Britain's Prince Andrew attends Sunday service at the Royal Chapel of All Saints at Windsor Great Park, Britain, following the death of his father, Prince Philip, April 11, 2021.Steve Parsons/PA Wire/Pool via REUTERS
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Pandemic philosophy
Re Should The Unvaxxed Be Taxed? (Editorial, Jan. 13): “No man is an island.” To further quote John Donne’s Meditation 17 of 1623: “No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main … any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”
Death is the great equalizer, but why hurry it along if there is something the unvaccinated can do about it?
Heinz Senger Surrey, B.C.
Subtitle
Re Prince Andrew Loses Military Titles And Use Of ‘His Royal Highness’ Amid Sexual Abuse Lawsuit (Jan. 14): In the carnage of Prince Andrew losing his litany of titles, I notice he still is a vice-admiral – retaining that one seems appropriate to me.
Martin Harvey Niagara-on-the-Lake, Ont.
Tick, tick
Re As Time Runs Out, Here’s what We Need To Do To Prepare For Climate Disaster (Jan. 11): There is one basic metric that should apply to each area studied by advisory tables: risk of disruption from a climate-change event.
What is the risk of disruption, for example, of the supply chain infrastructure in the southern trade corridor, from Vancouver through the Fraser Canyon and the Pacific Coast Range to the rest of Canada? How likely are future events such as wildfires and floods likely to disrupt road and rail links?
Based on that risk metric, it would then be possible to look at the cost of adaptation – building road and railroad links to withstand future events – versus alternative supply chain routes.
Roger Emsley Delta, B.C.
We are running out of time to make a “national adaptation strategy” work.
For this to succeed, it should be non-partisan. Each federal ministry should have a key goal to shepherd all the lesser goals it needs to address.
Canada should also appoint a climate czar who can pull all the federal items together, along with provincial agendas and those of our international partners. The strategy should be funded to the hilt, much as we did for the pandemic.
Success is within reach if we push forward sensibly and with commitment.
Geoff Sheffrin Brampton, Ont.
School of thought
Re Are Canada’s Medical Schools Failing In Their Purpose? (Jan. 11): In British Columbia, there are some hundreds of thousands of folks who find health care inaccessible owing to a lack of family doctors. Yet we hear of little planning for a resolution to this growing crisis.
There should be urgent collaboration between medical schools and provincial governments to attract graduates who profess dedication to one of the most demanding, yet satisfying and essential, medical specialties. Net income for family doctors should be competitive with other specialists. Working collaboratively in clinic groups with other essential services has great appeal, too.
Without well-trained family doctors, the whole system would disintegrate into dysfunctional chaos: no prescription renewals, essential testing, referrals or preventive health care, et cetera. Yet many medical schools and governments remain so out of touch with the needs of the citizenry.
Neil Finnie MD; Victoria
Medical students make lifelong career choices when they have barely begun their medical journey. It has become difficult to change career paths once chosen.
Specialty training positions and residencies are almost exclusively available to new graduates and not practising physicians who, after years of practice, are in more informed positions to enter a specialty. A doctor who chooses family medicine should not feel trapped in the role, but should be given the option of returning to training.
As a small-town general practitioner – after years of office and hospital practice, house calls and delivering babies – I was able to take a year of anesthesia training. I then returned to my previous practice, sharing my time between family medicine and anesthesia.
I never regretted this decision, and would like my younger colleagues to have similar career choices available.
Tom Suhadolc MD, CCFP (FPA); Grimsby, Ont.
As a proud generalist and graduate of the Northern Ontario School of Medicine who completed a residency at Dalhousie Medicine New Brunswick, the care of those who live in rural and remote settings has been the focus of my medical training and those of my fellow learners.
While I am guilty as charged of residing in an urban centre presently, it’s only while my spouse completes her subspecialty training – training that is only available in the south. We will be returning to Northern Ontario upon completion of her studies.
There are successful Canadian models that exist right now that can and should be exploited at other institutions.
Benjamin Reitzel MD, CCFP; Hamilton
The cost to educate a doctor is highly subsidized by the government. Upon graduating, perhaps new doctors should be mandated to spend two years where they are needed to help offset drastic shortages of family doctors.
Many would say their family couldn’t relocate. Fine. Give them a choice: “Go where you are needed or pay back what it has cost to educate you.”
Many years ago, while married to a professor of medicine, I would suggest this solution at dinner parties. Needless to say, it was not well received.
Sally Moore Toronto
Star power
Re When Art Imitates Life: Succession Star Sends Rogers A Paid Greeting (Jan. 12): Actor Brian Cox recorded a 19-second Cameo video for Edward Rogers, congratulating him on his “real-life Succession.” His fee: $875.
Once upon a time, celebrities would only break the fourth wall for a hefty price. Their preference was to appear in overseas ads with outsized marketing budgets and iron-clad contracts that swore campaigns would only run regionally. Think Bill Murray in Lost in Translation.
Today, celebrities often see video-sharing as a way of building their mythologies and working in unabashed brand partnerships to engage their most rabid fans. Unlike in decades past, when simply securing a celebrity was the win (such as George Clooney in those regrettable Nespresso ads), platforms such as Cameo are the great equalizer.
A brand may not have the biggest budget or even the biggest celebrity. But if it can figure out the cleverest way to hitchhike on their niche appeal, the effect will be outsized.
Katherine Gougeon Toronto
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