Irrational policies to protect health care system

Vincent J. Curtis

6 Jan 22

Since the beginning of the pandemic, the goal of the Ontario government has been to protect the health care system from being overwhelmed.  However, the government has followed utterly irrational policies to achieve this goal, with lockdowns and closing schools being outstanding examples of that irrationality.

Monoclonal antibody treatment reduces hospitalization by 80 percent.  If, in the fall, the government had purchased 20,000 doses of monoclonals, it could potentially reduce 20,000 COVID hospitalizations to 4,000.  Since, previously, only about two percent of COVID cases produced a hospitalization, potentially a million cases would generate only 4,000 hospitalizations with 20,000 monoclonal antibody treatments available.  (Ontario has had 828,000 total cases since January, 2020) The new anti-virals from Merck (molnuvirapir) and Pfizer (paxlovid) reduce hospitalization time.  Provincial hospitals can handle 4,000 COVID hospitalizations over the course of several weeks without being overwhelmed.

Instead, the government irrationally pursued mass vaccination, administering 27 million vaccine doses, mixing promiscuously the few at risk with the majority who had none.  To protect the health care system, only the vulnerable needed to be vaccinated since they are the ones who might need hospitalization.  Withal, the vaccination campaign proved a waste of time, as COVID is breaking through.

Closing schools and universities is an irrational answer to the latest wave.  Healthy people under 25 should be congregated together away from the vulnerable.  Keeping kids and university students out of school simply mixes them up with the vulnerable.  Being at school keeps them away from the vulnerable.

Now, consider locking down restaurants, salons, and the like.  What’s wrong with putting up a sign at the door warning vulnerable people, those over 65 and people with morbidities such as diabetes, obesity, and lung disorders, that spaces inside are confined, social distancing may be difficult, and letting the vulnerable decide whether or not they wish to enter?  That’s different from closing the business to those not at risk, or imposing six foot limits so that the business is uneconomic to run, or mandating useless masks.  If the vulnerable don’t want to take the risk, they are under no obligation to enter.

The rational way to protect the health care system from getting overwhelmed is to focus protection on the vulnerable, and we know who they are: the old, the obese, the diabetic, and those with lung disorders.  Trying to protect those who are at next to no risk of hospitalization is an irrational waste of resources, to say nothing of the bad effects on public health such irrational measures have.  To deny students schooling to allegedly protect the vulnerable is vicious, wrong, and irrational as policy on its own terms.

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