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Friday March 13, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday March 13, 2020

Trump’s European Travel Ban Doesn’t Make Sense

Last night, a few thousand Atlético Madrid supporters crammed into a corner of Liverpool’s Anfield stadium to watch their soccer team knock the reigning European champions out of the continent’s premier competition, the UEFA Champions League. As they woke in their hotel rooms and Airbnbs this morning, they discovered, as Madrileños, or, more important, Europeans who live in the no-border Schengen Area that operates on the continent, that they are now barred from traveling to the United States. The 50,000 Liverpool fans who were also in the stadium last night, or at least those who happen to be British or Irish, awoke chastened by their team’s defeat—but not banned.

January 13, 2018

If there is an award for the most absurd spectacle capturing the arbitrariness of the global response to the coronavirus pandemic, this surely wins it.

President Donald Trump’s decision to ban most European citizens from traveling to the U.S., except those from the United Kingdom and Ireland, appears to make no sense, and to inject past grievances and prejudices into delicate scientific and political equations. In this spiraling thriller–cum–horror novel, Trump’s emergence, full of hostility and conspiracy, with warnings of foreign viruses, heralds a darkening turn—an early indication of the power of a pandemic to infect global decision making and international relations.

December 16, 2019

Politics, domestic and international, is already morphing under the strain of the coronavirus, and all signs indicate that it will continue to do so. Some governments will rise to higher ideals, to duty and justice, equity and science; others will simply be unable to meet the test or, worse, disgrace themselves. Some systems will allow combinations of various measures, and some political leaders will take decisions in good faith, based on good science, but still get it wrong. This, though, is the stage when politics comes to the fore, when the values of those with power are revealed. More than that, this crisis is becoming a test of the international order, formal and institutional or informal and cultural, to cope with the pressures placed on it by nationalism, quackery, corruption, ignorance, and malevolence.

Yesterday, the Bank of England governor, Mark Carney, slashed interest rates in a coordinated stimulus effort with the British government. He declared that 2008 had revealed the danger that the new globally integrated financial system posed, but that today this very system could help, not hinder. In his world, global institutions and a culture of coordination had developed. The giants of the financial crash had learned the lessons from the 1930s and moved quickly and globally in the knowledge that a beggar-my-neighbor policy in a global depression beggars everyone in the end. Today, it is sobering simply to wonder whether anyone is applying this lesson to the pandemic—an even more obvious case of the stupidity of petty nationalism.

November 14, 2019

And yet, as ever with the American president, the rationale for his decision carries its own peculiarly Trumpian worldview, exposing both how he sees the world and the weaknesses of who he sees as his adversaries. Trump is nothing if not alive to the flaws of his enemies. In this case, it is not without logic to treat the European Schengen Area as one country. While it clearly isn’t one and doesn’t overlap neatly with either the euro or the European Union (Norway, which is not an EU member, is part of Schengen; Ireland, which is both an EU member and part of the eurozone, is not), it is a core feature for almost all EU member states, a common travel area in which there are no internal checks. Schengen is one of Europe’s core strengths and accomplishments, but also a structural weakness that continues to challenge its legitimacy in the eyes of many of its citizens.

The EU is a proto-state. It has the institutions of a state, a central bank and parliament, currency and court. And yet it is weaker than a conventional state, mostly unable to take effective collective action in times of crisis, whether diplomatically, fiscally, or militarily. Its weakness is in handling migration and debts, refugees and Russian aggression. The worry today is that this weakness will be exposed, even though the coronavirus is exactly the type of cross-border challenge that highlights one of the EU’s fundamental strengths: its ability to coordinate continentally. (Continued: The Atlantic) 

 

Thursday November 14, 2019

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 14, 2019

Help yourself and the health system — get a flu shot

If you have had the experience of going to a hospital in southern Ontario recently, especially if you entered through the emergency ward, there is a good chance you experienced first-hand what it’s like when hospitals are stretched to the limit.

ERs are jammed. Corridors can be lined with beds occupied by people waiting for a bed. Harried staff do the best they can, and they nearly always do a good job, but they, too, are stretched to the limit.

You may have waited hours in the ER, you may have received hallway health care. You have or are experiencing what it’s like in one of many Ontario hospitals that are operating at more than 100 per cent capacity.

Now try to imagine what it could be like when thousands of Ontarians, stricken by the flu, flock to ERs for treatment. Try to imagine the incremental strain on staff and facilities. Imagine the impact on already overburdened ambulance and paramedic care.

April 11, 2019

This isn’t fear mongering. It’s a real threat. Australia is often seen as a canary in a coal mine for flu season. Their season arrives earlier than ours does. When it’s bad there, it is often as bad here. This season, flu hit Australia early and hard. If it happens here, the president of the Ontario Hospital Association warns: “The system is quite fragile at the moment.”

Average citizens cannot fix what’s wrong with Ontario hospitals. But what if there was something you could do to reduce — by as much as half — your chances of ending up in a jammed ER or hospital corridor?

There is, and it’s not hard. It won’t cost you any money. It’s free. All you have to do is go to a pharmacy, your doctor’s office, a public clinic or another location that administers flu shots. Simply by doing that, you will be reducing by 50 per cent the chance of catching the flu. Add in good hygiene — following proper handwashing guidelines, for example — and you can reduce your chances even more.

Given all this, and the unpleasant alternatives, you might think the majority of sensible Canadians would get vaccinated against the flu. You’d be wrong. Experts say only about one-third of Canadians get flu shots. If you’re among the two-thirds who don’t, you’re part of the problem.

October 29, 2009

Why don’t more people get flu shots? In part, it’s the fictitious scare tactics of the anti-vaxxer movement. In part, it’s that the vaccine can sometimes cause you to feel ill, although not nearly as ill as if you got the real thing. But yes, sometimes side effects like fever and chills do happen as your body begins to make antibodies to ward off the bug. Some say no because they think they can actually catch the flu from the vaccination. You can’t. The vaccine has no live flu virus component — you cannot get the flu from the flu vaccine.

Public health officials say this year’s vaccine is deemed to be about 50 per cent effective. It’s not perfect, but is better than other recent years. And more importantly, it’s the best chance you have of avoiding the flu virus. It makes no sense — absolutely none — to say no to a flu shot. It’s actually irresponsible given the critical situation in public health. Be part of the solution, not the problem. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)