When Even the Medical Experts Despair

"[The brain also processes short- and long-term goals differently], and political leaders can be particularly prone to dominance of immediate over long-term goals when they focus on economic recovery and getting re-elected over the unavoidably longer-term problem of stopping the pandemic."

"What happens in everyone's brain is that we get a mixture of judgments about what's true, with what we want to be true. We're not computers. We're all both enhanced, but also limited by the fact that we're working with our emotions as well as our thinking processes."

"People grumbled about it [the COVID-induced Christmas lockdown], businesses were suffering, and so [political leaders] were highly motivated to think, 'oh, good, we got out of that second wave, we're going to be OK'."

"They were all too ready to ignore the advice given by the various medical authorities, saying, 'not so fast, we could get a rebound, because the variants are coming'." 

"We're bored, we're frustrated, people have fundamental social needs to interact with other people and these needs are not being met."

"So what are people doing? Well, they're going for short-term emotional decisions, based on those needs. 'I've just got to get out of here. I've got to see some people'. Rather than doing the long-term calculation, which tells you if we can stand here for a few more months, then in fact the pandemic will probably be under control, thanks to the vaccinations that are flooding in. And we'll be OK."

Paul Thagard, philosopher, professor emeritus, University of Waterloo

Healthcare workers get ready to prone a 47-year-old woman who has COVID-19 and is intubated on a ventilator in the intensive care unit at Toronto's Humber River Hospital on Tuesday, April 13, 2021. Photo by Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press

"I cannot see a situation where some degree of ICU triage doesn't happen."

"Demand will outstrip supply of staffed beds."

Dr.Michael Warner, head, critical care, Michael Garron Hospital

Premier Ford reaching out to other countries to acquire more COVID-19 vaccines, government says   CTV News

New modelling predicts that COVID-19 infections in Ontario could ascend beyond 15,000 cases daily by the end of June. A true nightmarish scenario, but one based on how case numbers have been piling up, increasing daily in the first quarter of 2021. In 2020, the first full year of the pandemic, everyone longed for 2021 to arrive in the-then certainty that the nightmare that was lived through from the introduction of the SARS-CoV-2 virus into Canada would by year's end be under control, and life, in 2021, would return to 'normal'.

 

But wait; while we wince at that projected worst-case scenario of 15,000 new case counts daily, the prediction goes even higher, to 30,000 daily cases. Currently, with the case numbers being recognized at 4,200 or 4,700 daily, hospitals are groaning under the weight of new admissions while intensive care  units admissions are devastating the capability of seeing to the needs of very sick people. So much so, that some patients are being flown by helicopter across the province to other hospitals not as yet so crowded and willing to share the load.

There is now a six-week stay-at-home order, while 100,000 people a day are being vaccinated, in the hope that over the next 30 days, three million COVID-inoculated people in a province of 14 million will enable the achievement of a level of control over the coronavirus running rampant, led by the U.K. variant, with the South African and Brazil variants rushing along behind. Provincial borders have been closed. All enterprises deemed to be non-essential have been shuttered until at least May 20. "Hang in there, please", pleaded Dr.Adalsteinn Brown, co-chair of the provincial science advisory panel.

 

 

Hospital medical staff at ICUs fear the possibility that swamped ICUs may force decision-making as is occurring in Brazil where doctors are running out of intubation drugs meant to sedate patients before connection to ventilators. In British Columbia the situation looks little better; their third wave has eclipsed the first two in numbers, hospitalizations and deaths, while Alberta has the highest per capita case count in Canada and Saskatchewan teeters "on the cusp of having a huge problem".

Confused messaging, poor leadership, errant communication, and no clear structure for prioritizing medical advice along with a pronounced inability to swiftly plan out and launch successful programs to cope with the disaster, all contribute to the general state of incompetence and the public's growing suspicion that government heads and medical experts are all singing out of different playbooks.

"When do we start saying that 2022 will be a whole lot better than 2021?"

"Honestly, it's heart breaking that we're over a year into this, that we've allowed this to happen."

"Once we have everyone immunized and our numbers are low, then we can start talking about opening up, like Israel, like the U.K."

"Until we're there, we've got to go hard."

Dr.Andrew Morris. professor of infectious diseases, University of Toronto

Construction workers set up a makeshift hospital at Sunnybrook Hospital in Toronto. (Nathan Denette/The Canadian Press)