After over
two months of “lockdown” in Ontario, our progress with respect to COVID-19 appears
to have reached what can only be termed a plateau. We have avoided worst case scenarios like
Spain and Italy and not overwhelmed our hospitals but we are not seeing our
numbers of new cases consistently go down as in some other provinces across the
country such as Manitoba or B.C. To be
fair, Ontario does have some of the most densely populated parts of the country
– namely the GTA – and the combination of dense populations and an
international airport are factors which made the COVID-19 situation worse. Ontario is not PEI or Manitoba.
At the same
time, our response to the onset of COVID-19 could have been quicker – here
Ontario was not alone given the federal response – and the resulting “lockdown”
was not really a lockdown in the sense of some of the European countries such
as Italy or Spain. While those countries
were hit harder, they were at the front end of the pandemic and responded more
firmly with their lockdowns. In Italy,
the “lockdown” was a complete shutdown where you could not go out unless it was
to the grocery store or pharmacy and if stopped while out you needed to justify
where you were going to police. As a
result, despite a more severe outbreak and having four times Ontario’s
population, Italy is now registering fewer daily new cases than Ontario.
Ontario’s
approach to COVID-19 in the end is a sort of Swedish approach with a fuller
shutdown, less public compliance and a bigger economic cost in terms of
shutdown. Sweden’s population at just
over 10 million people is close to Ontario’s 14 million. Its approach in the end has been less
successful in that it currently has a total of about 41,000 cases and 4,542
deaths compared to Ontario’s 29,047 cases and 2,312 deaths. The Swedish approach has been less damaging
to its economy - even schools and restaurants remained open – but its daily
case numbers have not gone down settling into an equilibrium between 500 and
1000 new cases a day. The problem with the Swedish approach is not only the
higher death rate but of course the greater risk of the pandemic re-igniting
given the larger number of embers.
Ontario’s
approach in the end has parallels to the family of five squirrels nesting in my
rear yard’s pine tree. Obviously, they
are sensitive to COVID-19 given that they are sticking to gatherings of five. However, they are a bit of a nuisance. Despite
my obvious attempts to discourage them, they do pretty much as they please as
they gallivant from tree to tree.
However, they are very skittish and if I play hawk calls from my phone,
they scamper away and lay low. That
seems to be the case in Ontario where despite a pandemic emergency and rules on
social gatherings, people still pretty much go about their daily business including
gathering in public parks and even participating in demonstrations in large
densely populated cities. And, the relaxed
approach and lack of attention to details is even in some of those institutions
that we were all most afraid of being overwhelmed – our hospitals. And then, as soon as something goes wrong, we act. Its not a consistent strategy.
This story
on Thunder Bay’s CBC web site regarding a commuting physician
with COVID-19 symptoms working at Thunder Bay Regional for days is an
unfortunate case in point. While I am
certain that this is a complex story with many dimensions, the essence to me is
that the hospital was not consistently following its own protocols – whatever
they happen to be – and once a problem emerged, the response was the squirrel
thing – a rapid shutdown again of all its “non-essential” surgical and
outpatient procedures. I suspect that in
the end, the mortality rate is going to rise in the coming year in Ontario but
more of the rise will be attributable to delayed diagnostics and medical procedures
than from COVID-19 itself.
In the case
of Thunder Bay Regional, the interesting part of the story is that there will
now be an investigation but that “the full report may be kept under
wraps.” Really? Are we implementing
Chinese Communist Party management principles in Ontario health care? I would be interested in knowing why during a
pandemic an incoming commuting physician was not tested for COVID-19 as a
matter of course especially given that the physician was exhibiting symptoms.
True, they could be seasonal allergies, but given the difficulty of separating
COVID symptoms from allergies, should not the medical staff worker have been
tested as a precaution? Is there not a supervisor this
physician reports to who could have compelled testing on first mention of
“allergy symptoms” to remove doubt? As an aside, was this physician flying back
and forth to their other abode or driving?
In the end, what do I really know? I am a simple country economist observing the
world from my home – be it presidents and prime ministers trying to make
decisions affecting the welfare of their populations, hospital administrations
and public health units dealing with health care, or squirrels foraging about
their daily business. To date, the motivation
and behaviour of the squirrels has been the easiest to understand.
