VICTORIA — The latest example of the NDP government’s overbearing message control arrived in media inboxes at 5:57 p.m. on Thursday.
“Provincial health officer’s statement on influenza-related deaths in children, youth,” said the headline.
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Reading on, one discovered Dr. Bonnie Henry had this to say: “The B.C. Centre for Disease and Control (BCCDC) is aware of six reports of influenza-associated deaths among children and youth in B.C. this season, with investigations ongoing. My thoughts are with families and communities impacted by the loss of a loved one.”
By then the tally was not breaking news.
“Six children have now died after getting the flu,” CTV had reported on its 6 p.m. newscast Tuesday. CTV reporter Penny Daflos got the story from sources who attended a crisis meeting Monday of doctors and other health care staff.
The coroner’s office reported a death toll at five on Wednesday. Health Minister Adrian Dix confirmed there were deaths that day as well. The BCCDC put the tally at six in a statement Thursday morning to Tiffany Crawford of The Vancouver Sun.
But Thursday’s supper hour release was the first time the Health Ministry had attached Henry’s name to the news.
She’d been asked during a media briefing Monday about a confirmed report of the death of a six-year-old from complications from the flu.
“I don’t know the details of this person in particular,” she replied. “But yes, we’ve had a number of children who’ve had more severe illness.”
Reports of severe illness lent authority to Henry’s repeated calls for people to get their children vaccinated. But confirmation of even one death from the flu, never mind several, would have added to the sense of urgency.
Some of the details in Henry’s statement were sobering as well: “The children who died included one who was younger than five years old, three who were between five and nine, and two adolescents who were between 15 and 19. Death associated with influenza in previously healthy children is a tragic, but rare event and is especially rare in school-age children and teens.”
Public health and the BCCDC only started last week to pull together the figures on flu deaths among children, Henry told Jill Bennett on CKNW Friday.
“This is an unusual season with unusual characteristics, including an early and intense surge in cases. With this unusual pattern, enhanced surveillance has been implemented that includes reporting of pediatric influenza-related deaths to public-health officials. As the information is confirmed, updates on pediatric influenza-related deaths will be posted weekly as part of the respiratory surveillance summaries on the BCCDC website.”
The Health Ministry provided no explanation for the belated timing of the release. The timing put some news organizations in the position of having to report the contents, without being able to ask any pesky questions about why it had taken so long to get the release out.
All part of the NDP strategy of media management, as documented in Lessons Learned, the recent review of how the government handled the operational side of the COVID-19 pandemic.
The New Democrats sat on that report for 10 weeks, then released it on a Friday afternoon, giving reporters 45 minutes to digest the 150 pages of findings before making Solicitor General Mike Farnworth available to answer questions.
The three retired public servants who did the review cited numerous concerns about misleading, evasive and incomplete pandemic communications from the Health Ministry and the office of the provincial health officer.
“The level of trust in the B.C. government’s response to the pandemic was very high in the initial stages,” they reported. “But it has eroded.”
They also reported what public servants told them in confidence about the basics of the NDP communications strategy after the first wave of the pandemic abated.
“There was strict central control of the messaging, including actively discouraging any questioning or challenging of the provincial health officer.”
All of which led them to an expression of concern about where things could be headed in the future: “We are concerned that eroding trust may translate into more resistance to restrictions necessitated by the next provincewide emergency.”
Or the next vaccination drive.
For there is the real downside of the delays and evasions: It makes it harder to report the news thoroughly and straightforwardly, even when — as in this case — the advice is urgent and essential.
The issue here is whether the government did everything it could, as soon as it could, to let people know that children were dying of the flu.
Under the heading of Lessons Learned, the three authors of the COVID review said the government “should identify opportunities to rebuild the trust that existed early in the pandemic to support high levels of compliance should new restrictions be required.”
Sound advice. But Thursday’s witless media release suggests that the David Eby government is bent on further eroding trust, not rebuilding it.
vpalmer@postmedia.com
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