Securing delivery of the vaccines and finding people who can actually govern are the biggest challenges we face

SwP thumbnail graphicBy Pepper Parr

April 10th, 2021

BURLINGTON, ON

OPINION

Is there anyone saying the provincial government is doing a good job in managing the pandemic – the only people who are saying anything positive are the politicians. Their advisors have been pressing for stronger measures to stop the spread of  Covid19

Ontario is caught between a rock and a hard place. We don’t have any facilities where we can manufacture the virus and we are having problems getting the vaccines the federal government has ordered.

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Managing the supply of the vaccines under contract isn’t working very well.

The federal government has contracts with just about every vaccine company but none of them are delivering on time.

There are delays upon delays. The supply was so short that the rate at which second doses of the vaccines was increased. Difficult to understand how the scientists can invent something and issue instruction saying the product should be applied four weeks apart and then, when the province finds they don’t have enough to deliver on that prescription – they make the second dose months later – and that seems to be OK.

It has to be because the supply just isn’t there.

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Listening to the advice of people who put the public ahead of politics is proving to be a challenge for the Premier.

The politicians are playing political games – Prime Minister says I sent you 2 million doses – and the Premier replies – sure you did – yesterday.

This is beginning to look and sound  like a Gilbert and Sullivan comic opera.

We failed the seniors’ community, because the most of the long term care homes are run by the private sector where profits come before service.

We can of course vote the politicians out of office – any assurance that the next lot that get elected will be any better?

The public service is a good place to work. That sector however, seems to have forgotten what serving actually means.

There have been some upsides. The science community has performed, for the most part, superbly. They were able to come up a vaccine in a very short period of time. And the leadership from the science community has pressed the governments to listen.

Finding men and women who bring courage, tenacity and a belief that public service is a calling is the challenge for the rest of us. Hoping for the best isn’t going to be enough.

Salt with Pepper is the musings, reflections and opinions of the publisher of the Burlington Gazette, an online newspaper that was formed in 2010 and is a member of the National Newsmedia Council.

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6 comments to Securing delivery of the vaccines and finding people who can actually govern are the biggest challenges we face

  • Earl

    Right on, 0ne of your better missives. The extension for second jabs to 4 months is strictly a political move – there is little or no science behind the move whatsoever. God help us…

  • Denise W.

    Anybody who looked, could see this coming some time ago. Given where we are now, as I previously suggested, this is the best pathway for all of us. Going forward, my opinion, we need more mRNA vaccines, that ideally will also be adjusted for the variants.

  • perryb

    Why would anyone with any skills or commitment run for office? To get elected, you have to survive a gauntlet of bitter partisan battles. Then you report for work and find that your job is to pop up and vote when told, and cheer like a trained seal when your party leaders make even the most inane pronouncement. If you have any initiative at all, you are quickly told to shut up and do what you’re told. You’ll learn that your job is to be in service of votes, not voters, since every action of government is calculated on that basis. Put away any idealistic notions you might have or you’ll get bounced out of the party. Even worse, you may find yourself in the leadership group, and if a crisis like Covid occurs, your political skills don’t count for much, and what you learned from making sticky labels doesn’t quite cut it either.
    You might hope that the electorate will say ‘enough’ and fix this. Of course you’d need help from the 50-60% of us who can’t tear themselves away from the TV long enough to even get interested. Only once in two or three generations does a true leader emerge somehow and change the course of history.
    Sorry for the rant.

  • Phillip Wooster

    Correction to your story, You said the province “makes the second dose months later”. Remember it’s NACI–a federal body, who is calling the shots on the delay. This afternoon I listened to a doctor ripping NACI’s recommendation to shreds; it appears that NACI has no validated data (peer reviewed) on which to base its recommendation, in fact, some of its research materials contain no data at all. This suggests that NACI is not making its recommendation based on rigorous research but some other criteria, likely political at the federal level.

  • g.fraser

    “Finding men and women who bring courage, tenacity and a belief that public service is a calling is the challenge for the rest of us. Hoping for the best isn’t going to be enough.”

    NO disagreement with what was said.

    cheers