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

In this episode, Dr. Kwadro Kamaratang talks about why Canadian public health officials are so slow to talk about the things you can do to reduce your risk of getting infected with coronavirus, and why it's a problem.

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

Public officials have failed to prepare Canadians for COVID-19

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