Observations From Just Outside the Pandemic #13

As it appears as if we are entering a period when people and companies will slowly start to re-engage with their environment, we are going to be inundated with all kinds of experts telling us what our governments did wrong and why we should be angry about it. Some of this has already occurred with various groups/individuals suggesting that the Canadian government erred in its lack of planning, in not having enough medical supplies, in not testing enough, or doing it sooner and in not shutting down our borders fast enough.

There will also be an almost equal number of comments suggesting that the government did too much. That there was no need to close almost every conceivable service or if we had just exercised reasonable precautions, life could have gone on - in almost a normal fashion.

The problem with the above comments is that they are all, at least partially, right. It just depends upon what information the "experts" use to come to their conclusions. There would appear to be almost no consistency about how various countries measured the extent of the virus in its general population.

For example - Dr. Tam, Canada's chief public health officer on a daily bases reports the number of people who have been diagnosed with the virus. People can and do compare that number with other countries and rank whether Canada is doing better or worse in managing the crisis than other countries. The number of people sick or even in a hospital is a useless piece of data unless one knows the percentage of people who have been tested and who they are. If a country is only primarily testing people in health care, people who have been potentially been exposed to the virus,  the proportion of people infected may be significantly different than in a country where the testing limits are less restrictive in terms of occupation. Without knowing who was tested, we are comparing apples and oranges. Never a useful exercise.

As of today, 2800 people have died from complications of being infected with the COVID-19 virus. As of last week, almost half of the deaths in Canada have occurred in nursing homes. If we are going to discuss the number of deaths, we need to separate the number of seniors and their caregivers in long term care who have died from the general statistics. It is not that those deaths, or in fact those individuals are insignificant but rather that the reasons for their deaths have far more to do with the quality of care (or the lack thereof) than the federal government's failure to plan for a pandemic. It might be very useful to compare data about such deaths with what happened in other countries. If Sweden or Japan have had fewer deaths from the virus, what was the percentage of seniors who died and where did they live? According to the Independent (1), a respected British newspaper, Japan, while it has a higher percentage of senior citizens than many countries, it has fewer long term beds. Japan supports the elderly without incarcerating them in institutions.

If we are going to have a conversation about how many died and why - we need to understand all of the data. Depending on what data is used will change the conversation about whether or not Canada was successful in managing this health crisis.

(1) https://www.independent.co.uk/voices/japan-elderly-social-care-system-uk-nhs-health-old-people-a8377631.html