MOVE TO WEEKLY COVID-19 STAT REPORTS NOTHING BUT GOVERNMENT DOUBLESPEAK
Cloaking of health data does disservice to Quebecers and insults their intelligence
It’s not unusual for governments to release controversial news on Friday afternoons.
All the better for unpopular decisions, negative financial results or damning reports to fly under the radar, as the general public gears up for the weekend. Companies and organizations of all types engage in this subterfuge, keeping eagle-eyed journalists on their toes in a perpetual game of cat-and-mouse. When called on their sneakiness, most usually chalk up the timing to coincidence.
Still, the Quebec government’s announcement Wednesday that it will no longer offer daily statistics on new COVID-19 cases in the province, opting for weekly publication instead, takes obfuscation to a new level. Wednesday was, after all, the Fête nationale, when Quebecers were enjoying a holiday or perhaps starting summer vacation. While the population’s attention was diverted, the government dealt a double blow to transparency on an issue of paramount public interest.
Even as the coronavirus appears to have been contained, which is positive given all the major steps toward a return to normalcy, this move is a departure from the prompt reporting of almost every other credible jurisdiction in the world. It also keeps the public in the dark about the evolving status of the pandemic, when a new flare-up or an anticipated second wave could strike at any moment.
But it gets worse. On Thursday, the Institut national de la santé publique revealed that it, too, will move to weekly reporting on new COVID -19 cases, deaths, hospitalizations and recoveries “following the announcement of the Ministry of Health and Social Services on June 24.” A day earlier, the independent agency had stated its intention to issue updates Monday to Friday starting June 27, an understandable adjustment from providing fresh statistics seven days a week. It tellingly referred questions on its decision to the health ministry.
Dr. Horacio Arruda, Quebec’s national director of public health, emerged Thursday to explain there was nothing sinister about providing data every Thursday. Weekly reports will provide a more “stable” epidemiological snapshot, he insisted. Given the minuscule number of new cases, a backlog in updating records can skew the picture. And don’t worry, public health officials are still monitoring the situation daily so they will alert everyone if something changes.
Strange that no one seemed overly worried about delays in tallying cases throwing off the curve before. And this entreaty to “just trust us” probably will have the opposite effect on public confidence.
Arruda’s explanation is also at odds with his own voiced concerns that Quebecers are dangerously relaxing their social distancing habits as the province deconfines.
But the absence of daily COVID -19 numbers will only encourage people to let their guard down even more.
This doublespeak appears to be part of a shifting government communications strategy that seeks to de-emphasize the continuing ravages of COVID-19 and highlight the virtues of Quebec’s economic relaunch.
In recent weeks, Premier François Legault stopped announcing the daily toll of new coronavirus deaths and offering his heartfelt condolences.
Arruda — long portrayed as the sage scientist at Legault’s right hand, justifying all the government’s difficult decisions — has retreated from appearing alongside the premier.
Perhaps his warnings that Quebec is not out of the woods are too much of a downer amid the push to reopen the province.
But Arruda also courted controversy after it was revealed he was travelling abroad the week before COVID-19 body slammed Quebec. His contract is soon up for renewal, so his job may be on the line.
Legault rearranged his cabinet last week, switching Danielle Mccann out of the health portfolio and replacing her with Christian Dubé, heretofore Treasury Board president. If shuffling the health minister in the midst of a pandemic didn’t raise eyebrows, swapping a nurse with a businessman provoked questions about the government’s priorities.
But the alteration of the INSPQ’S reporting schedule is the most egregious development yet. It smacks of political interference with an independent scientific body.
The INSPQ inconveniently put the government on the defensive in May, when it released dire projections for the propagation of the virus in Montreal late one Friday. Legault took a drubbing for waiting until Monday to react and downplayed the modelling as an alarmist worstcase scenario “that will never happen.”
Ironically, he noted then that the INSPQ was an autonomous organization and he didn’t control the timing of their publications. But clearly muzzling the INSPQ now would prevent any embarrassing discrepancies between their statistics and the government’s rosy take on deconfinement.
The politicization and cloaking of health data not only does a disservice to Quebecers, it insults their intelligence.
While the population’s attention was diverted, the government dealt a double blow to transparency on an issue of paramount public interest.