health

Thursday January 13, 2022

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday January 13, 2022

Quebec to impose a tax on people who are unvaccinated from COVID-19

June 17, 2021

Quebec is announcing it will impose a health tax on Quebecers who refuse to be vaccinated against COVID-19.

Quebec Premier François Legault made the announcement in Montreal on Tuesday afternoon, as the number of pandemic-related hospitalizations continues to climb.

“A health contribution will be charged to all adults that don’t want to get vaccinated. We are there now,” he said.

Legault said he felt the ire of the vaccinated towards the unvaccinated, whom he blamed for clogging up the province’s hospitals.

Only 10 per cent of the population is unvaccinated but they make up 50 per cent of patients in intensive care beds, according to the premier.

On Tuesday the province reported an increase of 188 patients with COVID-19 for a total of 2,742. Of those, 255 are in intensive care.

Friday December 24, 2021

Illustration by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday December 24, 2021 (Two articles follow when clicking on the date above)

The pandemic’s terrible twos — lingering tantrums plague us

A pandemic is a hard, peculiar shape to wrap your head around, to fit your life, thinking, lungs and feelings around, to take sides about.

I’ll get to polarization and side-taking, in a bit. It’s true, this pandemic is not a world war, not global famine, but it is something. It has a shape. An ink blot maybe? Many things to many people? The shape of things to come?

Not a shape perhaps but more like a sensation, like walking through spider webs. It feels bad, you weren’t expecting it and, I mean, brrr, it’s spider webs, but then nothing bad happens to YOU and you feel silly because … I mean, like, it’s spider webs; gossamer. Chances would be slim that you’d be walking into actual spiders and even if you were, chances would be slimmer that they’d be black widows. Landmines don’t come in gossamer, do they?

You might feel that way sometimes.

Thursday November 11, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday November 11, 2021

Remembrance Day should only be about remembrance

In no small irony in the context of today’s ridiculousness, we owe a debt to the world wars for the advancement of vaccines.

May 5, 2000

Prior to the Second World War, soldiers were as likely to die from disease as battlefield injuries — a five-to-one ratio in the Spanish-American War and a two-to-one ratio in the American civil war, according to a piece on theconversation.com . And then came the outbreak of the 1918 Spanish flu that “accounted for roughly half of U.S. military casualties in Europe.”

By the Second World War, the American army “forged a new partnership with industry and academia” that resulted in the development of the flu vaccine and “targeted influenza, bacterial meningitis, bacterial pneumonia, measles, mumps, neurotropic diseases, tropical diseases and acute respiratory diseases,” according to The Conservation article by Kendall Hoyt, an assistant professor of medicine at Dartmouth College.

This victory in the advancement of science is a lesson that needs to be applied today. However, we also shouldn’t lose sight of the soldiers of days gone by who rolled up their sleeves like they always did in service of a greater good.

They didn’t blink at the notion of taking an “experimental” vaccine that most of them surely would have thought was of less consequence than the bullets whizzing by. As Saskatchewan Premier Scott Moe noted this summer while encouraging today’s generation to get vaccinated: “We’re not asking you to storm the beaches of Normandy.”

November 11, 2020

Now, think back to just one year ago when these now 90-year-old men and women — all masked, because this is what we asked them and everyone else to do — stood without complaint in the cold in front of cenotaphs across this nation to honour those who they left behind so many years ago.

They will do the same thing in this second  pandemic  Remembrance Day. They will do this for as long as they can … which, sadly for us, won’t be much longer.

They will soon be gone, but we should always honour their duty and decency on Nov. 11. This day should never be co-opted for some other cause or political message.

August 28, 2021

The thought crosses one’s mind this Remembrance Day for several reasons — the most significant being the disgustingly hideous memes and social media messages floating around the Internet tying the sacrifice of these men and women to the “freedom” of not getting vaccinated.

This is actually the antithesis of the what the greatest of generations stood for when they went overseas and fought and died to preserve our values, freedoms and way of life. Their sacrifices are why idiots of today get to wrap themselves with the flag and say  pretty much whatever they please without repercussion.

But no one gets to say they are doing this on behalf of veterans or those who died for freedom. (Continued: Regina Leader-Post) 

 

Friday September 3, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday September 3, 2021

Pharmacare AWOL in 2021

June 13, 2019

Nearly a quarter century ago, the federal government hosted a conference on national pharmacare in Saskatoon – the birthplace of Canadian medicare. The meeting was extraordinarily frustrating to delegates who anticipated action, not talk, at the time.

We know because we were there.

You see, that Saskatoon meeting was held on the heels of Prime Minister Chrétien’s 1997 National Forum on Health. Echoing previous national commissions, the forum recommended the implementation of a universal, comprehensive, public pharmacare program to work alongside Canadian medicare.

April 22, 2021

Yet, there we were, an audience of approximately 300 health professionals, experts, public representatives and stakeholders gathered to “engage in dialogue” on an issue that already had a very clear answer.

The national pharmacare system recommended would have reduced Canadian drug costs dramatically, meaning savings for governments, businesses and households. More Canadians would have access to medicines because they would be fully covered, but manufacturers would no longer be able to charge more in Canada than they did in comparable countries.

October 21, 2016

Drug companies preferred that Canada adopt a system of mandatory private insurance based on the model they had just convinced the Quebec government to implement in 1997 — at great cost to Quebec households and businesses. Insurers favoured the Quebec model too – what industry wouldn’t want people to be legally required to purchase their products without regulations on profit margins?

In 2019, the Liberals campaigned on a promise to act on pharmacare plan. Such a national pharmacare system was mentioned in the 2020 Throne Speech, Budget 2021 and 2021 mandate letters. But there has been little concrete action toward implementation.

Instead, the federal government has reverted yet again to “stakeholder engagement,” rather than policy action. (Red Deer Advocate) 

 

Thursday May 13, 2021

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday May 13, 2021

On Doug Ford’s watch, a new health crisis looms

A soaring backlog of surgeries and medical tests is shaking Ontario’s health-care system to its core. And Doug Ford needs a second opinion on how to deal with it because nothing he’s done so far has worked.

April 1, 2021

In struggling with the crisis unleashed by COVID-19, the premier and his government have created a new one that could result in even more suffering and death than we’ve been witnessing. Simply put, people aren’t getting the care they need when they need it.

To be fair, Ontario’s health-care system had to implement major changes over the past year as it battled the pandemic. Public health officials had to redeploy finite resources — including doctors, nurses and hospital beds — so people who had fallen sick with COVID-19 could be treated. 

But three weeks ago, Dr. David Williams, Ontario’s chief medical officer of health, shifted course in a more worrisome way. He ordered hospitals across the province to halt all non-emergency surgeries and non-urgent procedures. That didn’t impact only people waiting for hip or knee surgery, it also affected people needing cancer and cardiac treatments.

Now, a rising chorus of doctors is warning Dr. Williams’ order is too restrictive. They insist the system could expeditiously treat more patients with serious medical conditions without weakening the fight against COVID-19. One of the people speaking out is Dr. Robert Nam, a Toronto surgeon who says he’s “had to turn away referrals to help patients with cancer because of the provincial order to cancel elective surgery.”

January 16, 2021

“For cancer patients waiting for treatment … their hopes of being able to beat their disease have been severely harmed by the stroke of a pen,” he added.

What makes the situation even more frustrating for Dr. Nam is that it doesn’t have to be this way. He argues hospitals have the capacity to deal with COVID-19 but also other illnesses because they’ve “developed efficiencies and surgical techniques for cancer operations that do not require a hospital bed.”

But it’s not just where the health system is today that’s alarming; it’s where the province is headed that demands immediate action. According to Ontario’s science table, the pandemic-related surgical backlog had grown to 257,000 cases as of April. As if that wasn’t bad enough, the province’s Financial Accountability Office now predicts wait-lists of 419,000 surgeries and 2.5 million diagnostic tests and procedures by the end of September.

July 27, 2019

As it stands today, people aren’t getting the timely MRI tests that might reveal a serious medical condition. And as many as 500,000 women have had their breast-cancer screening delayed. But while some of those women might have developed breast cancer, they’ll have to wait for it to be diagnosed, then treated.

Even if the health-care system can offer surgeries, tests and procedures well above pre-pandemic levels for an extended period of time, it will take the province three and a half years to clear this backlog, the Financial Accountability Office said.

Given such numbers, it’s hard to believe Health Minister Christine Elliott when she says the government is on top of this problem. While the last provincial budget committed $610 million to clear the projected surgery and diagnostic procedures backlog, the Financial Accountability Office estimates it will cost $1.3 billion to get the job done. 

Somewhere, this government must come up with $700 million to deal with the systemic backlogs that are increasing by the day. Somehow, it must find the staff and resources needed to confront two separate health-care crises. And somehow, it must learn to fight a health-care battle on two fronts and at the same time. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)