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| Vivek Goel PHOTO BY FILE PHOTO /Postmedia Network |
It’s time to broaden the conversation in Canada around COVID-19 from one focused on just the daily case numbers to one that’s about maximizing the overall health and well-being of society.
That was one of the key messages articulated by Vivek Goel, one of the nation’s top public health experts, in a wide-ranging conversation with Postmedia.
“What we seem to have developed, by and large, is a view that we need to focus on eliminating COVID-19,” says Goel, a member of the COVID-19 Immunity Task Force and a professor at the Dalla Lana School of Public Health. “And we have got people to the point that they’re so scared of COVID-19 that they’re not thinking about all the other consequences.”
Goel — who was the founding president and CEO of Public Health Ontario from 2008 until 2014 — says that “we certainly are in a wave … but we have to avoid overreacting to the daily numbers.”
Comparing the daily numbers to where we were in the spring is not an apples to apples comparison, Goel notes, pointing out that earlier in the year there were far fewer tests, far more cases in older populations and long-term care homes, as well as far more people in ICUs and on ventilators.
“We have way more in terms of control measures in place,” Goel says in response to the argument some have made that those most dire indicators are now on the cusp of flaring up. “If we look at how many companies and organizations still have people working from home, so the number of daily interactions are limited, we have physical distancing and other requirements, we don’t have big conferences, sports events, theatres — so we are already starting from a baseline of control measures that didn’t exist back in March.”
Source: Anthony Furey | Toronto Sun
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