The SARS Commission report into the 2003 coronavirus outbreak in Toronto makes maddeningly familiar reading, from a lack of lab and testing capacity to shortages of personal protective equipment to debates over the efficacy of masks and methods of transmission — all of which could be avoided, the authors stressed, simply by employing the precautionary principle. All these lessons had been learned, we were assured.
In a section titled “Improvements since SARS,” the commission reported that “a two-month stockpile of personal protective equipment, including masks, gloves, gowns, eye protection and other clinical supplies, for a community the size of Toronto is available and could be distributed quickly through a central distribution system.” Seventeen years later, it was a mad scramble all over again. It’s not surprising, sadly, that the most elderly and vulnerable Canadians are bearing the brunt of that colossal failure. Ideally the shame of it might finally get it through our thick skulls never to let complacency set in again.
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