Thank you.
Dr. Tam, Dr. Njoo, Don and I have been at this for a long time.
You're all public health experts. I'm not telling you this story for your knowledge but for some of the people in the committee room who aren't familiar with this story.
Every public health class probably starts out with this story of London during the 1800s. There is a cholera epidemic and Dr. Snow, this very wise doctor, decides that instead of treating people, we should prevent them from getting sick. He puts a lock on this well in the middle of London, and thereby stops this cholera epidemic.
That's used as the example of how prevention is so much better than treatment. It's a lot more efficient. It's cheaper. It's a better way of doing things.
Using public health, so far we've done an excellent job by using things like vaccinations and social distancing. I have to say, with the Public Health Agency of Canada leading us, the Canadian people have done very well. We've had a third of the death rate of the United States, and about half the death rate of countries like France, Italy and Germany, by using those public health measures. However, I think it's come at a cost. It's certainly come at a cost in terms of the national debt and in terms of mental health. It's come at a cost in terms of civil strife.
I wonder—and I'm asking you this question—whether we ought to start looking at changing direction. We've whipped the public health horse about as hard as we can whip it. Maybe we have to start changing direction, in terms of trying to place measures that prevent people from getting really sick. That means protecting the elderly with third doses or fourth doses of vaccines, if necessary.
The other thing is possibly doing better in terms of treatment. We have pretty good treatments in terms of Paxlovid and remdesivir, which really aren't being used that much. The public largely doesn't know about them, and people don't know that if you're high risk and you get sick, perhaps you should get treatment.
We've maybe come full circle. Normally public health is cheaper and a better way of addressing a problem, but perhaps we're starting to look at treatment as becoming almost the cheaper thing to do.
I'd like to ask your opinion about that. Should we be doing more in terms of treatment, protecting the really vulnerable and worrying maybe a little less about the costly public health measures?