Bashing Ontario's Flu Response- Not Cool

[Ken Gigliotti]

I woke up this morning ,turned on the TV to be greeted by the Ontario Health minister having to answer to a grim auditor general's report.
Consultants and their costs in health care have never been well received as they are most often ironic  cost cutters.
So these times soon devolve into seeing everything through the lens political partisanship.
So I will refrain from using names or parties other than to say she projected exemplary leadership skills as have most of the premiers and health officials handling the public communication of the real-time daily pandemic briefings. Sometimes context hides things lost in the shuffle or lost in the fog of fast moving events on a world scale. Nursing home deaths in Quebec would be alarming to the public and top end health officials but not the front line. Rapid spread from China  was expected but not from Europe, PPE shortages for a national emergency was definitely on anyone's radar, as was non symptomatic spread.The second wave of long term deaths is also puzzling even in provinces that did not have problems in the first wave.

So my thing, is to try to find examples of clear thinking approaches. Clear thinking seems to have left the building only a few years ago with politics then spreading to media. The government/scientific approach I thought was pretty good from the start.The systems that failed were weak links waiting to crash.

Generally,I have to look back for clear thinking approaches and maybe that is why there is this fascination with WW2.

I immediately felt bad for those like the health minister who have been fighting a war they didn't start with an agile enemy that seemed to evolve to counter anything any other flu had ever done.  The battles has taken many lives and the second wave is just getting started and now the criticism. It must be very disheartening. A real punch in the gut. One of Manitoba's top health care officials doing the daily newsers  has also been working weekends in a long term care facility. 

In my Nov. 12 Coronavirus – Stale Messaging and Five Star Admirals and a Secret Weapon- I was trying to find a historical equivalent to try to ground the chaotic reporting from the US and in contrast the dry, “trust the science,” medical messaging from across Canada.

So this pandemic  flu  is comparable to a Pearl Harbor event, the never before virus struck in China, lingered in secrecy for a short while,then spread rapidly.

Things that had never been done before in modern history like halting air travel to and from China began. Some say too late. Travel to China is a  recent phenomenon and involved big numbers and had commercial considerations. Everyone moved too slow because it was impossible to move too fast. Incomprehensibly in fact.

Even the response to Pearl Harbor was too slow. Admiral Nimitz decided to  take the train to San Francisco rather than fly. He needed to sleep and think. He was also moved by the landscape and breathe of the country , industry and the people. He began to grasp the importance of his mission and how hard that would be. America as worth saving.

The first thing was drawing upon the diversity of  top admirals all graduates from the newly formed Annapolis Naval college prior to WW1 who recognized the importance of the new concepts of  fast attack aircraft carriers, naval air power, submarines and PBY long distance sea planes. Later code breaking.

Nimitz ran his first ship aground as a young commander and faced court martial. Instead of going to jail or being kicked out of the navy he was given a second chance. He  always remembered the idea of a second chance an used it wisely. He was punished by being assigned to the fledgling submarines service. This is after WW1, he saw the sub as a strategic rather than defensive service. He saw that there was a need to rethink engines as they had gasoline engines. The diesel engine had recently been invented and he ordered the subs to be refitted with that type of engine that are still in service today. He became an expert in the submarine service laying the thought process and ground work for  the modern navy of today. He also changed the navy tactic for battleships traveling in a line to a circular defense for the carrier service. War ships traveled in lines from the days of sails.

The first issue after the pearl Harbor attack was the issue of overall command structure needed to be what they called “unity of command,” from Washington to Pearl Harbor, to each battle group. The President was a navy man and was on board all the way. This was an issue in the newer in Ontario.

The admirals had to decide strategy from every level and had to find those admirals who would fight as well as preserve the surviving meager carrier force and navy still in the Pacific. It meant who would take the initiative when it was presented or would they leave the battle and disappear into the vast grayness of the ocean. Preservation capital was the issue.

The pandemic response was be like that with unity of command from the PM to the premiers to the front lines.The in Canada  the battle space like the ocean, it is vast area.

Pr-existing problems with pandemic response would create the conditions of spread. Lack off locally available or sourced PPE would drive the mask wearing response and controversy  from the start.

The systematic strangulation of health care over many decades would created high death tolls at the bottom of that ladder in care for the elderly in highly populated areas of Quebec,the GTA and BC. Less populated provinces would cope better in the first phase.BC would move the fastest in the long term area.

Quebec would be Canada's Pearl Harbor with an early spring break that would set the stage for high  first and highest flu spread and death.

Those areas that were air transportation hubs, Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto and Montreal and also have mass rapid transit  were hit the hardest. The spread was inevitable.

The new practice for Canadians and Americans of social distancing and mask wearing would have to be accepted by the public. The lack of masks for front line workers would create sketchy messaging for the public and commerce. People would be left to their own devices, making masks at home,a true wartime reaction. Stores would rapidly put up plastic barriers on their own.
Public transit would not really be a consideration but the shutting down the economy was.

Anyway Admiral Nimitz and Canada's top doctor D. Tam created a unity of command  that was  decisive and pushed politics aside.

Just as the War in the Pacific had it's setbacks , America's ability to manufacture was the deciding factor to winning both wars, the one in Europe and the Pacific could not be over looked, the development of the secret weapon the atomic bomb, today the vaccine are the punctuation marks to an enemy that would not give up.

This second wave needs some hard thinking because, mask wearing and social distancing  was already an accepted and common practice. The second wave should be starting right now in flu season , but it really didn't end from the first wave. “Flattening the wave” was not enough.

This is my take. Flu season should have been less of a problem not more of one. Has the flu changed? There were some problems in churches, young people in bars, but is there something else? Stat holidays maybe? The lack of leadership in the US has empowered predictable illogical social behavior that possibly should have been expected. I do not know. The current problems land squarely on the public ,specifically the forever non compliant. Historic Example - There are people, mostly in rural areas of Manitoba who die because seat belt use in the rural areas is chronically lax. So this non compliance by anti establishment or the rebel segment across all society needs to be a factor in any public influence messaging and enforcement.

Canada's inability to manufacture has to be noted, it created a big problem with PPE that effected public health messaging  and now with the production and distribution of vaccine. Not having manufacturing capacity of both high skill and low skilled jobs is a major problem in Canadian society as a whole. We need to think hard and deeply about social innovation that includes jobs, taxes and how people are to cope in the future. Giving away money in the future is not sustainable, not now.

Give the Ontario government a break a with others across Canada. The US not so much. Overall systemic changes over decades need to be addressed .Let everyone do their job. These are worthwhile jobs. Unemployment isn't working. I saw that phrase years ago painted on a wall in Winnipeg's Inner City.