Now is the winter of our discontent (as someone may have once said)

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is back to inform you through 2021. It's your weekly briefing on topics pertinent to healthcare marketers and executives published in cooperation with Peak Pharma Solutions. From Chronicle Companies, organizers of the National Pharmaceutical Congress Winter Webinar Feb. 10, 2021. More info at pharmacongress.info

⇒ Issue #154 (In numerology, 154 signifies adventurousness and expresses a sense of personal freedom.)

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 01/14: 686,211*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 01/14: 17,404*

⇒ Number of Canadians vaccinated as of 01/14: 402,889*
⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 01/14: 92,452,684*
⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 01/14: 1,980,885*

January 14, 2020—Good morning, CurveFlatteners. As we return to the place where it all went down, and gingerly step around the chalk silhouettes, your typist today is man-on-the-scene (and fellow of predictable behaviours), Mitch Shannon. 

You are well aware that while we were unplugged during the past couple of weeks, Covid has been running amok, the health system is breaking under the duress, orders have been issued to shelter in place, and, merely as a sideshow, the American capital continues under armed siege. Further to the latter development, and despite the ongoing border closure, a pair of Canadian healthcare dim-bulbs who call themselves “Global Frontline Nurses” managed to find their way down to last week's U.S. insurrection, and make their travels known on social media. That’s some serious breach of norms, ladies. You are not quite following the example set by Florence Nightingale, OM, RRC, DSt.

  

As of today at midnight, Ontario has issued instructions to stay at home for at least the next four weeks. Quebec previously imposed evening and overnight curfews

Front-line health workers are under siege. Twenty-one of 130 staff at a Toronto ambulance dispatch service are either in quarantine or self-isolating following a Covid outbreak in their workplace, according to the Toronto Star.

Tragically, a 35-year-old Granby, Que. emergency-room physician, Dr. Karine Dion, took her own life recently, in what her family describes as a consequence of work-related stress. A colleague,  Dr. Naheed Dosani, tells Global News: “Her family and her husband have gone public with this death to let the public know the immense distress that health workers are experiencing on the front lines of this pandemic.”

Canadian business leaders believe we will get past this challenge, but they predict it’s going to require the vaccinations of 4.5 million patients before things return to some form of normality. At the start of this week, we had achieved slightly more than seven per cent of that goal.

All this suggests that 2021 is already shaping up as one more dilly of an experience, isn’t it? You may be seeking an effective ameliorating/numbing agent to help with the angst, and here’s a tip. Try keeping the zydeco music cranked up all day and all night long, focusing on the catalogue of the immortal Jo-El Sonnier (link below.) Works for me -- up to a point.

The NPC Podcast returns this month for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to bring you our informative and entertaining weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Karen Lee, CEO of Parkinson Canada. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with our partners at Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 01/24/2020

• An epidemiological update issued Wednesday (01/13/21) by the World Health Organization illustrates how a lack of vigilance during the holiday season resulted in immediate consequences. Five million new Covid cases were reported last week, according to the WHO, reversing the previous two weeks of containment of disease spread. The organization’s Mike Ryan tells Reuters news agency: "Certainly in the northern hemisphere, particularly in Europe and North America we have seen that sort of perfect storm of the season: coldness, people going inside, increased social mixing and a combination of factors that have driven increased transmission in many, many countries." His comments were echoed by his WHO colleague, Maria Van Kerkhove, who cautions, "After the holidays, in some countries, the situation will get a lot worse before it gets better."
  
• Supplementing today’s disturbing news of the suicide of Dr. Dion of Granby, Que. (see previous item), new research from King's College in the U.K. indicates about half of active ICU staff may have PTSD, severe anxiety or problem drinking during the COVID-19 pandemic. The study was just published in Occupational Medicine. Prof. Neil Greenberg of King's College, who is the lead author, said: “Our results show a substantial burden of mental health symptoms being reported by ICU staff towards the end of the first wave in July and July 2020. The severity of symptoms we identified is highly likely to impair some ICU staffs ability to provide high-quality care as well as negatively impacting on their quality of life.”
  
  
• A new report due for publication in Perspectives on Psychological Science suggests that the efficacy of the new Covid-19 vaccines may be reduced by factors such as depression, stress, loneliness, and poor health behaviours. Lead author Annelise Madison of the Ohio State says, "Our new study sheds light on vaccine efficacy and how health behaviours and emotional stressors can alter the body's ability to develop an immune response. The trouble is that the pandemic in and of itself could be amplifying these risk factors."
• Because our labour-union agreement here at the CurveFlattener calls for publishing precisely one amusing item per annum featuring zombies, and to get it out of the way early in the year, here is that obligatory real-life burlesque. Research by Prof. John Johnson, of the psychology department at Penn State University, found that an individual's enjoyment of horror films may have better prepared them for the Covid-19 pandemic, in comparison with those who do not enjoy so-called frightening entertainment. The professor’s findings are published in the journal Personality and Individual Differences.

TODAY CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON

Yesterday, we just launched the first issue of CJMC Fortnightly, our new e-newsletter on emerging therapeutic uses of medical cannabis, with a mission of curating real-world data and real-world evidence. Congratulations to John Evans and the Chronicle Companies team. Sign up for a free subscription at http://cjmc.substack.com

BEST WISHES FOR THE NEW YEAR

As we resume manning our stations and preparing for whatever may be around the corner this year, the CurveFlattener will be reporting to you each Thursday and Friday, right up until the curve is flattened. We’ll be back tomorrow with Kylie Rebernik at the keyboard.