The same can be applied, sadly, to the Ontario Health system: https://twitter.com/DrQuinn15/status/1317570154847416321

Despite being a hot spot of SARS, alongside China and Hong Kong, Ontario failed to maintain its pandemic PPE resources, only to find much of it unusable.

The pandemic came at a time of low physician morale from years of unilateral cuts and public campaigns intended to shame physicians and label us as money-grubbing incompetent opportunists.

Whilst the pandemic spread due to poor public health policy, physicians were required to adapt to new models of care, without support, and now provide care that fails to meet previous standards for most high income countries.

Leveraging the pandemic and the ensuing chaos, hospital systems are using this time to slash resources, in particular operating room time, to less than pre-pandemic levels, despite record high backlogs.

And now we have the combination of the second wave with a burned out workforce (most of us never stopped working and have missed vacations), flu season, and the wave of pathology from deferred care.

Oh, and increasingly aggressive behaviour from both legitimately frustrated patients and from conspiracy theorists who vilify us for wearing PPE or protecting ourselves in our workforce.

Thank God I work with such amazing people because, honestly, I've never felt more isolated and powerless as a healthcare provider. #ONHealth