Juno News - Public health officials need to be transparent and accountable

Health officials are starting to conduct themselves more like politicians than like public servants or straightforward doctors, and that's a big problem. I think the public and media need to start treating them like the politicians they are behaving like by asking them some critical questions and not necessarily taking everything they said at face value.

00:00:00.000 Canadian public health officials are starting to conduct themselves more like politicians than like

00:00:10.320 public servants or straightforward doctors. And that's a big problem. And I think the public and

00:00:15.900 media need to start treating them like the politicians that they're behaving like by

00:00:20.400 asking them some more critical questions and not necessarily taking everything they say at face

00:00:25.740 value. I think more pushback is required now. Back about a year ago when the pandemic first started,

00:00:31.880 take those press conferences with Dr. Theresa Tam. People listened with great interest. They

00:00:36.560 trusted what she said with face value. She commanded a lot of respect in the Canadian public.

00:00:43.180 Things have really kind of changed lately though. I mean, we've learned a lot about coronavirus.

00:00:47.660 There's vaccines that have been developed. Our Canadian doctors and doctors all around the world

00:00:52.060 have learned the therapeutics to treat the virus. We've got data and statistics about

00:00:55.840 just how bad this is in terms of fatality rates. Who's actually being hard hit by the virus? Who's

00:01:01.460 the high risk category? Who's in the low risk category? A lot of information that we should

00:01:05.720 be able to use to evolve our response, to have a better, smarter approach. And yet on Friday,

00:01:12.080 Dr. Tam released modeling that caused a lot of people to raise their eyebrows. Right now,

00:01:17.400 Canada is at about 2,000 cases per day. Good news. It's going down. But her modeling says because of

00:01:23.620 new variants, we are going to skyrocket. You should see this chart. It actually shows the line just

00:01:28.860 shooting up within the next couple of weeks to over 20,000 cases per day or beyond. I don't know how

00:01:35.020 high it goes because the line just goes off of the chart, out of the page. Some media were asking,

00:01:41.060 where did you get these numbers from? They were asking some technical questions. To their credit,

00:01:45.300 Dr. Tam couldn't answer or wouldn't answer, didn't provide that information. Later on,

00:01:51.520 during the day on Friday afternoon, Michelle Rempel, she's the conservative health critic,

00:01:55.360 she was asking similar questions to Public Health Agency of Canada officials. What's going on with

00:02:00.580 this modeling? What are the inputs? Why are you actually concluding things are going to be so

00:02:05.140 outrageous? And they couldn't really answer the question. They said, we'll have to get back to you

00:02:08.900 next week. We don't know. Hmm. They're the experts. They don't know. And Michelle Rempel and

00:02:15.080 others were asking, why is it that there's modeling in other countries that are showing

00:02:18.760 that declines continue for these very weeks that you show rapid increases? And they just

00:02:23.600 couldn't answer the question. And why this really matters is Dr. Tam and Justin Trudeau on Friday

00:02:28.760 were saying, well, look, you know, cases are going to go out of control, which is why we need to keep

00:02:32.840 the lockdowns in place and we need enhanced measures. Now, some jurisdictions in Canada, they don't

00:02:39.040 have a lot of measures right now, but people in say Toronto and Peel region are going, I don't know

00:02:43.080 how it can be more enhanced than it already is. So a lot of people were rather frustrated to hear

00:02:48.200 that. And they're seeing cases decline all over the world and in their own backyard. And they're

00:02:52.600 going, shouldn't this be the time for reopening? Well, you know what? Maybe if public health officials,

00:02:57.220 they have a really good answer as to why not, and they have a really good explanation about what's

00:03:02.120 going on in these numbers, then, well, tell us and maybe we can talk it out. But, well, they didn't

00:03:08.100 give the answers. They dragged their feet. They were evasive. They said, we'll get back

00:03:11.540 to you next week. Sounds kind of like something a politician would do. And I don't think people

00:03:18.500 should accept those sorts of answers anymore. And, well, I don't think they are. I think people

00:03:23.380 are pushing back as they should.

Juno News - February 20, 2021

Public health officials need to be transparent and accountable

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