In terms of health care reforms, I'd like to see much more done on public health policy rather than major changes to hospital capacity. Trying to address this pandemic through hospital capacity is like trying to stop a tsunami by purchasing more umbrellas. We're talking different orders of magnitude. COVID ICU admissions are basically 1% of all known cases. As a result, we've been stuck in a situation where we can't let the virus spread to more than 20,000 people at a time. Doubling ICU capacity in the province would just mean that we need to cap active infections at 40,000. It would make no material difference to our experience of the pandemic. In fact, it would be worse, because we don't really want a lot of people in the ICU in the first place. Many of them die. Even more develop lifelong disabilities and illness.
The only way we'll do better in the next pandemic is by prevent the spread of the disease in the first place. The UCP has been the worst, but politicians of all stripes have a pretty terrible record in this regard. Whether it was fear of getting ahead of public opinion or just outright denial, our leaders have routinely delayed making tough decisions until things spiralled out of control. Vaccines are the most egregious example of this. We have literally been given a deus ex machina that will end this pandemic and our leaders have been slow to actually enforce its use. It became clear that demand was slipping back in June and (at least in Alberta) we're only getting enforcement now, three months later. Even the strictest provinces are still probably not where they need to be in terms of enforcement.
For the next pandemic, I think we need to look very closely at issues like border closures/monitoring, cheap rapid testing, tracking/tracing, vaccine roll out and enforcement, etc. We need to figure out how we can act faster and more aggressively even in situations with incomplete information. And - this may not be popular - I really think we need to reconsider how we weigh free speech versus social cohesion. No society in history has provided this much opportunity for subversive speech, particularly during a period of crisis like a pandemic or a war. We would never have tolerated figures like Maxime Bernier in the middle of WWI or WWII. In fact, we charged the mayor of Montreal with sedition and locked him up without trial, for goodness sake! Not saying we go that far, but we cannot be so timid with figures who deliberately and cynically try to spread misinformation, break the law, and encourage others to do the same. Instead we have plenty of media figures and mainstream politicians talking about the need to "hear them out".
