Dr. Tam's excuses don't add up in new interview, admits Canada could have done more

An interview with Canada's top doctor, Theresa Tam, was released Monday night, with some interesting insight being given throughout.

Tam's pandemic plan and the government rollout of measures to protect Canadians from coronavirus has received some flack, with many wondering why flights from China were not cancelled, and why Tam had said that closing borders would not have helped slow the spread of the virus, something she still stands by.

Among those vocal critics is Conservative shadow minister of finance Pierre Poilievre, who has repeatedly slammed Trudeau and his task force for allowing 2,000 people from the Hubei province to enter Canada after January 22, even after being briefed by military intelligence that the outbreak was "dangerous and massive."

Tam says she took notice of the virus on January 1st, as Canada had experienced SARS in the past. This was notable, as Canadians were repeatedly told that the risk to the novel virus was "low." As we all know, nearly fifty thousands Canadians have been infected,  while nearly 3,000 have already lost their lives to it.

"Could we have done more at the time? You can retrospectively say yes, absolutely, you could screen more, or you could change your stance. But at the time we had very, very few cases globally and in Canada," Tam told CBC's Rosemary Barton.

It's not entirely clear what defence Tam is using here. All pandemics, in every country, start with few cases. Viruses spread exponentially, so even one case can lead to a nation-wide shut down.

Regarding border closures, Tam said that there were countries who closed their borders who have still experienced serious outbreaks. Again, while this is true, it's difficult to understand the reasoning behind allowing Chinese tourists to enter Canada from the then epicentre of the virus, Wuhan China.

"At the same time, I think there were countries that did more," Tam said, "and in the end it wasn't that effective, if you actually think about the countries in the end that were impacted, because I think from a public health perspective we always knew that the border was just one layer of additional measure."

Tam has also said that border closures weren't in Canada's playbook, or in the playbook of most health experts in the outbreak's early stages.

"It's something that I've never experienced before ... or even people that went before me, with more experience than us, [they] had never envisaged the world shutting down," she said.

But moments later, Tam says that shutting down the border with the US "absolutely" slowed the spread of the virus, due to "the volume of travel between the two countries."

"We were very concerned about the United States ... All the signs were there that certain areas of the United States were hotspots. And that was a bigger concern almost to our provinces and territories than Europe. Europe was a big concern, but also the United States, so we knew that more had to be done," Tam told Barton.

"Was it perfect? No. But I think as you've seen over time, and commensurate with a flexible, scalable response, those layers have kept being strengthened as well."

Unprepared from top to bottom

The negligence goes beyond Tam, of course.

Last week, the manager of Canada's $300 million medical equipment supply—created in case of a pandemic—admitted that they were not aware of any medical shortages, according to Blacklock's Reporter.

Those medical supply shortages have come back to bite us.

The sentiment was previously stated by Health Minister Patty Hajdu, who said that Canada "likely did not have enough" medical equipment ready ahead of the global coronavirus pandemic in Ottawa on Tuesday.

"I think federal governments for decades have been under funding things like public health preparedness and I would say that obviously governments all across the world are in the same exact situation," said Hajdu.

Hospital equipment and important personal protective equipment like face masks and other medical equipment have been rationed in recent days, with Canadian companies having to repurpose to meet the demands.

The fact of the matter is, Canada was in a potentially great position to avoid a national shutdown. We should have learned our lesson after being the only country to have fatalities from SARS, outside of Asia. If our leaders had any amount of foresight, who knows where we would be today in our coronavirus plan.