Public officials have failed to prepare Canadians for COVID-19
Episode Stats
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199.69205
Summary
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.
Transcript
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I'm finding it a little puzzling and maybe even a little bit troubling that Canadian public health
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officials, a year into this, they've hardly at all discussed the things that Canadians can do,
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the choices they can make, the lifestyle decisions that they can make, to hopefully put themselves in
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a position where they are at less risk of having a serious outcome from coronavirus. This thought
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came to me after I was watching a video by Dr. Kwadro Kamaratang. He's an ICU doctor in Ottawa who
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sees people who unfortunately do get hospitalized with coronavirus, and he was talking about a number
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of things in this video. It's very interesting. One of the things he says is stay active, stay healthy,
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stay fit, because a lot of the folks that they're seeing in the ICU wards, they have obesity and they
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have other sort of health challenges associated with obesity. Well, that's a very interesting
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thing. He's not the first person to, of course, say it, but it's not something that's being discussed
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a lot out there by Canadian public health officials. And in fact, they've hardly acknowledged it at all
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that there are things you can perhaps do in terms of fitness and healthy choices that can lessen your
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odds of having this serious outcome. If they'd started to say this a year ago, well, then that
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would be a year of warnings people would have to deal with some of these challenges. I know it's not as
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easy as just saying, okay, well, you know, deal with your obesity and so forth, lots of challenges and all
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this, but, but why not at least send the message? You know, the British government, what they do in
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the UK is their national health service is actually giving out vitamin D pills to elderly persons.
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Because one other thing that's discussed is whether or not a vitamin D deficiency seems to play a role
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in people having serious outcomes. And my understanding is that the studies are not yet entirely conclusive
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in terms of cause and effect, but I guess they figured there's some sort of relationship here,
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it seems so it can't hurt to give out these vitamin D pills. That's another example, uh, talking
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about dealing with obesity, talking about dealing with vitamin D and so forth. And I understand there's
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a couple other things out there that health professionals are talking about that do play in
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to personal choices that we make that can, that can lessen our risk factors for us. And these are just
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things that are not at all present in the public health messaging. It is very confusing, very alarming
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as to why they're not doing more of that. When you do hear, uh, frontline healthcare professionals
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who are talking about these very issues, but for whatever reason, the official word wants to,
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wants to minimize all of that. And I wonder why, I mean, if they're doing it in the UK,
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if the UK government is mailing people supplies of vitamin D, clearly there are some government
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health officials who feel there is some sort of value and utility to talking about these various
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aspects. Why are we not getting it in Canada? Again, puzzling and maybe a little bit troubling that
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they haven't added some component of that to their messaging.