@DrBarbKing already had a good thread about this gaslighting letter, but I'll drop a second one. 1/ https://twitter.com/FourWinns298/status/1379433570725322752?s=19

They can't get through two sentences without disingenuous language. Contrast the hedging in "we fully believe COVID is a ... potentially deadly infection" with the urgency of "we are witnessing a devastation."

also "balanced approach" is code for Great Barrington. 2/

The ICU argument is complete nonsense. ICUs aren't full (yet) because we've added capacity, prevented admissions from nursing homes, cancelled surgery, and managed people on high flow O2 on the wards who pre-pandemic definitely would have been in the ICU. 3/

Ontario has definitely not had the toughest restrictions in North America. And all of these assertions require evidence, but none is provided. (In particular, there is no good evidence that suicide rates have generally risen during the pandemic.) 4/

There's no detail here about what this magical "modern", "sound inter-disciplinary" approach would actually be, or how one can prevent death in vulnerable populations while allowing everyone else to carry on. Countries like Sweden that tried to do that gave up. 5/

Which countries succeeded with a "moderate/balanced approach"? The places I can think of that succeeded, like Mongolia, Vietnam, New Zealand, Australia, and Atlantic Canada, did so through elimination. 6/

You know what's really bad for access to specialty health services? Having ICU and GIM spill over into the rest of the hospital because of an uncontrolled wave of Covid-19, like we had last spring. If you want to keep these services open, you need to control the pandemic. 7/

This whole letter is premised on a false tradeoff between pandemic control and negative impacts of lockdowns. In actual fact, achieving the former is the best way to avoid the latter. 8/

It is disgraceful that members of the medical profession in Ontario are making such arguments when we are heading into a very bad third wave. 9/9

Oh, and here's @DrBarbKing's original thread, in case you missed it https://twitter.com/DrBarbKing/status/1379439399788765191?s=19