You don’t stop a virus by bleeding democracy

2020/04/15 Leave a comment

Why is it that governments, no matter their political stripe, cannot resist the temptation to over-reach and reduce oversight, whether with respect to bloated omnibus budget bills or during the current COVID-19 pandemic?

And while the federal Conservatives, supported by the NDP, correctly forced the Liberals to back down given a minority government, in Alberta, there is no such check on the UCP government as this Globe editorial details.

Even more shameful than the attempted federal Liberal element given the UCP’s majority and its disregard for parliament (ironic, given that Premier Kenney was an effective parliamentarian at the federal level).

Hopefully, the same conservative-leaning pundits that rightly condemned the Liberal attempted power grab will also call out the Alberta UCP power grab (the first one to do so, John Carpay: Alberta’s Bill 10 is an affront to the rule of law):

Three weeks ago, the Trudeau government tried to use the cover of the coronavirus crisis to give itself unchecked powers once enjoyed by 17th-century European monarchs.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau had recalled the House of Commons on March 23 to debate and pass emergency measures to shore up the economy and help Canadians who were losing their jobs.

The opposition were willing to back the minority government’s economic measures, but once they saw the draft bill, they realized the Liberals had something more in mind.

Along with tens of billions of dollars in aid for Canadians in need, the bailout legislation also included clauses that would have given the government the power to raise or lower taxes, and to spend money, without going through Parliament. These extraordinary powers were to last until Dec. 31, 2021.

The opposition, along with many in the media, this page included, were having none of it. By the end of the day on March 23, the government relented. It removed the offending clauses, the opposition offered its backing and, the next day, the bill became law.

Team Trudeau has not explained its attempted end run around democracy, probably because it can’t. There is never any reason to usurp Parliament’s critical role as overseer of government and keeper of the public purse. Every Canadian government, provincial or federal, should get that.

And yet, barely a week later, it happened again.

In Alberta, the United Conservative Party of Premier Jason Kenney used its overwhelming majority to push through a bill on April 2 that gives cabinet ministers unilateral power to write and enact new laws in public health emergencies, with zero oversight by the provincial legislature.

Under Bill 10, the only requirement for enacting a new law is that the relevant minister “is satisfied that doing so is in the public interest.” The only limit on that power is that a new offence cannot be applied retroactively.

It is utterly wrong for democratic governments to seek unilateral powers under the cover of an emergency. It is also unnecessary. There is no justification for it – especially not the one that says governments need to move quickly in a crisis.

Alberta passed Bill 10 in less than 48 hours; the Trudeau government, having secured the support of the opposition, passed its original bailout measures in the same short period. Last weekend, it took less than a day for Parliament to adopt a wage subsidy package. The government shared the legislation with the opposition in advance and made changes to ensure it would pass.

Giving legislators the chance to study, debate and vote on bills doesn’t result in unacceptable delays – if anything, as shown time and again, it improves legislation. More importantly, the transparency and accountability that comes from having to pass a bill through Parliament is the foundation of our system of government.

The Liberals and the opposition parties are now arguing about how often the House of Commons should sit during the remainder of the crisis, and whether sessions should be held in person with a skeleton crew of members, or with all MPs, via teleconferencing.

However it does so, Parliament must sit. Committees, too. And Question Period must happen, so that the government remains answerable to the House and to Canadians. That holds in Ottawa and in each of the provinces. It goes for both minority and majority governments.

Under no circumstances should any government see this emergency as an excuse to sideline the elected representatives of the people.

Thanks to their daily crisis briefings, government leaders are dominating the news coverage. Opposition voices have been sidelined, but they must be given their due in order for our democracy to function properly. That happens best in Parliament.

This crisis is demanding a lot of Canadians. They are self-isolating at home with their families. Many have lost their jobs, or are watching their businesses teeter on the precipice.

They will be able to decide for themselves whether federal and provincial opposition parties have helped the situation, or simply been a partisan nuisance. But Canadians must not come out the other end of this only to discover that their institutions and rights have been compromised by governments that grabbed for powers they were not entitled to.

Source:    You don’t stop a virus by bleeding democracy Editorial <img src=”https://www.theglobeandmail.com/resizer/p5aED50QGxv9DJSWx6332Wy7vT0=/163×0:4746×3055/600×0/filters:quality(80)/arc-anglerfish-tgam-prod-tgam.s3.amazonaws.com/public/5D7WOGR7DNNH3AJ33H42OZMKTU.jpg” alt=””>     

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Canadian doctor once posted to Beijing ignored by Ottawa after offering help with COVID-19 response

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Does seem to be an oversight. The more serious one is why was he not replaced (likely due to budget pressures and the high cost, and changing priorities):

For seven years, Felix Li served on the distant front lines of Canadian public health, in China. As a doctor posted to Beijing, he fostered ties with health authorities that let him peer beneath the official rhetoric of a country that has been the source of multiple viral epidemics in recent decades.

When Dr. Li returned to Canada in 2015 and retired from the Public Health Agency of Canada (PHAC) after 23 years, he was not replaced.

But he retained his contacts inside the Chinese public health system and was keen to help when another outbreak began to emerge.

So, a few days after the Jan. 23 lockdown of Wuhan, he sent an e-mail to the PHAC, including Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam, offering his expertise.

“I offered to go back to Ottawa to work with them on this. I needed to help, to save lives,” Dr. Li said in an interview.

In the e-mail, he described his knowledge of the Chinese system and the contacts he maintains there.

“I got an e-mail back saying, ‘We’ll talk about it and let you know.’ But I never had any response after that.”

Instead, the PHAC has relied heavily on the World Health Organization for information and guidance in its response to the rapid spread of the deadly new virus.

But critics have questioned the relationship between the WHO and China, whose response the WHO has praised effusively. The health organization has raised few public concerns about the reliability of information provided by Beijing, despite evidence suggesting Chinese authorities have significantly underreported the death toll from the outbreak.

Dr. Li said that, during his time in China, there was a difference in “the quality of the information” he was able to obtain by communicating directly with people at China’s Ministry of Health and the Chinese Centre for Disease Control and Prevention. During the 2013 H7N9 avian influenza outbreak, for example, he received updates directly from Chinese officials.

Were he working now, he’d “probably get a lot more timely and accurate information on things,” he said.

There is good reason to seek more sources of information, public health experts say.

“In any acute emergency, there is always benefit of ‘on the ground’ expertise and contacts in getting access to data and understanding the nuances of actual context. There is also always value in having multiple sources of data, information or intelligence, and it would be wise to have as many sources as possible,” said James Orbinski, director of York University’s Dahdaleh Institute for Global Health Research.

“Relying on one source of information for critical decision making leaves you open to all of its biases and limitations, and every source – even ‘official’ ones, like the WHO, the government of China, the CIA, the government of the United States, the government of Canada – has biases and limitations.”

The PHAC says it has full confidence in its methods – and in the WHO. “With the situation related to COVID-19 continuing to evolve rapidly around the world, Canada will continue to work closely with its international partners, including the WHO and China, as well as with provincial and territorial counterparts to reduce risks to Canadians and the global community,” spokesperson Anna Maddison said in an e-mailed statement.

The agency can rely on Canada’s foreign service “to share and gather information related to health and public health matters,” Ms. Maddison said.

Canada’s embassies and consulates in China, however, have been working with low staffing levels after non-essential staff – including provincial representatives – were sent home.

Unlike the U.S., Canada does not have a wide-reaching global public health service, which makes it reliant upon the WHO. That’s not a bad thing, said Srinivas Murthy, an infectious disease specialist at the University of British Columbia who has worked with the WHO.

“The WHO is a very reputable, very strong organization which has that capacity,” Dr. Murthy said. “I don’t think Canada specifically needs a foreign public health agency.”

But there are also risks in relying on an agency that itself relies on information from China, a country where statistics are often bent to political imperatives. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has itself been criticized for cutting its staff in China by two-thirds before the COVID-19 outbreak.

In Canada, meanwhile, it appears health leaders are not receiving sufficient advice on the potential weaknesses of Chinese data being transmitted by the WHO, said Charles Burton, a senior fellow at the Macdonald-Laurier Institute who has twice worked out of the Canadian embassy in Beijing.

The result is that China’s “politically motivated misinformation tragically leads to unnecessary Canadian deaths,” he said.

Dr. Li began his public health work in Beijing in 2008 with the belief that “Canada should not be responding to epidemics or pandemics when they reach the shores of Canada. We should be proactively working with China.”

He declined to offer his views on how China and Canada have responded to COVID-19, for fear of damaging his relationships with public health officials he still hopes to work alongside.

“As a medical doctor and a public health doctor, our task is to save lives. If I were called upon, I’d jump on the next plane to Ottawa,” he said.

Source: Canadian doctor once posted to Beijing ignored by Ottawa after offering help with COVID-19 response

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USA: Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

2020/04/14 Leave a comment

Similar in Canada I believe, making it all that more impressive how well public servants were able to ramp up so quickly EI claim processing and implement CERB (WatchJohn Ivison: Amid staggering unemployment rate, public servants handling EI claims are unsung heroes).

Similar issues arose regarding lack of COBOL programmers during Y2K:

Over the weekend, New Jersey governor, Phil Murphy, made an unusual public plea during his daily coronavirus briefing: The state was seeking volunteer programmers who know COBOL, a 60-year old programming language that the state’s unemployment benefits system is built on. Like every state across the nation, New Jersey was being flooded with unemployment claims in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic. And New Jersey’s data processing systems were unprepared.

“We literally have a system that is 40-plus years old,” Murphy said.

To COBOL programmers, it was a familiar ask. In times of bureaucratic crisis over the last 50 years, Americans have been faced time and time again with the dusty, dated systems that undergird much of our government, and economy. In response to Y2K, when it was unclear whether the date of the new millennium might cause cascading errors across the entire world’s computing systems, legions of programmers fluent in largely forgotten languages like COBOL were specifically hired to fix government and enterprise code. As a result, Y2K was largely a nonissue.

Over 20 years later, much of the state, federal, and banking systems still run on these very same programming languages.

New Jersey isn’t the only state that depends on COBOL. Connecticut’s computer systems for processing unemployment also runs on it, the state’s governor said last week, which is causing weeks-long processing delays. Connecticut and four other states are creating a joint effort to recruit retired COBOL programmers who can update the state software.

The scarcity of COBOL programmers has led to increased interest in startups like COBOL Cowboys, made up of older, experienced programmers who have the know-how to operate these systems.

COBOL debuted in 1960 and was largely used on IBM mainframes for business tasks like accounting. IBM continues to sell mainframes compatible with COBOL.

The Government Accountability Office has repeatedly warned about the use of legacy programming languages for critical systems. In 2019, the GAO issued a report summarizing 10 federal computing systems that were in desperate need of an overhaul. For instance, the Department of Education’s system for processing federal student aid applications was implemented in 1973. It takes 18 contractors to maintain the system, and since it’s written in COBOL, it requires specific hardware and is difficult to integrate with newer software languages.

GAO considers COBOL a legacy language, which means agencies have trouble finding staff that knows how to write the code at all. And when they can, the specialist contractors charge a premium.

It also means that when a system breaks, there might not be somebody there to fix it. And that’s where New Jersey finds itself now, with a sagging system and lack of qualified engineers.

Despite its age, and the fact that so many programmers have moved onto C and Java, COBOL is still a widely used programming language. It’s tried and true, which is partly why it was so widely adopted by banks and governments in the second half of the 20th century.

Today, nearly half the world’s banking systems run on COBOL, according to Reuters, and more than 80% of card-based transactions use the code.

“I show COBOL programs written in 1960 that you can still compile and run today,” says J. Ray Scott, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University, and one of the few professors who still teaches COBOL.

“I would hate to be a bank and have Python, and Python 3 came out and broke everything, and then we have to recompile all our code,” he said.

Scott attributes the lack of COBOL programmers to a number of issues, from the absence of an open-source version of the software in the ’80s and ’90s to the simple appeal of newer databases that natively connect to the internet.

“There was a period of 20 years where people were sure COBOL was dead, so there was nobody teaching it, nobody learning it,” he said. “COBOL started before there were disc drives, let alone the internet.”

A sliver of hope, Scott says, is that COBOL isn’t a particularly complex language to learn. When he was starting his career programming for steel mills in Pittsburgh, he says companies would perform aptitude tests for workers on the floors of the mills. If they passed, they were sent to a two-week COBOL class at IBM and then put onto the job in the IT department.

Bill Hinshaw, who runs COBOL Cowboys, says that the 60-year old programming language still has some life in it, especially in industries where it’s inexorably linked to critical functions. In his experience, governments are simply working with older versions of software and hardware, compared to banks and other industries.

“We’re dealing with more and more people who want to modernize COBOL,” Hinshaw says. “COBOL is not going away.”

Still, governments relying on a system too arcane for most working engineers can be perceived as a structural failure. Murphy’s plea for COBOL engineers is also a sign that local, state, and federal governments have overwhelmingly failed to update their technologies to meet the needs of citizens.

“There will be lots of postmortems,” after the coronavirus passes, Murphy said in his address to New Jersey. One of them on our list will be, ‘How the heck did we get here where we literally needed COBOL programmers?’”

Source:  Our Government Runs on a 60-Year-Old Coding Language, and Now It’s Falling Apart

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Canadians would not have backed strict pandemic measures in mid-January, says official

2020/04/11 Leave a comment

While legitimate of course to criticize the government’s response (and lack of follow-up to the SARS report Ottawa had a playbook for a coronavirus-like pandemic 14 years ago. What went wrong?), tend to agree that many of the same people criticizing the government for being too slow would have criticized the government had they acted much earlier:

Closing the border and telling the public to self-isolate at home in the early days of Canada’s COVID-19 outbreak would have done more harm than good, according to a national public health organization.

Ian Culbert, executive director of the Canadian Public Health Association (CPHA), told a virtual committee of MPs today that while critics have said the federal government should have acted sooner, there would have been “very little” public support for strict measures in the middle of January, which could have undermined health officials’ efforts when the situation became more dire.

“Low public support would have led to low-level adherence and a diminished support for any future interventions,” he said. “Slowly, you have to change people’s thinking … that takes time. It takes evidence. You have to prove to people that it’s serious.”

The House of Commons health committee is studying Canada’s response to the COVID-19 virus to ensure the federal government learns lessons that can be applied to the next pandemic. The Liberal government has faced criticism for waiting until the eve of Ontario’s March break to tell people not to travel. The Conservatives have accused the Trudeau government of failing to restrict public gatherings soon enough and waiting too long to impose tougher measures at the border.After critics accused it of lax screening at airports for returning travellers, Quebec Premier François Legault sent his own public health officials and police to airports to warn travellers to self-isolate for two weeks. This week, B.C. Premier John Horgan took it a step further and imposed a new legal requirement forcing travellers to present formal self-isolation plans to authorities at airports and border crossings.Culbert said while public health officials’ incremental approach has been attacked, he believes it was backed up by evidence.

Culbert said it’s hard to change human behaviour — especially in Canada’s case, given that the pandemic started halfway around the world in China. Canadians felt a sense of “insulation,” he said. That attitude carried on even when Canada reported its first cases in British Columbia and Ontario, he added.

“There’s a sense of them and us,” he said. “Slowly, you have to change people’s thinking. There’s no them and us. It’s a ‘we’ situation.”

He turned to an example from the 20th century: when Canadians with tuberculosis were forced to leave their families and isolate in sanatoriums, he said, many avoided public health authorities as a result, which spread the disease further.

“This shows coercive actions can only be used as a last resort,” he said.

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau says it will take months of Canadians’ “continued, determined effort” to follow pandemic measures such as physical distancing to overcome COVID-19. 1:55

There’s been a “massive cultural change” over the last century in the public’s attitudes toward science and health authorities, Culbert added. But he pointed to the anti-vaccination movement as a current example that shows public health officials can’t just tell people what’s good for them and expect them to listen.

“Just telling people the right thing to do doesn’t work anymore,” he said. “We have to convince people. It takes time, unfortunately … but it’s actually what works.”

‘We’re just trying to strengthen the message’: Tam

Conservative MP Tamara Jansen questioned the government’s incremental approach to the restrictions.

Jansen said that in January, the Langley Chinese Cultural Arts Association cancelled a large event proactively before Chief Public Health Officer Dr. Theresa Tam banned large gatherings.

She also said that, early in the outbreak, members of the Chinese community in B.C.’s Lower Mainland were picking up people at the airport returning from China to ensure they didn’t take cabs. They were also buying them groceries so they didn’t go to the grocery store, she said.”They were begging me to get the government to be more proactive,” said Jansen.”This was all done on a completely voluntary basis. Is it possible it was a misjudgment of [the] willingness of Canadians to self-isolate that this didn’t go quicker?”

Culbert said this particular community likely felt directly affected because of their ties to the epicentre of the outbreak in Wuhan, China.

“You’re talking about a highly sensitized community,” he said. “They had a direct connection [to] what was happening in China and were very much aware. Many Canadians were not that connected and [were] thinking of it as a problem on the other side of the country.”

Dr. Tam, meanwhile, was asked at a press conference today if she’s recommending the government enact even stricter measures.Tam said she’s working with her provincial and territorial counterparts to monitor the trajectory of the pandemic and figure out how effective the current measures are. She said innovative studies are underway to track how well Canadians are following those measures, which could point to places where they can be bolstered.

“We’re just trying to strengthen the message to Canadians that really you should avoid all non-essential travel and stay at home as much as possible during this critical period,” she said.

Source: Canadians would not have backed strict pandemic measures in mid-January, says official

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No time to fly blind: To beat COVID 19, Canada needs better data

2020/04/09 Leave a comment

As we always do! Bit surprised no discussion of what role the Canadian Institute of Health Information (CIHI) could play:

Accurate information is critical to fight a health emergency like the COVID-19 pandemic. Robust data identifies the scale of the problem. It enables the prioritization of human, financial and material resources for an effective and efficient response. It allows for public scrutiny, advocacy and accountability. It builds trust. It provides authorities with tools to counter misinformation. It will enable us to slowly and safely return to economic and social activity.

In short, good data can mean the difference between life and death – or in the case of a pandemic, tens of thousands of deaths. Yet in the face of the greatest international health crisis in a generation, Canada is falling short.

Prime Minister Trudeau promised better data. To deliver on this promise, the Public Health Agency must mandate standardized information reporting for provincial and district public health authorities. These standardized templates would outline the data and information to be reported, how it should be collected and how it should be shared. Moreover, the Agency should urgently provide financial and technical resources to improve information management at all levels of the public health response.

At first glance COVID-19 data appears to be plentiful – case numbers and graphs are splashed across news reports and public health websites. Public health agencies produce epidemiological reports with colourful graphs and charts. Officials quote modelling estimates of projected case numbers and fatalities.

But in reality the value  of this information is limited. Efforts to fill in information gaps with modelling is a short-term and imperfect substitute for real-time data.  The data that does exist is of questionable validity given low testing numbers within the population and delays in receiving test results. Moreover, the data is not gathered, compiled or presented in a consistent manner by health authorities across the country. Different case definitions make comparison within and across provinces difficult. Sex and age disaggregated figures are not always provided. Some areas report hospitalization and intensive care unit numbers, some do not. Warnings of medical equipment and personal protective equipment (PPE) shortages are widespread, yet inventories of PPE stockpiles are frequently not given.

Moreover, public health officials report cases but do not discuss population context. They do not present important statistics about communities including age, sex and socio-economic data and specific vulnerabilities. Authorities rarely provide information on the number of health workers employed in the response, hospital beds available or PPE stockpiles. Officials cite testing numbers with little concrete data on laboratory capacity or efforts to expand it.

It is confusing. Overwhelming. And unhelpful.

Without accurate data and information, authorities cannot identify and manage human, financial and material resources to engage in the fight against COVID-19.  Nor can they monitor the effectiveness of interventions and stop its spread.

We can do better. During humanitarian crises, which often occur in data-scarce contexts, central coordinating bodies prioritize the collection and transparent dissemination of information. They develop standardized “Situation Reports” at multiple levels – the community, the region and the country – to identify need, prioritize interventions and target scarce human, material and financial resources. In the health sector, reports include population size disaggregated by sex, age and vulnerability; the number of health facilities in operation; key causes and rates of illness and mortality; medical procedures and treatment courses. These reports are published openly and disseminated widely. Information is critical for an effective and efficient response in complex and rapidly changing environments. It allows resources to be targeted to save lives.

COVID-19 warrants something similar. We need to understand the progress of the disease and our response – in real time. Proper information management will not only improve the effectiveness of our interventions, but it will also enable the safe resumption of economic and social activity.

A standardized reporting template would include case numbers and hospitalizations (sex and age disaggregated).  But counting the numbers of outbreak cases is only one piece of the information puzzle. Reports should include community baseline data. Important information includes population demographics (age, sex and particular vulnerabilities), neighbourhoods with higher risks, and the number of vulnerable institutions (retirement and nursing homes, corrections facilities). Authorities would identify financial, human and material resources available and required. Reports should document laboratories with COVID-19 testing capacity and provide inventories of PPE.

Better data would allow us to identify critical intervention points to stop the spread of COVID-19 and to slowly get our lives and economy back on track. The lack of prioritization on testing is both a symptom and a consequence of Canada’s failure to prioritize information management. Given testing capacity, public health officials discourage tests for those with mild symptoms. This undermines the validity of most of the numbers used by public officials to track the COVID-19 outbreak. Without the total ‘real’ numbers of individuals infected, we lack an accurate denominator, which undermines the accurate calculation of hospitalization or case fatality rates. Lag times in test results also make accurate contact tracing very difficult.

More critically, without expanded testing, we lack the ability to quickly test health workers and those employed in other essential services (such as retirement homes) to protect them, their co-workers, patients or residents and the public. Nor do we have the ability to test people to gradually and safely scale up economic and social activity. Instead we are told to wait for testing innovations while COVID rates numbers rise. Yet many private labs as well as lab facilities in university and colleges remain unutilized over three weeks into Canada’s full scale COVID-19 response. With better information would come increased accountability for mobilizing such capacity.

COVID-19 has sparked one innovation in information production – the use of outbreak models to guide public health responses to COVID-19, often funded by public health authorities. The federal government recently provided $192 million to BlueDot – a Toronto based digital health firm, not a university research department – to support its modelling activities. After calls to release modelling estimates, some provincial governments have provided projections of case and mortality numbers.

But transparency warrants more. Modelling in general is extremely challenging and COVID-19 modelling is particularly complex. Population demographic characteristics appear to determine the speed of COVID-19 transmission as well as severe illness, hospitalization and fatality rates. While the professionalization of the modellers is not in question, research driving policy decisions should be published openly and subject to scrutiny. The lack of clarity contrasts unfavourably to models published in scientific journals, or those published online by Professor Neil Ferguson of Imperial College, University of London. If governments release model estimates, they should release the assumptions and data that inform these estimates.

Moreover, modelling is an imperfect and flawed substitute for real data and concrete information about the response. Policy makers urgently need to pay attention to the generation and management of accurate and valid data, mandate standardized reporting from all public health authorities and provide public funds to make it happen.

We are in unprecedented public policy territory. Yet we lack the information needed to effectively navigate the COVID-19 pandemic and get our economy and our lives back on track. Prime Minister Trudeau’s commitment to better data and improved information management provides Canada’s Public Health Agency with the opportunity to exercise leadership. It is time to up our game.

Source: No time to fly blind: To beat COVID 19, Canada needs better data

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Ai Weiwei: The virus in the body politic: We have lost our ability to cherish each other

2020/04/06 Leave a comment

Worth reading and reflecting upon:

I was living in Beijing in 2003 when SARS struck, and I can remember how that felt. It descended as an entirely new thing – a new concept, an unwelcome intruder, an ominous threat. It galvanized a new mindset in society and led the government to impose unprecedented defences. Some of those defences have been used again to combat the coronavirus, but to citizens, the two campaigns have felt different. SARS felt like a battle; coronavirus feels like a war.

With SARS, the government’s first response was to seal off all reports and to deny that a problem existed. The truth only emerged when an elderly military doctor, who had seen the government’s Minister of Public Health lie broadly to the Chinese people on television, wrote a letter to Chinese media that was leaked to the foreign press.

The government then drew on techniques used in the military and in prisons to suppress the outbreak. Ordinary folk, lacking better medical advice, resorted to herbal medicines, antibiotics, or hormones, which were either useless or harmful, and when they were harmful, they added to the death toll.

Sadly, the same thing has happened again. When the coronavirus first appeared in Wuhan last November, doctors who noticed it began passing along the news in text messages – only to be summoned by police, reprimanded and ordered to remain silent.

It took until Jan. 11 for Wuhan’s health commission to report the city’s first known death from this new kind of coronavirus, along with dozens of cases. At the same time, the commission insisted that the virus could not spread from person to person, which we now know to be false. Its purported origin was from a live animal market, but not long after that announcement, alternative theories began to circulate, given oxygen by a lack of transparency on the part of a Chinese government that has a poor record around trust. And just this Wednesday, a U.S. intelligence report declared that Beijing has been intentionally under-reporting the total numbers of cases and deaths there.

With the virus racing and information suppressed, the government eventually decided to abruptly seal off Wuhan and place its more than 11 million citizens under mandatory quarantine. There were strict rules and police enforced them. People could not enter or exit quarantine zones at will, and some people were not allowed to leave home. Some doors were even welded shut. Between mid-January and mid-March, quarantine and detention tactics were deployed across China. The country was in shock.

By late March, the number of new cases in China had slowed. But in the meantime, the virus had spread to more than a hundred other countries, where the total numbers of confirmed cases and deaths have now exceeded China’s. And where once there was only criticism for China’s unique station and particular response, other countries – democratic or otherwise – are now panicking through their own preparations and plans.

What the world needs now – in China, and in the world at large – is sober reflection on what it means to cherish life.

What, exactly, is a virus? About one-thousandth the size of a bacterium, a virus cannot survive or reproduce on its own. To live, it must enter, attach to and parasitize a living cell. Viruses have been doing this for tens of thousands of years – entering living bodies and dying when the host body either kills them with its immune system, or when the body dies itself. This happens because the immune system’s battle with viruses also kills normal cells, and if too much of that happens, the host body can perish, taking the virus with it. In this fight to the death, both sides can lose.

It’s a useful metaphor when considering how various countries have responded to their given outbreaks. The Chinese government is authoritarian, but that gives it huge advantages in combating the virus; it can set aside considerations of human rights and individual freedom, to say nothing of “cherishing life.” Virus control in democratic countries such as Italy, Britain and the United States, where the freedom of individuals is respected, is clearly more difficult and complex.

But there, too, cherishing life can feel impossible. The U.S. does not have a public medical system or universal guarantees of health. Its hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and insurance companies are private, and they operate on the principle of capitalism in the service of individual patients. And the full terror of such a health-care system has been put on display with this latest outbreak, exposing the fantasy of “the land of equal opportunity” for what it really is: a place where those with means are taken care of, while the rest are left to fend for themselves.

The only conclusion a reasonable person can derive from the semi-coherent ramblings of U.S. President Donald Trump and British Prime Minister Boris Johnson, when they answer questions about the coronavirus, is that neither man is focused on cherishing life, but only on how well bureaucratic capitalism is operating. One’s only source of cheer in observing the tiny coronavirus is to note its spirit of egalitarianism: You are a religious leader? A famous actor or high official? A politician who either does or does not think I am causing a crisis? Fine – I treat you all the same.

What are we learning from the disaster? Can we learn something about, as former Chinese Communist Party general secretary Hu Jintao once declared, a “community of shared destiny”? If such a phrase were to come from today’s Chinese leaders, who pursue crony capitalism while speaking of Marxism, it could seem like self-satire. In Karl Marx’s original vision, communism is the model of humanity’s ultimate ideals: a community of equals that accords with the basic characteristics of human life. China’s constitution and the charter of the Chinese Communist Party, however, both cite communism as the glorious endpoint of political “struggle.” Also by contrast, the Western capitalist world prioritizes commercial competition while taking democracy and human rights as its ethical base (even though, it must be said, that base has been regularly defiled and now is only a weak answer to the challenges of authoritarianism). With such divergent expressions of ideals in the world, how can we talk about a “community of shared destiny”?

The actual fate of the world today is a freakish amalgam of different systems. For Western capitalism to continue expanding, it has had no choice but to partner with exploitative, authoritarian states such as China, to profit in ways that the West cannot at home. By doing so, despite the seemingly deep ideological differences, Western capitalism has allowed Chinese communism into its structure, virus-like, and the two now share a fate. Indeed, just as how former paramount leader Deng Xiaoping’s guideline to “let some of the people get rich first” became the only fate that mattered to many Chinese people from the 1990s on, this viral hybrid system that resulted has continued to grow. It now threatens civilization’s immune system – just wait and see.

The insertion of an external element into an organism can demonstrate life’s uniformity, but also its fragility. The same key fits into all locks, be they black or white, Christian or Muslim, or a fearless atheist. Can humanity respond? Whether or not wisdom, science, medical expertise and the protection of various gods will be enough to see fragile humanity through this moment – we do not clearly know. At a minimum, a question will remain: If a similar disaster comes in five years, or two, or less, what will happen? Will humanity’s spiritual values and material wealth be able to hold up?

In the interim, we should be thinking about the true value of our fragile little bundle of life, and how it can live in harmony with nature at large. If we can do this, then no sort of political opinion, religion, war, or any other of the various concerns of mankind should be able to block our quest for survival. This is a question of philosophy that goes well beyond medical science or the arguments of politicians. A philosophy is realized only in the details of the joys and pains of human experience.

After death, a corpse cools and interment may follow, regardless of what has died – virus, human being, all of humanity, or all of life. Let’s hope that humanity begins understanding that there are no differences in the end.

When information is hard to access and people are prevented from drawing informed conclusions, hatred, bias, prejudice and violence come rolling out. A shared understanding of life is nearly impossible. The most fundamental humanist understanding is that life and death co-exist, and the attitudes necessary to reach such an understanding are tolerance, empathy, recognition of suffering and willingness to help others. This is so because other people are a part of oneself; protection of oneself calls for protection of human society. To see this point is to identify with the value of common existence, which is the reliable basis for all of our pleasures and happiness. Otherwise we live with nothing but empty illusions that a whiff of breeze can blow away.

To stand in awe of life itself is the best way to see the connections between an individual body and the rest of life. We despise war, we despise the barriers that separate people and we despise the political schemes that divide people into irreconcilable groups. The compensation that the coronavirus affords us is that we can view the world with a bit more wisdom.

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German, French Officials Accuse U.S. Of Diverting Supplies

2020/04/06 Leave a comment

Failure on humanitarian, ethical and institutional levels.

The best comment, with respect to the US, came from Ontario Premier Doug Ford: “We’re the two largest trading partners anywhere in the world. It’s like one of your family members (says), ‘OK you go starve and we’ll go feast on the rest of the meal.’ I’m just so disappointed right now. We have a great relationship with the U.S. and they pull these shenanigans? Unacceptable.”

As the coronavirus rattles the globe, governments and aid organizations everywhere find themselves in a race to acquire scarce medical supplies and protective equipment — but some say the United States isn’t playing fair.

Earlier this week, officials in both Germany and France accused the U.S. of diverting medical supplies meant for their respective countries by outbidding the original buyers.

As of Saturday, there were more than 1 million confirmed cases of COVID-19 worldwide and more than 60,000 deaths from the virus, according to a tally by researchers at Johns Hopkins University. The U.S. has the most cases globally, with Germany and France at the fourth and fifth-highest case count, respectively.

On Friday, officials in Berlin alleged that the U.S. intercepted a shipment of medical equipment in Thailand from American medical supply company 3M and diverted it to the U.S., the German newspaper Der Tagesspiegel reported. Berlin’s interior minister called the alleged interception “modern piracy.”

That same day, French officials accused the U.S. of redirecting a shipment of medical masks from Shanghai originally intended for a hard-hit French region to the U.S. by offering a much higher price for the supplies, The Guardian reported.

The accusations come as demand in the U.S. for facemasks surges, particularly after a new Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recommendation that all Americans should wear cloth face coverings in public.

The U.S. has flatly denied allegations of diverting supplies from other countries. But President Trump has also tried to force American companies into prioritizing U.S. orders by invoking the Defense Production Act. On Thursday, the president used the DPA to order 3M to stop exporting hospital-grade N95 masks to Canada and Latin America, according to the company.

“We hit 3M hard today after seeing what they were doing with their Masks. ‘P Act’ all the way,” the president said in a tweet Thursday night.

On Friday morning, 3M warned of “significant humanitarian implications” of ending shipments to Canada and Latin America, saying the company is “a critical supplier of respirators.” 3M also said other countries would likely retaliate, reducing the overall number of respirators in the U.S.

Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau echoed warnings against halting American medical exports to Canada on Friday.

“It would be a mistake to create blockages or reduce the amount of back-and-forth trade of essential goods and services including medical goods,” the Canadian leader said.

3M CEO Mike Roman also pushed back on the president’s threats to the company. “The idea that 3M is not doing all it can to fight price gouging and unauthorized retailing is absurd,” Roman said in a CNBC interview. “The narrative that we are not doing everything we can to maximize deliveries of respirators in our home country — nothing could be further from the truth.”

With no collective global effort to distribute supplies to countries that need them most, little stands in the way of global feuding and price-gouging. The Trump administration has come under criticism for the same issue in domestic markets.

The Washington Post reported earlier this week that states with governors who are allies to the president, including Florida’s Ron DeSantis, have had little trouble getting requests filled with supplies from the national stockpile. Meanwhile, some Democratic governors have struggled to get federal help.

Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker and New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo have repeatedly complained that trying to get federal supplies is like the “wild west”: states must compete against one another as well as other countries, with essential supplies going to the highest bidder.

Trump blamed New York’s shortage of ventilators on the state itself for not having more respirators before the pandemic broke out.

“They should’ve had more ventilators. They were totally under-serviced,” the president said Friday. “We have a lot of states that have to be taken care of, some much more than others.”

New York state has the highest number of coronavirus cases and deaths in the country, with more than 100,000 cases of COVID-19 as of Saturday. The next closest state is New Jersey with just under 30,000 cases.

Source: German, French Officials Accuse U.S. Of Diverting Supplies

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Saunders: When viruses threaten, the strongest disinfectant is democracy

2020/04/06 Leave a comment

Good reminder by Saunders (although current US administration is testing thesis):

If you want to see bold leadership in the fight against this pandemic, look no further than Turkmenistan, where dictator Gurbanguly Berdymukhammedov put his foot down and banned any use, in conversation or print, of the word “coronavirus.”

That ought to take care of the problem.

Mr. Berdymukhamedov may occupy a place on the remote fringes of politics (and of sanity), but he is far from the only politician who would like us to believe that a disease outbreak is best fought by suspending democratic practices and ruling by decree.

There is an unhealthy belief, far too prevalent among otherwise liberal-minded people these days, that democracy is not an effective disinfectant for fighting infection.

It’s not hard to reach this conclusion – after all, citizens are being asked to do things, and sometimes compelled by law, that in normal times would be considered grotesque infringements on personal liberties. A lot of emergency decisions have to be made quickly. Isn’t democracy, with its checks and balances and deliberative processes, just a sluggish hindrance?

That was the case made by Viktor Orban, the far-right president of Hungary, when he persuaded his parliament this week – in which his party already has a two-thirds super-majority – to pass an “emergency” law that suspends all elections and allows him to rule by decree, bypass democratic institutions and courts, and imprison anyone who complains. It has no end date.

It was immediately apparent that these new measures have nothing to do with fighting the virus, which has yet to hit Hungary hard. Mr. Orban included language that made it illegal for people to have a gender different from their biological sex – a hot-button topic on the angry right, but one utterly unrelated to virology.

Mr. Orban already holds extraordinary extralegal powers under another “emergency” law passed in 2015, ostensibly to deal with the European refugee crisis, which barely touched Hungary. It was never repealed.

Democratic leaders have done a better virus-fighting job not by seizing absolute power (like Mr. Orban) or by lying and denying the existence of a pandemic threat for months (like U.S. President Donald Trump or his counterparts in Brazil and the Philippines) but by building their country’s reserves of public trust and co-operation by using transparency, compromise and other democratic values to bring everyone together around this difficult common sacrifice, as we’ve seen in the better moments from Asian and European democracies.

As such, it was welcome to see Canada’s opposition parties fight back against attempts by the governing Liberals, who have an unhealthy preference for governing from the backrooms of the Prime Minister’s Office, to allow economic policy to be passed by emergency decree – and for the Liberals to climb down quickly and open their policies to full parliamentary debate.

Nevertheless, there is an alarming number of otherwise democratic people who have pointed approvingly to China – where opaque authoritarian secrecy allowed the new coronavirus to explode and spread internationally in December and early January, before a harsh crackdown slowed its spread.

There is absolutely nothing to suggest that an epidemic is better fought by non-democratic governments.

In fact, the record shows otherwise. In February, researchers from The Economist used the massive International Disaster Database to examine the death and infection data from all recorded epidemics since 1960 – hundreds of outbreaks in hundreds of countries over six decades. The results are striking: “For any given level of income, democracies appear to experience lower mortality rates for epidemic diseases than their non-democratic counterparts.”

In democracies with average incomes similar to China’s, epidemics have killed a third fewer people than they have in China and other autocratic states with similar incomes. This “democracy gap” has remained consistent in recent years and under all sorts of epidemics.

“Authoritarian regimes,” the authors conclude, “although able to co-ordinate massive construction projects, may be poorly suited to matters that require the free flow of information and open dialogue between citizens and rulers … . Non-democratic societies often restrict the flow of information and persecute perceived critics.”

The most impressive responses to the virus are not those ordered, belatedly, by Beijing – or by other countries that have followed China’s lead in imprisoning critics and silencing dissent, including Thailand, Cambodia, Venezuela, Bangladesh and Turkey.

Far more impressive Asian pandemic-fighting results can be observed in Taiwan, South Korea, Japan and Singapore, where democracy was not suspended but rather used as a tool, and infection curves were flattened even better. I see similar results around me in Germany, where the Chancellor used persuasion and public trust to avoid sending police vans immediately onto the streets.

It is, in many ways, the healthier response – both for democracy and for death rates.

Source:     When viruses threaten, the strongest disinfectant is democracy Doug Saunders 20 hours ago Updated       

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Access-to-information systems across Canada slowed by COVID-19

2020/04/04 Leave a comment

ATIP is not the most responsive at the best of times and my experience suggests a further slowing down. Some of the delays may be legitimate given some of the requested records may be hard to access when working remotely:

An international human rights organization is calling on all levels of government in Canada to continue answering access to information requests — and prioritize ones that relate to government accountability.

As governments across the country move to offer essential services only due to COVID-19, some are warning of delays in processing access to information requests, while others have stopped accepting new requests entirely.

It means the public has one less tool to understand how those in power are making decisions during a public health crisis.

“We’ve got, on the one hand, this incredible need for accountability and on the other hand, the institutions of accountability are operating well below their normal levels,” Toby Mendel, executive director of the Halifax-based Centre for Law and Democracy, said in an interview.”So, it’s a cocktail for lack of accountability and at this time, the importance of access to information is much, much greater than ever.”

The Access to Information Act allows applicants who pay $5 to ask for documents ranging from expense reports to briefing papers from government bodies in Canada.

‘Canadians will expect a comprehensive picture’

Last week, the federal information commissioner urged federal agencies and departments to “take all reasonable measures to limit the impact on individuals’ right to access.”

She followed it up with a statement on Thursday, reminding public bodies about their obligation to document decisions and actions, even with many people working from home.

“When the time comes, and it will, for a full accounting of the measures taken and the vast financial resources committed by the government during this emergency, Canadians will expect a comprehensive picture of the data, deliberations and policy decisions that determined the government’s overall response to COVID-19,” commissioner Caroline Maynard wrote in the statement.

But some institutions in the already-clogged federal system are halting access to information requests indefinitely.

“The Access to Information and Privacy Office has decided to put all access and privacy requests on hold until the situation returns to normal,” Public Services and Procurement Canada wrote in an email to an applicant last week.

The email didn’t say what part of the legislation allows it to put requests on hold indefinitely or how it would define “normal.”

A spokesperson for Public Services and Procurement Canada didn’t answer those questions, but said it “is prioritizing support for the government’s response efforts, as well as critical services, including administering pay and pensions, and maintaining building safety as part of its service continuity.”

Toronto not accepting new requests

The access to information system is not just slowing down at the federal level.

CBC News surveyed five cities — Toronto, Ottawa, Halifax, Vancouver and Calgary — and found their approaches to access to information during COVID-19 vary.

Calgary, Ottawa and Vancouver say they are continuing to answer requests as usual during the pandemic while trying to minimize delays.

Toronto, Canada’s largest city, says it has “temporarily suspended the intake of any new [freedom of information] requests” so staff can “prioritize COVID-19 response activities.”

“It is not currently feasible to deploy staff resources to conduct the searches necessary to locate records in order to respond to new requests,” City of Toronto spokesperson Beth Waldman wrote in an email.

Waldman said transparency and right to information are still a priority, citing the city’s press briefings and “other communications to the public” during the pandemic. She didn’t specify when the city will start accepting new requests again.

After two weeks of mass closures and aggressive physical distancing to prevent the spread of COVID-19, public health experts watch closely to see if Canada is taking steps towards flattening the curve. 3:08

Earlier this week, the Halifax Regional Municipality’s website said it wasn’t accepting new requests for information or routine disclosure requests, where people can request information that’s already been released.

After CBC News asked why that was the case, the website was changed to say the municipality would accept requests, but applicants should expect delays “as municipal staff are working remotely and will not be in a position to search for records responsive to the request.”Provinces are also handling the situation differently.

The New Brunswick Ombud’s Office has granted an extension to public bodies, giving them until May 29 to complete active requests.

But in Newfoundland and Labrador, public bodies are getting indefinite extensions, according to a letter sent to an applicant in March.

“The extension is approved for the time until government returns to normal operations,” the letter says, adding that the extension was approved by the province’s access to information and privacy commissioner.

‘Scrutiny from outside makes things work better’

Mendel said public bodies have been too quick to say they can’t handle processing requests.

“It is not appropriate for bodies to simply say we’re not processing requests anymore,” Mendel said.”We have laws across the country. They set rules for the processing of requests and those rules must either be formally limited by a legal process or they must be obeyed.”

While he said it may be reasonable for public bodies to restrict employees from going into offices and looking for physical files, he believes public institutions should prioritize requests that deal with government accountability, including those from journalists and opposition politicians.

“Scrutiny from outside makes things work better,” said Mendel.

His organization has recently launched a tracker that examines how governments across the globe are handling access to information during a pandemic.

“In Brazil, for example, they sought to suspend the operation of the act and the Supreme Court said, ‘No that’s not legitimate, that is a key accountability institution,'” Mendel said.

“You can see that when the proper rule of law system is being applied to these measures, it doesn’t just allow governments to act as they might wish arbitrarily. ”

Crisis could push access to information to modernize

Organizations that already struggled to respond to access to information requests will likely make access to information “an even lower priority” during a pandemic, according to Jason Woywada, executive director of the British Columbia Freedom of Information and Privacy Association.

“That does lead to concerns because those are the same institutions that likely require the highest degree of oversight to improve their processes and operations,” he said.

But it also could push the country’s access to information systems to modernize.

Woywada supports that, as long as it’s done in a way that doesn’t put privacy at risk.

Nova Scotia learned that the hard way in 2018, after it was forced to shut down its online freedom of information portal after a privacy breach.

More than 7,000 documents, including hundreds with highly personal information, were downloaded in March 2018, but the breach wouldn’t be detected until a month later.

“The key consideration there is making sure that security is maintained and making sure that the privacy is maintained for the information of the individuals that is being used online, that we aren’t seeing a sudden increase in data breaches,” Woywada said.

Source: Access-to-information systems across Canada slowed by COVID-19

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Corak: Ottawa is struggling to be a just-in-time government

2020/04/01 Leave a comment

Good commentary by Miles Corak and the need to rebalance between policy development and service delivery. The initial idea behind Service Canada was precisely to do just that, having policy being service and citizen-centric rather than stove-piped by department and program. Too risky an approach for government, and most DMs and other senior officials make their name and career based upon their role in policy development rather than service delivery, with the inevitable results of some major screw-ups like the Phoenix pay system.

We shall see how the government manages to deliver all of the COVID-19 measures, as I suspect, like Corak, that they will be judged on that basis. Of course, a few years later, evaluations and audits will highlight some of the accountability and integrity issues that arose with the new and expanded programs rushed out the door (given time being of the essence over full due process and safeguards):

Big government rode into town just in time, but alas, when he jumped off his bronco and reached for his six-gun, it became clear he wasn’t just-in-time government.

What is clear from the COVID-19 crisis is that we should always choose our leaders with one thing in mind: character. Character determines how they will stand up to the unexpected. That’s what matters, and whether it is François Legault, Doug Ford, Jason Kenney, John Horgan, Naheed Nenshi, John Tory or Justin Trudeau, Canadians feel they are all passing the test.

Opinion polling shows that strong majorities see their leaders as doing a good job responding to COVID-19. And it’s impressive, their sensibility to consult, their conviction to act. Now, when we need them, they’ve all shown up, just in time.

But we can’t be governed by character alone. Good governance needs an infrastructure that can deliver, and thank goodness Canadians can also count on a professional public service. But at the same time, we fear its muscles can’t flex in real time.

The biggest stumble of the past week was Ottawa’s overreaching ambition in the first draft of Bill C-13 – the COVID-19 Emergency Response Act – an attempt to skirt parliamentary oversight and seize control of taxing and spending for two years. Not immediately tasteful, not in character – and certainly not contributing to the we-are-in-it-together spirit that is crucial for good governance and success.

It was probably driven more by insecurity than partisanship, springing from having to look through the veil of uncertainty that has fallen over Ottawa. Staring into the mirror and seeing no reassuring reflection, Finance Minister Bill Morneau wished for a pot of gold, just in case, you never know, down the road, we may need it.

Insecurity about a fluid situation, and about how quickly programs can be delivered, flows out of clogged government plumbing, a hard constraint on Big Think. For years we’ve neglected, cut, denigrated, and now the public service has a tough time doing just-in-time.

Take, for example, Employment Insurance, that grand social insurance scheme born from the disaster of the Great Depression, intended to offer income support to all in need, to insure against the great social risks we collectively face – risks that would bankrupt private insurers in no time. How is it performing during a collective crisis of the very kind it was intended to address?

It is straining, with computer code written in the 1980s running its servers, processing power and devoted personnel stretched to the limit, service centres now shut down. The public service is doing the best it can with old plumbing.

Ottawa mandarins often muse about an “all of government approach,” a busting across the silos of different ministries to address all aspects of a policy challenge. But the biggest silos of all have never been breached, those between policy development and service delivery. And now the delivery plumbing is conditioning the choices that Big Thinkers can make.

What is also clear from the COVID-19 crisis is that we should always be investing and innovating in public service delivery, something that’s easy to ignore in normal times.

There is no doubt that the income-support programs the federal government moved quickly out of the drawing room and into legislation last week were designed with an eye, not simply to whether they were big enough, but to how they would be delivered. The cheques won’t be in the mail for weeks. In a time of pandemic, that’s a lifetime.

Our governments have to think big, but they can only implement incrementally, a couple of quick steps forward, one back. Events are moving too fast, capacity is too limited, for Canadians to expect otherwise, even if what they really need is both big and just-in-time government.

When Mr. Trudeau’s team first came to power, they were enamoured with the idea of governing with data. Measure outcomes, set targets, recalibrate in the face of results and move forward with a “there’s more to do” attitude. But lags in information and delivery make all that fall short.

There is always a big gap between intention and result, even more so in times of crisis, and that gap has to be filled with the trust that character instills in partners and citizens.

Trust gives us the assurance that the cheque is indeed in the mail, and character, now more than ever, needs to deliver. It can’t stumble too many times before trust rides away.

Source: Ottawa is struggling to be a just-in-time government: Miles Corak

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