Snapshot taken Sun. April 5th 2020. Source of Global Cases Map, CSSE at JHU: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6
Day 10: So, I finally called Toronto Public Health: (Weds March 25, 2020)
Shit’s fucked up guys. Not only are they not testing anyone who doesn’t meet “the criteria” (for example: the person is elderly, lives in an institutional setting, works in healthcare, or works in an institutional setting)… But the public health system is not even taking the info or tracking the cases for any of those people who are not being tested, but almost certainly do have the virus. They are not tracking the suspected cases at all.
We see in all of the mainstream media that they are reporting the number of cases. They talk about the number of people tested, and they talk about cases that have been traced back to travel to Europe or Asia, or a person who traveled on certain TTC vehicles etc.
They give us the impression that they have got this thing at least somewhat handled, and they know where most of these cases are. Or that they are at least interested in finding out where all of these cases are, and what the real numbers are. But they are not interested, they cannot afford to be interested in that right now! They are buried up to their eyeballs in dog shit right now! And it’s not getting better anytime soon.
They use this term “community spread,” a nice palatable phrase. Very media friendly. What does it mean? It means that we have untraceable cases that cannot be linked back to travel. But, they are not saying that these community spread cases are not being tested anymore, if they don’t meet the new “criteria.” They are not saying that those none-tested, “community spread,” “suspected cases” numbers, are not being counted among the numbers being reported on the news.
They are also not saying that they are not even testing a fraction of the active cases of COVID-19 that come into their testing centres on a daily basis. And, they are not saying that the Public Health system can’t be asked to give a fuck about that right now, because they are still trying to finish the steaming pile of work they had on their desks last week, let alone stay up to date on what’s happened right now. They are completely understaffed and ill equipped for this pandemic.
My sister is a med lab tech at a hospital in Barrie. She works in microbiology. She is capable of this kind of lab work, she has a fair idea of what it is, unlike the rest of us who don’t have a clue. But she is not responsible for doing any COVID-19 testing in her lab in the hospital. Perhaps for good reason… take that stuff away from the rest of the sick people and immunocompromised.
No hospital lab is doing this kind of testing. It is all being done by Public Health. All the test kits go to public health labs, to be processed. The results are given to my sister, and other lab techs like her, who then need to enter the information into the system in their hospital, which goes into the patient’s record?
I think that’s what she said… Anyway, what a waste of time! Why can’t the results from public health just automatically go into the patient record at the hospital? Ok, I’m getting side tracked here…
My sister has been overworked and underslept in her field for years before this outbreak ever happened. Now she is losing her mind! And she’s not even dealing with processing the actual tests for COVID-19, and she still hasn’t had any more than 1 or 2 days off since the crisis started here.
Can you even imagine what is going on at the Public Health labs right now around this country? It’s a madhouse! People can’t keep up. There aren’t enough test kits, so they get more, and they still can’t test anymore people than they were before, because they cannot keep up with the load. There just isn’t enough manpower, not enough medically trained staff to keep up.
The system was simply not built to handle this load. They were maxed out before COVID got here.
We are hearing messages of, just stay home and only go out to do your essential grocery shopping, and you don’t need to wear a mask. They say social distancing is the key. They say we can flatten the curve. They say only people who are doing essential work should be taking public transportation, and as long as everyone does that, we will be fine.
However, what they are not saying is that we actually have NO IDEA how many people in the community already have this virus! That the numbers they are reporting mean absolutely NOTHING! They are likely a drop in the bucket of the actual active cases we have in the city right now.
They are not talking about the fact that we now know that the Coronavirus can survive on some surfaces for up to 17 days (like in the cabins on that Princess cruise ship). And, we are relying on the honour system, that people who most likely have this virus are staying self quarantined as instructed. We are just going to assume they are doing this, when we know most people don’t listen to anything they are told unless they get smacked in the face with it.
They are not talking about the fact that by now the numbers could be double, triple, quadruple what’s being reported. We just have no idea. Not only are they not testing everyone who shows up who clearly has symptoms, but they are not even taking your information.
At the hospital, they are not notifying Public Health of your suspected case. And, even if you voluntarily call Public Health, of your own free will, to inform them of your undocumented, probable case of COVID-19, that you can’t be tested for, like i just did today, they still won’t bother taking down your information. They can’t.
There is no record of my case, and if I was a selfish asshole, like we know many people are, I could have gone right back to my normal life. No follow-up call from Public Health, to make sure that I have read and understand my self isolation instruction and am following orders.
They didn’t even tell me what I needed to do to keep myself safe and healthy. They gave me the self-isolation instruction, but nothing to do with how to care for myself. They didn’t tell me what to take, and what not to take. They didn’t tell me that Advil could be bad for me, even though some sources are telling me that. They didn’t give me any instructions on what I might do to help recent things from getting worse in my case.
And everyone is saying, we just didn’t know… we didn’t have the data. We don’t know enough about the virus. But is that likely? Did no one know this was coming? Or did some people know, and they just didn’t share that information quickly enough with the rest of the people in the world, who needed to know, in order to have really made any difference.
I didn’t even know about the coronavirus at all until late February when I visited with my friend who had recently come back from traveling in the Philippines for a few weeks. He told me about how everyone is talking about this virus over there. It wasn’t even really in the news here in North America yet. I had no idea what he was talking about because I don’t even watch the news, like most people of my generation or younger.
But China had been dealing with it since back in December 2019! They had already lost thousands of lives by late February, and collected tons of data about the virus. They were already working on studying it in order to stop the spread and create a vaccine. Why was no one here talking about it? Why were we not preparing for it to come?
There are plenty of people in North America who speak Chinese and work in the medical field. Did no one think to ask them to translate all the medical research from China before the virus got here? Did they really think there was some kind of magical force field that was going to keep the virus from coming across the ocean?
How did this manage to take everyone in North America completely by surprise? How did we let this become such a mess before we started taking decisive actions?
Now I just want to say, I’m keenly aware of how lucky I am to be here in Canada and not the United States. At the very least, my government is working to make it possible for people to self-isolate safely at home without dying of hunger, living the rest of their lives with massive medical debt or having no place to go because they can’t pay their rent. They are working on very progressive solutions to these concerns.
I get how lucky I am to be here and have a support system for everyone. Even if imperfect, it’s better than most people are faring in this pandemic. And, a lot of people are taking advantage of this like it’s a paid vacation and not taking social distancing seriously. And perhaps, they are not taking it seriously, because they have no idea what the actual scale of the problem is here in Canada already.
It hasn’t become real for us yet. The numbers do not reflect that actual problem. People are still living in the belief that this is most likely just a common cold that will not trouble them personally in any way. And they will be wrong. It’s only a matter of time before we start losing people we shouldn’t have had to lose, simply because the numbers get so large we can’t hospitalize or ventilate them all.
Please know, the grim reaper is coming for us, we are not immune, we are not special, we are not magic. We are simply a few weeks behind the curve of other places that are peaking now. We think we are safe because we have no idea what our numbers truly are here in Canada. They could be astronomical already. We just don’t know.