A health crisis and a confidence issue - how much can the public handle ?

SwP thumbnail graphicBy Pepper Parr

April 19th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

 

There are a lot of people very unhappy with the Premier.

Brown and Williams

Dr. Adelstein Brown, Chair of the Science Table , keeps a safe distance from Dr. David Williams, Chief Medical Officer of Health.

Members of the Science table who advise the Chief Medical Officer of the province who then advises the Premier are talking about resigning.

They don’t think the Premier understands the gravity of the Covid19 situation and how close we are to being out of control.

Leader of the provincial Liberals want the Premier to resign – Stephen Del Duca said: ““Doug Ford is the worst Premier in Ontario history at a time when leadership matters the most. He should resign now before he makes things any worse. If he does, I will be the first to commend him, because it takes real guts to get out of the way when he’s screwed up this badly. But he won’t. Because he only cares about himself and his special friends.”

That’s just politics – Del Duca has yet to win a seat to even sit in the Legislature.k

It is becoming very clear that this government cannot seem to get ahead of the crisis. Paid sick leave for those people who have the crummy jobs, live with large families, often in congested space, work for a bit more than the minimum wage and having to use public transit doesn’t seem to be something the province is prepared to do.

Ford Doug with graph Apr 16

Premier Ford uses data provided by the Science Table as a prop during a media event – but doesn’t follow the recommendations that came with the data.

Money can’t be the issue – the Premier keeps saying “whatever it takes”. It takes taking care of the people who work in the hospitals who are approaching burn out, the single parent who works in the supermarket and now has to figure out how she is going to care for her children with schools closed.

The decision to give police the authority to stop people at random and have them justify why they are out of their homes was a stretch when the public was informed – then at least 30 police forces in the province declare they aren’t going to use the authority – the province backs off.

There is a health crisis that is barely under control.

There is a confidence problem as well.

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3 comments to A health crisis and a confidence issue – how much can the public handle ?

  • Denise W.

    I was asked…..No matter the model, good or bad accuracy. Or extrapolating from graphs. There is no good news. We could very easily tip over the edge and it will be as it was in California or Texas. There are no right answers and it has been a “learn as we go” sort of thing. The real “right answers” are up to the us, the public. How effective we are with our precautions.

  • Hans Jacobs

    It’s difficult to trust the provincial leadership, which had at least a year to make plans for infection avoidance and vaccination and failed miserably, ranging from “enjoy your March break” last year to not being able to be decisive about closing schools this year.
    We deserve better leadership.

  • Denise W.

    ” They don’t think the Premier understands the gravity of the Covid19 situation and how close we are to being out of control. ”

    So why is the Premier getting pushback on greater police powers. Seems a prudent next step. They are still visiting friends and ignoring the stay at home order. Travelling all around. Movie business wants to keep going and bring people in. Everybody has reasons why their business has to stay open and continue normally. People now are planning their migration back to cottage country and getting boats ready. ????

    The problem is the population, just doesn’t get with the program. People won’t even follow the arrows in a grocery store. Let alone wear their mask properly.

    Would love to see the math ST used for the modelling. I have been crunching things and it really is at the PhD level to even get 40 percent accuracy. Need to put in full demographics by county. Age, sex, ethnicity, population, proportions of those working from home and a factor for assumed comorbidities. Then a coefficient (actually an equation) for community transmission taking into account the population density and they type of housing. A mining camp up north will have low population density per county, but they live in close quarters like a built up urban area. So higher transmissibility. Other remote counties will have low density and low community transmissibility. So must recognize that. And if the numbers run up, they cannot keep going because in the real world infections will saturate, deaths will rise to a max and mobility goes down and then transmissibility. I could go on for three pages. Data entry and control, for the province alone would require a staggering amount of labour, to do properly.

    Hard enough for Halton county alone. And this has to be done in am manner that keeps all the units the same for each county. So one master formula. Then data can be put in for other counties and can be done for all of Ontario. So the Science Table, I hope has some pretty good math people doing this. Better than me, anyway as I am not trained in this, so probably look at it all differently. But the devil is always in the details.

    I’m not criticizing the ST in any way. I agree, this is dangerous. But address the problem. Don’t be such a pain that the leadership avoids the messenger. And if people resign, wow what a brave political statement. But for scientists, a stunt, that is a backwards step. Isn’t it better to stay in the action so that you can exert influence towards a change you know is needed? What do they want, stricter rules? We have them on tap but the Premier is getting grief for them. Then next week, he isn’t strict enough. Everything to do with this pandemic is a thankless job. But for those who signed on to be involved, I would think they should see it through the best they can.

    Summer, I give up on that. People are just not taking this serious enough right now.