REAL STORY OF LONG-TERM CARE DEATHS.

The mudslinging attacks on long-term care operators seems to be reaching a peak, leaving the unstated but obvious implication that the operators of these homes and care facilities are somehow responsible for the COVID-19 deaths of thousands of elderly Canadians. The release this week of the Canadian military’s findings in a few long-term care homes in Ontario and Quebec has been seized upon as the final piece of supposedly compelling evidence of a mismanaged industry associated with up to 80 per cent of Canada’s 6,700 coronavirus deaths.

Fed by the media and assorted critics of the long-term care system and their government regulators, the attack amounts to a slanderous smear that conveniently avoids the real reason so many vulnerable aging Canadians are now dead.

It starts at the top. What follows is an excerpt from a late March daily address to the nation that Prime Minister Justin Trudeau never gave:

“As this COVID-19 outbreak unfolds in coming months, our government will aim to support Canadians and keep them protected. We’ve based our response on input from our worldclass health professionals and authorities. We know what the science is telling us. The evidence is clear. The elderly are our greatest risk. We’ve seen the experience in Italy and Spain. We know what happened in China. In Washington State. The first long-term care death in British Columbia occurred March 8.

“The signals are clear. The most vulnerable Canadians are in long-term care institutions.

“Today our government is allocating $20 billion to deploy as many physical and human resources as possible to stop this pandemic from reaching our most vulnerable population. If you are in a long-term care home, or are related to someone who is, rest assured. Our top priority is to get you the help you need.”

That never happened last March. Instead, as the elderly death toll began to march upward in long-term care facilities, Ottawa and the provinces proceeded to lock down the lives of millennials in downtown Toronto and Vancouver and distribute hundreds of billions all over the economy to compensate.

As the lockdown created an economic crisis, COVID-19 was essentially allowed to spread into vulnerable long-term care homes. By May, 3,642 Canadians had died in LTC facilities, making up 82 per cent of all deaths. Today, Health Canada reports that more than 6,700 Canadians have perished from the virus, with 97 per of the victims being over the age of 60, and 75 per cent being over the age of 80.

Why did this disaster happen?

It certainly cannot be pegged to the LTC industry. The elderly death toll has a variety of causes, but the main question is: How many of these deaths could have been avoided if Ottawa — the chief science player in this pandemic — had focused on the specific risk to the elderly rather than attempt to stop the spread of COVID-19 through the whole population?

Veteran Canadian risk consultant Tim Leech has been hammering that point. Instead of imposing widespread lockdowns, Leech argues in a blog post, governments should have applied “targeted risk-management strategies” and massive resources to protect Canadians at high risk, particularly in long-term care.

Did Ottawa ever consider a targeted risk-management strategy that would have saved lives? We may never know, adds Leech.

But we need to know, if only to halt the current viral implication that LTC industry operators are somehow to blame. The industry has been issuing warnings of underfunding, understaffing and outdated facilities. In Ontario in 2018, the province paid $4.3 billion to fund residents at a cost of $55,000 each.

The Ontario Long Term Care Association, in a pre-pandemic 2019 budget submission, warned that the industry and its employees were at a “tipping point.” Staff and professionals were feeling overworked and over-scrutinized by the public, the media and the government. Punitive policies and “problems hiring and retaining staff across the province has resulted in a system that is under siege.”

When the pandemic struck, many facilities were unprepared, especially older institutions that still included rooms with four patients. The Ontario association concluded its budget submission: “Despite a well-known, evidence-based demographic surge of seniors unable to care for themselves … and massive waiting lists to enter long-term care, we spent the last decade mired in a program to rebuild or renovate homes that simply doesn’t work.”

Then came COVID-19, which landed on some aging facilities that were ill-prepared to cope with the virus’s infection routes. One industry executive told me in an interview that the officially sanctioned long-term care approach to infection risk was focused on tracking down infections, including identifying and isolating infected residents. “What’s special about COVID-19 is the asymptomatic transmission. The whole strategy of looking for fever and looking for symptoms didn’t work. By the time we found somebody with symptoms, and then tested everybody in the home, you would find 40 or 50 residents already positive.”

By the time the military got on the scene in Ontario and Quebec, the logical outcome of failed government regulation and risk preparedness was obvious. Individual homes and companies were left to scramble as COVID-19 scared off already overworked staff. The military dealt with the aftermath and now claims the headlines.

Despite all the speeches about protecting front-line workers and flattening the curve for the health-care system (which now has more than 30 per cent empty beds), there is good reason to believe that governments — especially Ottawa — failed at their self-appointed task of protecting the most vulnerable, despite the science and the warnings.