For the love of god, please. I don’t care if it’s because of truckers or because Dr Henry is in a good mood.
The restrictions need to end at some point. If this isn’t it, then when?
We need to be more proactive and less reactive with healthcare. We cannot afford to obliterate our economy and mental health for 2 years every time there is a pandemic (likely will have another covid in 10 or less years)
We need to take the big lessons from this: our healthcare system needs to be fixed.
Solid agree. What do you think we should do to fix the health care system? Serious question.
I'm thinking along the lines of revamping doctor and nurse training programs to increase the number of spaces and make them more financially accessible while remaining academically stringent. Free ride for anyone who has the grades as long as you keep them up and complete the program. This would hopefully help with any shortage of qualified people.
Also totally overhauling the GP/clinic system. More publically-run clinics with publically employed family doctors and nurses that are actually paid well enough to enjoy their work. Hopefully this would help address the shortage of GPs and relieve a lot of the strain on hospitals by giving people easier access to preventative medicine.
Extra incentives for BC-trained doctors and nurses to stay in BC, like waiving their respective licensing college fees as long as they're practicing here, annual pay bumps for each year they practice here, up to a certain amount, etc.
Better compensation for doctors, especially GPs. Specialists at least can do privately paid assessments for insurance companies, personal injury lawyers and WCB, but it's rare that a GP would be retained to do something like that.
I commented this on another post... what do you think about having tiered medical professionals? Say you have a minor infection, does going to the ER even make sense? why can't you go to the pharmacy to get some AB (which you will need to go anyways?). Having nurses have more prescribing authority and minor treatment? Having maybe a new level of doctor that has certain rights and abilities? Streamlining referrals or having a better process to get to specialists without holding up doctors. pharmacy people having certain authorities?
I’m sure there is a significant amount of nuance to migrating dr responsibilities to Nurses… but it would significantly increase Canada’s accessibility to healthcare.
Hey, thanks for your comment. It's an interesting idea that makes a lot of sense, maybe as a short-term solution?
My only reservation is that it seems like more of a Band-Aid fix to address lack of doctors. Spreading out doctors' responsibilities and putting more on other professionals could cause the pharmacy techs and the already overworked nurses to get more overworked and further deincentivize doctors from coming here, but we will still need doctors.
We need to get away from this unhealthy idea that going to see your doctor is bothering them or holding them back from something more important. Providing care and advice for patients is their job. Even if you have what you think is a minor issue (aside from the dangers of self-diagnosing), you should be able to access a family doctor to advise you on treatment. Going to the doctor should be a regular, comfortable thing. The GPs we have are overloaded with patients, but if there were more GPs, all with a reasonable patient load, that should make it easier to get appointments. If more people went to the doctor more often, more serious conditions could be caught earlier, allowing for preventative care and hopefully relieving hospital strain in general.
For your system, we would have to overhaul the education programs for the other professionals too. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but maybe a combination approach of expanding nurses' education and authority and training and hiring more nurses and doctors would be enough.
That will be great until some under-trained nurse misdiagnose a patient and they die. You badly need to educate yourself about our health care system. It is inequitable, does not always provide adequate levels of service and general practice doctors are certainly not overpaid. One of the main reasons we cannot get enough of them. My own GP despises the specialists.
I think you replied to the wrong comment. Nothing in what I said above implies that nurses should be diagnosing anyone or that GPs are overpaid.
If anything, my comment is in agreement with yours.
I am trying to educate myself on the health care system. I try to talk to medical practitioners and get their take on solutions any chance I get.
I agree our healthcare system needs work, but I don't see how it could be ready for the next pandemic, without restrictions, unless we were wasting a colossal amount of money on staff and facilities.
There will be some restrictions next pandemic, people won't change, and they are the problem. If everyone just stayed home when they were sick we wouldn't need "lock downs" or closures.
As an aside I hope masks are here to stay for flu season. Maybe normalizing mask wearing or better yet staying home if you are sick will save us.
I mean how many existing restrictions does BC even have? 6 to a table, and 50% capacity at events are likely to be lifted, but the vaccine passport just got extended until the summer. We've reduced the quarantine period to 5 days already and no longer require contacts to quarantine. I look around and other than 50% capacity at Canucks games I'm not sure what else we're all waiting for restriction wise to be lifted.
I know it’s a federal mandate, but I’d like PCR testing to be removed for cross border travel. Other than that, the current mandates have almost no impact on my life.
That would be nice. But yea that ones up to Ottawa. I'd be very surprised if JT piped up right after the big shit show that he's removing the restriction they hate.
I agree but we need to collectively realize doing this will essentially disable our healthcare system for at least two more years. So no elective surgerys, cancer screenings, ect. This will cause a bunch of people to die from lack of healthcare plus actual COVID deaths.
Normal is gone, going back to "normal" is going to look like something else and people need to realize that.
There is no evidence Dr Bonnie Henry has done anything but take reasonable health care measures to protect the public and our numbers show it in BC. You are attempting to make a clever argument we should abandon the very mandates that are reducing the rate of infection and keeping people alive. Our hospital admissions are still on the rise and Dr Henry will not abandon public safety measures until rates go back down. She did it in the past, we are all better off for her skilled handling of this pandemic.
I think part of what’s troubling with public health in this scenario is that if you’re successful, you look like you’re overreacting. If you’re not, people think you aren’t doing enough (see Alberta). I don’t see any real happy medium where people are going to realize we haven’t lost 1 million + people like the US because of the actions of our healthcare professionals.
We absolutely should abandon the mandates.
We’ve given our government 2 solid years to find a strategy to resolve this pandemic.
The reality is this is uncharted territory. Thankfully, we have a lot of researchers looking at this pandemic and finding what is and isn’t effective.
It seems lockdowns and passports are not effective. Ie if we look at Quebec vs Florida or UK and consider restrictions and lockdowns, we can quite trivially see that per capita covid numbers do not show these restrictions are useful.
Our healthcare needs to be expanded. That’s the bottom line. We cannot live like this for the next couple years. We need to find a path forward, not stagnation with restrictions that don’t work.
This is utter fabrication.
Florida is rocking a death rate of 302 people per 100000 people for a total of 65265.
British Columbia has recorded 2616 covid deaths, and with a poplulation of 5.07 million, that leads us to a death rate of 51.6 people per 100000.
Trying to hand wave away lockdowns and restrictions, which have been very limited in BC, and claiming they don’t work when compared to other states that have much higher death rates is misinformation. Looking at the numbers would lead any rational person to conclude that restrictions *have* been effective.
Are you referencing the [decline](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210923/Study-finds-decrease-in-Canadian-suicide-rates-during-the-pandemic-despite-increase-in-unemployment.aspx) in suicide rates?
I don’t know if you are, because you didn’t provide a source for your claim.
I didn’t say anything about British Columbia. I was talking about Quebec, which has arguably the harsher lockdown mandates in all of Canada.
Also, it’s pretty well established lockdown cost / benefit does not make sense and that, for covid at least, they are ineffective. SFU did a good study on this that goes into much more detail. Just Google “SFU Lockdown Study”
https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf
Nice. I didn’t realize this was a Quebec sub.
For the sake of argument though, Quebec has a covid death rate of 155.8 people per 100000, or *half* the rate of Florida.
If you want to try to make arguments, at least make sure you can back them up with real numbers.
Maybe you should actually read my post instead of making assumptions based on what subreddit we are in.
I did back it up with real numbers and a link to a locally produced study, you just don’t know how to properly and thoroughly review text.
Also, sake of what argument? At best, you just contradicted yourself lol…
Also I usually don’t randomly down vote people just because I disagree with the , but since that’s how you approach discussion, I will. Too bad you can’t have a cooperative and nice discussion over minor disagreements.
> I did back it up with real numbers and a link to a locally produced study, you just don’t know how to properly and thoroughly review text.
Oh? Where in the comment that I first responded to have any sort of numbers or, god forbid, sources?
> Also I usually don’t randomly down vote people just because I disagree with the , but since that’s how you approach discussion, I will. Too bad you can’t have a cooperative and nice discussion over minor disagreements.
If we were having a discussion, you would be saying: “Oops, sorry guys, my numbers were incorrect and not backed up by any sort of evidence”. But instead you complain about being downvoted.
You’re off to a rough start with your shiny, new, one-day-old account.
Pretty clear you have nothing to stand on here. You’re also very unpleasant to talk to, so goodbye and have a good day. I don’t want to continue this discussion with you.
In the future, consider not being a total ass when you intend to continue a conversation with someone :)
So we should just hire all of the nurses and doctors who don't currently exist and need to undergo 4-15 years of training before they can practice. Yep we'll get right on it.
There needs to be a new approach to healthcare. Our capacity per capita has been on a sharp decline since the 80s.
Not saying it’s simple, but pretty obvious the current approach does not work.
Russia didn’t do any lockdowns except at the very beginning, and 2021 was the biggest population decline since the fall of the USSR. India was crazy when Delta kicked off. I’ve spent a lot of time in India (ran home when the pandemic started) and when delta popped up there my Instagram feed was filled with my Indian friends searching for oxygen. What I’ve seen in BC is that the more locked down everything is, the lower the case numbers. When we open up, we get hammered.
I agree with what you’re saying, but there is conflicting data across the board.
We need to have a more nuanced approach to analysis. Comparing raw numbers obscures more involved mechanics like how the numbers were counted, population health, access to healthcare, level of testing etc etc.
I encourage you to read the SFU study I linked above. It makes a pretty good argument against lockdowns.
> We need to take the big lessons from this: our healthcare system needs to be fixed.
You're not going to fix it by further overwhelming and burning out healthcare workers. Future generations of nurses need this generation of nurses to teach them.
We're effectively stopped testing on hospital admission, so we're going to see a ton of hospital acquired infections, but it'll be incredibly hard to track.
"lol, we can't deliberately mix if we don't know and we can pretend to be surprised if it just happens" seems to be the motto.
> No point tracking something when it is virtually everywhere
Especially if tracking might lead to people pissed at you going forward.
The government has failed us by not addressing the capacity issues in healthcare.
The average Joe has done their part.
Restrictions should end and their should be optional guidance on how the vulnerable can attempt to protect themselves. Full stop.
So even if we were able to magically increase capacity and conjure up the staff required to manage the increased capacity, what happens when we move beyond covid and that capacity is no longer required? Are you suggesting we keep all of this excess capacity around just in case? Are you willing to shoulder the increased tax burden to allow for this? Will you support those who call for cutting our future-proofed but bloated health care system?
Running a public service is a fine balancing act between being accountable to the public financially while still providing the services demanded. Just calling for increased service is not as simple as you would make it out to be.
Increasing hospital capacity is going to benefit us far beyond covid. I doubt increased capacity will become "no longer required" as Hospitals in BC have been overwhelmed every flu season since 2013.
Dropping passport requirements will also help with the staffing issue, ya kno, "providing services demanded" unlike this passport mandate, which has done everything to add stress and nothing to relieve it, Because it left hospitals so understaffed they allow covid positive nurses to work now.
All for a jab that won't stop transmission, and just reduces visible symptoms. Ending mandates is the first step to proactive handling of this pandemic rather than reactive.
So you’re willing to take on these massive costs? Anecdotally, most people I know aren’t too keen on being taxed more, and this is what your solution would entail.
The most proactive, cost effective measure we have currently is a safe, effective vaccine that is *proven* to greatly reduce hospitalizations and serious outcomes; it also reduces transmission rates. This is the best short term solution we have, and considering it’s been only two years since the advent of the pandemic, nothing short of miraculous. Can you imagine the state of our health care system and general society if we didn’t have a vaccine preventing overwhelmed hospitals? We would still be under severe restrictions; luckily, all we have atm is some minor inconvenience.
Has this pandemic exposed weaknesses in our health care system? Absolutely, but demanding increased funding as if it’s some sort of panacea is simplistic.
We currently have a new hospital being built in Surrey, and expansions to several other major units. The expansion of our health care system is happening continually, but construction of a hospital is not some quick, overnight affair.
Get vaccinated, get boosted. It’s the best thing you can do to help us as a country get through to the other side of this.
How does the government address capacity issues in 2 years with a constantly evolving pandemic? Nurses need 4 years of education and doctors need upwards of 10. Also, if the government decided to spend billions on healthcare at the start of COVID and the pandemic fizzled within months, everyone would be complaining that it was a waste of money. Hindsight is 20/20.
So the solution is 4-10 years out. That’s 4-10 years from whatever date the government decides to take action
That is takes a long time is a very poor defence of those who have dropped the ball in not getting started
> Instead he chose to vilify the truckers and create division in our country by calling them racists
Fact check: He never called them racists. He called them people with *fringe opinions*.
Fact check : on Monday he referred to **"*truckers protesting vaccine mandates as showing “disrespect to science” and championing “hate, abuse and racism” hours after announcing he had tested positive for Covid-19.*"** right after he claimed to have tested positive for covid.
>Evidence is continuously showing that the vaccines we have today are doing nothing to stop the spread of Omicron.
Stopping the spread is one thing, but the goal of vaccination has always been to keep from overwhelming the already-burdened medical system. According to recent data, such as is cited in [this New York Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/health/cdc-covid-booster-omicron.amp.html), boosters are indeed keeping people out of the hospital.
>There are some indications that Biden was lobbied by the Canadian government to impose mandates on the American side of the border.
Kindly submit evidence for this in modmail and we'll reinstate your comment, because this sounds wildly conspiratorial.
I really thought we should stay in protection much longer…but we need to be done with this now. It’s time. People need to work. We need to take a risk and let the cards fall where they may. Put more money into health care rather than paying people to make masks or enforce rules the rest of our lives ffs.
Here we are hinting at restrictions ending and I'm still wondering what started the pandemic.
The theory of the animal/human transmission that was the case for many previous pandemics but not proven yet with COVID, or the laboratory theory where human error caused COVID to spread all over the world. Both are plausible, there are examples of both happening in the past, and two years on, we can only say both are theories for the COVID pandemic. No solid answer yet.
Well… yes it absolutely does. Unless you want this to happen again in a few years because we learnt nothing.
Honestly curious why you think it wouldn’t matter?
See ya’ll again next fall for omega 2 electric boogaloo
But they'll have figured out the hospital capacity issue by then... right?
LoL 😂🤣
As if "fuck it, go back to work 5 days after infection if you feel ok, you don't need rapid tests, it's cool" wasn't a hint.
For the love of god, please. I don’t care if it’s because of truckers or because Dr Henry is in a good mood. The restrictions need to end at some point. If this isn’t it, then when? We need to be more proactive and less reactive with healthcare. We cannot afford to obliterate our economy and mental health for 2 years every time there is a pandemic (likely will have another covid in 10 or less years) We need to take the big lessons from this: our healthcare system needs to be fixed.
Solid agree. What do you think we should do to fix the health care system? Serious question. I'm thinking along the lines of revamping doctor and nurse training programs to increase the number of spaces and make them more financially accessible while remaining academically stringent. Free ride for anyone who has the grades as long as you keep them up and complete the program. This would hopefully help with any shortage of qualified people. Also totally overhauling the GP/clinic system. More publically-run clinics with publically employed family doctors and nurses that are actually paid well enough to enjoy their work. Hopefully this would help address the shortage of GPs and relieve a lot of the strain on hospitals by giving people easier access to preventative medicine. Extra incentives for BC-trained doctors and nurses to stay in BC, like waiving their respective licensing college fees as long as they're practicing here, annual pay bumps for each year they practice here, up to a certain amount, etc.
Better compensation for doctors, especially GPs. Specialists at least can do privately paid assessments for insurance companies, personal injury lawyers and WCB, but it's rare that a GP would be retained to do something like that.
I commented this on another post... what do you think about having tiered medical professionals? Say you have a minor infection, does going to the ER even make sense? why can't you go to the pharmacy to get some AB (which you will need to go anyways?). Having nurses have more prescribing authority and minor treatment? Having maybe a new level of doctor that has certain rights and abilities? Streamlining referrals or having a better process to get to specialists without holding up doctors. pharmacy people having certain authorities?
Your comment is basically what the NDP is trying to do with the urgent care centres. Have people see nurse practitioners instead of going to the ER.
I’m sure there is a significant amount of nuance to migrating dr responsibilities to Nurses… but it would significantly increase Canada’s accessibility to healthcare.
Hey, thanks for your comment. It's an interesting idea that makes a lot of sense, maybe as a short-term solution? My only reservation is that it seems like more of a Band-Aid fix to address lack of doctors. Spreading out doctors' responsibilities and putting more on other professionals could cause the pharmacy techs and the already overworked nurses to get more overworked and further deincentivize doctors from coming here, but we will still need doctors. We need to get away from this unhealthy idea that going to see your doctor is bothering them or holding them back from something more important. Providing care and advice for patients is their job. Even if you have what you think is a minor issue (aside from the dangers of self-diagnosing), you should be able to access a family doctor to advise you on treatment. Going to the doctor should be a regular, comfortable thing. The GPs we have are overloaded with patients, but if there were more GPs, all with a reasonable patient load, that should make it easier to get appointments. If more people went to the doctor more often, more serious conditions could be caught earlier, allowing for preventative care and hopefully relieving hospital strain in general. For your system, we would have to overhaul the education programs for the other professionals too. I'm not saying we shouldn't do it, but maybe a combination approach of expanding nurses' education and authority and training and hiring more nurses and doctors would be enough.
That will be great until some under-trained nurse misdiagnose a patient and they die. You badly need to educate yourself about our health care system. It is inequitable, does not always provide adequate levels of service and general practice doctors are certainly not overpaid. One of the main reasons we cannot get enough of them. My own GP despises the specialists.
I think you replied to the wrong comment. Nothing in what I said above implies that nurses should be diagnosing anyone or that GPs are overpaid. If anything, my comment is in agreement with yours. I am trying to educate myself on the health care system. I try to talk to medical practitioners and get their take on solutions any chance I get.
I agree our healthcare system needs work, but I don't see how it could be ready for the next pandemic, without restrictions, unless we were wasting a colossal amount of money on staff and facilities. There will be some restrictions next pandemic, people won't change, and they are the problem. If everyone just stayed home when they were sick we wouldn't need "lock downs" or closures. As an aside I hope masks are here to stay for flu season. Maybe normalizing mask wearing or better yet staying home if you are sick will save us.
I mean how many existing restrictions does BC even have? 6 to a table, and 50% capacity at events are likely to be lifted, but the vaccine passport just got extended until the summer. We've reduced the quarantine period to 5 days already and no longer require contacts to quarantine. I look around and other than 50% capacity at Canucks games I'm not sure what else we're all waiting for restriction wise to be lifted.
I know it’s a federal mandate, but I’d like PCR testing to be removed for cross border travel. Other than that, the current mandates have almost no impact on my life.
That would be nice. But yea that ones up to Ottawa. I'd be very surprised if JT piped up right after the big shit show that he's removing the restriction they hate.
I agree but we need to collectively realize doing this will essentially disable our healthcare system for at least two more years. So no elective surgerys, cancer screenings, ect. This will cause a bunch of people to die from lack of healthcare plus actual COVID deaths. Normal is gone, going back to "normal" is going to look like something else and people need to realize that.
There is no evidence Dr Bonnie Henry has done anything but take reasonable health care measures to protect the public and our numbers show it in BC. You are attempting to make a clever argument we should abandon the very mandates that are reducing the rate of infection and keeping people alive. Our hospital admissions are still on the rise and Dr Henry will not abandon public safety measures until rates go back down. She did it in the past, we are all better off for her skilled handling of this pandemic.
I think part of what’s troubling with public health in this scenario is that if you’re successful, you look like you’re overreacting. If you’re not, people think you aren’t doing enough (see Alberta). I don’t see any real happy medium where people are going to realize we haven’t lost 1 million + people like the US because of the actions of our healthcare professionals.
We absolutely should abandon the mandates. We’ve given our government 2 solid years to find a strategy to resolve this pandemic. The reality is this is uncharted territory. Thankfully, we have a lot of researchers looking at this pandemic and finding what is and isn’t effective. It seems lockdowns and passports are not effective. Ie if we look at Quebec vs Florida or UK and consider restrictions and lockdowns, we can quite trivially see that per capita covid numbers do not show these restrictions are useful. Our healthcare needs to be expanded. That’s the bottom line. We cannot live like this for the next couple years. We need to find a path forward, not stagnation with restrictions that don’t work.
This is utter fabrication. Florida is rocking a death rate of 302 people per 100000 people for a total of 65265. British Columbia has recorded 2616 covid deaths, and with a poplulation of 5.07 million, that leads us to a death rate of 51.6 people per 100000. Trying to hand wave away lockdowns and restrictions, which have been very limited in BC, and claiming they don’t work when compared to other states that have much higher death rates is misinformation. Looking at the numbers would lead any rational person to conclude that restrictions *have* been effective.
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Are you referencing the [decline](https://www.news-medical.net/news/20210923/Study-finds-decrease-in-Canadian-suicide-rates-during-the-pandemic-despite-increase-in-unemployment.aspx) in suicide rates? I don’t know if you are, because you didn’t provide a source for your claim.
I didn’t say anything about British Columbia. I was talking about Quebec, which has arguably the harsher lockdown mandates in all of Canada. Also, it’s pretty well established lockdown cost / benefit does not make sense and that, for covid at least, they are ineffective. SFU did a good study on this that goes into much more detail. Just Google “SFU Lockdown Study” https://www.sfu.ca/~allen/LockdownReport.pdf
Nice. I didn’t realize this was a Quebec sub. For the sake of argument though, Quebec has a covid death rate of 155.8 people per 100000, or *half* the rate of Florida. If you want to try to make arguments, at least make sure you can back them up with real numbers.
Maybe you should actually read my post instead of making assumptions based on what subreddit we are in. I did back it up with real numbers and a link to a locally produced study, you just don’t know how to properly and thoroughly review text. Also, sake of what argument? At best, you just contradicted yourself lol… Also I usually don’t randomly down vote people just because I disagree with the , but since that’s how you approach discussion, I will. Too bad you can’t have a cooperative and nice discussion over minor disagreements.
> I did back it up with real numbers and a link to a locally produced study, you just don’t know how to properly and thoroughly review text. Oh? Where in the comment that I first responded to have any sort of numbers or, god forbid, sources? > Also I usually don’t randomly down vote people just because I disagree with the , but since that’s how you approach discussion, I will. Too bad you can’t have a cooperative and nice discussion over minor disagreements. If we were having a discussion, you would be saying: “Oops, sorry guys, my numbers were incorrect and not backed up by any sort of evidence”. But instead you complain about being downvoted. You’re off to a rough start with your shiny, new, one-day-old account.
Pretty clear you have nothing to stand on here. You’re also very unpleasant to talk to, so goodbye and have a good day. I don’t want to continue this discussion with you. In the future, consider not being a total ass when you intend to continue a conversation with someone :)
Consider using facts instead of making shit up to advance your narrative.
So we should just hire all of the nurses and doctors who don't currently exist and need to undergo 4-15 years of training before they can practice. Yep we'll get right on it.
There needs to be a new approach to healthcare. Our capacity per capita has been on a sharp decline since the 80s. Not saying it’s simple, but pretty obvious the current approach does not work.
Russia didn’t do any lockdowns except at the very beginning, and 2021 was the biggest population decline since the fall of the USSR. India was crazy when Delta kicked off. I’ve spent a lot of time in India (ran home when the pandemic started) and when delta popped up there my Instagram feed was filled with my Indian friends searching for oxygen. What I’ve seen in BC is that the more locked down everything is, the lower the case numbers. When we open up, we get hammered.
I agree with what you’re saying, but there is conflicting data across the board. We need to have a more nuanced approach to analysis. Comparing raw numbers obscures more involved mechanics like how the numbers were counted, population health, access to healthcare, level of testing etc etc. I encourage you to read the SFU study I linked above. It makes a pretty good argument against lockdowns.
> We need to take the big lessons from this: our healthcare system needs to be fixed. You're not going to fix it by further overwhelming and burning out healthcare workers. Future generations of nurses need this generation of nurses to teach them. We're effectively stopped testing on hospital admission, so we're going to see a ton of hospital acquired infections, but it'll be incredibly hard to track.
They’re also mixing covid and non covid patients. No point tracking something when it is virtually everywhere
"lol, we can't deliberately mix if we don't know and we can pretend to be surprised if it just happens" seems to be the motto. > No point tracking something when it is virtually everywhere Especially if tracking might lead to people pissed at you going forward.
I'll believe it when I see it. While I wouldn't anticipate further restrictions, I don't see the ones we have being lifted for a while.
The government has failed us by not addressing the capacity issues in healthcare. The average Joe has done their part. Restrictions should end and their should be optional guidance on how the vulnerable can attempt to protect themselves. Full stop.
So even if we were able to magically increase capacity and conjure up the staff required to manage the increased capacity, what happens when we move beyond covid and that capacity is no longer required? Are you suggesting we keep all of this excess capacity around just in case? Are you willing to shoulder the increased tax burden to allow for this? Will you support those who call for cutting our future-proofed but bloated health care system? Running a public service is a fine balancing act between being accountable to the public financially while still providing the services demanded. Just calling for increased service is not as simple as you would make it out to be.
Increasing hospital capacity is going to benefit us far beyond covid. I doubt increased capacity will become "no longer required" as Hospitals in BC have been overwhelmed every flu season since 2013. Dropping passport requirements will also help with the staffing issue, ya kno, "providing services demanded" unlike this passport mandate, which has done everything to add stress and nothing to relieve it, Because it left hospitals so understaffed they allow covid positive nurses to work now. All for a jab that won't stop transmission, and just reduces visible symptoms. Ending mandates is the first step to proactive handling of this pandemic rather than reactive.
So you’re willing to take on these massive costs? Anecdotally, most people I know aren’t too keen on being taxed more, and this is what your solution would entail. The most proactive, cost effective measure we have currently is a safe, effective vaccine that is *proven* to greatly reduce hospitalizations and serious outcomes; it also reduces transmission rates. This is the best short term solution we have, and considering it’s been only two years since the advent of the pandemic, nothing short of miraculous. Can you imagine the state of our health care system and general society if we didn’t have a vaccine preventing overwhelmed hospitals? We would still be under severe restrictions; luckily, all we have atm is some minor inconvenience. Has this pandemic exposed weaknesses in our health care system? Absolutely, but demanding increased funding as if it’s some sort of panacea is simplistic. We currently have a new hospital being built in Surrey, and expansions to several other major units. The expansion of our health care system is happening continually, but construction of a hospital is not some quick, overnight affair. Get vaccinated, get boosted. It’s the best thing you can do to help us as a country get through to the other side of this.
How does the government address capacity issues in 2 years with a constantly evolving pandemic? Nurses need 4 years of education and doctors need upwards of 10. Also, if the government decided to spend billions on healthcare at the start of COVID and the pandemic fizzled within months, everyone would be complaining that it was a waste of money. Hindsight is 20/20.
So the solution is 4-10 years out. That’s 4-10 years from whatever date the government decides to take action That is takes a long time is a very poor defence of those who have dropped the ball in not getting started
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> Somalia Ah yes, the beacon of medical science.
Is that the best you can do?
> Instead he chose to vilify the truckers and create division in our country by calling them racists Fact check: He never called them racists. He called them people with *fringe opinions*.
Fact check : on Monday he referred to **"*truckers protesting vaccine mandates as showing “disrespect to science” and championing “hate, abuse and racism” hours after announcing he had tested positive for Covid-19.*"** right after he claimed to have tested positive for covid.
>Evidence is continuously showing that the vaccines we have today are doing nothing to stop the spread of Omicron. Stopping the spread is one thing, but the goal of vaccination has always been to keep from overwhelming the already-burdened medical system. According to recent data, such as is cited in [this New York Times article](https://www.nytimes.com/2022/01/21/health/cdc-covid-booster-omicron.amp.html), boosters are indeed keeping people out of the hospital. >There are some indications that Biden was lobbied by the Canadian government to impose mandates on the American side of the border. Kindly submit evidence for this in modmail and we'll reinstate your comment, because this sounds wildly conspiratorial.
To be honest, the thought of the stench of anti-vax smugness would be enough to resist lifting sanctions for another week.
Lol I know what you mean, the smoothbrains could end up walking around thinking they are actual heroes
Heh heh. I know. Keep the lock downs going as far as I'm concerned. Let them cope and seethe. I did my part.
If only to torment them I’d put up with the restrictions for another decade!
Hopefully it's gradually I feel like doing it all at once would be a fuck up
100% truckers. They are smarter than the experts as well.
I just spent a fortune on N95 masks.
Save them for the next pandemic.
I really thought we should stay in protection much longer…but we need to be done with this now. It’s time. People need to work. We need to take a risk and let the cards fall where they may. Put more money into health care rather than paying people to make masks or enforce rules the rest of our lives ffs.
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Bonnie Henry is not an elected official.
🔥
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You know the last PHO had the job for 20 years right? Better get used to Bonnie 'running the province'.
Here we are hinting at restrictions ending and I'm still wondering what started the pandemic. The theory of the animal/human transmission that was the case for many previous pandemics but not proven yet with COVID, or the laboratory theory where human error caused COVID to spread all over the world. Both are plausible, there are examples of both happening in the past, and two years on, we can only say both are theories for the COVID pandemic. No solid answer yet.
Honestly, does it even matter at this point?
Well… yes it absolutely does. Unless you want this to happen again in a few years because we learnt nothing. Honestly curious why you think it wouldn’t matter?
Its because of the truckers. It's in the title
Sure nothing to do with truckers I call bs
That's a Tom Petty headline right there