Closing the Barn Door in Wuhan, China

"Any disease that can kill two percent of all those it infects, and which is expected to infect at least 40 percent of the population, will be horrible; mathematically, economically, socially and medically."
"Those who have seen actual military service have been quick to remind us to not panic, to slow down, to prepare for a long campaign..."
"Emotions can spread like viruses, so keep a check on yours. I was livid the day when I discovered that hand sanitizer had been ripped off the hospital walls and masks had been stolen by the public."
"We are all vulnerable, and none of us is truly a nihilist or an island."
"We health-care workers are scared but we are also lucky. We have the chance to relearn that human contact is lovely, that caring for others matters, and that finding humour in the everyday is glorious."
Peter G.Brindley, Department of Critical Care Medicine, Department of Anesthesiology and Pain Medicine, Dosseter Ethics Centre, University of Alberta, Edmonton

Tedros Adhanon Ghebreyesus, Director General, WHO

The Director General of the WHO (World Health Organization), Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, holds a powerful position. The WHO is the health advisory arm of the United Nations. Government health departments, hospital administrations and medical associations around the world look to the WHO for direction, and assessments on a global scale. What the WHO, through Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus advises as best practices under trying global health situations, governs the decisions and actions taken by governments and their health advisers around the world.

The purpose of the WHO is to advocate for patient health, to warn governments of possible health threats and the secure actions recommended to deal with them. The critical position of director general is arrived at by an executive board selection. The board is appointed through the decision-making of a rotating appointed World Health Authority comprised of WHO member-state representatives. As such the appointment of the head of the WHO becomes a political decision.

In the instance of Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus, it was the decision of the appointment board to place a non-medical actor in the role of director general. Someone who was a politician in Ethiopia and who before that had been a member of the Tigray People's Liberation Front, in other words, a revolutionary. Whose political party assumed power in Ethiopia in 1991 following a bloody civil war. And when they came to power Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus was given the post of minister of health from 2005 to 2012.

He also served as Ethiopia's foreign minister from 2012 to 2016, before being elected in 2017 to lead the WHO. While foreign minister of Ethiopia he established a good working relation between his country and China. And it was largely China's support in 2017 that gave the impetus to Tedros's election as head of the WHO, a prestigious post but one that should never be held by anyone without a medical degree. In his capacity as director general, Tedros had high praise for China's outstanding handling of the novel coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan, China.

This photo taken on Feb. 18, 2020, shows Medical personnel walk among patients with mild symptoms of the COVID-19 coronavirus at night in the temporary Fangcai Hospital set up in a sports stadium in Wuhan, China.AFP via Getty Images

China's "transparency" was approvingly cited, despite the fact that China deliberately and with full intention suppressed any news of an emerging epidemic, going so far as to threaten Chinese doctors who spoke of a mysterious new respiratory disease leading to pneumonia and death. And when China eventually agreed there was a problem, it downplayed the possibility of human-to-human contact. Which led the WHO to this statement: "Preliminary investigations conducted by the Chinese authorities have found no clear evidence of human-to-human transmission of the novel #coronavirus (2019-nCoV) identified in #Wuhan, #China."

When China expressed outrage that the epidemic was called the 'Chinese coronavirus', identifying it as the source, Tedros from his magisterial height chastened the world, that it was discriminatory and unfair, and came up with an approved title for the virus: COVID-19, approved by China. And when alarmed nations sought to exclude the entrance of Chinese to their borders, he huffed how 'racist' that was, though China allowed seven million people to leave Hubei Province, the hub of the virus, for Chinese New Year.

Now that China is no longer the hot-spot for viral spread, and Italy is suffering a magnitude of deaths that far outpaced China's, perhaps through virus mutation and partly because Italy failed to exert immediate military measures in lockdown, finding China's example unattractive to its culture, and the United States looks set to overtake Italy and Spain in the numbers of the U.S. population infected and dying, China is locking down its borders against the entry of 'foreigners', to ensure the virus is not re-introduced. But that, needless to say, is not racist.

Tedros, while in the running for the WHO top spot, was accused by medical doctor and prominent global health expert from the United Kingdom, David Nabarro, of covering up three cholera epidemics while he was Ethiopia's minister of health, passing them off as cases of "acute watery diarrhea".  And now, while the world awaited direction from the World Health Organization, Tedros kept it waiting, refusing to declare a global pandemic until COVID-19 had infected over 116 countries.

This, while the world was awaiting a signal from the world body to determine how each of the affected governments would need to react to protect their populations, basing their pandemic response plan and how it would be implemented, once they received word from the WHO. So, like every other arm of the United Nations and the United Nations itself, corrupt and self-serving nations have handily succeeded in wagging the tail that controls the dog's mind.

"As reports of the spread of confirmed and suspected cases of the novel coronavirus in other countries grew in the past several weeks, numerous airlines took the precaution to temporarily cancel their flights to and from China. Tedros, while officially declaring the Wuhan novel coronavirus as a “Public Health Emergency of International Concern (PHEIC),” (in 2009 the WHO called it a Level 6 Global Pandemic), sharply and repeatedly criticized other countries for allowing air travel to China to be cut. On February 7 the China Peoples’ Daily reported Tedros stating, his disapproval of imposing travel bans on China, stressing that “such restrictions can have the effect of increasing fear and stigma, with little public health benefit."
F. William Engdahl Global Research, February 20, 2020 

Men stand on a bridge over the Yangtze River in Wuhan on March 30 after travel restrictions into the city were eased following more than two months of lockdown. (AFP)

 

The Unthinkable -- SARS/CoV-2 Deaths

"A global pandemic of this scale was inevitable. In recent years, hundreds of health experts have written books, white papers, and op-eds warning of the possibility. Bill Gates has been telling anyone who would listen, including the 18 million viewers of his TED Talk. In 2018, I wrote a story for The Atlantic arguing that America was not ready for the pandemic that would eventually come. In October, the Johns Hopkins Center for Health Security war-gamed what might happen if a new coronavirus swept the globe. And then one did. Hypotheticals became reality. 'What if?' became 'Now what'?"
"'No matter what, a virus [like SARS-CoV-2] was going to test the resilience of even the most well-equipped health systems', says Nahid Bhadelia, an infectious-diseases physician at the Boston University School of Medicine. More transmissible and fatal than seasonal influenza, the new coronavirus is also stealthier, spreading from one host to another for several days before triggering obvious symptoms. To contain such a pathogen, nations must develop a test and use it to identify infected people, isolate them, and trace those they’ve had contact with. That is what South Korea, Singapore, and Hong Kong did to tremendous effect. It is what the United States did not."
Ed Yong, The Atlantic 

"Looking at what we're seeing now, we're looking at 100,000 to 200,000 deaths."
"But I don't just think that we need to make a projection when it's such a moving target, that you could so easily be wrong."
"[Measures like the travel advisory to residents of the greater New York area] will ultimately help stop the virus."
"The original proposal was to consider seriously an enforceable quarantine. After discussions with the president, we made it clear, and he agreed, that it would be much better to do what's called a strong advisory." 
"I think it's entirely conceivable that if we do not mitigate to the extent we are trying to do is that you could reach that number."
"I'm not against releasing the restrictions. I'm actually for it in an appropriate place. But I don't recommend it unless we have the tools in place in real time." 
National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases Director, Anthony Fauci 

"We are asking every single governor and every single mayor to prepare like New York is preparing now."
"What we're trying to say to everyone is: when this virus comes to your metro area, please stay in your metro area where your care can be provided, because it's spreading virus more quickly around the United States." 
"This virus, we think, can spread with a lot of asymptomatic and mild cases. It's not until it gets into the vulnerable groups that you start to see the hospitalizations. If you wait for that, if the metros and rural areas don't take care now, by the time you see it, it has penetrated your community pretty significantly. And that's what we're concerned about. And that's why you have to prepare, even though you think it's not there."
Dr.Deborah Birx, White House coronavirus response co-ordinator 

"[There is a 15-page 'road map' outlining ways to transition from [sweeping mitigation strategies] to new approaches."
"A sustained reduction in the number of daily cases [over 14 days would be a trigger for lifting some of the measures in specific places]."
"It is too early to lift these measures [two weeks from the present]."
Dr.Scott Gottlieb, resident fellow, American Enterprise Institute

A Samaritan's Purse crew works on building an emergency field hospital equipped with a respiratory unit in New York's Central Park across from the Mount Sinai Hospital, Sunday, March 29, 2020.

Formerly head of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, Dr.Gottlieb, now with the American Enterprise Institute. introduced a "road map in reopening" the United States in distinct phases. This, at a time when the infection rate in the U.S. is rising toward its peak, and at present stands at 164,121 infections and 3,153 deaths. U.S.President Donald Trump, conscious of the drain on American business spoke optimistically last week of the current situation in the pause of business-as-usual as the novel coronavirus cuts a swath through the U.S., with plans to launch by Easter.

Dr.Gottlieb and his colleagues expressed their expert opinion that various states have little requirement to be ordered to loosen restrictions by the White House. The recently released AEI report outlines steps that could be chosen once COVID-19 transmission comes under control in various regions, steps that were specifically linked to both the federal government and the states and health-care partners, public and private, working together for the common goal of restoring normalcy.

In the very midst of the pandemic's devastatingly-wide infectious rate, along with the deaths of so many Americans, a total of 100,000 to 200,000 deaths at peak is envisaged, and this toll is viewed by the president as a modest success in that government action has ensured that infinitely greater numbers of deaths -- some spoke of up to a million and beyond -- had been averted under his guidance. A stroke of good fortune whose personal perceptions and touted results are obviously not shared by all experts and commentators.

The reality is that a death toll spoken of by Dr.Fauci extends far beyond anything experienced by China, where the pandemic originated, and which has a population four times that of the United States. Even Italy's dread death rate and galloping infection rate that has swamped its hospitals and overwhelmed the capacity of its health-care community, which has seen a death rate over that which China experienced is set to be outpaced by the U.S.

Yet according to Dr.Fauci and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, discussions with the White House coronavirus task force led to President Trump's ultimate decision to set aside a quarantine for parts of New York, New Jersey and Connecticut, in stark contrast to the strict lockdowns seen in Singapore, Hong Kong and China itself which succeeded in halting the internal spread of the coronavirus. As a result, South Korea, China, Singapore and Hong Kong are returning to normal, stamping out embers of the virus, while looking out for recurrences.

The Navy hospital ship USNS Comfort passes lower Manhattan on its way to docking in New York, Monday, March 30, 2020.

COVID-19 Vaccine Search in Laboratories World-Wide

"Typically, the first in-human study tends to be quite small, 40 or 50 people."
"Obviously the first human studies are done in young, healthy people, where they are the least likely to get into trouble if anything goes wrong, with any of the vaccines, including ours."
"We want to move forward in a very careful, deliberate way. But you have older people and people with respiratory and cardiac diseases who are dying at stunningly high rates when they get infected --we're talking 16, 25, 28 percent mortality."
"We have some pretty good ideas about why those vaccine-enhanced diseases occurred [with the previous use of RSV vaccines causing 'vaccine-enhanced disease'] and so we are quite specifically designing our vaccine to avoid that possibility."
Dr.Brian Ward, epidemiologist, professor, department of medicine, McGill University

"People are going to say you've got to be cautious. But other people will say, 'it seems to have worked in the study group -- we gotta go."
"I think we have to go somewhat faster, because the real answer to this plague is vaccination."
Arthur Caplan, bioethicist, Langone Health, New York University

"It's kind of pathetically funny that great vaccine work done by scientists with SARS and MER, both times the taps were shut off. It's hard to even get them into animal studies let alone clinical trials, because pretty well governments say, 'well, this disease is gone, why are we funding it'?"
"[It's different this time] It's amazing. I've never seen in my life, in my career, this much focus and this much effort being put toward so many vaccine candidates for one disease."
"It's fantastic. And I think some good will come out of this. But nothing like this can happen in a time frame that some governments would like to see happen."
"The public has to put a bit of faith and trust in us that nobody is trying to take short cuts where it is going to be more detrimental to the population than the disease itself."
"We're so much more advanced in ethics and understanding toxicity than we were back in the '40s that I think there's not a lot we need to worry about. We need to worry about all those that will succumb to this disease."
Dr.Eric Arts, Canada Research Chair in HIV pathogenesis and viral control, Western University

A COVID-19 assessment centre is set up outside of Scarborough Health Network – Birchmount Hospital on Saturday March 21, 2020. Veronica Henri/Toronto Sun/Postmedia Network

Professor Brian Ward is chief medical officer for Medicago Inc. based in Quebec, using plants with an aim to producing a vaccine for the global novel coronavirus pandemic streaming across the globe. This pathogen is of the same type as SARS, with some similarities and as-yet-unknown differences. It is not as deadly as SARS, but it infects at a higher rate and replicates wildly, searching for new hosts to enable it to continue replicating and infecting.

He explains the purpose of the coronavirus (crownvirus) "spikes" as proteins on the virus outer surface to clamp onto a human cell where it changes from its club appearance to a spear, fusing with the cell membrane's genetic material to enter the cell and replicate. The copies it makes go on to spread to other cells, and when copies are shed externally, the process continues when the virus infects other human hosts. A day following the free release of the genetic blueprint that Chinese scientists had placed on line for SARS-CoV-2, Medicago began its hunt for a vaccine.

In twenty days' time Medicago scientists produced a virus-like particle (VLP) mimicking the virus structure, stripped of harmful genetic material to make them non-infectious, but capable of 'tricking' the immune system into believing it has discovered a virus to generate enough antibodies primed to attack the real virus. Plans to begin testing the company's vaccine are set for July. Which seems a long way off, given the situation the world finds itself in.

Medicago

A galloping virus whose properties are still not completely understood, for which there is no cure, no treatment, no protocol to protect the public, no therapy of any use once it is transmitted, has now infected over a half million people worldwide, and produced close to 25,000 deaths. No one is spared, from the  young to the old, the wealthy and the poor, people of social substance and blue collar workers, people on welfare, and world leaders alike. The democratization of ill health.

This is the sudden presence of an entirely new virus, a pathogen of frightening properties, a zoonotic that transferred a virus that inhabits animals in an exchange between animal and human through a barbaric cuisine-cultural practise of using live wild animals in food preparation and pharmaceuticals. This is not a new situation, but one that has occurred previously and with increasing frequency, challenging nature to do her worst through human practises that offend nature itself.

Now research laboratories around the world are focused on discovering a way to stop this virus in its belligerently raging tracks, coming up with an anti-infectious agent capable of safely vaccinating hundreds of millions of people globally against the ongoing predation of a mysterious, debilitating, sometimes-deadly virus. Now, the need to adequately fund research to secure the health safety of the world's population has become a high priority of governments, which had prior to this denied the funding of ongoing vaccine research.

Moderna based in Massachusetts initiated their first human trials on a possible COVID-19 vaccine a week ago, hoping for initial results to arrive in possibly two months even though a commercially available vaccine will take at least 12 to 18 months. The possibility exists, however that a promising vaccine might be released on an emergency basis to inoculate health care workers at an earlier date.

Dr. Sonia Macieiewski samples proteins at Novavax labs in Rockville, Maryland on March 20, 2020, one of the labs developing a vaccine for the corona virus, COVID-19. ANDREW CABALLERO-REYNOLDS/AFP via Getty Images

False Conspiracy Mongering : China's Novel Coronavirus

"The Chinese Communist Party sees itself as engaged in a global competition over the narrative surrounding COVID-19, its origins and government responses."
"The disinformation, the conspiracy theory peddling and the wild and unsubstantiated accusations are prime examples."
We have not seen the last Li Wenliang. The question his case raises is whether the next Li Wenliang will even have the opportunity to send that first message."
Julian Gewirtz, The Harvard Academy for International and Area Studies

"People of the world have all witnessed that it is under the leadership of the CPC [Communist Party of China] that the Chinese people achieved independence, freedom and liberation and made enormous progress in national development."
"It is also under the leadership of the CPC that the Chinese national united as one and speedily fought against COVID-19, buying precious time for the global response."
Chinese Embassy, Ottawa

A doctor examines a patient who is infected by the coronavirus at a hospital in Wuhan in China's central Hubei province.

STR/AFP via Getty Images

A University of Toronto Internet watchdog, The Citizen Lab, had reported the blocking of key words by a Chinese livestreaming platform in late December, related to the coronavirus outbreak. Following that, a broader censorship followed. And Wuhan, the epicentre of the novel coronavirus outbreak in China, was sealed into military-style lockdown on January 23. Its eleven million people were virtually prisoners in their own homes, as the frightening new virus leading to pneumonia and death for many, swept through the city and the region.

To the world's misfortune, that lockdown came too late. China's attempts to shield knowledge of the new coronavirus from the outside world led it to ignore the impending disaster, to allow millions of Wuhan residents to fan out from the city during the Chinese New Year in the customary tradition of returning home to visit with family. Those visitors took with them an alarming infectious rate, not only within China, but to the world outside as well.

In Canada, the first case of COVID-19 emerged a mere three days later, on January 25 when a traveller who had been to Wuhan returned to Canada. More latterly, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman, Lijian Zhao, has used the specious auspices of a Montreal-based, conspiracy-theory group called Centre for Research on Globalization to 'legitimize' its contention that COVID-19 did not emerge in China, at all. It was deliberately brought by U.S. soldiers last November to Wuhan with the intention of initiating a vicious viral war.

A pangolin, mammal thought a possible intermediate host for the coronavirus.

This conspiracy-pushing group that honours decrepit versions of 9/11 that not Islamist terrorists but the CIA conspired to destroy the World Trade Centers, delighted Mr.Lijian in its take on the Wuhan virus, who then tweeted "It might be US army who brought the epidemic to Wuhan. Be transparent!"
Beijing followed up by recent suggestions the virus could have originated in Italy. And now Beijing is ennobling the doctor they first criminalized, who was arrested after alerting his colleagues about a mysterious new type of pneumonia showing up in Wuhan hospitals.

And while China receives praise from the World Health Organization over its self-described timely and efficient halt to the spread of the novel coronavirus, the U.S. is shaping up as an epicentre of the viral contamination, following Italy's and Spain's ongoing crisis in trying to control the runaway contagion. This new virus is a close cousin of SARS, so much so it is classified as SARS/cov-2. SARS, another high-death-rate virus which originated in a Chinese wet-market, did not have the astonishing infectious impetus of COVID-19.

Closed Huanan Seafood Wholesale Market, Wuhan.  Noel Celis/AFP via Getty Images

With the emergence of the novel coronavirus and patients admitted to hospital with a mystery pneumonia, health care workers wee infected, among them eight doctors, including ophthalmologist Li Wenliang, all who were brought in by police to be accused of spreading false rumours, and forced to humbly recant. Li contracted the virus and died of it in February. When, eventually officials made public acknowledgement of the virus they claimed it was not serious. Which led to a holiday banquet attended by 40,000 people taking place in Wuhan on January 13, and the rest is history.

Between the banquet and the millions of holiday-goers leaving Wuhan the explosion of infection began globally. Live wild game sold at 'wet' markets spawned over the years various zoonotic transmissions from animal host to human victim. This was just another one, with an explosive spread, and a deadly message. Beijing has been busy crafting a new version of events; not only that the virus originated elsewhere, but that Chinese authorities took immediate remedial action to counter its spread.

A worker in a protective suit at the closed seafood market in Wuhan, Hubei Province, China, January 10, 2020. The seafood market is linked to the outbreak of the pneumonia caused by the new strain of coronavirus, but some patients diagnosed with the new coronavirus deny exposure to this market. (Stringer/Reuters)

Funerals: Not The Events To Attend

"We were all in a period of adjustment and learning new things about how to cope with the coronavirus and containing its spread. It's become a mini-epicentre here."

"Everyone comes in and they're all over each other and everyone is calling out to each other and slapping each other on the back and hugging. Normally I'd shake hands and hug half the people there."

"I was very careful not to shake hands with any of the people who came, including with the family themselves. They understood. They were just grateful they were able to gather and have a funeral."

Father Paul Lundrigan, St. John’s on March 16. (CBC)

"We need to now make sure families understand this is so necessary for their protection, especially families who are grieving."

"They're so emotionally charged, they're just not thinking about keeping physical distance and washing hands and they're crying over each other. That's the quickest way to spread this disease, people who have wet noses and wet eyes and wiping their eyes and then touching each other, holding each other and kissing each other."

"It's probably one of the most dangerous places to be [at a funeral]."

Reverend Paul Lundrigan, Catholic priest, St.John's Newfoundland

There were two funerals in St.John's on March 15 and 16, at the W.J.Caul Funeral Home, overlooking the city harbour. Over 60 of the province's 82 cases of COVID-19 have been traced to the funeral home. Someone among the funeral attendees had an active, infectious case of the novel coronavirus and had attended both funerals. Someone who had returned from a trip abroad. Newfoundlanders are emotional, demonstrative people, somewhat in that regard, like Italians, where in Italy COVID-19 has devastated the country.

As a result of the fact that a lot of people are very neighbourly in Newfoundland in a way not quite seen elsewhere in the country, it seems obvious now that funerals and funeral wakes are just the places where viral transmission can very readily take place. Reverend Paul Lundrigan presided over one of the funerals and himself visited during the wakes that overlapped at the funeral home. And where he would on normal occasions take part in physical contact as a way to offer comfort at such times of grief and stress, on this particular occasion he withheld that contact.

That was in view of the fact that a health emergency had been declared. At the present time Father Lundrigan is in self-isolation. He was not among those who contracted the novel coronavirus. He has no symptoms of COVID-19, no coughing, no fever, and most certainly has not experienced any difficulty breathing. Unlike many others who attended the funerals and wakes. Where between March 15 and 17 transmission of the virus took place, at the funeral home. At the time, health regulations had limited the number of people at gatherings to 50.

Out of both services that overlapped, the theory was that among the funeral staff someone may have been a vector, but people in the community felt that someone who arrived for one funeral, knowing members of the second family's funeral stayed behind for both even though people were making an effort to avoid close contact. People would move back a row of pews if someone else sat in front of them, or they would move to the other end of a pew. But there was evidently sufficient contact to spread the virus.

And some of those who tested positive for COVID-19 after attending the funerals also spread the virus to health-care workers, including paramedics. Several days later the funeral home posted a public notice denying chatter of any problems at its facilities: "We have been in touch with the Department of Health and have been advised that no COVID-19 infection has been linked in any way to staff, family, or visitors."

The following day the health department advised the home that an individual who tested positive for COVID-19 had attended services for both funerals, which led the home to contact all involved, including musicians and pastors, including Reverend Lundrigan. The home is now closed until at least April 1. "The health of those we serve, and the greater community, is of utmost importance", the funeral home stated. 

And the Archdiocese of St.John's has stopped public funeral services altogether for the present. Should a burial be required, a brief graveside blessing is to be held in the company of a few immediate family members, only. At some future date, 'celebrations of life' ceremonies may be resumed.

A letter from Archbishop Peter Hundt on Monday to the Archdiocese of St. John's stated clergy will no longer preside over public funeral services, amid the COVID-19 pandemic. (Shutterstock/GreenAppleNZ)

"It has had an impact on workers in the health-care system."

"We are following in the footsteps, in some respects, of other jurisdictions. There have been outbreak clusters around a retirement home in B.C., there was a convention of professionals in Vancouver and a bonspiel in [Edmonton] that have all generated similar concerns."

John Haggie, Newfoundland Health Minister

Secure Agricultural Products, Then Comes BathroomTissue ... an Issue of Priorities

"We are working with our health department federally, and with the provinces on the rules ... but I can tell you that it will be the responsibility of the employers to make sure that they comply."

"Otherwise, they could lose their privilege to have new foreign temporary workers in the coming year. So, this is definitely something that they won't play with."

Agriculture Minister Marie Claude Bibeau

"There are so many cogs in this wheel. But the protocol being developed is very detailed. There will be no stone left unturned."

"No one wants a virus to infect their workforce and shut down their farm. Everyone is highly incentivized to do this right."

I expect to have something substantive soon. Every day we don't bring in workers is a lost day of production and that's an issue."

Mary Robinson, president, Canadian Federation of Agriculture

"There were supposed to be four people coming today. We've already seeded two greenhouses. If we don't get workers this week we won't seed a third."

"This is a $5-billion industry. If we don't get this sorted out now there could be major damage."

Ken Forth, broccoli farmer, chair, labour section, Ontario Fruit and Vegetable Growers' Association

Pfenning's Organic Farms in New Hamburg, Ontario, employs Canadians and Jamaican migrant farm workers to work its fields and packing warehouse. The owners would like to see its Jamaican workers afforded better pathways to becoming permanent residents and have open work permits that give workers the ability to easily change employers. Jim Rankin/Toronto Star

Major damage? As in, non-availability of vitally important, basic foodstuffs? A nation that is not self-sufficient in food, is one that has no interest in protecting and conserving the most vital aspect of daily life; the capacity to feed itself. The old agricultural version of a nation's food stability was one of small farms, of farming communities, of a dedication to the land and its resources, when a large proportion of a population was directly involved in basic food production.

All that has changed, with the introduction of large-scale farming. Where a farming family once was able to perform all the necessary work, hiring on a few extra locals to help during harvest, depending on neighbouring farms to lend a hand in a general atmosphere of farming neighbourliness, these new, massive farms are hugely dependent on the temporary importation of farm workers from third-world countries.

Canadians, like all 'developed', wealthy countries of the world, fail to view hard farm labour as an attractive profession. Fewer people are prepared to commit to the back-breaking work and long hours that farming require. Ironically, when fears of goods shortages on the consumer market ensued as a result of the spread worldwide of the novel coronavirus that emerged in the 'wet' markets of Wuhan, China where live wild animals are sold for human consumption, and the zoonotic we now know as COVID-19 spread across the globe, it was of all consumer products, bathroom tissue that people panicked over.

Temporary foreign workers, such as these Filipino workers at the Tignish Fisheries processing plant in P.E.I, and seasonal agricultural workers, many from Mexico, Guatemala, and the Caribbean, are critical to Canada's food production. The coronavirus and travel restrictions into Canada meant the tens of thousands of such workers might not be able to come. The government now says those with valid work visas will be allowed in. (CBC)

What good is toilet paper in the absence of food? Real food. Agricultural products, not the processed and pre-prepared quasi-food that most people mistakenly regard as nutritious quality food. But whether it's whole food, unprocessed, and freshly grown fruits and vegetables, all self-respecting and cautious nations of the world should be prepared to do anything to preserve their food supply. In the absence of Canadians themselves willing to perform hard farm labour, Canada looks to temporary workers from abroad.

Producers of lettuce, asparagus, and all manner of fruits and vegetables are now faced with the prospect of quarantining thousands of seasonal workers brought to Canada to work on farms at the very time that the country is in general lockdown, guarding against novel coronavirus transmission. Yet, to safeguard domestic food production, the industry is in dire need of workers from abroad, themselves anxious to come to Canada to earn money they can send back to their impoverished communities.

Protocols to mark out how farmers can safely transport workers from airports, then conduct mandatory 14-day quarantines are under way, along with discussions with foreign governments that have taken their own precautionary steps against COVID-19 by shutting their borders hoping to delay the rate of viral infections are in the works. Some of the details to be guaranteed are the supply to foreign temporary workers of safety equipment and protective wear against the virus. 

The Caribbean, Guatemala and Mexico supply about 60,000 workers, to enter Canada annually to seed and harvest crops. Some 4,000 workers have already arrived, with thousands more expected to arrive weekly until the fall harvest. But when the federal government barred all international visitors to Canada last week with some exceptions, the situation looked dire to farmers until the government relented, allowing seasonal and temporary foreign workers entry.

The issue is complicated by the fact that other governments have imposed their own travel restrictions, making the entry of seasonal employees all that more complex. Guatemala for example has halted all flights in and out of the country as a measure to slow down the transmission of COVID-19. Thousands of acres of broccoli, lettuce, asparagus and other vegetables must be seeded and harvested and without the presence of foreign workers that need will be seriously impeded.

"These are details we are still working on and, hopefully, we will have the proper protocols in place shortly."

"The most important thing is to stop the spread of this virus and take all the necessary steps. That is the only way we are going to get out of this."

Matthias Oppenlaender, chair. Grape Growers of Ontario

Do As I Say : Don't Look At Me!

"A bonspiel is not an essential activity."

"I know our health-care providers are under a lot of pressure and scrutiny right now, but hard not to wonder why this event took place."

Timothy Caulfield, Canada Research Chair in health law and policy, professor, faculties of law and public health, University of Alberta

"There have been no deaths linked to this bonspiel. No patients have tested positive with COVID-19 to date."

"At this time, no other patients appear to have been exposed from cases to the bonspiel."

"[Any disciplinary action would be from the provincial physicians' colleges; the focus is on] caring for patients."

"It is not on disciplining physicians, particularly at a time when we need them the most."

Alberta government statement

Curling rocks are shown Friday, Feb. 10, 2017, during a media demonstration the day before the opening ceremonies of the USA Curling Nationals in Everett, Wash. (THE CANADIAN PRESS/AP, Ted S. Warren)

We are so hugely -- as a public faced with the fears of an infectious global pandemic that has skulked its way into Canada from its emergent home in Wuhan, China -- dependent on the army of skilled medical professionals to care for us in illness and restore us to health, if and when possible. Physicians, secure in their professional knowledge, their practised experience, their diagnostic and healing skills, are the most trusted group of professionals the world over. For the most part, they earn that trust.

But as humans with all the failings of any human being they can at times spectacularly fail that trust.

And this is precisely what occurred when a decision was made to proceed with an annual curling event that brings together health professionals from the Western provinces of Canada. Where, despite knowing that COVID-19 has a swift and deadly spread, and to deter that spread as much as possible people should maintain a safe distance from others to self-protect and protect others from the highly infectious novel coronavirus, 72 people with medical degrees chose to attend the event.

Now three of the attendees from Alberta are known to have become infected with the virus at the tournament that took place in Edmonton. Before they became aware that they were infected, and thus vectors, they had contact with patients and with their colleagues. Twelve in fact, of the 47 Alberta health care workers at the bonspiel which took place between March 11 and 14, tested positive for COVID-19. A situation that calls for them to self-isolate for at least two weeks, placing them outside the health-care system as patients, not as badly-needed practitioners.

Three of the twelve -- physicians in Red Deer, Alberta -- had physical contact with patients and co-workers so that 58 patients were attended to during the course of normal medical business by the doctors involved before they became symptomatic. Add other possible infections counting the 97 other health professionals these doctors' indiscretion may have contaminated. And if so, unbeknownst to those 97, their contact with their own patients would have rippled beyond the initial contact. This is how contamination spirals.

This situation was first brought to light when Dr.Allan Woo, head of the Saskatchewan Medical Association publicly revealed that he had been infected with the novel coronavirus due to his attendance at the bonspiel in Edmonton. Now, Saskatchewan has announced that 11 of their 22 health professionals attending the event also tested positive for COVID-19. Three doctors in Manitoba are self-isolating, having attended the event. 

Well, so much for the wisdom of doctors. And wait, other medical professionals as well have proven to be as unwary -- as when earlier in the month the Pacific Dental Conference that took place in Vancouver at which close to 15,000 dentists and hygienists attended also appears to have resulted in a COVID-19 outbreak. Reports of infections are beginning to emerge, one in particular, the death of a dentist who attended that event.

Two people from the University of Calgary’s Cumming School of Medicine tested positive for COVID-19 after attending an Edmonton curling bonspiel that played host to more than 50 physicians last weekend, the university said in an email to faculty and students Friday. The University of Calgary is pictured on Tuesday February 26, 2019. Gavin Young/Postmedia

Oh, Blessed Russia!

"While the whole world is facing an outbreak of a new coronavirus, Russia is facing an outbreak of a community-acquired pneumonia."
"And, as usual, we're facing the lie of the authorities."
Anastasia Vasilyeva, president, Doctors' Alliance trade union

"We see quite a lot of people who are staying at home and just not getting tested -- people who have returned from abroad."
"They're feeling fine, thank God."
"The testing volume is very low and nobody knows the real picture."
"In reality, there are far more people who are infected."
Sergei Sobyanin, mayor, Moscow 

"How much biomaterial can be sent to one laboratory?"
"It will simply drown. It is absolutely not possible."
Dr.Vsevolod Shurkhay, Moscow neurosurgery clinic

"I do not think that at the moment there is any space for testing speculation about the quality."
"The WHO is working closely with the institute producing the test .. "
"We are looking into the comparative and the quality of testing, and for the moment, there are no major concerns."
Melita Vujnovic, Russia representative, World Health Organization

A man kisses the relics of John the Baptist in Kazan cathedral in central St. Petersburg, Russia, on March 15, 2020. As late as Sunday, Orthodox parishioners were lining up to kiss church icons without wiping them down, but more stringent measures to limit the spread of the coronavirus are coming into place Wednesday, closing the country's borders to foreigners and limiting indoor gatherings to fewer than 50 people. (Anton Vaganov/Reuters)

The 149 million people living in Russia are grateful to Vladimir Putin for keeping them safe and secure from all manner of threats emanating from outside the Russian Federation to target them. For the most part, military threats. And there now also is a global pandemic threatening them, as it threatens people vulnerable to its predatory invasion of the human body in its search for hosts where the virus can find one new haven after another allowing it to replicate without end and contaminate endlessly.

But not in Russia. Other countries may be ravaged by the COVID-19 pandemic but Russians can be assured that their borders have been locked tight and no threats may enter. They have it on the highest authority, the very man whom they will permit to rule Russia until his days on this mortal coil run dry. In the entire population of 149 million a mere 495 confirmed cases have been diagnosed. And possibly one death. How enviable, when countries like Iran, Italy and Spain are suffering losses threatening to supercede those of China itself.

"In Russia, things are not like they are in Europe. Things are going along in their normal way," "[Though the virus has been inflicted on Russia by foreigners -- but the country is successfully fighting back.]"
"It's big, scrupulous work, but the results are clear."
 Dmitry Kiselyov,  pro-Kremlin, Vesti Nedeli (News of the Week)

Few novel coronavirus cases or deaths associated with them, but the peculiar coincidence of a steep rise nationally in cases of pneumonia, that some doctors in their ignorance have the gall to claim may be associated with COVID-19. And where health-care workers are outfitted in hazmat suits when treating novel coronavirus patients, but not in their treatment of pneumonia patients. Which irritates Anastasia Vasilyeva, a supporter of opposition leader Alexei Navalny, no end.

According to President Putin "the situation in our country looks a lot better" than what is transpiring elsewhere, in Europe, because Russia has the situation "under control". So well controlled that when he visited one of Moscow's coronavirus hospitals Mr. Putin was fully geared in a hazmat suit. In Moscow, a 37 percent increase was seen in pneumonia as compared to a year earlier, according to Russia's statistics agency, Rossstat.

 Vladimir Putin chairs a meeting  (Sputnik/Mikhail Klimentyev/Kremlin/Reuters)

The Russian population, devout to their orthodox piety and trust in their president, appears not to be afflicted with the kind of deep concerns and fears evidenced elsewhere. Of course, some precautions have been taken; the closing of borders, cancellation of sporting events, schools placed on hold, but as for large-scale commercial closures, curfews and social isolation, quite unneeded. So much so that the government has felt free to charitably dispatch medical equipment along with "teams of Russian specialists" to aid Italy.

According to the WHO's Russia representative, Russia's success in quelling the infection rate is entirely due to its having taken early preventive steps to close the border with China and recommending two-week periods of self-isolation for anyone leaving a coronavirus hub to enter Russia. Roughly 195,000 coronavirus tests have been administered, and 94,000 people are under medical observation.

The 79-year-old woman whose death had been attributed to COVID-19 really died from a blood clot, and did not represent a coronavirus fatality, according to Moscow authorities. And the WHO has nothing but admiration for Moscow's resolve to ensure that the situation does not get out of hand, congratulating Mr. Putin for his steady hand and wise decision-making, just as it had China and President Xi.

No workers at Moscow's coronavirus 'hotline' call centre were wearing masks when CBC News visited and many were sitting within two metres of each other. (Chris Brown/CBC)

Gender Differences in Emotional Responses to Impending Danger

"Having done a little bit of research myself, looking at gender differences when it comes to risk perception, there's a fairly clear literature that says that men are just less likely to perceive risk as acutely as women."

"Men are much less likely to be worrying, but they're also less likely to be staying home, not going out and not interacting with other people -- basically not doing social distancing -- than women."

"That 30 to 44-age group across the board, whether men or female, are the most worried about this. So I think it is partly a parental driver. I think that parental instinct in young dads, it reflects that huge gap between those two  younger cohorts."

"We can't assume that these messages from public health agencies are actually getting through to everybody. It's hard to persuade people until  you're personally affected by it. And by then it's too late."

David Coletto, CEO, Abacus Data

While groceries and pharmacies and other designated essential public services are slated to remain open in Ontario and Quebec, all other non-essential enterprises have been ordered to close. Both governments have indicated they are prepared to enforce those closures should there be pushback from those involved, in the greater interests of protecting the public at large from the spread of the infectious novel coronavirus.

"This is not the time for half-measures. This decision [to close all schools and universities among other public institutions] was not made lightly and the gravity of this order does not escape me, but as I have said since day one, we will and we must take all steps necessary to stop the spread of COVOD-19."

Ontario Premier Doug Ford

"I am going to make sure that we continue to follow all recommendations of public health officers, particularly around staying at home wherever possible and self-isolation and social distancing", reiterated Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, himself remaining in self-isolation, while his wife is recovering from the novel coronavirus she contracted while on a trip to the U.K. The federal government's latest revelatory update of 1,474 coronavirus cases in Canada, with 20 people dead, is sobering.

The survey revealing the vast difference between the attitudes of men and women to the gravity of the spread of COVID-19 indicates that 49 percent of women respondents are very worried, with 29 percent somewhat concerned about the outbreak, while 30 percent of men are very worried and 33 percent are somewhat worried. And while 25 percent of women are either a little or not at all worried, 37 percent of men fall into that same category.

Notably, men are less likely to take the advice of health officials to self-isolate in a push to mitigate the effects of the pandemic. The poll also highlighted a difference between baby boomers and young people, each accusing the other group of being the most intransigent over following public health advice. Both young men and older men resist health advice and the need to self-isolate. And then there is the group of men aged 30 to 44 who have seriously absorbed the virus warnings.

So while forty percent of men age 30 to 44 years are very worried, a number double that of men aged 18 to 29 who feel similarly, the former age demographic is linked to their status as fathers of young children. That there are large groups of people for whom the presence of an unknown and dangerous infectious virus sweeping through populations feel unconcerned is worrisome indeed. As is the anecdotal stories of young people assembling in large groups and partying, defying reality.

In this file photo, people walk and cycle on the seawall between English Bay and Sunset Beach, in Vancouver, on Sunday, March 22, 2020. THE CANADIAN PRESS/Darryl Dyck

Crisis Management East Asian Style

"It's not too late to implement some of these things. This is going to be going on for months ...There's always value from learning from others who've had success."
"I can say this because I'm [ethnic] Asian but they're generally pretty obedient people. I find that in a lot of Western countries there's this philosophy of individualism."
"Canadians are very nice and we assume that everybody will follow the rules ... [but] we might have been too lax."
Dr.Jeff Kwong, family physician, public-health professor, University of Toronto

"It's just hard for people watching Canadians not take things seriously, knowing that in Singapore they took it very seriously from the start and therefore have the outbreak under control."
Ben Beingessner, vice-principal, Singapore American School

"It's like crime-solving."
"More or less, it's similar kinds of skills required -- piecing information from different people and different places together."
Assistant police superintendent Johnny Lim, Singapore

"I haven't felt that I've been inconvenienced. Shops and restaurants are open ... I'm able to go outside, I'm able to live my life pretty much normally right now."
"I'm not kidding when I say that everywhere you go, your temperature is taken."
"I'm normally a very pessimistic person by nature. But, strangely at this time, I'm very positive. I feel safe here."
Sandra Johnson, 32, Canadian expat, Mississauga, Ontario, in Singapore

Commuters wearing face masks as a preventive measure against the COVID-19 coronavirus look at their mobile phones on the Mass Rapid Transit train in Singapore on March 18, 2020.Catherine Lai/AFP via Getty Images

Singapore, like Taiwan, another Asian country linked to the coronavirus that emerged in Wuhan China, took immediate aggressive measures to ensure the novel coronavirus was kept under control. No fewer than 2.7 million visitors from China arrived in Taiwan in 2019, yet the country saw a mere 135 cases and experienced two deaths as opposed to the 846 cases and ten deaths that have taken place in Canada. Through innovation and determination the kind of mass social disruption that has roiled Europe and is now moving steadily through North America has been avoided in both Asian countries.

The economy remains intact. Schools, businesses, stores and restaurants are all open for business despite some restrictions. The difference seems to be that both Taiwan and Singapore took immediate steps to strictly isolate those who were seen to have, or might have, COVID-19. International travel came under tight control. And health and security authorities diligently pursued people who had contact with the infected.

In Singapore, police officers were deployed to track down contacts with the use of cellphones keeping tabs on people in quarantine. Taiwanese citizens' recent international travel histories were merged with their digital health insurance files to enable doctors and pharmacists to have access. Stiff fines were levied for violations of quarantine. A recent journal paper published by three Singapore doctors commented "relative normalcy of day-to-day life has been maintained".

Commuters pack a metro train in downtownTaipei, Taiwan on March 18, 2020 in Taipei, Taiwan. Paula Bronstein/Getty Images

The 4,000-student Singapore American School has taken steps to avoid crowding, but little else has changed in the operation of the school, pointed out Regina native Ben Beingessner. Like Toronto, both Singapore and Taiwan had undergone previous experience with the SARS outbreaks in 2003, planning to make certain they would not be as seriously impacted again by another infectious disease. Both carried out plans to prepare for the eventuality of another epidemic; it appears that Toronto failed to, to the full extent required.

Dr.Kwong from University of Toronto, sees some potential barriers to Canada adapting to a similar approach to those that the Asian countries chose, to control the epidemic; for one, chronic underfunding of public health in Canada, and in addition a population that feels unease with government control, unlike Asian populations. The obvious reality is that both Taiwan and Singapore have military-type governments to manage health care universally. Canada's federal system works with 13 separate health jurisdictions each delivering various responses to the pandemic.

"Just be alert and take early action to stop the spread of the virus", was the response by Jason Wang, a Stanford University professor with a paper recently published on Taiwan's COVID-19 success, who believes no real reason exists that Western nations cannot take similar action. "Whether the intensive nature of these policies can be maintained until the end of the epidemic and continue to be well received by the public is unclear", his paper concludes.

Taiwan set up a national health command centre shortly following SARS, including a central epidemic command centre. Extensive measures were taken to identify cases imported into the country as news of the new coronavirus emerged from Wuhan.Taiwanese officials boarded planes arriving from Wuhan to immediately assess passengers' health, ordering those with fever into isolation.

The government stockpiled supplies, recruited reserve soldiers to work on production lines for surgical and N95 masks, resulting in 44 million and 2 million of each respectively being available in quick order. The pricing was strictly controlled, to avoid profiteering and a rationing system allocating two masks per week to citizens was implemented.

The temperature screening station at a mall near Canadian Sandra Johnson’s home, part of Singapore’s extensive efforts to contain the COVID-19 virus. Supplied

Quarantine violators were pursued; those who had disappeared instead of remaining in isolation, given fines of $3,000 each; names published of those who failed to go into quarantine as instructed; $130,000 fines threatened for the spreading of false news. Singapore had built a national centre for infectious disease -- a dedicated 330-bed facility -- after its experience with SARS. Health and temperature screening of passengers from Wuhan began on January 3, and by the end of the month COVID-19 tests were increased to 2,200 daily.

Police officers are tasked with tracking down contacts of infected people or identifying the source of an infection cluster. Harvard public health experts produced a recent paper estimating that Singapore finds three times as many infected people, compared to the rest of the world. Random phone calls requiring those in isolation at home to take photographs of their surroundings as verification that they are indeed at home, along with mandatory-response texts with GPS location information are routine.

Anywhere and everywhere people go throughout the course of their daily lives, they have become accustomed to random screening for fever; at malls, office buildings, community centres and places of worship. Everything seems to work like clockwork; well planned, detailed and carried out. And then the inevitable of new cases surfacing -- imported from outside both countries.

Singapore has even deployed the armed forces in contact-tracing  Reuters