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pellerin: er crisis shows ontario needs to fix health care more broadly

we need to focus on fundamental issues such as solid public health and proper investments in education.

cheo has been inundated with children suffering severe respiratory distress this fall.
it’s not every day that i’m almost close to being in agreement with one sentence uttered by a failed conservative leadership candidate, but here we are.

amidst various frothy and vaguely anti-science tweets, roman baber said we should fix the ontario health care system instead of going “backward” to a mask mandate.

baber, wikipedia helpfully reminds me, was a member of the doug ford government in ontario until jan. 15, 2021. he got kicked out of caucus for his opposition to pandemic restrictions.

i’m not about to start endorsing him because much of what he writes and says is — what’s the word? — wrong. masking isn’t backward; there are no mandates, only recommendations; and it’s not true that kids hate masks. i mean, we all do to some extent, i suppose. but not a single one of the kids and teenagers i spoke with about this issue said they “hate” masks or would refuse to wear them in school. in fact, some of the teens i spoke with never stopped wearing them. it’s a decision they made and continue to make on their own.
once again, it’s only a small proportion of entitled adults who are causing most of the problems. they whine about the possible return of masks and wail about their lost freedom. meanwhile hospitals are over-capacity with kids who can’t breathe.

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whether it’s covid or respiratory syncytial virus (rsv) or flu any other bug, having to rush your kids to the er for a serious illness that could have been prevented is not only horrible but infuriating. especially when the refuseniks do little but talk nonsense about letting kids catch things so they can build up their immune systems.
widespread immunity is a fine concept in theory, but to achieve it usually requires some to die or suffer tremendously in the process. i don’t want to say what kind of person one needs to be to believe that sacrificing a few for the many is a fine idea. but i’m going to think it.

the rest of us reasonable people believe protecting all kids should be the goal, and we see the issue differently. a nanos survey released last week shows 70 per cent of canadians would support a mask mandate if it were deemed necessary.

the part of baber’s tweet i’m close to agreeing with is where he says what’s needed is to fix the health-care system.
my alert reader knows i’ve roamed a fair bit in north america this past year, including driving through the u.s. lengthwise just a few days ago. there are bugs and viruses everywhere, of course, same as here. but as far as i know, since the first wave of the pandemic, there have not been widespread or prolonged capacity crises in any health system except here in ontario.

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which raises the question: what exactly is driving our covid policy? public health or concerns for the survival of our hospital network? once again, the ford government is focused on the wrong thing.

as the opposition ndp noticed, the ford government’s fiscal fall update included no new money for nurses and health-care workers despite the unprecedented staffing shortages crippling the system.

to some extent, the ndp is also highlighting the wrong thing. it’s not just hospitals we need to pay attention to. it’s measures such as paid sick leave, proper ventilation in schools and other public buildings, and better investments in education so we don’t cram 30 kids into a small room for hours on end.
i hate being close to almost agreeing with roman baber even on just a few words, but it is true that we need to focus on fundamental issues such as solid public health and proper investments in education.
let’s mask up if that’s the best public-health advice to slow transmission of airborne pathogens. but not as an alternative to properly funding health care across the board.
brigitte pellerin is an ottawa writer.
 

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