Photo Courtesy of The National Post

How you doing? Sniffly? Sneezy? Got a frog in your throat or a crick in the neck? Do you feel, to use the vernacular, like you want to barf up a lung?

Nope. “Fine.” That’s good to hear. And on that account, I say told you so.

With spring springing and the arrival of longer, warmer days and the promise of fun and excitement in the great outdoors, it’s time to take accounting of the pandemic flu season that just past. Or perhaps that should be non-demic.

I was serving on the Community Editorial Board of my local daily, The Guelph Mercury, this time last year. As the coming swine-flu-pocalypse was starting to break, I waxed sarcastically about the media’s attention to hysteria, and how when all the beans are counted, common medical sense will bear out and all the worry will have been for not.
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Premier Gordon Campbell with a bad case of Olympic fever.

A friend of mine recently used her Facebook status to pose the following question: Can some one please explain the harmonized sales tax in layman’s terms? The first comment she attracted was a sincere attempt to explain the details of BC’s newest tax structure without any criticism of the hike. My irritated brain immediately commanded my fingers to type – “Everyone in BC starts to pay 12 percent tax on everything. The government gives themselves raises with the extra money and the rest of it gets mismanaged on things like useless projects that lines the pockets of their friends who own big development companies.” There, I thought to myself after posting my contribution, that should incense a few people, perhaps prompting some serious discussion on the topic and awareness of how little taxpayers know of what is actually going on with their money behind the proverbial closed doors. My self-satisfaction lasted as long as it took for two more comments to appear after my own. The first one read “I like glitter and bunnies.” The second? “I like glitter and bunnies too!”
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It's just a flu and it's just a vaccine.

Just to be clear, I enjoy a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person and, as I spend a good deal of time with my husband the communist and my parents, the super-liberal and the skeptic, I am also especially well disposed to a great deal of distrust for anyone who stands to make money from a negative situation. All of this considered, I would love to believe that the H1N1 vaccine is some international conspiratorial plot to either a) fill tax paying citizens with mercury and poisonous neurotoxins or b) turn out the near-empty pockets of a world economy choked by recession for those last few coins and some lint. But no matter what I read or hear, I just can’t make the leap.
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Last week I found an interactive map on the Globe and Mail website that provides a big-picture look at the number of confirmed H1N1 hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths by province/territory and for Canada as a whole. Today, I found another great resource courtesy of the National Post.

The image illustrates how H1N1 vaccines in Canada originate from GlaxoSmithKline, the sole provider of H1N1 vaccines in Canada, and ultimately reach the general population. The image also indicates the eligibility groups province by province and provides up-to-date information on the roll-out so far.

Here is a summary of the content provided:

British Columbia:

- 1.16 million doses received.
- Over 900,000 injections thus far.
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A negative-stained image of the swine flu virus.

While searching the web for accurate information regarding the number of Canadians impacted by the Swine Flu, I came across a fantastic interactive map on The Globe and Mail site. The map provides a big-picture look at the number of confirmed hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths by province/territory and for Canada as a whole. Although the size of the rings surrounding each providence can be misleading, the facts are not. Here are some of the figures they’ve gathered:

Deaths per million people:

All of Canada: 2.76
Newfoundland and Labrador: 0.00
Prince Edward Island: 0.00
Nova Scotia: 1.07
New Brunswick: 0.00
Quebec: 3.48
Ontario: 2.09
Manitoba: 5.79
Saskatchewan: 4.92
Alberta: 3.35
British Columbia: 2.74
Yukon: 0.00
Northwest Territories: 0.00
Nunavut: 31.85
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The Canadian government’s response to the H1N1 virus has been widely criticized for its perceived lack of foresight regarding its ability to inform and inoculate an increasingly frightened public.

Although the actual logistics of providing the vaccine are largely being seen to by individual provincial health services, Steven Harper’s Conservative government has borne the brunt of attacks about their level of preparedness in managing what the World Health Organization has been calling a global pandemic of so called ‘Swine Flu’ since August 29, 2009.

On October 21, 2009, Health Minister Leona Aglukkaq and Canada’s chief public health officer Dr. David Butler-Jones hosted a joint press conference in Ottawa to urge all Canadians to ward against this new, highly virulent and potentially deadly strain of influenza.

“I’m happy to say that today Health Canada has authorized the H1N1 flu virus vaccine,” said a reassuring Aglukkaq, “This is a milestone in our efforts to fight H1N1 flu virus.”
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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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