Category Archives: Epidemics/Pandemics

The Dominant Ideology Sucks

Capitalism, Epidemics/Pandemics, Social Democracy and Trust, Trust and Distrust

 

Why do so many people distrust the government and the leading institutions of their country?  That is the question I have been trying to solve in my own meandering and no doubt annoying style.

 

Many people, even poor people, have been sucked in by the dominant ideology.  Such people, for example, say something like this: ‘I am not any-vaccine, I just want to exercise my personal choice.” They see everything through the lens of personal choice. Now I am also big on personal choice and being responsible for my choices, but I don’t want to forget about the common good either. Sreedhar and Gopal  interviewed a woman from the residential complex where Mr. Steed lived, Amanda Santiago and this was her attitude. Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal pointed this out in their essay in the New York Times about one of the residents of a lower class housing project in the Bronx: “A growing body of research suggests that Ms. Santiago’s views reflect a broader shift in America, across class and race. Without an idea of the common good, health is often discussed using the language of “choice.” We must remember all such choices, which we are allowed to make, have consequences.

For example, Kyrie Irving is a basketball star. He advocated for personal choice and decided not to take the vaccines. As a result, he is so far missing the entire basketball season, and he is accepting the consequences in lost earnings. He can afford it. In Steinbach we have Pastor Tissen from the Church of God restoration who used the same language of personal choice.

This is what Sreedhar and Gopal say about personal choice:

“Of course, there’s a lot of good that comes from viewing health care decisions as personal choices: No one wants to be subjected to procedures against their wishes. But there are problems with reducing public health to a matter of choice. It gives the impression that individuals are wholly responsible for their own health. This is despite growing evidence that health is deeply influenced by factors outside our control; public health experts now talk about the “social determinants of health,” the idea that personal health is never simply just a reflection of individual lifestyle choices, but also the class people are born into, the neighborhood they grew up in and the race they belong to.”

 

Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal pointed out some important things about personal choices and Covid-19 when the social determinants of health are ignored:

 “Vaccine uptake is so high among wealthy people because Covid is one of the gravest threats they face. In some wealthy Manhattan neighborhoods, for example, vaccination rates run north of 90 percent.

For poorer and working-class people, though, the calculus is different: Covid-19 is only one of multiple grave threats.”

 

For people who live in poor areas such as the Bronx, Covid is not as big a threat as they face every day from other sources such a drug related crime, hostile police, racism, and unreasonable landlords, to name just a few. In such a context Covid is not really that scary and as a result vaccine hesitancy is not irrational.  Sometimes distrust is rational.

As a result, attitudes to Covid are quite naturally different between the lower and upper classes in such neighbourhoods. As Sreedhar and Gopal said,

“Most of the people we interviewed in the Bronx say they are skeptical of the institutions that claim to serve the poor but in fact have abandoned them. “When you’re in a high tax bracket, the government protects you,” said one man who drives an Amazon truck for a living. “So why wouldn’t you trust a government that protects you?” On the other hand, he and his friends find reason to view the government’s sudden interest in their well-being with suspicion. “They are over here shoving money at us,” a woman told us, referring to a New York City offer to pay a $500 bonus to municipal workers to get vaccinated. “And I’m asking, why are you so eager, when you don’t give us money for anything else?” These views reinforce the work of social scientists who find a link between a lack of trust and inequality. And without trust, there is no mutual obligation, no sense of a common good.”

 

The cost of distrust is enormously high, as we have been discovering.  We really should not be surprised that so many people distrust the government so much that they refuse to take lifesaving vaccines. The world’s elites are paying a big price for allowing the poor to feel abandoned. Unfortunately, so are the rest of us.

 

Hectoring does not work

Epidemics/Pandemics, Social Democracy and Trust, Trust and Distrust

Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal wrote an important article in the New York Times on the decades long shredding of trust in government among the lower classes in the United States. They started by talking about Robert Steed who lived in the South Bronx area of New York City. He lived in a public housing project where he had grown up, among poor people. During the pandemic the residential complex in which he lived was hit hard—very hard—by Covid.  Many of the people from that complex contracted Covid-19 and many suffered and died. There were posters plastered all over the complex urging the residents to get vaccinated.  You would think the sight of friends and neighbours being wheeled out in ambulances would have convinced all of the resident like Steed to get vaccinated. If you thought that you would be wrong. Steed would not touch the vaccines that could save is life or reduce the harm caused by the disease.

 

This is what he told his friends, after he contracted Covid: “I’m not going to do what the government says.” This was a simple but profound statement. He decided he would fight the government alone rather than with “help” from the government he did not trust. After all he was only 41 years old and healthy, had no underlying health conditions, and he could do his own research on the internet. He died a couple of days later in his apartment.

 

At his funeral all his friends said the same thing: they would not get vaccinated even though they had seen how quick their friend Steed died. They were shook up by his death but would not get vaccinated.

 

In the United States about 70% of Americans are now fully immunized compared to Canada, where about 80% have that status. In both countries there are stubborn pockets of vaccine resistance. No matter how often government officials tell them to get vaccinated or try to twist their arms to do that, they resist.

As Sreedhar and Gopal reported,

 

“In 2019, the World Health Organization declared vaccine hesitancy one of the 10 threats to global health. With persistent vaccine avoidance and unequal access to vaccines, unvaccinated pockets could act as reservoirs for the virus, allowing for the spread of new variants like Omicron.”

 

Please note this was before the onslaught of Covid.

 There is no one size fits all reason for vaccine hesitancy. There is a basket of reasons.  What we have been doing so far, is very unlikely to sway the opinions of these last remaining vaccine resisters. They have doubled down in their resistance with every effort to persuade them. By now those positions are so entrenched they are like religious convictions. As Anita Sreedhar and Anand Gopal said,

 The world needs to address the root causes of vaccine hesitancy. We can’t go on believing that the issue can be solved simply by flooding skeptical communities with public service announcements or hectoring people to “believe in science.”

No hectoring does not work. We need a better approach, but how do we find one?  I am not sure how we do, but I think it might help if we understand where these resisters, or at least many of them, are coming from.

Sreedhar Anand Gopal discovered some very interesting things about why people resisted. I will continue commenting on this article in my next post.

 

Rational Distrust

Epidemics/Pandemics, Social Democracy and Trust

 

I said in my last post that during a pandemic it was vitally important that people trust their governments and their leaders.  The failure to have that has caused enormous harm. A lack of trust means public policy will not be effective and that can have immense harm. A very good example was the failure to get enough people to take vaccines, much of which was caused by people not trusting government ,health officials, corporations, or scientists.

Let me be clear about one thing, I am all in favour of distrust. After all, governments, businesses, academics, media, courts, and leaders of all sorts have done much to earn some real distrust.

You would have to be out of your mind not to distrust our leaders and institutions. Take corporations for example, when corporations pay scientists, spin doctors and ad agencies to sow distrust of science in order to slow the spread of  public policies, as corporations in the energy sector did in the case of climate change, robust distrust is entirely warranted. These corporations successfully managed to manufacture doubt in good science so that they could continue to earn profits for longer than they should have, while millions of people around the world were harmed by the delays. Those industries through their leaders’ behaviours, have earned distrust for businesses not only inside their sector, but actually, corporations in general.

Tobacco companies did exactly the same thing, by knowingly denying that their products were deadly, so that their profits could continue a little longer while people around the world were harmed as a result of their deceptions. Again, this was egregiously bad behaviour with which the public largely acquiesced.

Then there were the corporations that hid the addictive nature of the opioids they produced or were selling  for years so that they could continue to be sold while people around the world got seriously sick. Those leaders were guilty of serious malfeasance.

All of these were shockingly bad corporate citizens. There were many such loathsome campaigns. They brought all of capitalism into disrepute to such an extent that legitimate capitalist achievements have been smeared.  They have earned all the distrust they attract.

Governments have also participated in serious harms. For example, their acquiescence around the world in failing to seriously pursue corporations and individuals that hid their wealth and income in offshore accounts, thus robbing  government around the world of money they could have used to achieve their social goals, while at the same those same people often paid professionals to white wash or green wash their slimy business practices or persuade ordinary citizens to abandon worthwhile social goals.  When governments for decades granted massive subsidies to industries such as the energy sector, to inflict harm on society, or when they also for decades granted excessive and entirely unjustifiable tax breaks to the rich while vigorously squeezing the poor for every penny owed, they have earned distrust.  When governments or political leaders lied about the reality of the wars they started the way the American government did during the Vietnam, while young men and women sacrificed their lives or suffered horrendous injuries, government were rightfully entitled to all the distrust and disrespect they got.

All of these things and many more that could be mentioned, have ensured that distrust is genuinely justified—in some cases.

While I endorse distrust,  the lack of trust be rational. Not every action by every government or corporation should be distrusted blindly. I don’t support ludicrous versions of the truth such as absurd claims that there is an international cabal of Satan-worshipping pedophiles who are drinking the blood of children. When the oppositional narrative of the distrusters reaches the levels of idiocy as it has done in the United States, we must categorically reject it. Distrust must be grounded on evidence, serious claims, and critical analysis. Rebels may criticize but blanket distrust is as blind as blind trust.

Distrust (just like trust) must be rational.

St. Ronny and the rise of neo-liberalism

Epidemics/Pandemics, Social Democracy and Trust

 

Ever since a client of mine told me earlier in the summer that he did not trust government issued vaccines I have been mulling over why that was the case. Why did he distrust government so much and stuff he learned from his friends or by doing “private research” online so little? I think that is a very important question. It is actually a much bigger question than I realized before I started looking at this issue.

 

Louis Menand wrote a fascinating article in the New Yorker about why people had lost their faith in government. Specifically, he wondered if liberals or conservatives were at fault. He noted that both liberals and conservatives in the US distrusted government:

“December, 1958, by pollsters from a center now called the American National Election Studies, at the University of Michigan, seventy-three per cent said yes, they had confidence in the government to do the right thing either almost all the time or most of the time. Six years later, they were asked basically the same question, and seventy-seven per cent said yes.

 

Pollsters ask the question regularly. In a Pew survey from April, 2021, only twenty-four per cent of respondents said yes. And that represented an uptick. During Obama’s and Trump’s Presidencies, the figure was sometimes as low as seventeen per cent. Sixty years ago, an overwhelming majority of Americans said they had faith in the government. Today, an overwhelming majority say they don’t. Who is to blame?”

 

I know I have been quick to blame Ronald Reagan and his coterie of conservatives. Now I realize the blame can be spread much more widely, though this is certainly part of the problem. Let’s start with Ronald Reagan. Reagan became wildly popular when he said “the 11 most scary words in the English language were, ‘I am from the government and I am here to help.’ ” He also made the following statement in his inaugural address “In this present crisis,” Reagan said in his Inaugural Address, “government is not the solution to our problem. Government is the problem.” People began to think that governments were inherently bad and  untrusworthy.

I am not saying Reagan caused the problem, but the neo-liberal ideology was given a big push by him in the US,  Margaret Thatcher in the UK and Brian Mulroney in Canada. At about that time a serious decline in trust in government began.

Yet as Menand pointed out, Reagan a very popular President, one of the most popular ever and who later became an icon of conservatism in America, did not remove one major government program! Why? Because people realized government delivered some pretty good and important things and programs. Really until then most people understood the benefits of public health care as we have in Canada and to a more limited extent in the United States, and understood the importance of schools, libraries, armed forces, police forces, fire fighters, social assistance to the needy, public parks and many other public goods. It was difficult to persuade people to believe that government is all bad.

But things have changed Bigly. Now they have more trust in Amazon, or Facebook, Wal-Mart, Canadian Tire, ExxonMobil, Safeway, or any other company than the government? How can that be?

Even during the 8 years that Reagan was President of the United States the trust index for government never rose above 45%. In the last 14 years it has never been higher than 30%. That is not a lot of trust!

How is this significant? The absence of trust in government has been disastrous during the pandemic.  During a pandemic if public health officials are not trusted, people won’t follow their instructions and we will all suffer. That is the problem.  And, as we have seen, it is a big problem. That is why it is so important to look at this issue.

Why do so many people distrust government and what is the significance of that?

 

A Spectrum of Mandates

Epidemics/Pandemics, Freedom, Human rights

 

I have tried to establish that the majority in a democratic society are allowed to impose vaccines on others who do not want to take them. I have tried to establish that on the basis of Mill’s principle of liberty enunciated in his book On Liberty.  Many of us now call the right which we have not to have actions imposed on us the principle of autonomy. I think that is a very important principle, but it is not an unlimited right.

Harms can be imposed on us if that is necessary to prevent us causing harm to others. It is of course necessary to weigh the harm avoided against the harm imposed.  The harm imposed must be less than the harm avoided, otherwise we have created greater harm by our actions. Sometimes, the ends justify the means. I will have more to say on that later.

Therefore, the harm caused by the mandate must be less than the harm avoided.

I suggest that there is a range of harms involved in mandates that depend upon the type of mandate. For example, the mandate could involve manacling the citizen and forcibly inflicting a needle with the vaccine into the body of the resister. That would be the most serious harm. It could cause great harm on the resister.  It certainly would elicit widespread opposition. I have seen photos of such a procedure being imposed on women’s suffragettes in the United States. They went on a hunger strike in the early 20th century to influence the American government, led by Woodrow Wilson, to grant women the right to vote.  They were horrific images of a woman being held while a tube was inserted into her mouth  through which food flowed against her will into her stomach.. The images probably went a long way toward persuading the public that perhaps their position was too strong and they lost public support. The same thing might happen with vaccines.

Unlike, forcing women to take food, I have argued that we would be morally justified in forcing vaccine Resisters to take the vaccines. But perhaps, such images, and there surely would be images, would quickly circulate and could persuade citizens that the government was going too far. As a result, such measures might be counterproductive.  Perhaps even though vaccine mandates are permissible we would be wise to avoid at least the more serious harms in the spectrum of harms. The spectrum of mandates could be from the smart to the stupid. I prefer the smart, though that is not always easy to determine.

We already have imposed some lesser measures that still go by the name of mandates. For example, we now require some employees in some situations, to be vaccinated, in order to work.  The loss of employment is obviously a serious harm imposed on the resisters.

We have also imposed restrictions on the unvaccinated to refrain from entering restaurants or certain stores or certain facilities such as hospitals or personal care homes for the purpose of visiting loved ones. Again these are serious harms but less draconian than the manacles.

Even though mandates are justified in my opinion we must be smart in choosing those that are the most effective and least counter productive.

We need smart mandates.

Trust, Mistrust and a Monstrous God

Epidemics/Pandemics, Evangelical Christianity, Politics & Religion, Social democracy, Social Democracy and Trust, The Sleep of Reason

 

One of the things that is so interesting about this pandemic is the astonishing fact that so many people mistrust so many so deeply. The distrust is virtually unshakeable. I am trying to understand why that happens. And it happens a lot where I live, in Southern Manitoba.

This has caught me by surprise. Or at least it once did. After nearly 2 years of this pandemic, it no longer surprises me. I expect it. I am surprised when someone demonstrates trust.  I think it has something to do with the deeply felt religious beliefs in our community, but that still does not explain it.

Here is what Winnipeg Free Press reporter Dylan Robertson said about exactly this issue:

“Manitoba children could qualify for COVID-19 vaccines within weeks, but evangelical parents might not let their kids roll up their sleeves.

In a recent Probe Research survey shared with the Free Press, two-thirds of evangelical Manitobans said they “worry about the long-term effects of COVID-19 vaccinations in children,” compared with 41 per cent of overall respondents.

In addition, 49 per cent of those identifying as evangelical said COVID-19 as an issue was “overblown,” compared with 28 per cent of the overall population.”

 

What would lead Manitoba parents to distrust government or the authorities so much that they would put the lives of their children in danger when the overwhelming weight of scientific evidence, and by now, real life experiences, make it so clear that not taking vaccines is a dangerous choice?

The Free Press  interviewed Rick Hiemstra, research director of the Evangelical Fellowship of Canada and this is what he said, “A lack of trust and polarization have come home to roost.” So many of these evangelicals now identify with their group—Christians who don’t trust vaccines. They don’t trust  scientists. No matter how many of them. They don’t trust the government. Instead, they trust what other members of their tribe has told them or trust what they have “learned” from their own “research” on the Internet. And they do while they put the lives of their children in danger.

Here is what a local theologian said as reported by the Winnipeg Free Press,

“Evangelical scholar Nicholas Greco said numerous factors cause that gap, from a desire to rely on God for healing, to science clashing with creationism, to general skepticism of media and government.

Evangelicals often are reflective of a social and political conservatism, which calls for smaller governments (and) personal autonomy, but also tends to lead to a mistrust of government,” said Greco, who is provost of Providence University College in Otterburne.

Greco, a long-time communications professor, said there’s a perception the government wants to control everyone, and that the media is overhyping the virus as part of some sort of conspiracy.

“The rhetoric I hear from many of my colleagues… is that we don’t want the government to have further control, because if they do, we will lose our freedoms,” he said.

The evangelicals believe conspiracy theories rather than scientists and they believe it so strongly they put the lives of their children in danger. It is like an article of their faith that vaccines are untrustworthy, and no reasoning, no data, or no actual experiences will shake them from their convictions.

Here is what the Free Press reported, “At a recent panel, one congregant said everyone who got the vaccine is going to die within a few years, and that they’ll all go to hell.”

As an aside, think for a moment about what a monstrous God this person believed in—a god who would punish someone for eternity for doing what our scientists have strongly recommended.

It is as if denial of vaccine efficacy has become part of their religious faith.

Age is also Important

Epidemics/Pandemics

 

My previous post indicated how the absence of relevant numbers of vaccinated people and unvaccinated people could be seriously misleading, because the province did not give adequate information about the proportion of the population that was vaccinated and unvaccinated.

There is a second important way in which the provincial numbers should be shown to Manitobans in order to reveal the true risk to unvaccinated people of being unvaccinated.  In addition to the proportion of vaccinated Manitobans compared to unvaccinated Manitobans we should be told the relative ages of people who are suffering seriously from COVBID-19. In other words, the numbers must also take into consideration that a large proportion of people who are fully vaccinated are also old and most at risk of catching the virus and more importantly getting sick to such an extent that they require hospitalization or even die.

The information we have been receiving from the Health authorities in Manitoba, is even more misleading without the information of ages.

This should be provided to make the real risks  even clearer. Even more context is required to ensure Manitobans are not misled into thinking the risks of going unvaccinated are less than they really are.

 Todd Friesen a Manitoba actuary has also jumped into the fray adding more information than just population that would help to make risks clear to Manitobans. As Friesen said,

 “If you don’t provide the context on these types of pie charts, then you run the risk of them being misused by the public and social media,..We need to do some minimal steps there to contextualize the data and to make sure that we are communicating the actual relative risk between those who are vaccinated and unvaccinated.”

 

Friesen said that without the context of age, Manitobans would underestimate the dangers of going unvaccinated. The reason for that is that older people, as we all know have a much higher chance of experiencing a severe outcome from COVID-19. As the Winnipeg Free Press reported, “Friesen said the average age of unvaccinated people in Manitoba is about 20, compared to 45 for people who have been vaccinated.” And that is very important.

 

As the Free Press reported about  what Friesen said ,

“One thing that’s contributing to that is we have a large cohort of ineligible kids who are not vaccinated… What ends up happening is we’re implicitly comparing unvaccinated kids with seniors who are fully vaccinated. And the relative risks between seniors and kids are not remotely close.”

 

It’s not fair to compare unvaccinated young people who have little chance of getting seriously sick from COVID-19  to old people like me. That is not comparing apples to apples. Friesen did the math, and concluded:

 “When adjusted for age, unvaccinated people are 45 times more likely to need hospitalization related to COVID-19 and 85 times more likely to need ICU admission.”

 

When you compare apples to apples, the difference in risk in not being vaccinated is remarkable. In fact, it would be miraculous if unvaccinated people were not doing better than vaccinated people, because most of them are much younger than the vaccinated people. The old codgers, like me, mainly realize the dangers, and are getting vaccinated. The younger people feel less danger and are not getting vaccinated in such large percentages. As a result, without these age adjustments, if you merely look at the percentage of people who are getting COVID-19 and are also vaccinated you can greatly underestimate the risk for younger people who are unvaccinated.

 As Friesen explained, “Those are substantial numbers. It shows very clearly how effective vaccines are.”

That is what  the province of Manitoba should be telling all Manitobans—context that makes sense of the numbers. Too many of us are not smart enough to figure this out, and all of us are paying a hefty price for this ignorance. Most of us are not actuaries. The Province should do a better job of presenting the numbers. If they did, perhaps more people would realize the importance of getting vaccinated.

 

Even True Numbers can be Deceiving

Epidemics/Pandemics

 

I have noticed that some people who welcomed vaccines have from time to time become dispirited by the numbers. Some of them think the recent numbers have shown that vaccines are not effective, and perhaps they have wasted efforts to get them.  That is an unfortunate thing, because the vaccines have been very effective.  I am grateful to the reporters and columnist at the Winnipeg Free to make this clear.  They have been providing an invaluable public service. They strongly suggest that in Manitoba at least the province could do a much better job in presenting the numbers on Covid-19 that make this clear. Instead, the government has been presenting numbers in a way that can facilitate the arguments of the Resisters.

The province of Manitoba presents summaries of the data it has collected on Covid-19 in what it calls a “dashboard.” This is exactly where it could do a better job according to experts.  In fact, some non-experts (like me) have been griping about this.

Superficially the province presents its information in a comprehensible manner because it includes the number of recent Covid-19 cases and the number of those that were vaccinated and those that were unvaccinated. Unfortunately, that is not enough to allow one to compare apples to apples and oranges to oranges. To do that we need more information. Specifically, the numbers must take into consideration two very important facts.

First, the numbers must be presented in such a way that the numbers show the proportion of the population that is vaccinated compared to the population that is not vaccinated. Without information like that the numbers presented by the province are seriously misleading and that is exactly what the province should not do in a pandemic.

I’ll give an example.  A recent dashboard showed that nearly half of recent Covid-19 cases in Manitoba were among fully vaccinated people. Sounds bad for vaccinated people doesn’t it? Why bother?  But presenting numbers that way without the context of the number of vaccinated people relative to the number of unvaccinated people is seriously misleading. People can easily be deceived. The way the province presents the numbers in its Dashboard does not show the true risks to Manitobans who have not yet been vaccinated. The way the numbers are presented can lull them into a false sense of security.

Prof. Nazeem Muhajarine of the University of Saskatchewan community health has pointed out that “the Manitoba dashboard lacks basic population information that would provide crucial context for the number of infections being reported among vaccinated and unvaccinated people.”

That is exactly the point, without the crucial context, people will tend to underestimate the benefits of vaccines.  And that result is disastrous in a pandemic where we urgently need more people to understand the risks and the choices they make. This is what Danielle Da Silva said in the Winnipeg Free Press,

“A government dashboard showing nearly half of recent COVID-19 cases in Manitoba were among fully vaccinated people is misleading and fails to clearly represent the risk the disease poses to people who have yet to take the jab, experts say.”

 

The Manitoba Dashboard does what you would think, it discloses the number of new COVID-19 cases, hospitalizations and intensive care admissions by vaccination status on its pandemic dashboard each weekday, but as Da Silva explained that is not enough.

Here is an example that Da Silva presented:

“According to the dashboard, 48 per cent of COVID-19 cases reported in the past two weeks were in fully vaccinated people and 44 per cent were in unvaccinated people. Meanwhile, on Tuesday, the province reported 88 new cases in fully vaccinated people and 61 cases in unvaccinated people.”

 

That is all true but it’s misleading. It doesn’t give us enough information to really understand what is going on.

The snapshot of daily data has since been shared on various social media channels and in anti-vaccination circles to cast doubt on the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines.

Da Silva interviewed a Professor from the University of Saskatchewan community, Nazeem Muhajarine, who said what was missing was basic population information that makes such information useful.  Manitoba should provide population information that gives context. As the Professor said, ,

 “Reporting this type of incomplete information in the midst of a pandemic and in the midst of one of the most highly mutated variants, omicron, knocking about… is actually very alarming,” Muhajarine said in an interview with the Free Press.

The epidemiologist described the province’s dashboard as misleading, adding it can serve as evidence and ammunition for people who already believe vaccines are not going to protect against COVID-19.

“It really does send the wrong message and signal to people who might be looking for something like this,” Muhajarine said. “They will latch on to it, harp on it and basically hold this up as confirmation of what they had always been saying, of course, erroneously.”

When adjusted to account for population size, the risk of infection for unvaccinated people in the province is more than five times greater than vaccinated people, according to Doctors Manitoba.

People who have yet to be vaccinated are also 8.4 times more likely to be hospitalized with COVID-19 and 19 times more likely to end up in intensive care, the physicians association said.”

  

When you realize that in Manitoba nearly 75% of all Manitobans have been fully vaccinated while less than 29% are unvaccinated, which includes those who are not even eligible, the numbers alone don’t tell the whole story.

Keir Johnson of Doctors Manitoba told this to the Free Press, “When it comes to sharing new COVID-19 cases or severe outcomes by vaccination status, it is important to present this information in a way that allows an apples-to-apples comparison.”

Doctors Manitoba has also said the province should do a better job communicating. This is particularly important in a time of a COVID pandemic where there is also a pandemic of misinformation.  The reason the information is not good enough, Johnson explained, is

“Because the number of people who are fully vaccinated is so much larger than the number of people who are unvaccinated, it makes comparing numbers misleading unless they are presented with additional information, such as a rate or relative risk.”

 

In my next post I will explain how there is another piece of information missing that would make the risks even clearer.

 

Christians Sing while People Die

Epidemics/Pandemics, Evangelical Christianity, Human rights, religion

 

The Winnipeg Free Press (Tom Brodbeck) has again reported on the effect that Christians have been having on the health of Manitobans.

“First the reporters explained how Intensive Care Units are working.  According to the Free Press

“Manitoba’s intensive care units can handle close to one new admission a day, on average, without disrupting normal hospital operations. Two per day, on a sustained basis, may force hospital administrators to redeploy staff to ICUs from other wards.

More than three daily admissions can lead to disaster — the kind Manitoba experienced earlier this year, when officials airlifted 57 COVID-19 patients out of province for critical care treatment. ICU patients tend to remain in hospital for long periods, which means they pile up fast when admission rates are high.

That’s how Manitoba Health described its ICU capacity in October, when public health officials pleaded with people to get fully vaccinated and follow public health orders to reduce pressure on hospitals.”

 

Of course, the Winnipeg Free has already reported how many people in Southern Health particularly in the Winkler area (though Steinbach is not much better) have been repeatedly ignoring Manitoba’s public Health Orders. Worst of all, dozens of people have been gathering in “secret churches” in barns and sheds ordinarily used for farm equipment. They want to gather together and sing together, even though such activities are dangerous at this time.  At the same time the region has the lowest rate of vaccine acceptance in the province and among the worst rates in Canada. All of this is done in the name of religion and freedom. The results have been disastrous, not just for the Southern Health Region but for all of Manitoba. As Tom Brodbeck of the Winnipeg Free Press opined:

“Since then, the ICU situation has gone from bad to worse, largely owing to scores of unvaccinated patients — mostly from the Southern Health region— clogging up hospital beds and threatening to collapse Manitoba’s health-care system.

ICU admissions from Southern Health alone over the past month have been enough to trigger contingency planning at Manitoba hospitals.

By mid-November, the number of newCOVID-19 ICU admissions from Southern Health exceeded an average of one a day, according to statistics compiled from the province’s online data portal.

There were two ICU admissions from Southern Health some days in November. On Dec. 6, there were four. No other health region, including Winnipeg, had more than one ICU admission in a single day over the past month.

Between Nov. 12 and Dec. 12 (the most recent available data), 33 of 69 COVID-19 ICU admissions were from Southern Health. The region is home to about 15 per cent of Manitoba’s population.

During that same period, 15 ICU admissions came from Winnipeg, 13 from Prairie Mountain, five from Interlake-Eastern, and three from the Northern health region.”

 

It is reasonable to infer, that because so many people from Southern Health are using the ICUs, and because so many of them are unvaccinated and flaunt public health orders, that the Manitoba Health system is jeopardy. This is despite the fact that Southern Health accounts for only 15% of Manitoba’s population. Sadly, a small group of recalcitrant people who resist vaccine and health orders, is putting the lives of Manitobans at great risk. And in many cases, this is done in the name of religion.

Added to that, Brodbeck asserted,

“There is incontrovertible evidence that low vaccine coverage and a stubborn refusal to follow public health orders, including masking indoors and adhering to proof-of-vaccination policies, is killing and hospitalizing people from Southern Health at disproportionate rates.”

 

Moreover, during this time we constantly hear reports about over worked nurses and other staff who are on the verge of emotional and physical collapse as they try their best to help people who are harming themselves and others as a result of their failure to follow health orders.  As a result Brodbeck informed,

 “Hospitals have been forced to redeploy health-care staff and cancel thousands of procedures to accommodate that, leaving tens of thousands of Manitobans suffering in pain and misery on growing wait lists.

This is the direct result of a misguided and misinformed anti-vaccination campaign that has taken a foothold in parts of the province. It is also the result of a provincial government that has refused to effectively enforce public health orders.

Manitoba hospitals are averaging over three new ICU patients a day (around half from Southern Health, the vast majority of whom are not fully vaccinated). Instead of having enough capacity to absorb another wave, Manitoba hospitals already have 34 COVID-19 patients in ICUs and 135 in hospital overall.”

It really looks like Manitoba and Southern Health in particular are headed for disaster and people in Southern Health have a lot of responsibility on their shoulders. They have illegally exercised their religious  freedom while they wreak havoc on the community. That is a strange kind of religion. If it is religion at all.

 

Religion of Thugs

Epidemics/Pandemics, Evangelical Christianity, religion

 

I recently read about a strange  Kind of Christianity—Churches flaunt rules as People Suffer and  Die.

Here is what was reported in the  Winnipeg Free Press by Brenda Suderman,

“Christian worshippers are secretly holding church services in farm sheds and machine shops in southern Manitoba communities as a way to evade Covid-19 public health orders.

Held on private properties, the Sunday services, attended by dozens, and up to hundreds,, have been organized to circumvent current public health rules, which required mask use and limit the size of religious gatherings if attendees are not full vaccinated for Covid-19 Communities in the Southern Health region have some of the lowest vaccination rates in Manitoba including Winkler and the Rural Municipality of Stanley, where the services are reportedly being held.”

According to Suderman, attendees gather in large insulated and heated farm buildings used for equipment maintenance, repair and storage. Usually, the buildings are equipped with overhead doors large enough to accommodate big farm machinery and have one two doors for pedestrians and perhaps an occasional window.

It appears nothing is being done by the province because the local MLA and current Manitoba Minister of Justice who oversees the criminal justice system and is responsible for making sure Manitoba’s laws are enforced said,

“It’s very sensitive. We’re also trying to send the message that we know how important it is for people to gather to meet their spiritual needs… If there were some groups of people looking to meet in clandestine ways in undisclosed locations, it would be very challenging to monitor.”

 

Perhaps Manitoba’s police are too busy checking up on drivers driving without wearing seat belts.

What makes the negligence of the Minister of Justice even more disturbing is the sharp rise of cases, hospitalizations and deaths in this region where Christians flout the law. Christians are flouting the law to facilitate their personal desires for freedom and as a direct result Manitobans are dying and being put at risk of further harms.  What kind of Christianity is that?

In a previous post I called this the religion of thugs. Actually, it’s not religion at all.

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