Rick Chandler
Special to The Lake Report

During this unprecedented pandemic, The Lake Report and other area media have done a commendable job updating readers on the rules of engagement with COVID-19 and reiterated those rules as often as is necessary for most of us to understand. Most follow these rules to keep ourselves, our family and friends safe.

There has been some confusion over which businesses and services are permitted by the government to open. Some businesses, like liquor stores and cannabis dealers are deemed essential. How long did we manage to go without cannabis outlets? Now they are essential.

I grew up in an age where services were classified as essential or non-essential for contractual purposes. Police, fire, health care, if allowed to strike, posed a threat to the public welfare, and thus were classified as essential services. 

Police, fire and EMS are three of the groups that take on a role to serve the public in spite of risks that are inherent in their job. 

Police do not refuse to respond to a call that involves violent offenders, firefighters do not refuse calls because there is a dangerous fire. Paramedics do not refuse to answer a call when a person’s life is in danger. Accommodations and procedures are made by all groups to lessen the danger to each and often work in conjunction with each other to achieve the goal of public safety and care. 

One group still stands out from the rest. Paramedics. 

Last month, during the initial vaccine rollout, Niagara Health in conjunction with Niagara EMS medics were running clinics at the hospital, prioritizing health care workers within the hospital. Paramedics were administering the vaccine but were unable to get the vaccine.

The reality is paramedics respond to calls that involve considerable risk and exposure to this virus. They do have personal protective equipment available and use it as directed, but obviously, with a consistently high number of employees off, this level of protection is not always effective. 

During a 12-hour shift, they enter private homes, businesses, long-term care homes, hospital emergency departments and many other venues where people are sick or injured. They are exposed constantly. They get sick, they take it home to families when they are asymptomatic, as well as to the next call they go on. 

What a recipe for disaster that is not recognized or being addressed by the public health department or the government of Ontario. 

Paramedics were finally being vaccinated as of Feb. 23. Any further delay in the vaccination of paramedics in your area and the variants that are being introduced to the equation keep getting more easily transmittable and deadly, you will find the community in a profoundly serious situation. 

Paramedics are the vector for transmission of this and many other communicable diseases, others which they are vaccinated against according to provincial legislation because of their interaction with the public. The provincial government makes this a condition of employment. Why was the COVID-19 vaccination not placed on the same list? 

The Jan. 28 edition of The Lake Report had a picture of a long-term care residence in NOTL with a picture of an ambulance sitting at the front. This is a commonplace event, so why are they not treated like other workers in the same facility? 

Who are the heroes? Everybody that works as a front-line caregiver to those who are exposed or infected with COVID-19 are heroes. 

The most heroic are the paramedics who are doing it at the expense of themselves and their families because they were not considered important enough to be vaccinated until this week. 

They come to you and they do their job without complaint or recognition. Not one individual, but all of them are heroes!

Rick Chandler is a retired paramedic and paramedic educator who lives in Niagara-on-the-Lake.