- Note - This was written by a Canadian who has been observing
the impact and course of SARS in his country from the outset. -ed
-
- In Hong Kong, Project Shield has raised money to buy
more than 70,000 protective suits for frontline medical staff in the hospitals
treating SARS patients. As predicted by the Asia Times, the SARS virus
has made its way into the Chinese countryside. Public health officials
fear it will run riot there.
- In Canada politicians, public health officials and
the media hope the World Health Organization will lift its Travel Advisory
on Toronto on Tuesday. They are presenting arguments that show SARS contained
and dying out in Toronto.
- WHO's Dr. David Hayman says the health organization
is trying to stop the spread of the disease internationally. WHO notes
that of the 26 countries that have reported SARS, all but three have contained
the disease very well. The exceptions are Canada, China (including Hong
Kong) and Singapore.
- SARS escaped from Toronto to other countries and Health
Canada had no personnel, simply a bulletin board with pamphlets, at the
Toronto airport. History and facts do not agree with the local assessment
of a heroic effort and containment of SARS.
- The fight against SARS in Ontario is led by the same
provincial government that brought us the Walkerton water disaster. They
killed so many full time nursing jobs that Toronto lacks staff to fight
SARS, and five frontline nurses quit today due to stress.
- Ontario's commissioner of public health D'Cunha is
saying that the last community cluster date of onset of SARS was on April
9. All of the cases caught afterwards have been health-care workers.
- At the same time front page news says a 44-year-old
man has become the first otherwise healthy person in Canada to die of SARS.
He was exposed to the virus during a visitation at Toronto's Highland Funeral
Home. Health officials had asked anyone who was at the funeral home on
April 3 to go into isolation for 10 days to prevent the spread of the disease.
- We don't know as fact that the virus hasn't passed
into the community in some way. And it is simple logic to see that a virus
will spread anew if it finds any avenue of transit. Many more people are
wasting away on respirators and new cases could be in the incubation phase.
- In Toronto all doctors' offices and clinics have you
fill out a form before entering. If you circle yes to any SARS symptoms,
which could be as small as muscle ache, you have to go to other facilities.
It is possible SARS could spread on public transit as people travel to
other locations for treatment.
- There may be a few avenues of escape that the virus
has taken advantage of and if that is the case it will break out again
and make a mockery of the current dog and pony show about the end of SARS.
- Currently the media, politicians and public health
officials have taken this new Toronto the Good and SARS-free hoopla so
far that it is bothersome even if they are correct in their assumptions.
- Media's new role is to collaborate with politicians
and business associations. They decide what the story and the truth should
be and then work to turn the public into cheerleaders for their propaganda.
- The Star, Sun and Globe are business groups and Star
publisher John Honderich's most recent article is titled": Toronto
- it's time for all of us to pull together.
- And shop and cheerlead for Toronto and oppose the
WHO and generally pretend that happy thoughts will make SARS go away.
- Genuine media analysis does not exist. None of the
big guys are telling the whole story. Other nations have quickly blocked
SARS. And we would have done so but didn't because the Harris/Eves government
has damaged the health care system. The Feds have been asleep on the issue,
and the city's response is both stupid and hysterical.
-
- Mayor Mel Lastman is on the same wavelength as Honderich,
but not as good at convincing people. He did the opposite and made a fool
of himself on CNN. His happy and safe Toronto pitch has turned us into
Toronto the Stupid.
-
- Some of the provincial government's spin is making
we wonder if they are taking SARS underground in an attempt to partially
hide its existence in Toronto. At all levels the powers that be seem to
believe in economic health instead of public health.
- Saturday Dr. Colin D'Cunha, the province's commissioner
of public health, suggested it would be unwise to assume a change might
be made next week in the World Health Organization's travel advisory on
Toronto. "I don't want to fool you to think that it's a done deal,
that on Tuesday the travel advisory's coming off. We don't know at this
time," he said.
- A look at D'Cunha's choice of words is telling. He
doesn't want to fool us about a done deal. The Tory term "done deal"
meaning a backroom deal. And it also means that if he knows about a failed
deal he was likely in on it. SARS stuff gets hidden behind closed doors,
and that means they could be fibbing to us.
- "The very existence of the travel advisory may
make it difficult to get the WHO to change its mind about Toronto,"
said Dr. James Young, commissioner of public security for Ontario. "Now
that Toronto has been branded a SARS pariah state, anyone who develops
any kind of respiratory ailment - the flu, a cold, community-acquired pneumonia
- will be instantly assumed to have SARS."
- Here Young may really be saying that SARS exported
from Toronto will be quickly detected by the World Health Organization.
His Boss, the province is unhappy because it can't contain SARS in a Toronto
cover-up when the World Health Organization will always catch it on exported
cases.
- Next Young says, "The Australians are a good
example of that. We have people who lived exactly probably 30 miles from
the area where we have problems, they travel half way across the world
and get sick and then this gets counted as SARS cases."
- Young was referring to three children who traveled
from Toronto to Australia last month and were hospitalized after their
arrival. Australian officials say it was SARS but the experts here say
it wasn't SARS.
- So again we see cases where it is SARS elsewhere but
in Toronto we say it isn't SARS. And we see Young using scientific description
that includes the words "exactly probably."
- We are told that SARS is tailing, but they don't really
know for sure. They are popping propaganda tranquillizers to us and to
the rest of the world. And if we all go to sleep we could awake and find
ourselves in a new medical emergency. Fooled again by the Tories.
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