> Costing millions
> Putting people out of work
> Shutting down civic functions
> intimidating school children
I don't know anything about Canadian government's response to the virus, but would it be fair to characterize the effects of the response as any or all of the above? Or if not affecting you directly, then those you may personally know or simply your fellow countrymen?
People do feel irritation when we have done so much collectively, only for a small minority to pee in the pool.
It's a war against the health system. It's on the verge of collapsing in many provinces because of Covid, and folks like Maxime Bernier want it privatized. Ideological and manipulative greed.
This is extremely disingenuous and ill-informed. I would recommend people do a google search for "Ontario hospital overcrowd" and set the date filter to be before 2020 (before COVID). You will find articles for every single year in past decade where hospitals were overcrowded because of flu.
Ontario ranks the 3rd last in the world in terms of hospital beds per 1000 (only mexico and chile are behind us) and absolute last within Canada. We used to have almost double the hospital beds per 1000 back in 1990s but since then our population has exploded and also gotten older but we haven't done much to increase the beds until last year when we added a few beds but still nowhere near to what it is supposed to be and what it used to be in 1990s.
A well functioning health care system is required to operate at 85% maximum but Ontario has been running at over 100% in most hospitals majority of the time BEFORE covid.
Ontario has the fewest hospital beds per capita in the country at 1.4 per 1,000 people. That compares to the national average of 2.0.
In 1990, Ontario had around 50000 hospital beds. Now, we only have around 34000 despite our population exploding and also getting older.
Many hospitals in Ontario operated at above 100% capacity in 2019. According to the Ontario Hospital Association, Ontario’s hospitals have faced low or nearly flat funding for years — with only an increase of 5.4% from 2012-19, compared to an average of 12.9% among other provinces while population increased and hospitals absorbed inflationary costs. Ontario’s Ministry of Health’s own numbers show the province has the lowest per capita health spending in Canada. The Registered Nurses Association of Ontario notes this also held true in 2018, and that the province had the lowest registered nurses per capita and the second-lowest hospital spending per capita rate in the country, after Quebec.
CBC News in January 2020 (before COVID) found 32 of Ontario’s hospitals were filled beyond 100% occupancy nearly every day in the first half of 2019 — including Ontario’s 10 biggest hospitals.
A study of 169 of Ontario’s acute care hospital sites during the same period found:
- 83 hospitals were beyond 100% capacity for more than 30 days.
- 39 hospitals hit 120% capacity or higher for at least one day.
- 40 hospitals averaged 100% capacity or higher.
https://pressprogress.ca/ontario-announces-surge-funding-to-...
Our health care systems in Canada have been collapsing every single year BEFORE covid:
> Before COVID, January 22, 2020: Brampton council declares health-care emergency amid hospital overcrowding, wait times
https://globalnews.ca/news/6447872/brampton-health-care-emer...
1 month prior to COVID:
> Some of Ontario's biggest hospitals are filled beyond capacity nearly every day, new data reveals
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-hospital-hall...
> Dozens of hospitals across Ontario filling beyond capacity most days, CBC investigation finds
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/doug-ford-ontario-hal...
> Hallway medicine 'new norm' at Guelph General Hospital, CEO says. Numbers show capacity problems in vast majority of first half of 2019
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/kitchener-waterloo/hallway-me...
> 2016: Ontario’s major hospitals operating over capacity, documents reveal
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/national/ontarios-major...
> 2019: Sask. Association of Nurses says patient died due to overcrowding in emergency room
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/saskatoon/saskatoon-patient-o...
> Canada ranks near the bottom of OECD countries when it comes to hospital beds per capita. For context, we had 90% of hospitals beds in use in Canada before the pandemic even started. Why are we not having a national conversation on the inadequacies of our healthcare capacity?
https://twitter.com/patrickbrownont/status/14783662450996469...
> Many of the posts are demanding Premier Doug Ford's government repeal Bill 124, 2019 legislation that capped annual salary increases for many public sector employees, including nurses, at an average of one per cent annually for three years.
https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ontario-health-care-w...
ALC stands for Alternate Level of Care - patient is someone who is occupying an acute care hospital bed but not acutely ill or does not require the intensity of resources or services provided in a hospital setting. In Ontario, there are 5375 ALC open cases. 42.2% (2268) of which are waiting for LTC. Median wait time to get into an LTC from a hospital is 114 days. This is an insanely high number of people tying up hospital resources through no fault of theirs but because of incompetence of LTC. Instead of fixing this, they want to falsely blame the unvaccinated.
> In Ontario, as of Jan. 17, "42% of those awaiting transfer to long term care facilities were unable to find a placement. This amounts to about 2,200 people, and the median wait for an LTC placement for someone in the hospital is a staggering 114 days."
https://nationalpost.com/opinion/rupa-subramanya-ontario-uns...
As if this isn't enough, Ontario and Quebec fired unvaccinated health care workers (many of whom had natural immunity from infection) and are now allowing COVID+ nurses to work if they are vaccinated.
How can we claim to provide equitable healthcare when we are denying fundamental freedoms based on discriminatory practices?
There is no pride in a health care system, however “free” it might be, if its existence is fundamentally incompatible with the human spirit.
The hospitals have been overloaded and badly managed for a long time, way before the pandemic.
Most hospitals here have been operating above 100% capacity for many years. Waiting time to see a doctor have been reported to take in average 15 hours and up to 20 hours (pre-covid data in 2019) [1]. God forbid if you need to be hospitalized, as it can reach 24-48 hours sometimes.
Firing nurses over COVID measures before Christmas certainly didn't help, which is worth pointing out.
The politicians are trying to shift the blame of the bad healthcare systems happening under their watch to COVID.
[1]: https://plus.lapresse.ca/screens/2fe607e4-1054-4f10-9f56-703...
Agree we designed systems that could barely handle the flu, and we are paying the price. I'm not defending the politicians, certainly not Legault.
Where do we go from here? Fund back to average OECD levels, raise taxes, or honk and yell freedom while healthcare workers burnout?
And yes, a tiny number of nurses were suspended, but it's noticing compared to those who left the field from exhaustion from mandatory overtime and rigid scheduling.
