To everyone, thank you
A few weeks ago, the National Newspaper Awards awarded a team of four journalists from the Toronto Star for “uncovering” that deaths in private, for-profit long-term care facilities from COVID-19 were higher than in public facilities. While they dug into the data to make important connections between for-profit care providers and quality of care, it was bizarre to see that they were being lauded for having “uncovered” this news. And many of you thought the same thing.
After this award, there was an incredible, and frankly overwhelming wave of support for me. A GoFundMe set up by Sam Tecle (who I cannot thank enough) essentially brought in an annual salary, recognition for more than a year of unpaid work that I had done to track COVID-19 deaths in Canada.
When I started doing this, I knew that finding the data would be impossible if it hadn’t been tracked from the start. I also knew that if media organizations were going to do something similar (which I had expected — and then was surprised to see that most actually did not!), the data would be visualized in such a way that it would make it a pain to search easily. So I decided to create a simple, publicly-available database that anyone could search. I hoped that it would be the kind of resource that someone could check in a second to see how many people died in a particular location, so they didn’t need to crawl through a search engine looking for the most up-to-date answer.
I have heard from thousands of you since having started this work. There are many who are trying to decide about how to approach long-term care for someone they love. Some have been in touch related to lawsuits or sketchy details that facilities are telling them that they are hoping to cross-reference with what I’ve gathered. Some are doing their own investigations into facilities where their loved ones live, or lived, and are hoping that I might have more information to help them. Most have simply said thanks — and every time they say thanks, I was validated in my decision to undertake such a difficult amount of work.
At the same time, my name remained on a media blacklist. Many of you expressed shock when you asked why I hadn’t done more analysis in mainstream media. I even had a few people offer to help with media relations to get my voice heard, which were very sweet offers. I have been frozen out for many years and while I thought that the freeze would thaw thanks alone to my COVID-19 work, I wasn’t too surprised when it didn’t. But I also risked becoming extremely bitter about everything. But, you can’t stare directly into the sun too long though, so I tried to ignore it. It’s better for me to be on the outside anyway.
All of this is to say that when the GoFundMe caught fire, I was truly floored. I am floored still. I am literally on the floor as I write this. So this is my note to say thanks, from the deepest parts of my soul (or my soles?), for recognizing my work and compensating me for it. Thanks for your kind words too, your support, your commiseration and your generosity, both financially but also with your words — I can’t tell you how much I appreciate all of it. I’ve realized that I can’t thank you all individually, but feel free to be in touch if ever you thought I could help you with something.
As we start to emerge from the trauma of the past 15 months, I hope you all commit to doing whatever you can to make sure that people are held to account for what we just went through. Every death was a policy decision that privileged someone else’s life — or more specifically someone else’s finances — and without organized pressure from average people, no one will ever be held to account. I promise to you all that I’ll do everything I can as well. The battle over who defines the new world has already started. We have no time to waste.
