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.
We will manage this event. We understand all the issues.
Having taken ownership of the asteroid, they must now manage the impact. Money for everyone! Guaranteed security for all! No one will get infected. One life is too much.
We have lost our collective minds.
Medical Response for Medical Problems
There is so much wrong with this pandemic I have been loath to write much about it. Perhaps we can blame social media?
It seems like people pursue madness and folly; they buy high and sell low. They tell us to stay calm, when preparation would have made a difference, but stay panicked, when it no longer helps.
All other pandemics have been medical or public health events. COVID-19 is neither.
When townships ban all campfires due to COVID, then lift the ban for the long weekend, medicine no longer matters. Perhaps patient care factors in somewhere; maybe even forest fires factor in too. But for the bigger part, it is all politics now.
Infection Without Disease
This trend will continue and grow; each issue more political than the one before. Urgencies create political imperatives to which the public adheres. Until citizens see it is nonsense.
Once people realise that the wiener roast ban is politics not safety, the public will revolt. Not with marches and looting. They will revolt in their hearts. Voters will learn that rules are made to benefit the people who made the rules.
If people cannot remember why we worry about power, we will get more arbitrary use of it. The reasons for states to act will become less important than avoiding the fallout from not taking action.
Infections will become political events, solutions partisan, and patients will get lost in the process. Sound familiar?
Photo credit: Pixabay 9866112
Welcome back Shawn ….. I’ve been losing my mind as well.
This pandemic was politicized the moment the CCP suppressed the warnings of the young clinicians whom they accused of spreading rumours,then lying to the WHO knowing there was human/human transmission in december,letting millions arrive in Hubei province for Chinese new year,then letting millions leave for the rest of the world(but not allowing them to return to Beijing or Shanghai).Sina then went to work deleting millions of posts on weibo and we chat,so that the only ‘evidence’ will be from the CCP.Does anyone believe the case count/death rate data out of China ?
Trudeau just continued the politicization in a ‘canadiana’ format,ensuring the voice of the people(parliament) was somehow deemed not to be an essential service (but bicycle repair amongst others was),taking control of our everyday lives,and having no idea how to walk this back.The mortality/morbidity of those not accessing health services in the last 2 mths will be deemed ‘collateral damage’ in the war on a virus that will likely kill less than influenza in a bad year,but has been used to scare the hell out of the populace,the likes of which we have not seen in our lifetimes.
Very well said, Ram.
I like your comments about the CCP making this political. Agree. It’s almost that our politicians had no choice but to follow and keep it all political.
Your other comments were great also, as usual.
Great to hear from you!
Cheers
It was reported last night that the CDC (Center for Disease Control) has an annual budget of 8 billion dollars of which less the 10% goes toward fighting infectious diseases ie covid. I suspected this for a while now that the shut down had several agendas at play behind it but one of the reasons was to hide the fact that the CDC is not prepared to live up to their very name of disease control. That is a disgrace and this is what swamp culture does take a lot of money and produce nothing. This has been going for decades with all medical regulatory agencies.
Wow. Thanks for sharing this, Brian. I wonder what the numbers are for Canadian agencies…
Imagine that Communist China launched a massive nuclear missile towards a distant asteroid posing no risk to our planet , as an “experiment”.
The missile does an U turn due to a malfunction and will hit our planet.
The CCP declares that all is well and starts to move its population( party members first of course) to underground bunkers hoarding PPE’s and whatever was required for survival, purchasing them from around the world, ordering ships carrying valuable matter away from China to return.
After a delay it tells the World space organization , based in Geneva, but infiltrated by its agents and useful fools, that all is well and that the missile is returning under control and will land harmlessly.
Our own PM , absolutely enamoured by the WSO , takes its advice and proceeds to export the items requested by China.
Our own credulous PM , despite likely receiving contrary information from a source hostile to Communist China ( despite the source , a feisty small independent Chinese island lying off shore , having taken precautions) , sits on his hands.
The missile strikes the planet with devastating effect…like any “good” politician, our PM does not allow any crisis go to waste and takes full advantage to impose his statist ideological wet dreams , Carbon / green and gender based, on the Canadian population.
One positive, our PM leads a minority government…one negative, what he lacks in intelligence and wisdom he compensates with cunning…the crisis allowing him to prevent the Canadian parliament from assembling , he and his PMO taking full advantage.
Oh Andris…this is excellent. A much better analogy than the one I used. Brilliant!
China takes over the Western World ( having some trouble with Australia; descended from deported British criminals ); no shots fired. If you are familiar with Professor Henry Higgins, in “My Fair Lady”, he can tell where come from within a few miles, or a few blocks in London, just by listening to your accent. If you have talked to me at Council or elsewhere, you have heard the accent of Sourh East England, East Anglia, County of Essex ( not Ontario ). That is where the Peasants’ Revolt started in 1381, in a small town called Billericay near where I grew up; about the size of Napanee. This has been political panic from the start, on the part of Chairman Justin of the “basically admired dictatorship” CCP ( Canadian Communist Party ). I suggest that we all go back to to work. Are there enough police, military and reservists to throw us all in our already over-utilized jails? Am I some kind of rabble rouser? Wat Tyler, their leader, was killed by the Lord Mayor of London while at an invited meeting with King Richard the Second. For a while a CPSO lawyer eradicated me so thoroughly that you could not find me even among the list of “bad” doctors. I see now I am back, but you will find it hard to see through the enduring typographical errors that I refused to do “unnecessary tests” beloved by some specialist “experts”, like temperature checks outside hardware stores. Of course, being over eighty makes me an “at risk” physician for incompetence.
Hey Roger,
Thanks for taking time to share a comment. You raise a good point about the lockdown only working if we all play along. Fear works to a point. Eventually, people will resist. I worry that too many white-collar workers can maintain their incomes working remotely and without additional risk. They have a voice. Everyone else cannot and has no voice.
I hope you are doing well!
Cheers
They tell us to stay calm, when preparation would have made a difference, but stay panicked, when it no longer helps.
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Dear Shawn,
That is brilliant!
Looking forward, it appears that everybody now knows that lock-down is an impossible strategy. The Italians and Spanish have figured it out (and publicly admitted it) first, but others know, even though they pretend.
My thought is this : What if we were to accept that a certain number of people are going to get sick and die ; and if we were to stop throwing astounding amounts of money at trying to prevent the inevitable (the latest is every student in Canada eligible for 5 grand over four months at 1200.-/per) …
What would we be able to accomplish (with even a fraction of the money now committed to lock-down) in actual humanitarian care ?
For instance (and I am no expert but just brainstorming) :
Removing all infected oldsters from the homes as soon as they are identified and relocating them in well conceived, medium care over-flow facilities until they get better or have to go to ICU ?
Doing the same for oldsters phoning in from home ?
Funding special mobile units whose only function is to dress people up in space suits so that ordinary civilians can go in and visit their loved ones ? (this service could vary according to organization and funding as we go forward. It could be only one day a week at each residence at first. But the idea that NOTHING along these lines has yet been suggested is astounding).
In short, instead of perfectly healthy people with no risk cowering at home and squandering their children’s heritage in an irrational attempt to “protect” themselves, what if we all go back to work, and spend whatever little money we have left, on seeing that sick people are well cared for, and that those who must die, will die in decent humanitarian circumstances ?
Best regards to all,
Gordon Friesen, Montreal
http://www.euthanasiediscussion.net/
Good points, Gordon. We face impossible choices. Staying locked down does not seem reasonable.
The only cure for a pandemic caused and then exacerbated by BS is the truth. I can always count on you for illuminating the truth Shawn. Thanks!
Thanks Rick!