Letter re - COVID testing

Robert Thomas | Sep 30, 2020

As leader of the Official Opposition, Erin O'Toole gets to appear on national TV and criticize the government. He's elected, paid, and given a public forum to do exactly this. That's how our system works.

But along with the public profile comes a responsibility to the truth and carefully reasoned argument. Following the Throne Speech Mr. O'Toole, eager to score easy political points, walked away from his responsibility.

Starting with a legitimate concern regarding testing for Covid 19, he moved rapidly to the statement that the problem could be fixed if  only the government would pressure Health Canada to fast-track approval of additional, newly-developed testing methods.

But some of these tests just look for the antibodies that the body produces in response to the virus having been present for some days -- during which time, it could have been spread to others. So, even if the test works perfectly, the result is equivalent to a "false negative". Not too helpful!

Assuming that a given test actually "looks for" the virus itself, it can be useless or dangerous if it delivers too many false results. So should Health Canada approve a test without thorough testing? Would any sane person want to trust such a test?

Instead of digging deeper, Mr. O'Toole claims that we should blindly follow the lead of Germany, Japan, and the US, which have apparently approved some (unspecified) tests.
PER MILLION PEOPLE:

Japan has had far fewer tests, cases, and deaths than Canada. We can learn from this. But is it because of better tests?

Germany has done roughly as many tests as Canada, and has had a comparable number of cases and about half the deaths.

The US has done 70% more tests than Canada, and had about 5 1/2 times the cases and 2 1/2 times the deaths.

So, Mr. O'Toole, whom should we emulate? Or does Health Canada have it right?

Robert Thomas