As the B.C. government conducts a “review” of its pandemic response (see more at the end of this column), a conversation I had with a former health-care worker came to mind.
Beverly Welsh is a retired palliative care nurse who I’ve known for many years, and as we recently talked about society’s response to the pandemic, her insights as a former nurse looking at the present situation seemed refreshingly level-headed.
She told me she was frustrated by the closing of churches and the lack of justification in the early days of the pandemic. She found it bizarre how much fear people had about churches being possible sources of contamination. “Every parish I’ve been to – St. Cyril and Methodius, St. Michael’s, Fatima, or wherever we’ve gone, it’s been scrupulously maintained.”
She was also struck by the same health order that moved Archbishop Miller to draw a line with possible legal action. “I don’t understand at all how they can have bars open and restaurants and social places like that (while closing churches). It’s just unbelievable. It’s almost like a totalitarian government we’ve got, and maybe we’d better start thinking about it.”
Welsh is thinking about it, as someone who has been there. She was a registered nurse for 44 years, working at St. Paul’s Hospital and looking after HIV patients at St. Mary’s Hospital in New Westminster. She trained at St. Michael’s Hospital in Toronto where “we looked after very infectious whooping cough cases and meningitis cases and HIV people and SARS and everything.”
After her experience dealing with those contagions, she found the response to COVID “just over the top, really. I’m certain that Mother Teresa wasn’t as terrified as all these people are today, and she was dealing with lepers. So was Father Damien. For goodness’ sake, let’s use common sense and let it prevail and ask for the grace of God as we go out to do our evangelizing work.”
Not only does Welsh question the government and social responses to COVID, she sees how they aggravated other social problems, from our disregard for the elderly to the expansion of euthanasia. On that last point she points to the B.C. government’s seizure of the Irene Thomas Hospice in Delta and the secrecy behind the Fraser Health Authority’s promotion of assisted suicide.
“It’s tough enough getting old and facing the end of our life without the thought of that,” she said. With medical staff now urging patients to consider euthanasia, “even nursing homes are not safe.”
Welsh told me a remarkable story about working in the palliative care ward at St. Mary’s where she was routinely tasked with asking patients a series of questions – everything from how much pain they were experiencing to whether they planned to return home once their symptoms were under control.
One day, in response to the question about returning home, a male patient sat bolt upright in his bed and said, “Hey, I thought I was coming in here to die!”
The man told Welsh he had been terrified about going into palliative care, where he had been told to sign a “do not resuscitate” order. “I thought they were just going to give me a bunch of morphine and knock me out and kill me,” he told her.
Welsh replied, “Sir, I can tell by looking at you that you’re not going to die anytime soon.” She assured him that once certain health conditions were under control, he would “probably be on the roof garden enjoying lemonade and watching the boats sail by on the Fraser River.”
After hearing that death was not typically imminent in cases like his, he replied, “You’re kidding.”
“He was so shocked, with that whole terror of coming into a palliative care unit, and it was upsetting to me that he was so terrified.”
Now that euthanasia is not only available but being expanded and promoted, Welsh said she can imagine how frightened people might be to enter palliative care.
Welsh shared many thoughts about the needs of the health-care system and how the Catholic Church should respond. She points out there are millions of dollars in the St. Mary’s Health Foundation, left over from the closing of the hospital. She’s on the foundation’s board of directors and suggests the money should be used to expand the delivery of Catholic health care. For example, she proposes establishing a Catholic nursing program or school to ensure a supply of Catholic nurses in our hospitals, just as we seek Catholic teachers for our schools.
These are the types of ideas that deserve consideration as the pandemic winds down. Unfortunately many signs point toward a return to restrictions in the fall, and the review announced by the government doesn’t suggest it has a burning desire to identify, let alone correct, the many mistakes and overreaches it made from Day 1 of the pandemic.
“We value your input and would like to know what aspects of the B.C. government’s response to COVID-19 from March 2020 to now you think worked well,” says the COVID-19 Lessons Learned Review webpage, then asking about “the changes government made to improve operational effectiveness as the pandemic evolved, and what improvements can be made to better prepare for future pandemics and emergencies.”
A government survey that opens by asking what it did well would seem to have a built-in bias for the status quo. However you feel, you have a few more days to tell the government what you think of its pandemic response. Feedback will be accepted until 4 p.m. Wednesday, April 20.
The government’s laser-focus on positive test results and nothing else during the pandemic has left a devastating swath of economic, social, medical, and psychological casualties that the government appears uninterested in addressing. It’s crucial that people like you and Beverly Welsh share your experiences. That may be the only thing that makes the government think twice about repeating the mistakes it made last time.
