I get the “armchair quarterback” comment. Everyone is a critic. Doesn’t matter what @BrianPallister and @roussin_brent do, someone will *always* criticize and have a different opinion. But, if you were planning and building capacity, why do we still have to cancel surgeries?

It’s been 14 months. Some nations have stamped Covid to zero. Some have built entire isolation/pandemic hospitals. Some are 100% vaccinated.

Why haven’t we renovated so that our hospitals have flex spaces that can convert to ICU space? Why haven’t you trained enough non-OR/Non-recovery room nurses to have ICU skills? The *only* pop-off valve is to overflow, steal staff/space, and cancel surgery.

The steal/overflow strategy has been our only option for surges - before consolidation, during our last influenza crisis (that proved how broken our surge capacity is), and now - over 14months and 3 repetitive cycles of ongoing global catastrophe.

If you were planning, you would be building permanent capacity and surge-readiness into our system. This is true even if there wasn’t an ongoing crisis.