'The perfect storm': York Region's medical officer of health has some bad news

Yorkregion.com
Nov. 7, 2022

It's not the kind of thing you want to hear from your Medical Officer of Health.

"It’s the perfect storm. We're most certainly not at the worst of it.”

York Region’s Dr. Barry Pakes is aware his words are a bit of a downer, but it's the hard reality we need right now to weather through this difficult winter ahead.

It’s been nearly three years of pandemic hypervigilance and many of us are weary, but there’s no escaping facts: influenza is skyrocketing, sick children are clogging up emergency wards, Pakes says the COVID death rate is "higher than in many, many months" and there’s growing concern about the virus’ unfolding impact on the body.

We spoke with him to find out what’s going on -- and what we can do.

Is there truth to reports that even mild COVID can damage our cardiovascular system or weaken immunity to other illnesses?

Any time you get sick, it activates your immune system.

When you're infected with COVID, your activated immune system causes inflammation that causes a blood clot; it causes the inside of your blood vessels to become bigger. That's where the cardiovascular outcomes appear.

There are things called cytokines in your blood that stimulate your immune system and are key to your body responding to infection, but it also stimulates other things in all parts of your body, whether it's your heart, your kidney or your brain.

When everybody has this virus and people have had it several times, you're going to see immune dysregulation affecting people differently -- cardiovascular and auto-immune, brain fog or mental health impacts or even just fatigue.

Some fare better, some worse -- but you do much, much better if you have a vaccine.

There are, however, some unique things about the SARS-CoV-2 virus and people are trying to sort out what the long effects are and risk factors that make it more likely for you to have after-effects.

Public Health Canada reports the number of RSV and Influenza A cases is above expected levels for this time of year and children’s hospitals are swamped. Could immune damage or dysregulation from COVID be causing this?

If kids are being infected with multiple viruses at the same time or if they didn’t have a chance to recover, they certainly will be sicker.

But the large part of the pediatric infectious diseases that we're seeing now is simply because those from age one to age four didn't have the same illnesses these past three years and now everybody is getting it at once.

That's not something emergency rooms, in-patient units or ICUs can handle.

Should we blame the pediatric crisis we’re seeing right now on COVID precautions?

Blame isn't the right word. It's a natural consequence.

If you’re in a car accident, your seatbelt could cause bruises or stomach injury. If you didn’t wear that seatbelt, you would have gone through the windshield and died.

It was absolutely 100 per cent necessary to take the measures that we took in order to prevent COVID from killing tens of thousands or more people before we had a vaccine.

Once we had a vaccine, we were able to reduce those measures to a degree that everybody's getting infected. We knew this was coming.

A country like United States, that didn't lock down as much and didn't vaccinate, had almost quadruple the number of deaths and is still going through this same overwhelmingly increased viral respiratory pathogens.

It’s also a timing thing: our Canadian winters coincide with health-care workers feeling burned out, retiring or struggling to keep going.

Another important piece is the lack of Tylenol and Advil for children. Many parents haven't seen their kids ill for quite some time and if they don’t have Tylenol to make them look better, they’re more likely to take them to the ER.

It's a bit of a perfect storm.

How do we weather this storm?

Stay home if you’re sick with anything.

Wear a mask indoors and in public spaces. Regarding the increasing calls for a mask mandate, I don’t foresee any action from York Region Public Health in isolation of our colleagues across the province at this time.

However, masking is a proven way to stay safe, and protect yourself and others from COVID, flu, deaths RSV and a host of other  respiratory illnesses

Get up to date on your shots -- COVID and flu - especially if you are young and healthy. You are the ones who can make a difference population-wide.

You can get both influenza and COVID-19 vaccinations by appointment at these designated Public Health Clinics.

Data shows flu infections rising quickly. That means we're most certainly not at the worst of it yet.