22 million

The aftermath of lockdowns are starting to show...

That is the number of “backlogged patient procedures” in Ontario due to the lockdown response imposed by our public health officials and government leaders. Let’s first really deeply understand the enormity of that number. It’s gargantuan. Next, we must try our best to understand the impacts and ramifications of such an outlandish “backlog” of medical care and access. It’s unrecoverable. Then, lastly we need to try to make sense of it all and derive meaning to move forward more humanely and constructively.

Such grossly delayed procedures include, but are not limited to, knee and hip replacements, colonoscopies, cancer screenings (mammograms, cervical cancer), and potential cancer diagnostic procedures as per recent public OMA statements . How many people currently reside in Ontario? Somewhere in the ballpark of 15 million people. Already there are more accrued unaccessible medical procedures than the entire provincial population. Now, how many of those people would fit into the typical category of requiring said “backlogged procedures”? Mostly middle aged to elderly people are predominantly affected here, multiple times over it seems. Delayed diagnoses is quite obviously devastating to a significant amount of human lives and their families, which results in excess morbidity, mortality and suffering. Early cancer diagnosis is demonstrably shown to improve patient outcomes both short and long term. Seriously consider the ramifications of millions of innocent Ontarians who have suffered and those who have died needlessly over the past two years due to policies that removed and obstructed essential medical care to citizens.

Preventative care is far more effective than reactive care. Family doctors are tasked to specifically specialize in this area of medicine and patient care. Many allowed, and largely participated in, the subversion of essentially any measure known to actual improved human health. Lockdowns, forced upon us, detached human physicians from human patients. A separation, with the greatest magnitude for harm, occurred with little to no resistance. Personal connection is where the doctor-patient relationship is found and built upon. The hyphen between those two self-determining beings represents the bond that develops during ethical and compassionate focused care and treatment. 

Delaying surgeries that will improve everyday function, mobility, and fall risks in our aging population is catastrophic, on its own accord, in various ways. As aging lives slow down due to moderate or severe arthritis, normal day to day activities become more burdensome. Our affected older population becomes increasingly sedentary, requires more assistance, and loss of independence triggers a whole cascade of psychological and physiological deterioration. Within a very short time, a matter of a few weeks, muscular mass and strength diminishes and without expedient resolution to the inciting factor for immobility, this loss often becomes unrecoverable. Mechanical falls ensue, dramatically increasing this group’s risk for various fractures, but most worrisome are hip fractures as the morbidity and mortality rates are quite high. Falling incites fear in patients, which further hastens the loss of vitality. It is important to note that forced lockdowns and social isolation caused both direct and indirect deterioration in our elderly. I’ve noted the indirect above (ie. delayed tests and procedures). Direct impacts of lockdowns include, but are not limited to, stay at home orders, abrupt and prolonged cessation of physical exercise and therapy programs, closure of recreation centres, etc which forced so many elderly into sedentary isolation. In medicine, we know isolation kills. Even the CDC reminds us

[s]ocial isolation significantly increased a person’s risk of premature death from all causes…“.

Lockdown enthusiasts purportedly implied universality (of good), but this is a false construct and, consequently, resulted in perpetrated harm onto our most vulnerable. Far more harm than they would have experienced from Covid itself. Consider the impacts of natural consequences of a respiratory virus on an elderly population, which results in natural bodily harm or, unfortunately at times, death. And contrast that with the results of mankind forcibly removing all human contact and connection, all purpose and meaning in huge swaths of our elders. Human dignity and aging well have effectively been removed from society’s radar of essential morals and values and, ostensibly, modern public health goals. The tradeoff? The far fetched narrative of safety.

Better understanding the consequential effects on human lives and experiences from lockdowns deepens the chasm between what is good for the individual and, what became a perpetually repeated mantra, “the greater good”. If we, as a society, allow individuals to be essentially tortured by isolation, desolation, and deprivation, what have we become as the collective? Arguably, nothing close to the boasted results of greater good, I’d say! And where are we headed, teaching our children and youth this is the “only way to stay safe”? Clearly there are always many possible solutions and approaches to any given problem or crisis. As an example, The Great Barrington Declaration outlined early on a targeted, more balanced approach to covid response that would have preserved human life, value, quality, and dignity. Many places on earth did not deny basic human needs or usher in cruel measures toward their populations, and had similar outcomes with covid without the social, spiritual, economic, and cultural catastrophes. There is risk in life every moment of every day. Yet, life must still be lived and not merely existed. Each of us has innate and acquired intelligence to determine risk and benefit. This insidiously emerging ‘safety culture’ elevates the old Imperialist notions of goodness while chastising a self-determining population. Empowering hegemonic forces and bloated bureaucrats with our own individual inherent agency for risk management and its relative responsibility always results in enormous harm to already vulnerable disenfranchised populations.  Until we take back our own power through responsible self-determination, our species will continue to participate in harming innocent human lives.

Why is this “backlog” only being brought to the public’s attention now, over 2 years after the lockdown catastrophe began? A great many voices were speaking out very early on and alerting of such societal and health devastation. For those who do not know what happened during that early spring 2020 period, the polyphony of voices publicly raising red flags were silenced. Ridiculed. Blamed. Shamed. Censored. Concerned voices, who knew the consequences of such a decision were far greater than any perceived benefits, were abolished from the public sphere. “No soup for you”, convey the lockdown enthusiast overlords to any naysayers or challengers. Now, two plus years later, with compounding collateral damage and human suffering, this topic can be publicly broached. Why now? Well, just like Shakespeare’s The Tempest has Prospero, the “seeing man”, who constructs the island and narrates its existence for Miranda and the reader, our current official covid narrative has such characters.

At no time did any member of Ontario leadership or public health representatives inform the public of the multitude of risks from stay at home orders. These same people remain untouched by any negativities from their own measures, and continue the pursuit of boasting only the benefits and the irrationally screaming of the ‘necessity’. There was never a risk benefit analysis completed and shown to communities and their citizens to make an informed decision. And, again, just as our Shakespearean protagonist Prospero, manipulates and withholds information from listeners to reduce the chance of his authority being called into question, the main characters in the official covid narrative engage in the same self-serving behaviours. We effectively had no choice. We had no idea what was going to result from this Imperialistic paradigm. We were told “we must, there is no other way to control the spread…”. We were continuously shown false fronts and partial stories, effectively elevating the official covid narrative protagonists to idol status. Anyone who challenged the ideology recognized the short, medium and long term effects of shutting life down for months on end, tried to speak out and request transparency and accountability. To no avail. Still to this day Ontario citizens have yet to see any degree of truth, transparency and accountability from our own modern day Prosperos - ie. those “in charge”.  All the while, the carnage of the lockdowns become increasingly present, real and visible to the Othered.

Can we pause to reflect on the meaning of this ancient process of power/control dynamics using Othering? In the most modern day human civilization, we are dehumanizing innocent living beings who raise questions and challenge official storytellers on their catchphrases

flatten the curve,

we’re all in this together,

essential workers

it’s just a mask

Critics of the modern day Prosperos are, and have always been, the inherent checks and balances for the collective. Without the individual (who is a real tangible being), there is no collective(construct). Each of us, born equal, has the same inalieable right to free thought and speech. I hope we can all see the essential value now as we sit at this precipice in human history. The “greater good” agenda has always, historically, included unthinkable violations to innocent lives and human rights.

Myopically allowing only one view or perspective has self-purportedly canonized its stories and characters; while, simultaneously resulting in the dehumanization, deaths, and suffering of a targeted subset of our population/collective both historically and presently. Being punished and exiled from my profession for continuing to carefully and thoughtfully consider the individual, a thing called patient-centred care, in this dystopian-progressive world serves only to sink the totalitarian hooks in even deeper to those who continue to fear their own choices. 

We will never recover from the pernicious hijacking of our medical system. So, we need to regroup, look for new and better ways forward.

Let’s leave off with a thought exercise. I challenge you to try to count to 22 million out loud. This is one activity to help us connect and engage more with the information, numbers and data the narrator is providing us.