Don Martin is in today's Calgary Herald lecturing the Liberals about their fear-mongering regarding swine flu. Shame on those silly Grits for misrepresenting the facts in order to score political points. Why surely the first influenza pandemic in forty years requires that we all take extra care to get our facts right. Just as Don Martin does.
For starters, [the Liberals] warned, the immunization completion date will be delayed by several months and could extend into February.
This is patently false-- minister Leona Aglukkaq says it's still on track for completion by Christmas and notes some jurisdictions will be finished their rollout this week--and it does nothing but heighten anxiety among Canadians and add panic to the lineups of parents seeking to ensure their kids have the shot.
Patently false! It'll be done by Christmas! Um, hang on a sec...
If every Canadian heeds the advice of public health officials to get the H1N1 shot, there will not be enough vaccine available by Christmas as the federal government has been promising, the chief public health officer acknowledged Tuesday.
...
While the federal government has ordered more than enough vaccine for the entire population -- 50.4 million doses -- it is basically counting on thousands of Canadians ignoring their advice to be vaccinated when it says there will be enough for everyone by the end of December.
Hmmm. Martin doesn't mention that. In fact, judging by the numbers cited in the article, they're counting on more than just thousands to give the vaccination a pass.
But surely Martin's right about this:
The Liberals also seem to be boosting flu figures for dramatic effect by saying there have been at least 41 deaths in the past week and 190 deaths. The latest information on the public health agency websites posts 20 deaths in the past week and 135 in total.
Except that the latest official information I can find was posted five days ago, Nov. 12th, and shows that even by that date there were 161 deaths associated with H1N1 and 26 of them had occurred during the three day period from the 10th to the 12th. The Liberal figures don't sound any farther off the mark than Martin's do (see update below).
I do think some of the criticisms directed at the government on this file have been wide of the mark and I really wish people on all sides would avoid politicizing public health issues when we're dealing with a complex subject that has already generated at least as much heat as light. People are confused and some are frightened. Where possible they need hard information, not spin. Pundits who are working so hard to attack one group of politicians that they skew the facts to favour another aren't any better than the politicians they criticize.
Updating before I even publish:
I drafted some of this earlier today. I just double-checked the PHAC site to find the total number of deaths is at 198 with 37 of them in the last five days, making the Grits look even better and Martin look even worse.
I blame the media more for fear mongering than I blame the Grits. The clumsy rollout compounded fears and the Con's can wear that.
OT Pog, there's some news on the detainee issue today.
http://www.cbc.ca/canada/story/2009/11/17/canada-afghan-prisoner017.html
I'll be looking for your take on it.
JB
I blame the media more for fear mongering than I blame the Grits.
I can point to examples of media hype. I can also point to examples of media people, Don Martin among them, waving this whole thing away before we even understood what we were facing.
The clumsy rollout compounded fears and the Con's can wear that.
Yes, the Cons can wear a really poor messaging effort resulting from their refusal to avert their gaze from their own self-promotion and then their mad scramble to do damage control when they got called on their neglect. If they'd taken control of the message in the beginning, it would have set the tone and resulted in a more consistent message all around.
there's some news on the detainee issue today
Thanks. Saw that. I'm waiting to see what comes out of today's committee meeting.
I'm not sure what source Martin used; the map on the Globe & Mail website shows 135 deaths, and it was last updated on Nov 7, so his source must also have been dated about then.
I remember when Klein was cutting back on health care and getting rid of hospitals, that Martin wrote he had seen the figures for the cuts and 'the numbers add up'. Ass.
I'm not sure what source Martin used
It occurred to me that Martin had quoted from memory from a source he'd seen previously. But he should know as well as anyone that this is a situation that's changing daily. If he had wanted to compare Liberal claims to actual facts on a particular date, he could have written it that way. But he didn't and instead he ended up misinforming his readers.
That PHAC page I linked to is one I hadn't seen before I started this post. It took me two minutes to find it. What's Don Martin's excuse?
Maybe he gets his information from the Globe & Mail? Lord knows the National Post is not a good source of information.
Here's the G&M map, still dated Nov. 7
http://www.theglobeandmail.com/life/health/h1n1-swine-flu/h1n1-cases-across-canada/article1352013/?cid=art-rail-h1n1swineflu
That map also shows 20 deaths in Alberta, which Martin mentions. As of today I think there have been 39 deaths in Alberta.
So pogge, your link shows 20 deaths in Alberta to Nov. 17. But this Alberta Health link has 43 deaths to Nov 18, with this note added:
"* One death out of country resident. The total number of deaths includes those who die from H1N1 and those who die from other causes and also tested positive for H1N1."
http://www.health.alberta.ca/health-info/influenza-H1N1-cases.html
I'm sure local CBC radio uses the higher numbers; I've heard 38 and 39 recently.
From that I would deduce that there have been 23 deaths from other causes where H1N1 was subsequently found. I'm not very impressed with Alberta or local CBC radio since what we'd be interested in is deaths actually caused by H1N1. If I have the flu and I get hit by a bus and killed, I don't think my death would belong in the flu statistics.
I don't know if that is a safe deduction to make; that link shows no deaths in Alberta Nov 12-17, but a child's death was reported on Nov 13 (and I think there have been more reported since). http://www.edmontonsun.com/news/swineflu/2009/11/14/11745586-sun.html
And the major Alberta media have all used the high numbers, though some call them deaths 'caused by' or 'attributed to' H1N1 and others call them deaths 'linked with' H1N1. So the media may be using my link and not paying attention to the note or fudging the report. But if so why doesn't Alberta Health correct them? Maybe Alberta Health is too busy laying off staff to keep track of the numbers.
I don't know if that is a safe deduction to make
The alternative would be that PHAC's national numbers are understated. I'd rather believe it's Alberta's mistake but right now anything is possible, I guess.
Today the PHAC site has Alberta at 42 deaths, with 22 reported between Nov 17 and 19; which suggests to me that Alberta Health was slow to report these deaths to PHAC.
http://www.phac-aspc.gc.ca/alert-alerte/h1n1/surveillance-eng.php
I made an initial error in thinking that Martin was talking about 20 deaths in Alberta when he was actually talking about 20 deaths reported in the past week in Canada. But then if I hadn't made the error, we wouldn't have noticed the discrepancy in the Alberta stats.
Somebody commented yesterday at Martin's column that he had the numbers wrong.
which suggests to me that Alberta Health was slow to report these deaths
That's another explanation. And I see that the total deaths has jumped significantly to 250.
Somebody commented yesterday at Martin's column that he had the numbers wrong.
I checked that out. I wonder if Martin reads those comments.