d o c t o r o n a s o a p b o x D r . C h r i s P e ng i l ly Dr. Chris Pengilly is Just For Canadian Doctors’ current affairs columnist. Please send your comments to him via his website at drpeng.ca.
A message that Barack Obama also contemplated:
Back again
The first (and ongoing) waves of the pandemic have been all about uncertainty fact, the public should be made aware that the current constraints, unpleasant as they are, are not for naught. So where do we go from here? Late in 2020 the light at the end of the tunnel became brighter with the introduction of vaccines. Unfortunately, that light is beginning to flicker somewhat but it will eventually break into full daylight. In the meantime, every attempt must be maintained to keep the virus count as low as possible because the fewer viruses around, the fewer the mutations. As the immunization program rolls out, who should be treated and when? There is fairly universal agreement that the frail elderly should be treated first because they require prolonged hospital stays when
acutely ill. Then, of course, it should be frontline workers in the emergency departments, ICUs and infectious diseases wards. Then the sick and well senior population. Canadian physicians have done a stellar job of bravely stepping up to the front— along with team support from nursing staff and paramedics—in dealing with these sick and infectious people. They all deserve a pat on the back. In fact, I think they all deserve a year’s holiday when this is over, but they may have to settle for just a couple weeks. After a crisis memories can be short. Barack Obama had on his desk a plaque, which he treasured, with the simple yet powerful message: HARD THINGS ARE HARD. Isn’t that so true.
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his issue of the magazine comes out after a year of silence, and what a tumultuous year it has been. In one way I have nothing to say—and in another I could fill five volumes. Several analogies have been applied to this period of history including a rollercoaster ride of chaos, anxiety and depression—with uncertainty underlying it all. That is, uncertainty about when the situation will begin to resolve, uncertainty about effective treatments and uncertainty about when the white knight is going to ride in with a vaccine. The anxiety level is not helped by the media. For example, the CBC delivers a news update every hour. I do not need to be told and retold every hour for several consecutive days that Moderna was cutting the vaccine sent to Canada by 20%. Phonein talk shows and armchair epidemiologists further fuel uncertainty and anxiety. One word that has been outstanding with relevance to the federal and provincial governments is “unprecedented.” There is no data to consult to see how this pandemic was dealt with previously. This is all virgin territory. Given the circumstances, all levels of government have tried to maintain transparency of their processes, and communicate concerns and difficulties to the public. The results may appear, to some, suboptimal but I am not going to go there. At the time of writing the biggest concern is the availability of vaccines. By the time this essay is published this may be history, and there will be yet another problem—another mutation or unprecedented change. (There’s that word again). In spite of the fairly lively anti-mask protesters and the scofflaws with regard to assemblies, Canada is not doing too badly. The latest figures I can get suggest that Canada has an incidence of the COVID-19 virus of 2%. The global incidence of COVID-19 is 13%. These figures are reassuring, but they are not relayed to the populace because it may encourage complacency and discourage compliance with public health guidelines. I think these figures are so good because people have, on the whole, been accommodating to these restrictions—in
Hard things are hard
Spring 2021 Just For Canadian doctors
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