Sanctimony over Sacred Duty

“As this COVID-19 outbreak unfolds in coming months, our government will aim to support Canadians and keep them protected. We’ve based our response on input from our world-class health professionals and authorities. We know what the science is telling us. The evidence is clear. The elderly are our greatest risk. We’ve seen the experience in Italy and Spain. We know what happened in China. In Washington State. The first long-term care death in British Columbia occurred March 8."
"The signals are clear. The most vulnerable Canadians are in long-term care institutions."
"Today our government is allocating $20 billion to deploy as many physical and human resources as possible to stop this pandemic from reaching our most vulnerable population. If you are in a long-term care home, or are related to someone who is, rest assured. Our top priority is to get you the help you need."
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, March statement of assurance

"What’s special about COVID-19 is the asymptomatic transmission. The whole strategy of looking for fever and looking for symptoms didn’t work."

"By the time we found somebody with symptoms, and then tested everybody in the home, you would find 40 or 50 residents already positive."

Long-Term Care Home executive

Words are important. If the words are strung together well and they approach a situation while appealing to those who are or will be deleteriously affected, they give reassurance. They shine a light of approval on whoever utters those words, the promise that the problem has been analyzed and authorities are prepared to undertake a solution that will meet the challenges of an all-consuming worry over the projected plight of the most vulnerable within society.

Those words were uttered, the assurance that government is aware and fully prepared to launch a program that would create the needed solution to a viral pathogen threatening the lives of Canada's elderly and health-impaired. After all, before the SARS-CoV-2 invasion hit Canada, there were examples out of Wuhan, China, where the novel coronavirus first emerged before spreading to Europe and onward to radiate over the entire globe with mixed results, none of them good.

Reports being received of the desperate carnage wreaked on institutions housing the elderly and health-compromised, due warning that this disease strikes those least able to ward off its destructive impact due to immune-compromised conditions linked to old age and/or to chronic and/or dread disease onset. Nothing quite so much focuses the mind as watching a tornado of disaster wreak hell elsewhere while it steadily advances toward you, waiting with bated breath.

75 per cent of Canada’s COVID-19 deaths those over age 80. Getty Images

So the data was there, it was analyzed and the solution seemed clear enough; target the virus aiming for the elderly to defuse its impact, and refuse it the opportunity for wholesale wreckage. The funding aiming to erect a scaffolding of defense earmarked for that specific purpose, the personnel alerted and diverted to ensure that the defence was well directed and maintained to fulfill its purpose. The intention publicly stated but never carried through to fruition.

Instead the focus swivelled to society at large, mandating a general lockdown to protect the greater aggregate of the population, those at least risk for harm among the population. And the aged and the infirm were left to chance. And as it happened chance failed to favour their continued longevity. Such are the best-laid plans of mice and men, when the authors of those plans lack the conviction of their intentions and their attention wanders off target...

The result was encapsulated in the Canadian Military report on their findings in a select few long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec as compelling evidence of a failed initiative. Outlining the case for blaming an uncaring industry whose primary interest is financial gain and whose investment in the well-being of those in their care, an afterthought. After all, of the 6,700 coronavirus deaths in Canada, 8o percent occurred in those inadequately staffed, untrained personnel LTCs.

Health Canada reports that over 6,700 Canadians died in LTC facilities -- the vast preponderance of all deaths in the country due to COVID; 97 percent of the deaths were to those over the age of 60, with 75 percent over the age of 80. By May, 3,652 elderly Canadians died in those facilities. The country was locked down to protect the entire public; those living outside such facilities, deemed to be at low risk, but encouraged to self-isolate, where the elderly were unable to, crowded into those LTCs.

The targeted risk-management so eloquently and warmly promised by Justin Trudeau simply failed to get off the ground. The casualties of that ill-timed 'forgetfulness' were the grandmothers and grandfathers of those who took shelter at home, wore face masks on rare ventures outside and obligingly heeded government orders. The LTC facilities, on the other hand, were left to attempt on their own, to make improvised changes in a desperate move to protect the vulnerable.

"Despite a well-known, evidence-based demographic surge of seniors unable to care for themselves -- and massive waiting lists to enter long-term care, we spent the last decade mired in a program to rebuild or renovate homes that simply don't work", according to the Ontario Long Term Care Association in its pre-pandemic 2018 budget submission, warning that its employees were at a "tipping point", with overwork, yet over-scrutinized by the media and government.

"Problems hiring and retaining staff across the province has resulted in a system that is under siege", they went on. Was anyone listening? The focus on hospitals and their capacity to care for an unstoppable surge of COVID patients in serious condition simply failed to materialize, leaving an extraordinarily rare situation of empty ICU beds.  

Outside Toronto's Eatonville Care Centre, a body wrapped in a white sheet is rolled out on a stretcher, pushed by a woman dressed head to toe in protective gear. (Chris Mulligan/CBC)