I have a very limited understanding of public health history gleaned from museums and plaques but it seems like engineers got involved early on to resolve systems problems and then after years of things gong well, medicine took over and pushed out systems thinking.
We needed independent aerosol engineering experts + healthcare/epidemiological experts. We got MOHs reporting directly to Ministers of Health, thereby politicising it. Politicians listened to corporations and small businesses, pols avoid costs. The system worked as designed, to our detriment.
I agree! Suspect in earlier times PH leaders would have said, "no fing way" followed by "if you fire me I'll be on every talk show for months explaining how you're lapdogs to corporations". In Alberta our CMOH willingly gave over authority she held in law to the cabinet covid committee.
She said that 'elected officials are the decision-makers'. Which is fine, except when it came to public health the law placed that decision-making authority in her office.
Sadly, she was between a rock and a hard place. I believe she should have stood her ground. Then they would have fired her, which in itself would have been a crisis. But her replacement would have been a lapdog, so....
How is it better that she was a lapdog? I hear this argument a lot but principled action would have changed perspectives in important ways. The only reason to capitulate is attachment to her lavish paycheque.
I said her replacement would have been a lapdog. As it was, she was too, and it was not better. We were doomed to have a lapdog, no matter what.
That’s what I’m saying. She deserves to be condemned.
Totally - just saying that even.if she would have made a stand, we'd have been in the same situation. Lose-lose.
Except that she could have said "no, this is wrong" and gotten some attention for it, highlighting the fact that her replacement was a lapdog, which could have been mattered. Complying in advance only helps fascists. The immediate results might have been the same but the CONTEXT would change.
I think I said that?
(to wit: have you heard about the CDC walkout today? Prolly wouldn't have happened if not for the "Nope" from the top.)
Might have brought it into stark clarity earlier. We have a Court of King’s Bench decision saying the CMOH unduly fettered her authority, but came out long after the fact. I’ve made mistakes, but so far never one that a court said involved violating the law (refusing to use authority).
A rationalisation for keeping her lavish paycheque? I wish all MOHs stood up and refused to toe the line. That would've been something. "We stand for Public Health, not harmful political BS." But I also hoped the world would stand up & refuse to trade with the USR.
I believe New Zealand was the only country that put public health first. For a while.
China was pretty restrictive too.
I hear that. But I don't trust any information coming from China.
Or from the US of Russia.
Ardern left & it was taken over by conservatives. Damn. I really like Jacinda.
I'm sure the strain of fighting the monied class got to her. A handful of billionaires can really throw their weight around.
She'd just had a baby recently and said she wanted to focus on her family, but yeah, I have no doubt politics & the corporate class can wear people down. Her handling of the Christchurch shooting was great. Woke/empathy is never out of style.
In Ontario, we've had some terrible & largely invisible CMOHs and most MOHs just toed the line. Ford's pandemic response was a bloody mess & many died, esp. in LTCHs. PH should never be in the hands of politicians.
*going
If only the people in charge had been receptive to incorporating different ways of thinking and solving problems they might not have been perceived as political and expendable by so many people.
This is a super article - discovered the first director of the CDC in USA was an engineer, and it had a unique discipline, public health engineering. www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/16...