Flu virus in this line only, inoculations line closed!

Honestly, I don’t know who I feel more disgust at, the Federal Government or the Provincial Government over the way this whole situation has been handled.  Let’s see if I can get the sequence of failures correct, if not the order.

Firstly, correct me if I’m wrong, but we’ve been inoculating people in the province of Alberta for the better part of 40 years against Bubonic Plague, Polio, TB etc…, yet the powers that be managed to completely bypass all known facilities for mass inoculation by creating a whole new plan, which is patently not working well.

Secondly, we managed to allow the press to dictate the situation, creating a near panic in their ever seeking mission to create news worthy items, even when most of the news isn’t worthy of our attention.

Thirdly, we allowed other countries panic to panic our already press sensitive politicians into a panic, who thereby, facing the self-induced panic of the press, capitulate to all comers and make announcement after announcement for self-serving purposes only to actually give out so little information that the general population hasn’t a bloody clue what is fact or fiction about H1N1.

Okay, the order is backward, but it will do.
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Now we’ve got Alberta’s health officials telling people to relax and take it easy if they’re not in a high-risk category; Dr. André Corriveau, Alberta’s Chief Medical Officer of Health went on to say, “…we plan to have everyone vaccinated by Christmas.” Hang on a second… did he say Christmas? BY CHRISTMAS! Holy Mother and all the Saints! What’s going on? I better check the Public Health Agency of Canada’s site. Oh my Lord! CHRISTMAS! It wasn’t a mistake.

It looks like Ontario, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, New Brunswick, and B.C. are all suffering from Glaxo-Smith Kline’s production “hiccup.” The vaccine producer is unable to keep up with the demand for its product. It’s hard to blame the people who are making the stuff for not keeping up with a demand that wasn’t even there a couple of short weeks ago, but what about the bunch who sounded the alarm?

I would like suggest something to the communications department of Health Canada in the event that we face similar future emergencies. Please think your messaging strategy through thoroughly before you carry it out. When dealing with a highly emotional/stressful topic (like the H1N1 pandemic) consider the most likely, as well as the less probable, effects that your words will have on the target audience – and then tailor your messages to dispel anxiety rather than provoke it. Oh yeah, one more thing: Never tell your audience to get vaccinated when there’s no vaccine in the larder; that’s just asking for trouble.

Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq

News of the Swine-Flu started drifting into the media back in April of 2009. It very soon began to seem like it was much noise about not much. Then it returned to the airwaves and started hitting all of us hard in early October as the date for the federal roll-out of a newly developed vaccine approached. One would imagine that the Ministry of Health would follow their own directives, as listed on their “About Mission, Values, Activities” page. Pay particular attention to the third sub-heading under “Core Values – Our Values in Action,” which is entitled, “Caring for the People of Canada.” (take a minute to click the link and read that one section). There’s talk about advancing the public good, as well as the provision of credible information and reliable advice – presumably to that same public. But what has actually happened falls rather short of the Ministry’s espoused ideals.

The Federal government, as represented by Canadian Health Minister, Leona Aglukkaq, told Canadians on October 21st, “I’m happy to say that today Health Canada has authorized the H1N1 flu virus vaccine,” and on October 25th, “I encourage Canadians to get the vaccine to stop the pandemic”. I live in BC where the H1N1 virus hit hardest, the clock is still ticking, people are still dying, it’s October 30th, and my family is still unable to get the vaccine. Unfortunately, or fortunately (I won’t know until the grim reaper has completed his grisly harvest), we’re not in a high risk category, so if we die, well, that’s just taking one for the team, don’t you see.
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The greatest thing about H1N1 is that it heightened social anxiety that is now out of control.

If government’s can’t control their message and act as the source for all direction, in a country with a national health care program and billions being dumped to support its existence, then people need to take this cue and start figuring things out for themselves.

Cudos to the media for enabling all of this ridiculousness. But like every other catastrophic doomsday prediction of the recent past – Y2K, moldy alfalfa sprouts, mad cow disease, etc. it’s great TV. But it’s starting to make humanity look like complete idiots.

In the last week, as the flu started to sweep across Canada with a predictable vengeance immediately after a 13 year old young rising hockey superstar from Ontario died, supposedly from H1N1, the circus began. I grieve for his parents but I don’t know if the media’s play on this was necessary. But it was unavoidable.
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We complain when the government spends money, but we complain when they do not. Take the millions of dollars that the government is spending on the latest round of flu vaccinations. They bought the drugs, which have yet to be proven effective in children or pregnant women, and have opened clinics to help deliver them to the masses. Every newspaper is showing stories of the latest numbers of infections and deaths, a small fraction of the numbers infected and killed by the season flu shot every year. Doctors are stressing that they would rather focus their efforts on prevention rather than treatment – a grand idea.

Everybody has formed their own opinions on this subject. Some of the comments from the CBC website today run along the lines of, and I am paraphrasing here because there are just far too many comments, “swine flu isn’t really a big deal, everybody should get the shot, people are dying from it” to “this is a media-hyped problem, you wouldn’t hear about people dying from the regular old flu”.
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Several cities in Canada now have programs that provide safe crack pipes to drug users with the aim of curbing diseases like HIV. Programs like this and Canada’s government funded safe-injection sites are being criticized by the United Nations for violating the International Narcotics Control Board that Canada signed onto in 1988. The aim of the safe inhalation and injection sites in Toronto, Ottawa and Vancouver are to prevent the spread of infectious diseases like HIV and hepatitis C. Laurel Ostfield from the Ontario Health Ministers office said, “The evidence shows — and this is evidence that’s supported by the World Health Organization — … that you really can prevent the spread of infectious diseases through safe inhalation or safe injection sites.”

Safe and Legal crack houses are a controversial topic, and for good reason. Having a government sanctioned spot for people to smoke a potent and dangerous drug can lead one to think that the Canadian government is condoning illegal activity. In Canada, crack cocaine is a Schedule 1 substance which holds a maximum possession sentence of 7 years, and a trafficking, production and exportation sentence of up to life. Critics have been arguing that the safe inhalation sites would further encourage crack addicts and would be diverting money from harm reduction and treatment.
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Preventative health measures seem to be all the rage, and so they should be!

In a time when economic and political stresses and strains weigh heavily on the minds of not only our leaders but every individual as the try to cope with the realities of an economic downturn, preventative measures seem to be an affective answer to some areas of concern.

The CHHS-AP has released a report focused on finding ways to prevent heart problems before they happen. A proactive approach to what is quickly becoming the deadliest of diseases around the world with an estimated 23.4 million people worldwide set to die from heart diseases by 2030 (WHO, 2008). In Canada alone 1 in every 20 people are diagnosed with a CV (Cardio-vascular) disease and this number could increase if nothing is done.
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