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Wednesday, December 2, 2020

Canada's poor & elderly hit hardest by lockdowns

Canada's COVID-19 strategy is an assault on the working class | Toronto Sun - Martin Kulldorff & Sunetra Gupta:

November 23, 2020 - "The Canadian COVID-19 lockdown strategy is the worst assault on the working class in many decades. Low-risk college students and young professionals are protected; such as lawyers, government employees, journalists, and scientists who can work from home; while older high-risk working-class people must work, risking their lives generating the population immunity that will eventually help protect everyone. This is backwards, leading to many unnecessary deaths from both COVID-19 and other diseases.

"While anyone can get infected, a key feature of COVID-19 is that there is more than a thousand-fold difference in the risk of death between the oldest and the youngest. In fact, children have much less risk from COVID-19 than from the annual influenza. Considering this, we must do a much better job protecting the elderly and other high-risk groups until a vaccine is available. As a contrast, children should go to school in-person while we encourage young adults to live near normal lives to minimize the collateral damage from the pandemic. For them, the public health damage from lockdowns is worse than their minimal risk from COVID-19. 

"Following basic public health principles and numerous pandemic preparedness plans, this is a focused protection strategy, as outlined in the Great Barrington Declaration, with accompanying details on how to properly protect the elderly....

"Despite heroic efforts by the public, the nine-month lockdown and contact tracing strategy has tragically failed older Canadians, with 97% of COVID-19 deaths inflicting those over 60. Where it did 'succeed' was in shifting the COVID-19 burden from affluent professionals to the less affluent working class. For example, in Toronto, the incidence rates were the same at the beginning of the pandemic, but after the March 23 lockdowns, detected cases declined in affluent neighborhoods while they skyrocketed in less affluent areas. A similar effect was subsequently observed for mortality....

"While it is impossible to protect anyone 100% during a pandemic, the notion that we cannot better protect the elderly and other high-risk groups is nonsense. It is not harder to protect the old than it is to protect the affluent, and the former leads to fewer deaths.

"Lockdowns have generated enormous collateral damage on other health outcomes, such as plummeting childhood vaccination rates, worst cardiovascular disease outcomes, less cancer screening, and deteriorating mental health, just to name a few. Even if all lockdowns are lifted tomorrow, this is something that we will have to live with – and die with – for many years to come.

"One of the basic principles of public health is to consider all health outcomes, and not only a single disease. Having thrown that principle out the window, we urgently need to bring it back to minimize mortality and to maximize overall health and well-being."

Read more: https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/opinion-canadas-covid-19-strategy-is-an-assault-on-the-working-class

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