When it comes to swine flu shots, Canadians understand who should get them first. Hockey players! Hockey players must not be made to stand in line with the halt, the lame, the pregnant and the harried mothers with their tots in tow. Athletes serve the national interest. And if you doubt they are a high-risk group, just ask them.
"We go from city to city and rink to rink," Maple Leafs centre John Mitchell told the Toronto Star. "There's people that might be an avid fan who doesn't want to miss a game even though he's feeling a little sick. … We have every bit of a chance of catching it as everybody else, maybe a little bit more."
No one wants the Maple Leafs to be stricken with swine flu. It might ruin their whole season. Thankfully, sports fans everywhere can rest assured that their favourite players need not waste a moment waiting for any kind of medical attention - MRIs, CAT scans, knee surgery or their annual checkups. That's because they don't use the public system.
Board members at Mount Sinai, a leading Toronto hospital, were also said to have received flu shots last month, so they will be able to carry on their ceaseless toil on behalf of universal health care. People who pay stiff fees to private clinics, as well as company executives enrolled in these clinics as a perk, don't have to line up, either.
Other nations have other priority groups. In the U.S., news came that Goldman Sachs was immunizing investment bankers who have reaped billions in government bailouts. Swamped by hundreds of furious calls from the public, health officials were quick to reassure them that even Goldman Sachs is bound by the honour system - which means that pregnant investment bankers should be first in line. "Just because it's Goldman Sachs doesn't mean it's wrong," said one health official.
Two weeks ago, public health officials were in despair because people thought that swine flu was a yawn. Now they're in despair because people are in a panic. "You'd think that not getting the vaccine is akin to being deprived of a lifeboat off the Titanic," one health expert told me.
But, really, who can blame us? We've been deluged with 24/7 coverage, heart-wrenching stories about healthy children who died and screaming headlines telling us not to panic. First the message was: "This is really, really serious, and everyone should get the shot as soon as possible or your neighbour's kid might die." Now the message is: "This is really serious, but not that serious, really, and everyone has got to keep it in perspective and wait their turn."
First they told us they would treat all comers, so people lined up around the block for hours. Then they told us to go home and wait, because there wasn't enough vaccine.
Meantime, swine flu phobia has swept the nation far faster than the flu itself. Dozens of schools have shut because of swine flu fear. In St. George, N.B., five schools closed when absenteeism soared, although it was far from clear how many people were actually sick, and even less clear how many of those had swine flu.
One public health expert reminded us that, if you're healthy, you're about 20 times more likely to die this year from a car crash than from swine flu. But nobody paid the least bit of attention.
The swine flu story is a microcosm of our nation. It features two-tier health care (which everyone keeps pretending to be shocked about), and politicians insisting that no one should get special treatment, even though they always have. It has politicians at all levels yelling at each other to score points. It also features an excess of bureaucracy and too many layers of government. Every province has a different flu-shot plan, and every city and town does, too, and none of them know when the next batch of vaccine will arrive.
We also seem to have a shortage of people who can actually give shots and manage lineups. With so many obstacles standing between your kid and her flu shot, it's a wonder she'll be getting it at all.
My own city, Toronto, is a miserable case in point. We are decently supplied with family doctors, who routinely dole out flu shots. But swine flu shots are all tied up in red tape. So their patients spend hours in lineups at public clinics, instead.
"It makes no sense to suddenly foist an onerous, bureaucratic protocol upon family doctors," said one physician. Nor will flu clinics be held in schools, a logical place to have them. Instead, children will be bussed to immunization centres, providing their parents sign the consent form, although one bureaucrat is now warning that parents will have to accompany their children.
By the time the bureaucrats work out all the details, flu season will be over. You can be sure the finger-pointing will last a good deal longer. But at least there's one big consolation: No matter how we've screwed it up, we haven't screwed it up as much as the Americans.