TORONTO – With all due deference to the thousands of fellow citizens who have expired “because of” of Covid-19 or “with” the virus present in their system, my confidence in the political system’s ability to confront and overcome the medical challenges is no longer unshaken.
Canada/Ontario is among the premier jurisdictions world-wide for medical-scientific research, for availability of medical services and for the necessary separation of medical infrastructure from partisan meddling. I am not naïve… that is generally the case and a goal to which all governments openly claim to direct their policies.
Since January of 2020, Canadians have been bombarded with “fact-based information” that has proven to be consistently off the mark. I cannot recall a single “science- based” statement espoused by any political representative that has not been almost immediately contested by yet another “medical expert”.
One does not know where “political spin begins” and where “chemical reactions in a laboratory” end as explanations for the viral rage we are experiencing. It does seem increasingly certain that fewer and fewer have sense of the correct next course action.
We have gone from “how to avoid getting it” (prevention), to “care” for those who get it, to numbers who “don’t make it”, to “investments in those who suffer economically”, to… [you] fill in the blank. And the Press/Media (we included) also bears responsibility.
Premier Ford is blaming Prime Minister Trudeau for bungling the access to vaccines, the efficacy of which has yet to be proven. If you didn’t have the virus without vaccination and still don’t get it afterwards, what’s the benefit? What’s the alternative?
Ford solution is to lock everyone indoors. Give police greater powers to enforce the directives and shut down the Legislature.
Yet despite the fact that the infection numbers for a seven-day rolling average are at the highest they have ever been, the “recovery rate” of those infected is still in the 95+ percentile, while the fatality rate per million of residents is so low relative to other jurisdictions world-wide as to be laughable.
Nonetheless, Ministers responsible for the greatest impact of Covid- 19 are still in their posts. Minister Fullerton, a Medical Doctor, was invisible as Seniors with underlying conditions succumbed to the virus in Long Term Care (LTC) centres. Close to 75% of fatalities occurred in LTC homes.
Hospitals’ inability to administer hospitalization and stresses to Intensive Care units brought on by increased infection rates is now “the crisis of the day”. Yet, Minister Elliott is still on the job.
Equally embarrassing is the performance of Minister Lecce whose shameless insistence that schools were healthy and safe as a rationale for keeping schools open – until a few hours later when premier Ford pulled the rug from under his feet – has everyone wondering on which hook is he hanging any microbe of credibility left in his political future.
Constitutionalist Rocco Galati has been making the case that the public has been subjected to disinformation, misinformation overload and is now being deprived of constitutional rights to freedom of movement and rights to seek alternatives. With every passing day, his arguments that we have been turned into one big experiment and clinical trial become increasingly credible.
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