Article content

One of the key lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic is that for at least the past decade, we focused disproportionately, or rather our governments did, on one potential global threat — human-induced climate change — to the exclusion of all others.

Anthropogenic climate change became the issue that sucked up all the oxygen in the room when it came to a global crisis.

We apologize, but this video has failed to load.

tap here to see other videos from our team. Try refreshing your browser, or GOLDSTEIN: We gambled on the wrong threat — climate change Back to video

At the expense of, for example, a contagious and deadly virus becoming a pandemic, which public health experts have been warning us about for decades.

In Canada, our political leaders, have long ignored — perhaps the fairer word is “downplayed” — the health care threat posed by the fact our hospitals are chronically overcrowded, with thousands of patients being treated in hallways, year after year.

That’s why the greatest concern health-care experts have now is that our hospitals, overcrowded in normal times and routinely operating at or beyond their designated capacities — as opposed to 80% of capacity to be able to handle a “black swan” event like COVID-19 — may soon be overrun by critically-ill patients.