Open Letter to Dr. Janet DeMille

 

The following was published in the Chronicle Journal August 11, 2020. Dr. DeMille is the Chief Medical Officer for the Thunder Bay District Health Unit.

 

Open Letter to Dr. Janet DeMille,

Dear Janet,

In support of your drive to keep workers, the public and our communities “safe” I have the following suggestions:

-          Require that everyone who is outdoors must use sunscreen and wear floppy hats to prevent skin cancer.

-          Ban the sale of all food items that are deemed to promote the onset of diabetes.

-          Ban the sale of all food items that are deemed to promote obesity.

-          Require that everyone wear a rain jacket when outdoors to make sure that if it rains, they do not get chilled and then susceptible to pneumonia.

-          Require all males who have reached puberty to wear condoms at all times when outside the home to help keep us safe from sexually transmitted diseases.

-          Require all females who have reached puberty to wear protective devices to prevent transmission of sexually transmitted diseases (“chastity belts” come to mind as one example).

-          Since our safety is so paramount you may as well ban the sale of all tobacco products.

-          While I know it did not work a century ago, why not ban the sale of alcohol, again for our “safety”?

While I could have provided many more I know some of the above seem silly but really, they are no sillier than requiring people to wear masks in public places even though almost all communities in the district have no Covid-19 cases and only a rare number have had any reported back when there was no concern about wearing masks.

I do have a related question for you. We trust people in authority, such as yourself, to rely on expert advice. With you being just a GP who did you rely on for your advice? I know it was not our national Minister of Health who has no medical background at all. Could it have been our Canadian Chief Medical Officer? The person, while trained in pediatric infectious diseases relied on the World Health Organisation (WHO) for advice even though they openly displayed bias to China, the source of Covid-19? The latter is especially strange in that Canada has five labs that are part of the National Microbiology Lab network of the Public Health Agency of Canada, including the JC Wilt Infectious Diseases Research Centre in Winnipeg. One would have thought “expert” advice could have been found here, in Canada.

I do find it strange though that this order for masks to be worn by all in public places has come so late in the cycle. Deaths from Covid-19 are down to single digits here in Canada. The worst is well past us. Internationally other countries went into lock down about the same time as us, with Sweden being one exception. While their death rate of 570 per million is more than double ours (237 per million) they are still no worse than many other countries such as the United Kingdom at 683 per million and Belgium at 850 per million. One standout is Germany whose death rate from Covid-19 stands at 110 per million. What did they do different than us? One is that they asked, but not told at risk of penalty, that people should wear masks in public back at the beginning of April. Back when such an action made sense.

One final comment I would like to make is that I find it extraordinary how one class of people, “journalists”, who seldom have much training in anything other than writing have become the dominant bullies in leading the charge in encouraging the imposition of controls on others. Yet it is this same group who cry about “Freedom of the Press” while gleefully encouraging the removal of freedoms from everyone else. One group in general that I have never liked are hypocrites and the two dominate groups that lead the pack in hypocrisy are politicians and “journalists”. I sure hope you were not trying to please them with your order for the mandatory use of masks. 

Right now, we are at a point in time where we know a lot more about Covid-19 than we did back in January. We know that, while still a risk, it is no where are virulent or as lethal as originally predicted. We have been subjected to endless fear mongering. It is time we got back to “normal” where we live life to the fullest as it is very fleeting, no matter what measures we take. It is time to bring hope and joy back into our lives as that is the only way to maintain our sanity, or at least those of us who are still sane.

Sincerely,

 

Alan