Grading one province's vaccination roll-out: What's a synonym for 'not good enough?'

The NPC Healthbiz Weekly is here 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. 

⇒ Issue #166 (In numerology, 166 represents caring, nurturing, responsibility and providing for yourself and others.)

⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 02/25: 112,646,459*

⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 02/25: 2,499,419*

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 02/25: 860,348*
⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 02/25: 21,810*

⇒ Number of vaccine doses administered to Canadians as of 02/25: 1,648,455*

February 25, 2020—Hello to CurveFlatteners in the Canadian province of Ontario and around the world. It’s Mitch Shannon here with your Thursday morning update. Was it only two years ago when we in Ontario had so few things to worry about that we’d actually fret over the damn slogans included on the damn auto license-plates? 

To recall those idyllic days back in 2019: Ontario premier Doug Ford had just ignited a controversy by replacing the time-honoured license-plate adage “Yours to Discover” with the updated declaration, “A Place to Grow.” So much has taken place since that kerfuffle. More accurately, so much has not taken place regarding Covid vaccine's unavailability to the public. As my colleague Allan Ryan reported here last week, inaction on vaccines has some Ontarians angry enough to make threats against provincial health officers.

Well, the bullied health bureaucrats will be reassured that being mediocre is still plenty good enough for at least one easy-to-please constituency. A national seniors’ advocacy group issued a report on Canada’s vaccine roll-out, widely acknowledged as amateurish and fumbling. But that’s still impressive to the organization known as CanAge, which just put out a very odd press release noting that it awards Ontario “a relatively impressive [score of] B-” for its efforts. 

Man. Don’t you wish CanAge had written your last job performance review? And, cliched cultural stereotypes notwithstanding, what would your immigrant parents say to a report card that had all “B-” grades? Likely not, “That’s relatively impressive, son!”

We’d bet there’s a high-level cabinet meeting taking place in Queens Park at this very moment, with the Ford administration contemplating using this wacky endorsement on the 2022 license plate design: “Ontario: We’re relatively impressive!” Or perhaps this variation: “Ontario: Where Mediocre Is the New Excellent!”

One Ontarian who might need to strive to attain mediocrity in health compliance is the owner of an infamous Etobicoke barbecue restaurant. CurveFlattener readers may recall our earlier report on the pit-master who defied the local anti-Covid measures and kept his eatery open for indoor dining after being warned by law-enforcement officials last November. This week the bill came due for the proprietor of Adamson Barbecue, and it will sting. Adam Skelly was handed a detailed invoice for more than $187,000 in costs related to the police visit and the related padlocking of his premises. But scofflaw Skelly may have the last laugh. A “GoFundMe'' page set up by carnivores with a distaste for following rules has raised $338,000 for the restaurateur’s defence fund. I give them all a B+ grade for stirring up muck and a “relatively impressive” F+ for health smarts.

The NPC Podcast is back for another season. The National Pharmaceutical Congress organizers are proud to release our new weekly podcast series, hosted by Peter Brenders. Peter's guest this week is Suzanne McGurn, President and CEO of CADTH. Listen here now, or download the episode and play it at your convenience. The NPC Podcast is presented in cooperation with Impres Pharma

COVID CHRONICLE 02/25/2021

• The U.S. Centers for Disease Control report a continuing increase in reports of Multisystem Inflammatory Syndrome in Children (MIS-C), a rare condition associated with Covid-19. According to CDC data, MIS-C infected 2,060 children and adolescents aged 14 and under and resulted in 30 fatalities. The agency admits its researchers are puzzled by the condition, which disproportionately affects Black and Hispanic children, with 69 per cent of patients falling in those racial categories. The number of reported cases doubled from October 1, 2020, to January 31, 2021.

• Where you live is a determining factor in whether or not you may be infected by Covid-19, according to a study by Louisiana public health officials published in Frontiers in Public Health. Researchers identified census tracts in the state associated with high levels of both social vulnerability and Covid-19 incidence. And what do you know? Bingo! They conclude: “Additional resources should be allocated to areas of increased social disadvantage to reduce the incidence of Covid-19 in vulnerable populations.”
• Japanese scientists have meticulously validated the instruction offered by Popeye the Sailor in an ancient cartoon episode: “Say it, don’t spray it.” The boffins used smoke and laser-light to study the flow of expelled breath near and around two people conversing in various relative postures commonly found in the service industry, such as in hair salons, medical exam rooms, or long-term care facilities. Lead author Keiko Ishii, writing in the journal Physics of Fluids, advocates using face-shields and facemasks by healthcare and personal-service workers.
• Covid has been horrible for most things but fantastic for one frequently overlooked thing: scientific publishing. That finding was published -- well, naturally it was -- in the journal Scientometrics. Caroline Wagner, a co-author of the study and associate professor in the John Glenn College of Public Affairs at The Ohio State University, found 4,875 articles were produced on the subject of Covid-19 between January and mid-April of 2020. That grew to 44,013 by mid-July and hit 87,515 by the start of October. Says she: "It is an astonishing number of publications. It may be unprecedented in the history of science.”

TODAY CHRONICLE IS WORKING ON

We’re very pleased to announce the launch of the "Skin Spectrum Podcast," a biweekly audio project positioned at the intersection of dermatology, race, and society. The Skin Spectrum Podcast will launch very shortly to lead the worldwide conversation on ethnodermatology. Watch this space for more details. Later tonight, I’m honoured to offer a short presentation during the Stevens-Johnson Syndrome Town Hall meeting, along with Wendy Adams of Galderma Canada and Dr. Neil H. Shear of Sunnybrook Health Sciences Centre. 

RIGHT NOW I’M READING

A Coney Island of the Mind, the 1958 collection of poetry by the late Lawrence Ferlinghetti, the bard of San Francisco’s North Beach neighbourhood, who died this week at the astonishing age of 101. I remember reading this book in high school and thinking that Ferlinghetti was no match for many of the other beatnik word-slingers he published under his City Lights imprint. But the cat was also a bookseller and a publisher, and that part of him inspired me. Revisiting his poems is an act of respect and affection for a World War II vet whose advocacy of free speech influenced social attitudes into the 21st century. It would be churlish to say that many of the poems just aren’t very good, so we’ll hold that thought. Curiously, Ferlinghetti’s death was preceded this past week by that of radio blowhard Rush Limbaugh. I recall visiting the City Lights bookstore with a colleague back in the ‘90s, during a medical conference. My co-worker searched high and low among the stacks of Gregory Corso, Gary Snyder and Allen Ginsberg volumes for a paperback of Limbaugh’s latest polemic. Needless to say, it wasn’t on offer in Ferlinghetti’s shop, and what kind of numbskull would ever think that it might be? You want Limbaugh, you can find stacks of his deceitful twaddle on sale in every mass-market newsstand, Wal-Mart, and 7-Eleven. But that reassurance failed to placate my pal, who left the historic hepster premises in a huff, mumbling under his breath about the beatniks not deigning to carry Rush. And, needless to say, after we left San Francisco, we never spoke again.  

NEXT UP

CurveFlattener returns tomorrow, with Kylie Rebernik at the controls. Until then, keep up the curveflattening, won'tcha?