02.27.2020 10:57 AM

A Canadian coronavirus catastrophe

26 Comments

  1. Paige says:

    Makes you wonder if this is Govt of Canada official policy or just the fevered rantings of private citizen Patti.

  2. PAM LEVY says:

    Health Minister Patty Hajdu is over her head on this one and then there is Dr. Tam. This government is incapable of making intelligent decisions that are not slapped together. PS New recommendation is to shave facial hair. Where is that going to leave Mr. Dress-Up?

  3. Jack McLeod says:

    Perhaps the federal health minister shares a sense of self preservation with most Canadians!

  4. joe says:

    Stock pile essential supplies? Too bad if they are transported by rail.

  5. Ronald O'Dowd says:

    I guess I better expand my PMO staff assessment to also include ministerial Chiefs of Staff?

  6. the real Sean says:

    Thats what you get with this cabinet. One wild guess after another. With the laughing stock of a leader they have, its probably extremely difficult for any of them to take their jobs seriously anymore. Why even show up to work?

  7. Douglas W says:

    Patty’s learning on the job.
    Just like her boss.

  8. Mike Jeffries says:

    No, she may be telling the truth! What has happened in Wuhan can (will) happen here unless CoVid-19 dies down.
    The prospect of quarantines and supply chain interruptions due to the need for decontamination will be real. So, 30-180 days of food & medicines bought ahead of time is realistic and what she should have said.
    Because if Canadian cities become like Wuhan the only time you will want to go out is if you have CoVid-19 and need to go to hospital!

  9. Gilbert says:

    Her comments are irresponsible.

  10. Brian says:

    Her job is to consider the health and well being of Canadians. How is it not good advice to have food and meds available.

    • Steve T says:

      Because they feed the collective freak-out that is already happening. As an example, in local news here in Winnipeg, the entire morning news cycle has been consumed with the fact that one sick person came off an airplane this morning. No details, but hoo boy were there massive headlines. As it turned out, this woman didn’t even have coronavirus.

      In other words, the media is already very excited about the prospect of global mayhem. We don’t need the government giving legitimacy to the paranoia.

    • Fred from BC says:

      “Her job is to consider the health and well being of Canadians. How is it not good advice to have food and meds available.”

      Oh it’s probably good advice, alright…it just shouldn’t have come directly from her.

      She should have had certain media people suggest it (the old “experts advise” line), or maybe planted a question at a news conference, answered with a ” couldn’t hurt” or “well, we’re not there yet but…”, or any number of other seemingly off-handed responses that would get the message across but not panic people unnecessarily. That’s how a professional would do it, I think.

  11. PJH says:

    Not reckless in the extreme. If this thing takes off in Canada, and there is a possibility it might…(if Italy, Iran, or S. Korea are any indication), having a months worth of staples: rice, beans and tinned goods on hand is the prudent thing to do. This is not to panic people, but to have them prepared so there aren’t runs on grocery stores and the like later on in case a neighbourhood needs to be quarantined. Look how quickly supplies of hand sanitizer and face masks sold out in Toronto. There is one known case in a community a half hour from mine ….the incubation period of the virus may be up to twenty one days…I suspect there may be more infections to come. With quick detection, self isolation, and top flight facilities for treating cases here in Canada, I doubt we will get to the situation facing Italy and S.Korea..but it doesnt hurt to be prepared. I admire the Health Minister’s candor, actually.

  12. Pedant says:

    80% of Canada’s medications are imported from China. For certain types of meds, the percentage rises to as much as 95%. Yes, “stockpiling” the meds that you need is a good idea. And what’s wrong with having a full pantry? If there is a quarantine announced for your area it will be a pain to try to go to the grocery store.

    I think this government is a loathsome pile of globalist garbage, but I can’t see anything wrong with the Health Minister’s statement.

    It is a failure of leadership throughout the Western world that we permitted our healthcare system to be held hostage, whether intentional or not, by essentially single-sourcing medication from a single country.

  13. Steve says:

    After weeks of demonizing anyone who dared question their do nothing “don’t worry, be happy, move along, nothing to see here” policies on Coronavirus, the Liberals are now telling people to stockpile food & meds. Seriously ? Their handling of the Coronavirus file is identical to their handling of every other file. Disastrous. They prioritize political correctness and virtue signaling ahead of the well being of Canadians. What a sorry lot. Sadly the old adage, when you elect a clown, expect a circus seems tailor made for Justin Trudeau’s buffoonery.

    • Derek Pearce says:

      On the other hand your comment shows that the gov’t just can’t win with a certain portion of the public. Tell everyone to remain calm? Not doing enough. Tell people to take prudent precautions? You’re panicking people.

  14. Pipes says:

    I’m thinking that more and more people do not trust the government. It’s a bit of a clown car, when you have leaders like Trump and Pence etc. It seems to me its better to advise people to have reserves than to have a Chernobyl type Epidemic/Pandemic Strategy.

    I guess the Minister looked at the options and decided not to provide a shit filled twinky suggestion. I dont think I would find an ” everything will be fine, don’t worry about it, its under control and we are the government and we are here to help you” acceptable.

    If it were me I would have said-“Build a bunker and fill er up with beer and chips and dont forget your pills, and bring canaries”.

    Just sayin…………

  15. Fred from BC says:

    Sorry, but this is the kind of thing you can expect when you proudly ‘gender balance’ your cabinet, rather than picking people based on competence or suitability for the role. Sometimes you’ll get lucky, other times…not so much.

  16. PJH says:

    Perhaps this piece will shed some light on things in a calm logical manner, esp Dr. Ronald St. John’s comments….rather than my pedestrian effort, which in hindsight….kind of does smack of “head for the hills!”….https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/covid-19-how-to-prepare-at-home-for-potential-quarantine-1.4832097

  17. Derek Pearce says:

    And when Covid-19 does hit Canada in a serious way she can point to advice and say “I told you so”.

  18. Grames Barnaby says:

    Good Afternoon Warren,

    Right now the responses have been rather disappointing for most of the leadership in the various G20 countries. And in the case of some countries like Iran at the moment, see here : https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1233668766124400640.html there’s going to be some massive shake ups in how we’re going to be picking up pieces later on.

    And in the case of our current health care minister, in fairness reading her bio here : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Patty_Hajdu she’s had a background in being mostly a homeless activist and working harm prevention with regards to drugs in the past and mostly doing lifetime public servant internal work. By contrast, Kellie Leitch: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kellie_Leitch was an ex surgeon who probably knows the ins and outs of our various flavors of provincial heath care systems and their issues especially with a once in a lifetime Pandemic/Epidemic hitting the shores in about 100 years.

    If Hadju had you Warren, on side to take advice, you’d tell her to first up study on the health care logistic issues with her predecessor first, as she’s got ground level experience to explain the in’s and out’s of what protocols are available and the potential logistics issues running concurrently with the virus spread. Get her to study and contact the folks that handled the SARS issues back in the day, and compile data from say various preppers and the like and compare with what little data the WHO barely puts out and sort it all into data sets with the impromtu medical team. Keep the Ottawa Wizards out of damn office on this one as they probably know jack shit other than blowing pr smoke on the air.

    The second item you’d tell Hadju to study, is to read up on the Tyenol recalls of the past : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tylenol_(brand)#1982_Chicago_Tylenol_murders , and then tell her, build a crisis management plan, make it transparent to the public and set up reasonable timelines for various actions if needed. If nothing else right now for most folks on left and right reading about the Corona issues on the underground circuit we do know that there is now finally the START of the vaccine trials on humans: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/02/25/us-health-officials-say-human-trials-on-coronavirus-vaccine-to-start-in-6-weeks.html

    We will mostly likely not have any real stock available for say north America, until say the end of this year at the earliest, and if this hits various African countries as hard as it it Iran, expect it not to be available for a year and a half realistically. So you’ve got timelines, and you could even set actions based on cases per community as well. But the key thing is BUILD A PLAN with EXPERTISE THAT KNOWS THE LAY OF THE LOCAL LAND to make it work, and not on whatever PR wonks the Wizards will say she needs to say to the public. Bring weekly transparent neutral updates to the public and stick to those actions.

  19. Grames Barnaby says:

    Now having said my big ol’ wall of text on this, I would like to add a bit of a P.S. on all of this.

    1) While it’s important to study up on SARS, the Ebola outbreak, and even cases in the past where we’ve dealt with far worse (think of Polio for instance), western wise we might handle this a bit better than say the tumbling mess that was the Spanish Influenza virus of the past. Yes, I understand Warren that as an ex-reporter yourself, it’s rather sad that most reporters on the health beat have been doing a rather not so great job in getting consistent information regarding the disease, whilst there’s more consistency coming from various citizen journalists/doctors in discords, IRC’s, twitter etc, to get and sort out intel. I mean we live in an era, where if your dad was say in his prime, he’d have a better chance of directly speaking to the audience about the nature of new diseases than in the past see here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5rOTz9duXwo .

    2) If there’s one major causality that’s going to put the nails in the coffin of international co-operation sadly it’s going to be this disease. Once again look at the background of the current WHO director https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tedros_Adhanom, he’s advocated for Robert Mugabe to be a goodwill ambassador : https://web.archive.org/web/20171021230320/https://www.theguardian.com/world/2017/oct/21/un-lambasted-after-naming-mugabe-goodwill-ambassador or some of the issues noted about how he handled the recent Ethiopia Cholera outbreak https://web.archive.org/web/20171026111949/https://www.nytimes.com/2017/05/13/health/candidate-who-director-general-ethiopia-cholera-outbreaks.html . If anything he strikes me as a man who really earnestly wants to bring Africa to the table in terms of the world wide medical field, that he’s scared to ever admit fault and really does not feel remotely confident in being in front of the press in the process. So much so, that he seems afraid to admit fault and get on with the business of problem solving in favor of saving face, because right now there’s a tight industrial policy developing between China and Africa, and by trying to not fully disclose the issues to the public, he most likely fears the loss of sponsorship by one of the rising economic stars of the G20. And that relationship is especially needed if needs to fund further initiatives for the 2063 agenda in Africa. But as this virus continues and when it hits Africa, if he botches it as badly as he’s managed his own press conferences and leadership, he might as well kiss that relationship goodbye and any future goodwill the rest of the international community had for him. But as in the PR game honesty and problem solving is more important than trying to game things to save face.

    3) Right now more folks in Canada are calmly prepping for the potential of a full on or possibly rotating quarantines for the future if it’s needed. As most of this information has spread faster to most folks using more organic and crowd sourced information, I’ve noticed that people are more calm on how they should handle their affairs and what to prep with and not PANIC BECAUSE COSTCO RAN OUT OF THE SURVIVALIST FOOD BUCKET. Even poorer folks are realizing that they can do alot of basic prepping for a quarantine or a disaster with not as much in expenses than they think. And if for a couple of hundred or even less is required for basic protein (aka beans, rice, and lentils or instance, with some canned meats) they’ll be more prepared if they need to stay at home briefly, and because they’ve been putting their ears out and calmly going to Walmart or Dollarama’s for readily available cheap food goods ahead of time. Calmly getting folks a heads up on a disaster and organically networking amongst neighbors can assist in helping to relieve the dangers of panic buying, but it also helps more people learn that prepping for occasional outages or disasters is a healthy normal thing to do. Not unlike how as kids you were taught about doing fire safety and drills at home in case you needed to pull out in a disaster. You may not need it now, but you could need it in the future.

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