No amount of effort to make the approval process more efficient can overcome a society whose actions are currently straining public services like COVID testing and hospital care. Canadians have made the choice to roll the dice with COVID.
Who, I wonder, sitting on the Opposition benches would Fraser Macdonald recommend be given the authority to override Health Canada's procedures, assessments, and determinations, and make the "reasonable risk assessment" regarding Canadians' health and safety? Michelle Rempel Garner, Pierre Poilievre, and Erin O'Toole have been harsh and loud critics of Health Canada's (and Prime Minister Trudeau's) approach to ensuring the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 drugs, tests, and treatments. Should Rempel Garner, Poilievre, and O'Toole be tasked with overriding Health Canada when they see fit, and assess the risk to Canadian's health? If not them, if not Health Canada, if not the government, then who?
It’s easy to say do it faster, it’s much harder to come up with actual recommendations about how to be faster without sacrificing safety. This article has no such recommendations. Yesterday on CBC’s cross country checkup I heard a disappointingly high number of callers say they likely wouldn’t get the COVID vaccine. While I found it very surprising, and their comments uninformed, what it came down to was a lack of trust. That trust won’t be enhanced by vague articles crying “faster, faster”, or by Health Canada being pressured.
I agree. I'm not an epidemiologist but common sense tells me if large-scale testing had been prioritized at the very beginning when the rapid spread became obvious, we could have isolated outbreaks as they popped up instead of "one-size-fits-all" lockdowns for the whole country. And I suspect as a result, the rush for a vaccine would not be so acute. Easy to say from the comfy armchair of criticism but we had a step-by-step pandemic response report post-SARS, which Tam had co-written. They had all the information and just sat on it, stunned.
No amount of effort to make the approval process more efficient can overcome a society whose actions are currently straining public services like COVID testing and hospital care. Canadians have made the choice to roll the dice with COVID.
Who, I wonder, sitting on the Opposition benches would Fraser Macdonald recommend be given the authority to override Health Canada's procedures, assessments, and determinations, and make the "reasonable risk assessment" regarding Canadians' health and safety? Michelle Rempel Garner, Pierre Poilievre, and Erin O'Toole have been harsh and loud critics of Health Canada's (and Prime Minister Trudeau's) approach to ensuring the safety and efficacy of COVID-19 drugs, tests, and treatments. Should Rempel Garner, Poilievre, and O'Toole be tasked with overriding Health Canada when they see fit, and assess the risk to Canadian's health? If not them, if not Health Canada, if not the government, then who?
It’s easy to say do it faster, it’s much harder to come up with actual recommendations about how to be faster without sacrificing safety. This article has no such recommendations. Yesterday on CBC’s cross country checkup I heard a disappointingly high number of callers say they likely wouldn’t get the COVID vaccine. While I found it very surprising, and their comments uninformed, what it came down to was a lack of trust. That trust won’t be enhanced by vague articles crying “faster, faster”, or by Health Canada being pressured.
I agree. I'm not an epidemiologist but common sense tells me if large-scale testing had been prioritized at the very beginning when the rapid spread became obvious, we could have isolated outbreaks as they popped up instead of "one-size-fits-all" lockdowns for the whole country. And I suspect as a result, the rush for a vaccine would not be so acute. Easy to say from the comfy armchair of criticism but we had a step-by-step pandemic response report post-SARS, which Tam had co-written. They had all the information and just sat on it, stunned.