.
    People continue to live with kidney disease, diabetes, COPD, autoimmune, arthritic conditions, and potentially low grade cancers pandemic or no pandemic, and telehealth is insufficient to properly care for these patients.
    Marginalized populations are falling into bigger holes with shuttering of social programs and shelters. Domestic abuse and depression are rising because of distancing measures.

    It’s easy to portray this as Health vs Wealth, but I think there is definitely an unacknowledged health risk associated with continued distancing as well. We just need to find the point where that risk outweighs the immediate risk of the pandemic.

    1. Well said indeed.

      This needs to be about Health vs Health. We are making huge trade offs for one kind of treatment while forgoing others. At some point, we need to rebalance.

      Thanks so much!

  12. It is time to pivot and change course.
    We have had opportunity to prepare and be prepared. We are there.
    The “cure” should not be worse than the disease. We need to start treating the deferred cancer cases, replacing the joints that are causing grave pain and immobility, managing our diabetes……
    We also need to “treat” the social and economic effects of this preparedness. I fear these effects will have longer lasting Ill effects if we do not start planning a new phase, a recovery phase for this covid infection.

    1. Well said, Debbie. What kind of a medical system will we have to go back to if we let it completely implode due to an extended shutdown?

  13. Last week a news report said that on average a NYC suicide crisis gets a 1k/day, after the shut down 25k/day. The shut down will cause suicides because people need to make a living. I haven’t seen any numbers of suicide deaths due to shut down but those people are just as dead as people who have died from the plague that China has unleashed unto the world. One of the results of cancel culture is that an “expert” class has emerged that cannot even being questioned. That imo is extremely dangerous a free and open society requires completely open debate and we are losing it. Time to turn that around.

    1. Well said, Brian.

      We need more discussion about how and when we can reopen. Even vigorous discussion will take weeks. Governments will be extremely shy of reopening. Far better to stay shutdown, politically, because the harm of staying shut is unknown, for now.

      Thanks!

  14. Agree with Brian Kinney.
    The ‘experts’ advising our politicians are guessing,and the last time they were in this position was 17 yrs ago….time to mobilize the patient post surgery.
    Ksy11 is wrong …. our ICU’s and hospitals are EMPTY(20% of expected). How on earth can we justify that for longer than the month already passed ???
    Enough discussion for you Shawn ??

    1. Yes, wow. Didn’t expect quite this much, Ram. The FB page on COVID got very rowdy.

      Political processes are not like treatment decisions. They take forever, require negotiation and trades, and ultimately rely on public mood. Political decisions might be the farthest thing from an evidence-based decision. And by definition, we will not have evidence of the harm of shutdown until after the shutdown.

      Thanks so much for reading and posting comments!

      Cheers

  15. Sweden’s less restrictive response is possibly reflected in their 132 deaths per million population, compared to Canada’s 27, and the U.S. at 86. To my knowledge there has been no community spread in our district, meaning we are all as susceptible now as we were at the outset. No herd immunity. Lots of mobile healthy young people to asymptomatically spread the next wave, and lots of seniors who like to travel. Letting the next wave go in the young and healthy population while socially distancing the vulnerable for a couple months might be more feasible than the doomed prospect of isolating the entire population for a year.

    1. Good points.

      No doubt, there are risks of opening up…even just a little. However, those risks need to be weighed against the risks to patients of staying closed.

      I think your suggestion about lifting restrictions on some seems wise.

    2. The Swedes, in particular the males, seem to naturally isolate themselves…not exactly the most sociable of humans.

      I recall sitting on the subway in Stockholm…the males looked anti social and morose, the females of the species looked relatively cheerful.

  16. It is being widely reported that cause of death is due to covid virus ignoring if the patient had an underlying condition. I have heard many doctors voice opposition to this, one doctor in Minnesota said that he received instructions on how to fill out the death certificate, the first time in his career. Is there a reasonable explanation for this?

    1. Good point, Brian. It would be useful to know who died due to Covid vs who died with Covid and so avoid getting an over-inflated mortality rate.

  17. Shawn,
    I agree. Now is the time to start thinking about how to open up. Not to do it tomorrow but to do it well before the harm of closure exceeds the benefit. In my opinion, the government and public health are too busy putting out fires to direct their attention to this critical task. And it needs to be thought about now (well a couple of weeks ago actually).
    I have ideas and expertise and would volunteer my time to get this rolling. Can we connect a group of smart, like
    like-minded doctors and other experts to give the government and public health a map out of this risky situation?

    1. Exactly. Well said, Angela.

      I do not know if governments are open to discussing a map out of this. But even just getting people talking about it more will help. We need people to raise the concern about the health harms caused by shutdown as well as the health benefits. This is not about Health vs Wealth, as someone else said so well. We need to assess the impacts on health in both directions (closed vs open).

      I posted this on the COVID FB page. There seemed to be some docs open to the discussion. But many were aggressively opposed (to put it nicely). We need to find a balance between doctrinaire positions at either end.

      Thanks so much!

  18. At the very least we should loosen some of the more draconian and probably least effective restrictions at the beginning of May in Ontario (for instance using public parks outdoors). These likely have low benefit (though not no benefit) but are making it hard for many people to deal with prolonged restrictions. A harm reduction approach is necessary in containing this pandemic. With each gradual loosening of restrictions we can watch to see if there is a substantial bump in cases (which we should be able to pick up with consistent but not necessarily broad based testing) and alter our response from there. A prolonged period of government enforced social distancing without firm deadlines for loosening restrictions risks both loss of hope (and attendant mental health issues) plus backlash against government authority leading to breakdown of trust in the very authorities we need right now to lead us through this pandemic.

    1. Good thoughts, Joshua. Thanks so much.

      I agree with your ‘harm reduction’ and ‘loss of hope’ comments. We need people to start talking more about the health costs of closing. What more do we need in the way of PPE etc for the community to decrease the risk of transmission when we do open up? Other countries have figured this out.

      Cheers

      1. No one has really figured it out yet. Maybe Taiwan. We can open up but it has to be done with harm reduction attitudes but absolute safety. Like methadone.
        As an example open parks but have police patrols. (They seem to have lots of time for speed traps right now!)
        Most importantly. Test everyone you can. Self isolation is suspect. Hire 100s of thousand unemployed and rather then give them a check to stay home make them part of a massive tracing system. Knock on the door with a mask. Who else lives here? Test them. Can they isolate? Etc etc.
        As for someone’s comments about opening schools it is always from a rich perspective. I would wager at least a million kids in the GTA go home to their grandparents as well.
        We can talk gradual opening but until you have PPE, isolation plans for the elderly well and shelters(!) , mass tracing , enforcement of breaches , enough CPAPs ( likely to replace vents and need separate facilities due to aerosol) , NONE of which he have or even tried to get going on a massive scale, go ahead and open up. Roll the dice like Justin and Tam and their guide the WHO already did. And Ramus your empty hospital had an ER filled with no bed admits again today after being empty. 1st inning everyone- because we got Team Covid out with only a run scored it doesn’t mean we change the plan for the second inning. Long game to go still. Accept it. Be very careful. Remember Europe and NY.

  19. It is my understanding that in “flattening” the curve, we never really hoped to reduce the area beneath that curve, or, in other words, reduce the total number of people ultimately infected.

    Am I missing something ?

    If herd immunity is our goal : the sooner we get it the better. And if that is agreed, our policy should be akin to the way we turn the taps to get the temperature just right when we are washing our hands : the maximum rate of infection which our society can (comfortably) stand.

    Less time for economic collapse to take us back to 1933. Or worse.

    China and the USA have both made nuclear systems tests in the last month to caution one another. The four horses of the Apocalypse have a way of finding their own moment to erupt onto the scene. These are not eventualities we should unwittingly be toying with ; and certainly not for extended periods of time.

    Gordon Friesen, Montreal
    http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/

    1. I think it might be! For such a short post. Looks like people are not entirely thrilled with the current direction/shutdown/militaristic approach. It seemed reasonable for a very short time, but this sort of thing can take on its own life and never die.

      Addendum — I just checked. It has the 5th highest number of comments. Highest is this one New Deal for Ontario Doctors.

  21. We need more doctors in Ontario and Canada publishing pieces like this. The more data comes out the more it becomes obvious that the panic is overblown and that “targeted isolation” is the correct solution to protect the vulnerable and prevent deaths resulting from economic collapse. The below was published recently based on new studies and data by Dr. Scott Atlas, a Senior Fellow and former chief of neuroradiology at Stanford:

    https://thehill.com/opinion/healthcare/494034-the-data-are-in-stop-the-panic-and-end-the-total-isolation

    Please Ontario/Canadian doctors with common sense: publish fact-based pieces like this to help the complacent Canadian patient get off the bed.

  22. It’s less than 4 weeks since your post and we are now just shy of 4000 deaths in Canada, the majority attributed to LTC. It’s certainly not just the flu. We must recognize as the economies start to reopen (with the massive international economic devastation that we are in) we are really just at the beginning of this whole mess. There will be many more lives lost (the unfortunate reality) as we try to figure our ways through uncharted territories.

    1. Totally agree, Ira.

      The human suffering from the lockdown is considerable. We won’t know how many treatable cancers became untreatable until long after this is over — maybe years later, when we look back and study the differences in all-cause mortality.

      I am happy to see that we are cautiously trying to reopen. It is still too slow. But at least we are trying.

      Great to hear from you!

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