Trudeau government drops the Covid-19 ball again, failing to warn of possible airborne transmission

With both the U.S. CDC and World Health Orginization warning that SARS-Cov-2 may be transmitted by airborne aerosols, Canada is once again a day late and a dollar short with our response.  Do note that there is no definitive proof that SARS-Cov-2, the virus that causes the Covid-19 disease, is airborne, this is just another transmission vector that many health authorities around the world believe leads to the spread.  

The CBC just published a story on it:

https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-canada-airborne-spread-1.5758114

So, is this important?  Well....YEAH!!!  At least I think so, as well as numerous other countries that are updating their guidance.  

As mentioned in the CBC article linked above, if SARS-Cov-2 is airborne then cloth and simple medical masks aren't going to cut it, especially for front line health care workers in high risk environments.  

Do note of course, I'm not an epidemiolgist or an expert in any field of medical science, likely no different from Adam Miller the writer of the CBC article I linked.  Like many I'm simply trying to follow the science, not necessarily all the scientists  though because experts in medical science often disagree.  Which explains why different countries and jurisdictions have different responses.  

What I find worriesome is that if SARS-Cov-2 is indeed airborne, as many infectious disease experts now believe, then I fear our response may be doing as much harm as good, perhaps even more harm.

To my non-expert mind, airborne transmission makes perfect sense, it would certainly explain why in Ontario case numbers keep climbing higher and higher despite the fact that masking is basically mandatory now in all indoor places.  In point of fact I think mandatory masking could be contributing to the spread because it can give a false sense of security.  

And for myself personally, that's fine....I decided a while ago that my best defense against Covid-19 was a healthy immune system.  I've been drinking lots more OJ of late, taking Vitamin D supplements, trying to engage in more exercise outside.  It is entirely possible that I may have already been infected by the novel coronavirus and not known it.  There has been research suggesting a possible genetic marker called HLA that may play a role in why some people get seriously and sometimes fatally ill, while others have either incredibly mild symptoms or none at all.

But I know others who are hyper vigilant and concerned about contracting this virus.  Some are wearing masks almost all the time, certainly every time they leave the house, even when outside walking a dog with nobody around.  And that may very well be the wisest move, people with diabetes for example would likely be perfectly justified in being hyper vigilant, and that's just one of many underlying health conditions that can make Covid a very serious and potentially lethal disease.

My concern is more for those who are vulnerable who may be engaging in risky behaviour because Canada's federal health experts are slow off the mark yet again.  An elderly person with underlying health issues might just go out to a restaraunt, thinking that it's safe because everyone is wearing a mask when moving about, only removing them when sitting at their respective tables.  "Those droplets can't reach me because I'm well beyond 2 metres away from everyone".  

If the restaraunt is not well ventilated, and really how many are.....then an airborne virus could easily be floating around if there's an asymptomatic diner there at the same time or even possibly several hours earlier.  A piece of cloth or a medical mask won't stop an aerosol.

Here's a video of someone vaping with various types of masks.  The person in the video claims to be a doctor, but for me that is neither here nor there, what matters is what happens with the aerosols which are visible in this case because of the vape smoke.  

That the Trudeau government is slow again is nothing new.  Everyone knows that while countries like the United States, Australia and New Zealand started restricting travellers from places like China and Europe in early Februrary, Canada waited another month.  And those who did return back then, they were not required to quarantine because "it was believed" that the risk of human to human trasmission was so low that it didn't warrant isolating people.  

Even more recently we've had news that Canada is finally ordering about 2 million so called "Rapid Tests" because the PCR tests being used now have such a high failure rate, and the processing time for results can be long.  News that Canada is finally ordering some of these Rapid Tests came out Oct. 6th but we're not expected to have any delivered until toward the end of this year.  The NY Times reported on August 29th that the Trump administration is ordering 150 million rapid tests. I wonder how Trudeau likes taking longer and ordering far fewer on a per capita basis than the POTUS? 

I know media has drilled it into our collective subconcsious that the US response to Covid has been a failure, while our's has been oh so good.  Goverment subsidized media in this country loves to tell us how horribly the Americans have done compared with us.  But just because the media states an opinion as fact doesn't make it true.

In both the United States and Canada there are jurisdictions that have done poorly, and others that have done well.  In Canada Quebec's Covid death toll has been horrendous, even worse than Sweden's, a country that didn't have any harsh lockdown measures.  And in the United States the worst performers using fatality as the yardstick are New Jersey, New York and Massachusetts.  But in both countries much of the response is handled at either the state or provincial level, with the federal governments simply providing some direction.  

In Canada the direction coming from Ottawa has too often been wrong, and probably deadly for some.