Juno News - Public officials have failed to prepare Canadians for COVID-19

00:00:00.000 I'm finding it a little puzzling and maybe even a little bit troubling that Canadian public health

00:00:10.860 officials, a year into this, they've hardly at all discussed the things that Canadians can do,

00:00:16.600 the choices they can make, the lifestyle decisions that they can make, to hopefully put themselves in

00:00:22.620 a position where they are at less risk of having a serious outcome from coronavirus. This thought

00:00:28.880 came to me after I was watching a video by Dr. Kwadro Kamaratang. He's an ICU doctor in Ottawa who

00:00:34.400 sees people who unfortunately do get hospitalized with coronavirus, and he was talking about a number

00:00:38.780 of things in this video. It's very interesting. One of the things he says is stay active, stay healthy,

00:00:44.200 stay fit, because a lot of the folks that they're seeing in the ICU wards, they have obesity and they

00:00:49.560 have other sort of health challenges associated with obesity. Well, that's a very interesting

00:00:54.460 thing. He's not the first person to, of course, say it, but it's not something that's being discussed

00:00:58.780 a lot out there by Canadian public health officials. And in fact, they've hardly acknowledged it at all

00:01:04.100 that there are things you can perhaps do in terms of fitness and healthy choices that can lessen your

00:01:12.020 odds of having this serious outcome. If they'd started to say this a year ago, well, then that

00:01:16.500 would be a year of warnings people would have to deal with some of these challenges. I know it's not as

00:01:21.460 easy as just saying, okay, well, you know, deal with your obesity and so forth, lots of challenges and all

00:01:26.140 this, but, but why not at least send the message? You know, the British government, what they do in

00:01:31.540 the UK is their national health service is actually giving out vitamin D pills to elderly persons.

00:01:37.000 Because one other thing that's discussed is whether or not a vitamin D deficiency seems to play a role

00:01:42.080 in people having serious outcomes. And my understanding is that the studies are not yet entirely conclusive

00:01:47.480 in terms of cause and effect, but I guess they figured there's some sort of relationship here,

00:01:51.380 it seems so it can't hurt to give out these vitamin D pills. That's another example, uh, talking

00:01:56.540 about dealing with obesity, talking about dealing with vitamin D and so forth. And I understand there's

00:02:00.480 a couple other things out there that health professionals are talking about that do play in

00:02:04.080 to personal choices that we make that can, that can lessen our risk factors for us. And these are just

00:02:09.540 things that are not at all present in the public health messaging. It is very confusing, very alarming

00:02:15.520 as to why they're not doing more of that. When you do hear, uh, frontline healthcare professionals

00:02:20.620 who are talking about these very issues, but for whatever reason, the official word wants to,

00:02:26.160 wants to minimize all of that. And I wonder why, I mean, if they're doing it in the UK,

00:02:29.780 if the UK government is mailing people supplies of vitamin D, clearly there are some government

00:02:36.420 health officials who feel there is some sort of value and utility to talking about these various

00:02:40.580 aspects. Why are we not getting it in Canada? Again, puzzling and maybe a little bit troubling that

00:02:45.600 they haven't added some component of that to their messaging.

Juno News - April 03, 2021