covid-19

Saturday April 4, 2020

April 4, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 4, 2020

Should I keep away from others while walking? Prof says yes

Walking has been a welcome relief for people feeling cooped up in these unprecedented times of social distancing, but even this ordinary activity raises questions about what’s appropriate when approaching fellow pedestrians.

Coronavirus cartoons

Exercise and fresh air are important for both physical and mental health during the COVID-19 outbreak — but so is following some key guidelines, advises Corinne Hart, associate professor of Ryerson University’s Daphne Cockwell School of Nursing.

Maintaining six feet of space is at the top of her list.

Hart is walking her 13-year-old Goldendoodle daily through Toronto’s historic Mount Pleasant Cemetery.

With its wide roads that wind through the cemetery’s picturesque 200 acres, it’s the ideal place to keep a safe distance from others while walking, said Hart.

“It’s so nice, and there’s lots of space,” Hart said Thursday in a phone interview.

But it’s important to keep two arm lengths away from people, she added.

“Don’t stop and have chats with people where you’re going to get close. The smartest thing is to err on the side of caution and keep far away.”

And while dog parks are a popular place to hang out — they’ve been as busy as ever this week as people flock outdoors — Hart said it’s better to stay away from them. Congregating anywhere isn’t a good idea, and dogs are unpredictable.

“I was shocked at how many people were in the dog park actually when I was walking today,” she said. “I would say don’t.”

Dogs might get into tussles, prompting owners to rush and pull them apart, or go talk to the other person, she explained.

“Unless you’ve got a big dog park (to maintain distance) and your dog is really well-behaved and is going to come when you call.”

Hart, who teaches community health nursing and practice at Ryerson, also cautions against walks for people in self-isolation. While people in isolation surely crave the outdoors more than anyone, self-isolating means halting all contact with others. Leaving the house presents too many risks.

“If by some chance something happens — you fall, you get hurt, there’s an accident — then you’re stuck out there with people all over you,” said Hart, who’s also Ryerson’s academic lead for interprofessional education in the Faculty of Community Services.

But for those not in self-isolation, outdoor exercise is recommended. And biking and running don’t pose any more of a risk than walking, as long as they’re not done in close contact with others. (CTV)

 

 

Friday April 3, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 3, 2020

Trudeau must reveal COVID-19 national projections

It’s time for Justin Trudeau to tell us just how bad the COVID-19 pandemic could get in Canada.

Coronavirus cartoons

The prime minister holds in his hands science-based models that project how many people might get this illness and, just as crucially, how many might die from it.

Yet he’s doggedly keeping this vital information secret, despite the fact many other political leaders are levelling with their public about the viral tsunami barrelling their way.

Even Ontario Premier Doug Ford, who had previously resisted publicizing such projections, just did a complete about-face.

“You deserve to know what I know,” he told Ontarians Thursday as he announced that the province’s top doctors would on Friday provide the modelling numbers for where Ontario was, is and could be. 

It was only Wednesday when Ford said people might panic if they learned those projections. Now, he says the information will provide the public with “a real wake-up call.”

This is one of those rare occasions when Trudeau should follow Ford’s lead. Trudeau’s condescending, father-knows-best rejection of the public’s right to know infantilizes mature Canadian adults and leaves them in the dark — just when they most need the bright light provided by the latest scientific research to guide them forward.

Not only are his excuses for doing this flimsy, they’re self-contradictory. In one breath, Trudeau says he won’t release the pandemic predictions prepared by Canada’s top public health officials until they’re more accurate. 

In the next breath, he suggests those projections are unreliable because the response of Canadians in the coming days will change them. But that argument, taken to its logical conclusion, means even Ottawa’s best projections will always be useless because they could always be altered by future events. 

And if that’s so, why does the government bother making such projections at all? If they serve no purpose in helping Canadians know how to act, they serve no purpose in directing federal policy.

Finally, if the pandemic models are so problematic, it made no sense for Trudeau to promise that he looks “forward to sharing more information with Canadians in the coming days” after he consults with the premiers.

The only way people will truly comprehend the life-and-death stakes of COVID-19 is if Trudeau gives them the facts as he knows them.

That’s what Premier Ford rightly decided to do. It’s what even the much-maligned Donald Trump has done. On Tuesday, the president allowed the release of sobering projections from the top U.S. scientists battling the coronavirus. They indicated it could kill 100,000 to 240,000 Americans. 

Likewise, in mid-March new modelling from the Imperial College of London demonstrated stronger measures were urgently needed to cut the projected COVID-19 death-toll in the United Kingdom from 260,000 to 20,000. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, who entrusted the nation with these numbers, changed course almost immediately.

Trudeau owes the public this kind of transparency — and trust. There are too many rumours and fake news stories spreading alarms in this country. There is no cure, as yet, to COVID-19. A steady flow of solid information from the government, however, is the best cure for public confusion and fear. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)

 

Thursday April 2, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 2, 2020

If we want the economy to recover, we need to bail out tenants and property owners, too

Coronavirus cartoons

The federal government recently introduced a plan to encourage businesses to retain workers by subsidizing 75 per cent of their wages. By providing laid-off and self-isolating workers with an alternative to employment benefits it should help limit social, economic and financial disruption from the pandemic. Rather than let the economy tailspin, the hope is to engineer a successful recovery once the virus is contained. If business activity and consumer confidence vanish, getting the economy back off the ground will be hard.

We need to expand this plan to the real estate sector. For many newly laid-off people, neither expanded Employment Insurance nor the new Emergency Response Benefit will be enough to cover rent or mortgage payments. But homeowners in Vancouver and tenants in Toronto typically have much higher monthly obligations than those in Moncton and Trois-Rivières. Issuing the same federal cheque to everyone would not be fair. Commercial tenants are just as diverse: their ability to pay rent today depends on how hard the virus has hit their business and that varies from case to case and region to region.

On the positive side, banks rebuilt their capital over the past decade and most commercial landlords, because of strong recent growth, have resources to deal with temporary difficulties. But the scope of the current crisis is unprecedented: large numbers of homeowners could soon stop paying their mortgages, while many real estate owners could default on their commercial mortgages as both tenants stop paying rents. This would force banks to take large write-offs, quickly depleting their capital and potentially throwing the country into a financial crisis.

Such an outcome can be avoided by providing rapid and targeted mortgage and rent relief where it is most urgently needed. Because governments are already over-extended, banks and real estate owners should manage the programs I’m proposing, with government limited to providing funds, liquidity and loan guarantees. Minimizing the government’s role and putting the onus of implementation on banks and landlords would encourage efficiency and speed. (Continued: Financial Post) If we want the economy to recover, we need to bail out tenants and property owners, too

The federal government recently introduced a plan to encourage businesses to retain workers by subsidizing 75 per cent of their wages. By providing laid-off and self-isolating workers with an alternative to employment benefits it should help limit social, economic and financial disruption from the pandemic. Rather than let the economy tailspin, the hope is to engineer a successful recovery once the virus is contained. If business activity and consumer confidence vanish, getting the economy back off the ground will be hard.

We need to expand this plan to the real estate sector. For many newly laid-off people, neither expanded Employment Insurance nor the new Emergency Response Benefit will be enough to cover rent or mortgage payments. But homeowners in Vancouver and tenants in Toronto typically have much higher monthly obligations than those in Moncton and Trois-Rivières. Issuing the same federal cheque to everyone would not be fair. Commercial tenants are just as diverse: their ability to pay rent today depends on how hard the virus has hit their business and that varies from case to case and region to region.

On the positive side, banks rebuilt their capital over the past decade and most commercial landlords, because of strong recent growth, have resources to deal with temporary difficulties. But the scope of the current crisis is unprecedented: large numbers of homeowners could soon stop paying their mortgages, while many real estate owners could default on their commercial mortgages as both tenants stop paying rents. This would force banks to take large write-offs, quickly depleting their capital and potentially throwing the country into a financial crisis.

Such an outcome can be avoided by providing rapid and targeted mortgage and rent relief where it is most urgently needed. Because governments are already over-extended, banks and real estate owners should manage the programs I’m proposing, with government limited to providing funds, liquidity and loan guarantees. Minimizing the government’s role and putting the onus of implementation on banks and landlords would encourage efficiency and speed. (Continued: Financial Post) 

 

Wednesday April 1, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 1, 2020

Long-term care homes are worrisome COVID-19 hotspots

Coronavirus cartoons

Monday’s news of a deadly outbreak of COVID-19 in a long-term care home in Ontario has once again put the spotlight on how these facilities are coping with the pandemic, and what measures are being taken to protect their residents.

The Pinecrest Nursing Home in Bobcaygeon, about 150 kilometres northeast of Toronto, has lost 12 residents, and a volunteer whose husband is a resident also died.

It’s a big heartbreak for a little town, and that pain is being experienced by Canadians across the country.

On Tuesday, a care home in Calgary reported its third death, while a home in Toronto, the Rekai Centre reported one of its residents died. There have been at least 29 deaths at seniors’ residences throughout Ontario and four in Quebec. 

Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver was one of the first and hardest hit seniors homes in Canada. It’s where the country’s first death related to COVID-19 occurred on March 8. In all, 11 residents died, 40 more got the virus, and 21 staff became ill.

Nineteen long-term care homes in B.C. are currently dealing with outbreaks. Several homes across the country are in the same boat. 

These residences are the kinds of places where an illness like COVID-19 can easily take hold. Residents share living spaces — in some homes there are four people to a room — as well as eating spaces and other communal areas. 

They can be high traffic places, with staff, visitors and deliveries coming and going. The residents are elderly, and some may have compromised immune systems that can’t fend off the virus or underlying conditions, or both. The people caring for them are hands on — they can’t stay a hockey-stick length away from their patients, as other Canadians are being instructed to do.

Long-term care homes are used to dealing with outbreaks of influenza and other illnesses within their walls, but this pandemic has led them to go far beyond their usual infection control protocols.

Non-essential visitors have been shut out for weeks now at homes across the country, and governments and home operators are implementing more restrictions.

Isobel Mackenize, the B.C. government’s seniors advocate, said in an interview that lessons were learned from the Lynn Valley outbreak, and that a number of steps have been taken to prevent more residents, and staff, from getting sick. (CBC) 

 

Friday March 27, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 27, 2020

Doug Ford has risen to the coronavirus challenge

Coronavirus cartoons

As the spread of COVID-19 has utterly transformed life as we know it, it has also emerged as the most profound test of political leadership in a generation or more.

Of course, the pandemic is, first and foremost, a health crisis. In the global response, doctors and public health authorities have been foregrounded, and rightfully so. But it is also a crisis of public confidence and so it is appropriate to look at the crisis through the lens of the political leadership as well.

In the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Boris Johnson, having gotten Brexit done, now faces an even greater challenge. He has been forced to pivot from an initial anachronistic approach of herd immunity (i.e., letting the virus run amok) to proper suppression and mitigation efforts as in the rest of the world.

Meanwhile, in Ireland, Taoiseach Leo Varadkar was voted out of office last month, but while a new government has been unable to form, the former doctor-turned-politician has, quite literally, risen to the role of caretaker government. On St. Patrick’s Day, he delivered a national address that marked the high watermark of his premiership.

The pandemic has forced Angela Merkel, long averse to televised displays of leadership, into doing precisely that. And in so doing proving why she continues to be primus inter pares among world leaders.

March 13, 2020

As for Donald Trump, there is only one word: disaster.

Here at home, Canadian leaders, at all orders of government, have acted on the advice of scientists, doctors and public health experts, as they bloody well should. And for that we can, as a people, be grateful.

From Prime Minister Trudeau to our premiers and mayors, the performances of our leaders have been commendable.

But perhaps the biggest success has been the commanding performance of Ontario Premier Doug Ford. It was not even two weeks ago that Ford was embroiled in a kerfuffle over manufacturing defects with new provincial licence plates; today, it seems hard to imagine a scandal with smaller stakes. And a protracted dispute with the teacher’s unions had dragged his government’s approval rating underwater. Now, in his daily briefings about the province’s response to COVID-19, he is modelling leadership in real time.

Series: Young Doug Ford

As the crisis has deepened, Ford is exemplifying the tenets of good crisis communication. He has been transparent and forthcoming, hosting daily briefings which may seem routine, but are in fact distinguished by attention to small details.

The premier begins promptly on time, wearing a suit and tie. He has been honest and plainspoken about the scale and severity of the challenge before us. He has delegated and empowered his bench of ministers, including Deputy Premier and Health Minister Christine Elliott and Finance Minister Rod Phillips. He has put aside partisan considerations.

He is working hand in hand with his federal counterparts. And, for a man whose political career has been defined by animosity towards the mainstream media, this week’s explicit recognition of their essential role marked a turning point. (Continued: Toronto Star)