covid-19

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)



 

Wednesday April 1, 2020

 

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

Breaking down the COVID-19 numbers

Coronavirus cartoons

In a little more than two months, SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19, raced around the world and turned a handful of known cases to more than three quarters of a million, with at least 36,000 lives lost – reported figures that the scientific and health communities widely agree are too low.

The spreading virus has pushed numerous countries to scramble to lock down cities, shutter non-essential businesses, and close their borders to all but their own citizens, adopting some of the extraordinary measures executed in China that might have previously been unthinkable elsewhere.

Researchers and armchair epidemiologists alike are analyzing the trove of data to create models, find patterns and clues on whether curves are being flattened, which country is on a faster or slower trajectory, why death rates and ages vary, what measures seemed to work, and when the pandemic might end.

The flood of numbers and questions they raise can be overwhelming for the average person trying to make sense of the data.

Epidemiologists and an infectious disease expert who spoke with CTVNews.ca said it was too early to make predictions or draw conclusions from the data, but stressed the importance of understanding the context surrounding the numbers. 

While most of the focus has been on the daily tally of new cases, epidemiologists say that other data points are more useful.

Cynthia Carr, a Winnipeg-based epidemiologist with two decades of experience interpreting and developing protocols for gathering and analyzing health data, said the daily focus on new cases can be a distraction and spark unnecessary panic.

“[The public was] not listening to the information. They were in a store with 1,000 people at Costco buying toilet paper” when that was the last place they should be, said Carr.

The total number of tests administered, infections, hospitalizations, intensive care patients, and deaths are all key indicators for different reasons, explained Erin Strumpf, an epidemiologist and associate professor at McGill University.

“It’s more about the rate of change in those numbers than it is about the actual numbers on a given day,” she said.

The mortality and hospitalization rates – and whether they are increasing or decreasing over time – gives more context and balance to the data, Carr noted.

“You should never just look at one piece of information,” Carr said.

“I have said from the beginning, when we increase our testing capacity, you would quickly see an increase in cases… we’re getting more of an accurate denominator, an accurate representation of the number of people with the illness.” (CTV) 

 

Monday March 16, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Monday March 16, 2020

What historians heard when Trump warned of a ‘foreign virus’

For immigration historians and other scholars, the way US President Donald Trump is describing the coronavirus pandemic has a familiar ring.

“This is the most aggressive and comprehensive effort to confront a foreign virus in modern history,” Trump said in an Oval Office address Wednesday night. “I am confident that by counting and continuing to take these tough measures we will significantly reduce the threat to our citizens and we will ultimately and expeditiously defeat this virus.”

Coronavirus cartoons

As soon as Trump’s words describing a “foreign virus” hit the airwaves, Nükhet Varlik knew she’d heard them before.

“We’ve had plenty of examples of this in the past. It’s mindblowing that this still continues,” said Varlik, an associate professor of history at Rutgers University in Newark, New Jersey, and at the University of South Carolina.

“It opens up the ways of thinking about disease in dangerous ways,” she said. “Once you open that door…historically we have examples, we know where it goes. And we don’t want to go there. I find it extremely dangerous.”

It’s the latest chapter in a story that historians see as centuries in the making. From the plague to SARS, whenever an outbreak spread, racism and xenophobia weren’t far behind. 

Here’s what scholars told CNN about some of history’s shameful episodes, and the lessons we can learn from them: The ‘Black Death’ in the 14th century; Cholera outbreaks in New York in the 19th century; 1900 Quarantines in San Francisco’s Chinatown; Health screenings and quarantines on Ellis Island; and SARS (Continued: CNN) 

 

Thursday March 12, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday March 12, 2020

As virus outbreak spreads, schools face a dilemma

When the new coronavirus surfaced at Saint Raphael Academy after a school group returned from a trip to Italy, officials decided to close the Rhode Island Catholic high school for two weeks.

February 4, 2020

Instead of cancelling classes, the school in Pawtucket instituted “virtual days” where students are expected to work from home, check for assignments through an online portal and occasionally chat with teachers.

A few miles away, a public charter school also closed after a teacher who attended the same Italy trip awaited test results. But at Achievement First, the two days off were treated like snow days — no special assignments and no expectation that kids keep up their schoolwork.

As more schools across the United States close their doors because of the coronavirus, they are confronted with a dilemma in weighing whether to shut down and move classes online, which could leave behind the many students who don’t have computers, home internet access or parents with flexible work schedules. As the closures accelerate, children at some schools, like Saint Raphael, will be able to continue some form of learning, while children at schools with fewer technological or other resources, may simply miss out.

September 3, 2013

The deep technological and wealth gap that exists nationwide between poor and affluent students has made the coronavirus outbreak even more challenging for school officials, who are wrestling with not only health and safety decisions but also questions about the ethics of school closures.

These deliberations have been playing out in schools all around the country during the outbreak, from urban districts in New York, Seattle and Los Angeles to rural ones in Nebraska and Pennsylvania.

“If we shut down for a week or two weeks, and some of the kids can do it but some can’t, what do you do?” said Edward Albert, executive director of the Pennsylvania Association of Rural and Small Schools. “There are some places that don’t even have phone service.”

Although widespread closures are a new development in the United States, they are already a reality in nations that have been hit harder by the virus. The United Nations’ education agency, UNESCO, says nearly 300 million children in 22 countries on three continents were being affected by school closures last week. In response, it has begun supporting online learning programs. (PBS) 

Meanwhile, Ontario’s elementary teachers are set to resume contract talks with the government on Wednesday, but they’re warning that if bargaining doesn’t produce an agreement, the union will resume job action after March break. (CBC)