Furey: Canada Made Pandemic Playbooks -- And We're Not Following Them

FUREY:

Canada made pandemic playbooks

-- and we're not following them

Author of the article:
Anthony Furey
Publishing date:
Feb 06, 2021 • 2 days ago • 3 minute read

Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam holds a press conference during the COVID-19 pandemic in Ottawa on Friday, Dec. 18, 2020. PHOTO BY SEAN KILPATRICK /THE CANADIAN PRESS
It’s quite something to look back and see what Canada’s response
to a pandemic was supposed to be and then compare it
to what we’ve actually being doing to deal with COVID-19.

There’s one recurring theme that comes across w
hen you study the various pandemic preparedness documents
that have been put together by different levels of governments in recent years:

It’s that they all anticipate a situation worse
than the one that is currently unfolding,
but they call for less restrictive measures
than the ones that have now been enacted.


As an example, let’s take a look at the “high impact” scenario
in the federal government’s 2018 pandemic preparedness guidebook.

That’s the worst case scenario they outline.

It anticipates that 25% to 45% of the population
becomes ill and warns that “mass fatalities
may overwhelm death care services (e.g. funeral homes, mortuaries).”

What then should be done in such a situation?

When it comes to businesses,
it simply warns that “high absenteeism (due to illness)
would put all sectors and services under extreme pressure.”

It certainly doesn’t call to shut all of these workplaces down.



Here’s the most aggressive the recommendations get:

“Social distancing measures or strategies may be used
to minimize close contact among persons in public places,
e.g., pro-active school closures; cancellation or modification
of public gatherings; and alternative workplace approaches,
such as teleconferences and working from home.

Because of their potential societal impact, social distancing measures
are most applicable in pandemics of moderate to high impact.”

There’s a more detailed 2010 report
by the Simcoe Muskoka District Health Unit
— an Ontario region north of Toronto that includes the city of Barrie
— that also offers great insights.

(To be clear, these are all influenza pandemic guidebooks.

No officials anticipated a coronavirus pandemic.)

Their working assumptions for a worst-case scenario involve the pandemic requiring “170% of ICU beds, and 117% of ventilator supported beds
during the peak of influenza activity.”

Yet even with these dire predictions
— which no Canadian hospital has experienced during COVID-19
— they simply talk about measures required to support the health care system
and manage expectations.

They don’t talk about shutting down all of society
in response to increased hospital volume.

It’s this disconnect between what we’re supposed to be doing
and the mistaken path Canada has instead headed down
that retired Lt.-Col. David Redman has been sounding the alarm over.



Redman knows what he’s talking about.

After 27 years in the Canadian Armed Forces,
he went on to become the executive director
of the Alberta Emergency Management Agency.

“Never send healthy people home,” says Redman,
in conversation with the Sun.

“That’s a ridiculous concept.
Every plan that was ever written says you use non-pharmaceutical
interventions as the last resort. They really discourage lockdowns.”

Redman points to how the World Health Organization
initially didn’t support China plunging the region of Wuhan
into the first such widespread lockdown in modern human history.

“We followed the campaign of fear coming out of China
and we watched what they did,” says Redman,
of the first big misstep made by government officials.

Now, Redman is firing off briefing notes to Canada’s premiers
in the hopes that they’ll pivot towards the way emergency planning officials

— who the retired military officer says should have played a greater role
from the beginning — would deal with the situation.

“We do two things,” Redman says of what he hopes
can be a new game plan.

“One: We immediately quarantine our long-term care seniors’ homes.

Two: We immediately change the rhetoric in the media
and we move to confidence — we tell people that our hospital system
is not going to collapse because we built surge capacity.”

A conversation with Redman is a bittersweet experience.

It’s refreshing to hear an experienced military officer and emergency planner talk about how there is indeed a better way to manage the situation.

But it’s sad to think that so much of the damage that’s been
caused by lockdowns and poor protection of LTCs
could have been averted if we just stayed calm
and put the right people in charge.

I’ll leave you with a section from Redman’s latest briefing
note that was sent to Canada’s premiers on Wednesday:

“Ignoring our long-established and hard learned pandemic
response goals and following a failed lockdown response
has caused massive collateral damage in terms of deaths
and long-term effects on our population.

Collateral damage, largely ignored by mainstream media,
includes but is not limited to, massive damage to our social fabric,
our mental health, our other severe health conditions,
our children’s education, and our economy.”