Dear Editor,
While I have been walking my dog around Harriston (Minto) in the last few days, I have been bemused to encounter tiny posters, stuck to poles in the downtown area, which suggest that the pandemic is actually some kind of political conspiracy and that people should be wary of government policies which have been implemented.
Comment added – Messages questioning COVID-19 restrictions have been added to some signage advising of the measures in downtown Harriston. Submitted photo
The authors of these poster messages conveniently (for themselves) do not reveal their names, the names of their organizations (if any) and do not suggest any source materials for their implied claims.
As a retired, professional epidemiologist, I urge everyone to get their information on COVID-19 from trustworthy, well-resourced, accountable institutions like Health Canada, the World Health Organization (WHO) and the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) in Atlanta. The information and recommendations provided by these groups are based on decades of scientifically verifiable studies, observation and experimentation.
All of this science can traced back to its creators, and their organizations, through the literature in the medical journals. Health science is continually being improved, reviewed and challenged by scientists, making the process transparent.
The lessons learned from confronting SARS, H1N1, chicken, swine and bird flu events, have all been collected and analyzed to do one thing: prevent a recurrence of the outcomes of the 1918 flu pandemic. In 1918, the flu killed about 50 million people world-wide (nearly as many as World War II) and it infected a third of the world population. If unchecked, a rate like that would kill 175 million people, today.
In 1918, health workers knew that distancing should have been practiced. But, because of confusion and political interference associated with the First World War, useful information was muddled and suppressed in the nations at war. In the U.S., 675,000 people died and some were buried in mass graves because their response systems were overwhelmed.
In Canada, 17,000 people have died from COVID-19. The U.S., with a population about 10 times that of Canada and a similar age and economic structure, should experience around 10 times as many deaths as Canada. Instead, partly due to the buffoonery of the Trump administration, the number of deaths in the U.S. (380,000) is 22 times that of the number in Canada. Bad information and implementation can have tragic consequences.
The purveyors of conspiracy theories, sticking tiny posters on poles downtown, are not capable of thinking clearly about the spectre we face.
Of course, we should always be suspicious of the motivations of politicians, but confronted with COVID-19, our leaders have been attempting to implement World Health Organization guidelines.
We need to listen to them as if our lives depend on it.
Richard N. Fry, Epidemiologist (retired),
Harriston