The Ontario government has published its priority list for who will be the first to receive the life saving Covid-19 vaccinations. Among the group consisting of anyone over the age of 80 are any healthy indigenous adults of any age living on or off a reservation.
If we are ever going to develop a culture that is fair to everyone and eliminates racism, all accepted government, and nongovernment policies that involve race should be applicable to any race, including white. Imagine the priority list above if Indigenous was replaced with White.
AS LONG AS WE HAVE POLICIES TREAT PEOPLE DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF RACE, THEY WILL CONTINUE TO BE TREATED DIFFERENT BECAUSE OF RACE
WE ARE ALL EQUAL!!!!!!!
Dave Lister
listerlogic.com
Note: I have deleted my blog post “WHAT IT MEANS TO BE CANADIAN” from 5 years ago as it no longer applies
The immediate hiring of thousands of unskilled medical people and training them as para-nurses is the solution for the upcoming surge of Covid-19 hospitalizations. So, what is a para-nurse? A para-nurse (nurse assistant) would be someone whose only medical skill before being deployed to a hospital maybe how to use their own PPE. They would be assigned to a nurse and trained on the fly to assist him/her with their duties, eventually performing basic tasks on their own.
Some of the tasks a para-nurse might do are getting a bedridden patient a drink of water, helping them get to the washroom, feeding, or helping with a video call to a relative. This would free up the nurse to better use their time for the high skilled tasks they were trained for. Para-nurses could even be trained to very specific more complicated tasks such as assisting a doctor in rolling an intubated covid patient.
A para-nurse can be hired, trained in PPE, and deployed to a hospital in as little as a couple of days. With unemployment as high as it is, there is a large pool of candidates to choose from. The ideal person, in this case, would be someone that has already had, recovered, and most likely immune to Covid-19. They should be quick learners in good physical condition and no underlying health problems. Other assets would be an empathetic people-person with medical or computer background.
Even though para-nurses could be deployed within days of hiring, ideally, time permitting, a para-nurse would be given the vaccine the day they are hired and go through 6 weeks of training while, at the same time building up immunity. At that point, they would be deployed to a hospital. Being able to wait 6 weeks for a para-nurse however, may not be possible due to sudden rapid demand.
The current lockdown has temporarily reduced the new total number of daily cases in Ontario, but cases will climb rapidly as soon as restrictions are eased. Even if we maintain the lockdown until enough people are vaccinated to establish herd immunity (probably end of 2021), compliancy burnout and the more contagious variants will still eventually drive hospitalizations beyond what we can currently handle. Construction of field hospitals and hiring of para-nurses NOW is critical in saving lives.
Now that vaccines for Covid-19 are becoming more available, all Canadians are now expected to have access to the shot by the end of 2021. It would seem the crisis will soon be over and life will get back to normal. But will it? Since the start of Covid and limitless government spending to control it, an economic storm has been brewing. It has already reached gargantuan size and continues to grow by the day.
With the stock market hitting all-time highs it would seem the economy is doing a good job weathering the outbreak. Whats not obvious though, is the current economy is being propped up by unpresidented, massive government spending. By the end of 2021 it would not surprise me if it amounted to close to a trillion dollars. All money the government doesn’t have.
When the pandemic is over in late 2021 the government will have to curve its unsustainable spending and the storm will begin. Unemployment is already over 8% and thousands of businesses have gone under. When government spending stops, thousands more supported businesses will fail. Unemployment will climb. As individual subsidies end, it will lead to personal hardships only experienced so far by a handful of people, mostly small business owners. On top of all this, we will have to deal with a trillion-dollar deficit.
How quickly covid subsidies are withdrawn, how much money is invested in the economic recovery, and how far in the future deficit responsibilities are pushed out, make predicting our economic future even more complicated than predicting the virus itself. One thing is for sure, we are in for dark economic times. On top of this, Canada is not the only country in this situation making this worldwide problem even more complex.
April 15th, 2020 update. People are finally coming to the realization that Covid-19 will not be going away anytime soon and its effects will still be felt into 2021. What people still fail to see is the path that saves the most lives in the short term could turn to years of misery with even more lives lost in the end. How long this virus lasts in each area of the world could very as long as a year depending on the individual government policies in that area.
To date, there is no country that can say they are through the pandemic and returned to normal so we can only use what we currently know and logic to predict what is most likely to happen in the future. Lives and the survival of our economy depend on the decisions we make now. In predicting the future by comparing Covid-19 with other pandemics, it is critical we take into account that this virus is completely different, in that it is far more contagious than anything else we have ever seen.
With this in mind, there are only 3 possibilities that would end the Covid-19 Outbreak:
The virus could just disappear
We find a cure
Enough people become infected and immune to it, that it can no longer spread easily and dies out.
Unlike the seasonal flu that dies out in the heat of summer, Covid-19 has infected even tropical countries making it unlikely to die out and go away with the changing of seasons. Unfortunately, there is no evidence that would indicate any other reason that would cause it to just go away, making the chances of it just disappearing on its own very unlikely.
Researchers have stated: finding, developing, and distributing a cure, if rushed, could be done in an unprecedented amount of time of as little as 2 years. Can we stay in lockdown for 2 years? Keep in mind there is still no cure for SARS that came out in 2003 or Ebola in 2014. Both these viruses were nowhere near as contagious as the unprecedented rate of Covid-19 and were only able to be brought under control through isolation and containment. Isolation and containment have already proved impossible when it comes to Covid-19.
That leaves mass immunity by large numbers of the population contracting and recovering from the virus as the most likely scenario to end the outbreak. As more and more people catch the disease and become immune, the virus from those infected and living on surfaces has a harder and harder time finding someone that has not yet been exposed until eventually dying out.
Evedence of mass immunity working should become evident in the coming months as places with the worst outbreaks so far, like Northern Italy and New York City will be able to start returning to normal while maintaining a low number of new cases. Even if new outside cases are introduced, the immunity level in these places should be high enough to stop another significant outbreak. The higher the percentage of immune people in an area, the less likely the chance of another major outbreak and the lower the number of new cases.
Assuming mass immunity turns out to be the final endgame for this virus, government policies designed to flatten the curve of infection through lockdowns and closures well below what health care systems can handle could prove disastrous. Although it will look like they are winning the fight at first, it would only serve to slow the spread of the virus over years instead of months. Until they reach a high enough percentage of the population that is immune, it will explode every time they try to open things up. In the end, not only will the prolonged chance of exposure to those people most vulnerable end in even more deaths, but the measures necessary to slow the virus, left in place too long will result in total economic collapse.
Regardless of the path we take to fight this virus, when it comes to protecting the most vulnerable during this pandemic, developing an accurate test to tell if someone is already immune is vital. By having only immune people have direct contact with the 20 percent of the population shown most vulnerable, it would drastically reduce the chances they get infected and save the most lives. Placing immune health care workers in old age homes would be the single most important factor in keeping the virus out.
Although necessary, the current importance we are placing on testing people for the virus as being a solution to stopping it is highly overrated. The virus is so widespread and contagious that a person that is tested now and does not have it, could easily become infected before they even get their negative test result back. With so little testing being done it offers only limited and misleading data as to how to stop it. We know that about 80% of people that contract Covid-19 have mild symptoms. We know since the start of the pandemic people in this category have been told to go home and self isolate without being tested and we know that unless people have life-threatening symptoms they are afraid to go to the hospital. What we don’t know is the number of people that have been exposed and are now immune. I suspect these numbers are much greater than we think they are. The most important thing we can do to save lives and end the outbreak is to develop a reliable test to tell who is immune.
This virus is relentless, from the infection of the first person in China to shutting down the world in less than 6 months. It creeps into old age homes and gets through PPE, infecting health care workers. Assuming we can hide in our homes until it goes away is to totally underestimate it. Without a cure, areas without a high enough percentage of population immunity are like explosives factories and every contagious person is a match. Even 1 person left infected in the world could set them off.
Dave Lister
listerlogic.com
Note: The above article was sent on April 18, 2020 to the following-
Do N95 masks protect against Covid-19? At first, we were told they offered no protection, then we were told they offer limited protection. With the N95 being the main choice for front line health workers and considering the high number of those health workers that have contracted the virus, indications are they are not that effective.
Could a modified snorkel mask be a better alternative? Fitted with a virus filter where the snorkel attaches, the mask would offer complete protection of eyes, nose, and mouth. Because they are designed to go underwater, they could be worn right into a decontamination shower at the end of each shift. Once removed they could be cleaned further and reused over and over. Further modification by connecting a pressurized air supply to the snorkel would give the mask a positive pressure, keeping the virus from entering the mask the same way negative pressure rooms keep the virus in. At a retail cost as low as $50.00 they are an affordable solution to make up for the N95 backlog and effectiveness.
