Tuesday, March 21, 2023
No Result
View All Result
  • Media
Support Us
Macdonald-Laurier Institute
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media
No Result
View All Result
Macdonald-Laurier Institute

Different Regional Experiences Require Different Pandemic Responses: Shawn Whatley in the Epoch Times

October 7, 2020
in Columns, COVID-19, Domestic Policy Program, Health, In the Media, Latest News, Shawn Whatley
Reading Time: 3 mins read
A A

Regional solutions, avoiding disaggregated risk, and management based on flow science together offer hope that this next wave, or the next pandemic, does not deal the same crushing blow as COVID-19 did this spring, writes Shawn Whatley in the Epoch Times.

By Shawn Whatley, October 7, 2020

The first wave of COVID-19 hit at the peak of hospital overcrowding. Decades of trimming the meat while leaving the untouchable fat left some communities declaring a state of emergency. As we enter the second wave, here are three lessons we should have learned from COVID-19 already.

First, pandemics are regional. They do not infect the whole country like a giant paint roller covering each corner with an equal burden of disease. Pandemics are not egalitarian. Some regions suffer more than others; some patients bear a greater burden of illness.

Much like Canadian politics, pandemics require a regional response. What works for the Cornwall hospital may not work for the Queensway. Scarborough will look different than Sudbury, and so on. Fortunately, most hospitals have smart, motivated teams to run them. They do not need direction; they just need permission. Given the freedom to find creative solutions to local problems, they will design plans to protect the communities they serve that far surpass anything a small group of experts could design from a boardroom a thousand kilometres away.

Second, we cannot disaggregate risk. We cannot focus on one leak in a boat that has many leaks. We need to focus on the whole boat. Focussing on one risk—in this case, COVID-19—to the exclusion of all others may decrease the damage posed by the one risk, but it increases the total risk overall. Our boat still sinks.

Again, hospital managers know this. They spend their careers balancing demands from equally dire situations: breast versus bladder cancer; counselling versus cataract surgery. One risk, even a massive one, almost never warrants ignorance of all the others. Vulnerable people suffer from multiple vulnerabilities. We need to protect them from all risks to life and limb, not just the one that has caught the attention of media.

The lockdown presented at least as great a risk—a greater risk, in some cases—as the pandemic, for many patients. We will not know the extent until we measure the morbidity and mortality over the next few years. Much of it we will never know. But measurement misses the point; hospital managers could have mitigated much of this if they had been allowed to balance the risk of COVID against the risk of cancelling necessary treatment.

Finally, resilience is not magic. Flow scientists have taught us since the 1950s that systems which face unscheduled demand function best at just over 80 percent capacity. If we staff a coffee shop to guarantee that the staff are maximally busy all the time, then customers must wait. The same applies for everything from elevators in apartment buildings to major highways. Dreams of maximum capacity guarantee failure. We cannot run hospitals at (and above!) 100 percent capacity. Again, most hospital managers know this. They will deliver the performance that the system rewards and allows. Lately, we have neither rewarded nor allowed evidence-based flow solutions.

Risk forces us to re-examine how we lead. Complicated systems—for example, space shuttles and ocean liners—require better rules and more precise control to decrease risk. Complex systems—for example, child raising and romantic relationships—require creativity to decrease risk. Better rules and precise control can only function to the level of intelligence already baked into the rules. When a novel threat hits, rules offer no solution.

Canadian health care is a complex system. It demands diversity and nuance and defies central control. Complex systems function best with less attention to clear rules and measurable goals and more attention to incentives and principles.

Call it the paradox of complexity. Incentives and principles achieve real goals that are far better than the ones we dream up in boardrooms but never achieve in real life.

Regional solutions, avoiding disaggregated risk, and management based on flow science together offer hope that this next wave, or the next pandemic, does not deal the same crushing blow as COVID-19 did this spring.

Shawn Whatley is a physician, past president of the Ontario Medical Association, and a Munk senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute. He is also the author of an upcoming book titled “When Politics Comes Before Patients—Why and How Canadian Medicare is Failing.”

Tags: COVID-19Health PolicyhealthcarelockdownpandemicShawn Whatley
Previous Post

Amid Second Wave, Canada Needs a Sustainable Pandemic Strategy, not Lockdowns: Ken Coates in the Epoch Times

Next Post

Standing up for Freedom and Democracy in Tibet: New MLI Straight Talk with Sherap Therchin

Related Posts

Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy: Stephen Van Dine and Karl Salgo for Inside Policy
Inside Policy

Oaths, trust and Canadian democracy: Stephen Van Dine and Karl Salgo for Inside Policy

March 17, 2023
Preparing for the Foreign Threats to Canadian Democracy: Straight Talk with Richard Fadden
Inside Policy

Canada and Japan’s common miscalculation in cyberspace: Koichiro Komiyama for Inside Policy

March 15, 2023
Defending against foreign interference in our elections: Marcus Kolga for Inside Policy
Columns

As Ottawa balks at an election interference inquiry, public trust in our democracy is draining away: Marcus Kolga in the Globe and Mail

March 15, 2023
Next Post
Standing up for Freedom and Democracy in Tibet: New MLI Straight Talk with Sherap Therchin

Standing up for Freedom and Democracy in Tibet: New MLI Straight Talk with Sherap Therchin

Macdonald-Laurier Institute

323 Chapel Street, Suite #300
Ottawa, Ontario
K1N 7Z2 Canada

613.482.8327

info@macdonaldlaurier.ca
MLI directory

Follow us on

Newsletter Signup

Support Us

Support the Macdonald-Laurier Institute to help ensure that Canada is one of the best governed countries in the world. Click below to learn more or become a sponsor.

Support Us

Inside Policy Magazine

  • Current Issue
  • Back Issues
  • Advertising
  • Inside Policy Blog
  • Privacy Policy

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.

No Result
View All Result
  • Home
  • About
    • Who We Are
    • Who Makes MLI Work
    • Tenth Anniversary
    • Jobs
    • Women’s History Month Fundraiser
  • Experts
    • Experts Directory
    • In Memoriam
  • Issues
    • Domestic Policy Program
      • Agriculture and Agri-Food
      • Canada’s Political Tradition
      • Economic policy
      • Health Care
      • Innovation
      • Justice
      • Social issues
      • Telecoms
    • Energy Policy Program
      • Energy
      • Environment
    • Foreign Policy Program
      • Foreign Affairs
      • National Defence
      • National Security
    • Indigenous Affairs Program
  • Projects
    • COVID and after: A mandate for recovery
    • COVID Misery Index
      • Beyond Lockdown
    • Provincial COVID Misery Index
    • Centre for Advancing Canada’s Interests Abroad
      • Dragon at the Door
      • The Eavesdropping Dragon: Huawei
    • An Intellectual Property Strategy for Canada
    • Competition Policy in Canada
    • Speak for Ourselves
    • Canada and the Indo-Pacific Initiative
    • DisInfoWatch.org
    • The Transatlantic Program
    • Indigenous Prosperity at a Crossroads
      • Aboriginal Canada and Natural Resources
    • Talkin’ in the Free World with Mariam Memarsadeghi
    • Past Projects
      • Justice Report Card
      • Munk Senior Fellows
      • A Mandate for Canada
      • Confederation Series
      • Fiscal Reform
      • The Canadian Century project
      • Fixing Canadian health care
      • Internal trade
      • From a mandate for change
      • Size of government in Canada
  • Events
    • Upcoming Events
    • Past Events
      • MLI Dinners
      • Great Canadian Debates
  • Latest News
  • Libraries
    • Annual Reports
    • Inside Policy Magazine
      • Inside Policy Back Issues
      • Inside Policy Blog
    • Papers
    • Columns
    • Books
    • Commentary
    • Straight Talk
    • Video
    • Multimedia
    • Podcasts
    • Leading Economic Indicator
    • Labour Market Report
    • MLI in the Media

© 2021 Macdonald-Laurier Institute. All Rights reserved.