Toronto Public Health’s vice-chair responds to backlash over Sun column about COVID-19, says her only aim was to ‘promote discourse’
With a little bit of time and a lot of research, we could learn a lot as a public health community from experts, including the ones who lead the most visible, important pieces of our work.
We all know there’s an important conversation to be had about the COVID-19 pandemic, which began to spread in early January and has spread through every sector of our society — health, social, education.
And so we have experts talking about it.
We all know that we have to come together to find a solution, to find a way, so that we can all get through this.
We have experts on the ground, who are working to ensure we have real solutions to the pandemic — solutions that will not impact our lives too much.
There’s just one thing, though.
People’s fears are driving us to want to be ‘safe’, and for many, being ‘safe’ means staying home, and trying not to cross the road, or wear a mask, or go into a restaurant.
For me, and many other people, for those who say they can’t work from home, that’s fine, that’s OK.
They see work from home as a way of protecting themselves from an invisible enemy that can’t be seen at all, that can’t be identified in the lab.
And it’s not about protecting people at all; it’s about protecting corporations who want more profit.
A couple of weeks ago, a column on Ottawa Citizen online went out the way we hope it will go out in Ottawa: from the community, it will be very thoughtful, and it will invite critical engagement.
It was written by Sun columnist and investigative reporter Evan Solomon.
This column, entitled ‘The coronavirus is a pandemic that’s destroying public trust’, began: ‘Some