[Canada] Canadian Politics Redux

[crazy canuck]

That article is a bit misleading.  The Health authority responsible for Greater Vancouver imposed the restriction in March 20th - ie soon after the initial deaths inLTC homes were reported.  The Fraser Valley health authority followed within days.  As did the other Health authorities.

The article you posted confused the date the restrictions were imposed with the date of the increase in pay which did take a bit longer to coordinate to ensure uniform staffing levels.

Here is an article that is a bit more accurate.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-vancouver-health-authority-bans-visitors-restrict-workers-at-long/

[Malthus]

That article is a bit misleading.  The Health authority responsible for Greater Vancouver imposed the restriction in March 20th - ie soon after the initial deaths inLTC homes were reported.  The Fraser Valley health authority followed within days.  As did the other Health authorities.

The article you posted confused the date the restrictions were imposed with the date of the increase in pay which did take a bit longer to coordinate to ensure uniform staffing levels.

Here is an article that is a bit more accurate.


https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-vancouver-health-authority-bans-visitors-restrict-workers-at-long/

I suspect that the timing of various measures such as this was simply not formalized everywhere. For example, I know for a fact that at least some measures were taken in Ontario at least three weeks ago to restrict the movement of staff between LTCs, because my sister in law worked at two LTCs and was told she had to choose which to continue with back then - but who made that decision and how widespread it applied I don't know. Only now is Ontario formally stating province wide that staff may not move between facilities.

My guess is that it was left to different regions or municipalities. Only now are measures concerning increases in resources being taken (more money, more protective equipment, etc.).

[crazy canuck]

Yeah, certainly it is going to work differently in each province.  The way it works here is Dr. Henry issues guidelines and directives that the regional health authorities then implement.  A lot of that inner working isn't necessarily reported although Dr. Henry has done a good job at giving detailed daily briefings about what is taking place.  I suspect very similar things are happening in other provinces.  Ontario has the added difficulty of being so large and home to our most densely populated area.

[viper37]

The point that is being missed is the Federal government left placing restrictions to the Provinces, as they should.  It is a provincial responsibility - other than the border.  Criticizing Dr. Tam for not imposing restrictions therefore does not make much sense.  Unless of course the goal is to score political points which appears to be exactly what the Conservatives seem to be doing.  Public Health Officers were each making their own judgments as can be seen from the differences in response across the country reflecting different local circumstances.

I agree with the decision to leave healthcare matters in the hands of the province, each one acted according to their chief scientists, I think.
I disagree with listening to the WHO instead of our own scientists who were saying we should restrict travel at the borders and impose quarantine on travelers.
Quebec&Montreal had to send their own people at the airport as they were fed up with the Federal govt inaction on controlling its border.  And even after they shut the border, they left open an illegal passage used by many migrants coming from New York - a hot spot of the virus - and it took public complaints from our Premier for Trudeau to act on this.

Now as to the situation at the Federal level, I believe more cooperation between parties should be done.  Scheer should just shut up for now, but Trudeau should consult the other leaders at least once a week on what is going on and what is coming.

[viper37]

According to this article, the major step BC has taken was to prohibit care workers from moving from taking multiple jobs at different LTC facilities - and that was only in force recently, because of union and contract issues and most important, staff shortage concerns. So BC is still in the same boat as the other provinces in suffering outbreaks (if so far not having anything as horrific as that particular Quebec case).

https://www.google.ca/amp/s/beta.ctvnews.ca/local/british-columbia/2020/4/12/1_4892968.html

My guess is that the same issues affect other provinces. In all provinces, including BC, there is a distinct sense of shutting the barn door after the horses have left. But that is probably a function of the system itself - the extent of the concern was underestimated, so money was not thrown at it until the problem manifested.

In Ontario, there are a bunch of measures allegedly being taken now, hopefully it will not take weeks to implement them.

The staff moving on to other jobs was a big problem and it's still difficult to tackle with so much staff shortage.  Quebec had to negotiate with specialist doctors for 3 weeks before they agreed to visit LTC and help with lower task (doing a nurse job, or simply taking care of elderlys like changing diapers, giving their meals, etc) and they only agreed after the govt promised them 211$/hr.

And Quebec accounts for 50% of all the elderlys placed in retirement homes.  That explains a problem with the spread with so many people in the same place.

[crazy canuck]

The point that is being missed is the Federal government left placing restrictions to the Provinces, as they should.  It is a provincial responsibility - other than the border.  Criticizing Dr. Tam for not imposing restrictions therefore does not make much sense.  Unless of course the goal is to score political points which appears to be exactly what the Conservatives seem to be doing.  Public Health Officers were each making their own judgments as can be seen from the differences in response across the country reflecting different local circumstances.

I agree with the decision to leave healthcare matters in the hands of the province, each one acted according to their chief scientists, I think.
I disagree with listening to the WHO instead of our own scientists who were saying we should restrict travel at the borders and impose quarantine on travelers.
Quebec&Montreal had to send their own people at the airport as they were fed up with the Federal govt inaction on controlling its border.  And even after they shut the border, they left open an illegal passage used by many migrants coming from New York - a hot spot of the virus - and it took public complaints from our Premier for Trudeau to act on this.

Now as to the situation at the Federal level, I believe more cooperation between parties should be done.  Scheer should just shut up for now, but Trudeau should consult the other leaders at least once a week on what is going on and what is coming.

And if that happened you would have a point.  Fact of that matter is that within 24 hours of BC asking the Feds to close the border, it was closed.

edit: people are forgetting a lot about what actually happened.  BC didn't know that it had a new wave of infections originating from Washington State until the genome results were known.  It took about 48 hours to close the border from that point.  This wasn't the WHO deciding. We were listening to our own public health officials.

Don't buy the right wing conspiracy bullshit.

[crazy canuck]

Our Minister of Health just gave a big shout out to Quebec saying that their sharing of information about the effects of their earlier spring break helped BC to put appropriate restrictions in place.

[crazy canuck]

BC released its new modelling this morning.  Still a few weeks away from relaxing some restrictions.  One of the more interesting models was what would happen if we removed all or 80% of the restrictions now.  The modelling shows that we would end up looking something like the US or Italy.  So we wait.

[viper37]

And if that happened you would have a point.  Fact of that matter is that within 24 hours of BC asking the Feds to close the border, it was closed.

edit: people are forgetting a lot about what actually happened.  BC didn't know that it had a new wave of infections originating from Washington State until the genome results were known.  It took about 48 hours to close the border from that point.  This wasn't the WHO deciding. We were listening to our own public health officials.

Don't buy the right wing conspiracy bullshit.

We knew people were coming back from their travels without quarantining, without any kind of check, without any kind of warning about isolating themselves.  It's not like the thing originated from here.

Scientists were telling the government to restrict travel, they were talking with Christya Freeland  for a week prior to the official closure, while Dr Tam&Trudeau was still insisting it shouldn't be done.  Only once he entered isolation did things started to move in the country.

There was an advisory commity in place at the Federal level, people were talking in the medias, you know.

[viper37]

BC released its new modelling this morning.  Still a few weeks away from relaxing some restrictions.  One of the more interesting models was what would happen if we removed all or 80% of the restrictions now.  The modelling shows that we would end up looking something like the US or Italy.  So we wait.

the plan here is to reopen the economy sector by sector, slowly, but steadily.  We've reached our peak, but it's still gonna take time to deconfine ourselves.

[Josephus]

Rushing into re-opening things would be a huge disaster. I understand the need to balance the economy and health. But if we rush this, like Trump wants, then we risk undoing all we've done so far.
It will be interesting to see if they'll even open schools up before the promised vaccine is ready.

[viper37]

Rushing into re-opening things would be a huge disaster. I understand the need to balance the economy and health. But if we rush this, like Trump wants, then we risk undoing all we've done so far.
It will be interesting to see if they'll even open schools up before the promised vaccine is ready.

No one is talking of rushing.  But public health and government have been working on a scenario to reopen for a while now.

Last week, a part of residential construction and some garages were allowed to reopen.  The government will assess the situation gradually as we near the 4th of May.  We've reached the peak, number of cases in the ER are diminishing slightly.  LTCs remain the problem, mostly in Montreal.  Outside of Greater Montreal Area, LTCs are mostly fine.  Indian communities have taken a hit, so Quebec called the army there, Rangers are being deployed to help stabilize the situation.

[Valmy]

Rushing into re-opening things would be a huge disaster. I understand the need to balance the economy and health. But if we rush this, like Trump wants, then we risk undoing all we've done so far.
It will be interesting to see if they'll even open schools up before the promised vaccine is ready.

Yeah our government looks like it wants to tank the economy AND kill as many people as possible.

[viper37]

Rushing into re-opening things would be a huge disaster. I understand the need to balance the economy and health. But if we rush this, like Trump wants, then we risk undoing all we've done so far.
It will be interesting to see if they'll even open schools up before the promised vaccine is ready.

Yeah our government looks like it wants to tank the economy AND kill as many people as possible.

What's the political situation in Texas?  Does your governor still believe in strict sanitary measures or is he inclined to follow Trump's lead?

[crazy canuck]

And if that happened you would have a point.  Fact of that matter is that within 24 hours of BC asking the Feds to close the border, it was closed.

edit: people are forgetting a lot about what actually happened.  BC didn't know that it had a new wave of infections originating from Washington State until the genome results were known.  It took about 48 hours to close the border from that point.  This wasn't the WHO deciding. We were listening to our own public health officials.

Don't buy the right wing conspiracy bullshit.

We knew people were coming back from their travels without quarantining, without any kind of check, without any kind of warning about isolating themselves.  It's not like the thing originated from here.

Scientists were telling the government to restrict travel, they were talking with Christya Freeland  for a week prior to the official closure, while Dr Tam&Trudeau was still insisting it shouldn't be done.  Only once he entered isolation did things started to move in the country.

There was an advisory commity in place at the Federal level, people were talking in the medias, you know.

We did not know asymptotic carriers could infect.  Instead we monitored symptoms like we did with SARS.