Dave Redman – Models, Mismanagement, and Emergency Planning

Here’s a link to the YouTube video.

References:

The World Health Organization’s 2019 guide on Non-pharmaceutical public health measures for mitigating the risk and impact of epidemic and pandemic influenza:

https://apps.who.int/iris/bitstream/handle/10665/329438/9789241516839-eng.pdf

0m 38s

Emergency management looks out for hazards, for those most vulnerable to the hazard, and then connects the relevant stakeholders. For some reason, the government decided that COVID wasn’t a societal-wide emergency, but rather, just a health emergency. We knew back in February who was dying from COVID-19. But we failed to protect those in long-term care homes. Hospitals are just one form of critical infrastructure.

4m 9s

Pandemic plans are made from the lessons learned from past pandemics. We threw out our pandemic plans when COVID-19 hit. The government should have modified their extant plan to address covid 19, made clear who was responsible for what, engaged with both the private and public sector, and then widely published a plan.

6m 20s

Premiers are responsible for making medical health officers responsible for the pandemic. Instead of health advisory boards, they should have formed a task force with the top 10 or 11 most impacted government ministries, along with stakeholders from the private and public sector (power grid people, natural gas, hospital leaders, food suppliers, etc). You need INPUT.

8m 22s

There are 15 possible non-pharmaceutical interventions that the WHO looked at, with regards to efficacy. We immediately went ahead with all 15 out of 15 measures. “Lockdowns” as a concept didn’t exist in the WHO pandemic response guidance. Most of them were not recommended. Things like quarantining people who had been exposed were not shown to stop the spread of the disease, but cause massive collateral damage. 

The London Imperial College model doesn’t work, and it hasn’t worked. It repeatedly overestimates deaths and case counts, creating fear. As an emergency management expert, Redman would use models to measure surge capacity. For eg., making sure that if all of your power grid operators are taken out, there are enough backup people trained. If there aren’t, you find/make em! Models should never have become a weapon to panic people.

The UK and Germany and other European countries were following their pandemic preparedness plans in March, but switched to using all 15 out of 15 NPIs in March. Models are meant to build surge capacity for critical infrastructure, not to monitor your success fighting COVID!

17m 16s

People who speak with Redman fear that their careers may be cut short simply because of their association with him. How then can we think publicly if there’s so much pressure? How can we trust our (health) leaders if they are not willing to host and have public debates? If dissent is punished? 

Redman’s goal is to ensure confidence in government, but premiers from all across the country have been turning him away. No MOHs were willing to listen to his point of view. He was only published in alternative media platforms like C2C Journal. His goal is also to save the lives of people who are vulnerable to COVID-19 – seniors with multiple co-morbidities. However, few others agreed. Others were motivated by fear. 

22m 54s

There WILL be repercussions to adding $400 billion dollars to our national debt. Unfortunately, the dialogue is so panicked and moralizing that any sign that you resist the status quo is seen as a sign of betrayal; you are shunned. We knew from the 2019 study on NPIs that they don’t work, and that there’d be collateral damage. 30,000 trucks cross the US-Canadian border, carrying food, medicine, and critical equipment. We absolutely cannot isolate Canada. 

27m 13s

Redman’s argument showing that lockdowns don’t work: Sweden never had lockdowns, and mostly had recommendations. Businesses weren’t closed at all, nor were most schools. They have around 10 million people. But if you compare their per capita death rate with Quebec, both are tied. Sweden has done better than Quebec for people under the age of 60 actually. Sweden’s hospital system was never overwhelmed. To learn more about Sweden, you can check out Sebastian Rushworth and Dr. Technol (28:38). Belarus (the authoritarian dictatorship) has been having huge parties, football matches, gatherings, etc. Same death rates. 

29m 60s

Facts and figures are not being contextualized. 96% of the COVID deaths in our country have been from those with co-morbidities. At Ontario’s peak, they had 1,760 COVID patients in acute care beds. They have 22,358 acute care beds in total. Government confidence is being lost by them not sharing this proper risk assessment. 

32m 2s

Asking long-term care home workers to quarantine the people they work with is a lot to ask, but can be done by paying them more, offering things like citizenship, and putting people on 2 week shifts, like is done in Fort McMurray. In Fort McMurray, workers don’t generally have homes there, because they are flown in. Something similar should’ve happened with long-term health care workers. They could’ve lived in hospitals, transportation and food could’ve been arranged, and it could’ve all been done for much cheaper than what we actually have done. Long-term care home workers are attached to and care for the people they work with. You can bring in entertainers. You can build hugging walls. They could’ve been protected without losing their humanity. 

Those who argue against him say that locking them up is inhumane. But it makes less sense to lock everyone else in society up with them. This would only last until rapid testing could be introduced. We borrowed $400 billion and still killed 16,000 of them, which was completely preventable. Redman knows it’s possible because he’s organized things like this before. Nobody made a plan in February. 

40m 31s

Redman lays out how family practitioners should’ve been the nodes who could’ve found those with multiple co-morbidities. From there, you can offer more options: quarantine hotels for those who want to get through the first wave. Add medical staff to the hotel. Providing assistance to family members who are taking care of sick relatives (grocery delivery, protective equipment, etc). Instead, we were scared out of our minds. We could’ve done *so much better*. We could’ve saved *so many more lives*. 

Regarding the Charter, if an individual in a long term care home cannot choose for themselves how they’ll protect themselves (ie. they might have dementia), then the government has an obligation to protect them. If they can choose, then they should have been given options. Some will choose to live 6 months instead of 18 months if it means they are able to hug their grandkids every day. Our approach was completely one size fits all. Redman describes how a team of nurses in France quarantined with their nursing home residents, and nobody died. Had we done something similar, we could’ve spent perhaps $2 billion instead of $400 billion. 

47m 52s

Redman has been retired for nearly two decades. How does he deal with the frustration from watching negligence and incompetence at such a pronounced level? He tries to stop watching the TV. But he’s not as frustrated as the many doctors in the system who see the doctors on the media lying about the proportion of covid sickness compared to those dying of mental health issues, of overdoses, cancer, diabetes, and of heart attacks. Of kids whose damage won’t be seen until 5-10 years from now. 

When you’re in a shitty situation and people around you are afraid, you need to give them a plan. You don’t run home and hide. You let people know what their role is. That’s confidence. Confidence defeats fear. A plan with clear responsibilities defeats fear. A place for input to be collected defeats fear. 

52m 20s

To the doctors and nurses in institutions who feel muzzled and can’t push back, Redman says to do what you feel comfortable with. The risk to oyur career is real for speaking out and against the mainstream. If that means having a conversation within their walls, then do so. 

55m 0

The government has certainly chosen economic winners and losers. The construction industry hasn’t slowed down, as we’ve built more hoses this year than in the last 12 months. They don’t social distance and mask. In the rest of society, most people who get COVID don’t even know they’ve had it. And we must also contextualize the risks of COVID. 

57m 5s

Regarding civil disobedience (for eg., Adam Skelly), Redman is personally someone who doesn’t practice civil disobedience. That’s not who he is. Instead, his aim is to change rules he believe are wrong. When he was a new leftenant, a general he respected once said that you should never make a rule you don’t intend to enforce. It signals that every other rule is suspect. 

59m 27s

With the personal attacks and threats, he just carries on. He’s retired, so he can’t be threatened very easily. He loves his country, his family, and is standing up for both. We ended discussing that under the Charter of Rights and Freedoms, you have rights and freedoms until the government can justify taking them away. However, lockdowns don’t work. They do create massive collateral damage though. And we completely abandoned our seniors. 

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