Canadian doctors share personal toll of COVID-19 pandemic 5 years later
Doctors thrust into pandemic celebrity reflect on threats and thank you letters
When the COVID-19 pandemic hit five years ago, Canadian public health doctors, infectious disease specialists and epidemiologists were thrust into national fame through daily televised briefings and media interviews about measures to contain the spread of the virus.
Doctors themselves were just learning about the new virus and emerging variants, and they were tasked with providing the latest scientific evidence to provincial and federal governments.
But government-imposed lockdowns, school closures and changing advice on masking went on for about three years. Doctors who had become household names became targets for backlash from people who didn't agree with the ongoing measures. B.C. Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry says she needs government-supplied security to follow her around to this day due to threats.
While the COVID-19 vaccine rollout was seen as a public health success with 81 per cent of Canadians receiving at least one shot by 2024, it also came with mandates that some rejected.
Doctors had to combat escalating misinformation circulating on social media, ranging from anti-masking and anti-vaccine sentiment to conspiracy theories denying the seriousness of the pandemic.
Three doctors who became public figures during that time reflected on their experiences — both good and bad — with The Canadian Press.
All three say they've learned how important it is to communicate clearly to build trust — including explaining how decisions and advice can change during a public health crisis as new scientific evidence becomes available.
Dr. Bonnie Henry
During the first few years of the pandemic, Dr. Bonnie Henry, British Columbia's provincial health officer, had a recurring dream that she was a maypole — and all the ribbons wrapped around her were things to worry about, from protecting seniors in long-term care homes to figuring out if schools could be opened safely.
"It was relentless," she said. "We had to make decisions with imperfect information, with the best that we had, and sometimes those decisions changed when we got more information and that was really hard."
Things got "very intense, very quickly" after the province had its first COVID-19 case in January 2020, and then declared a public health emergency on March 17, Henry said.
"But I don't think in my heart I realized it was going to be really three years of intensity."
Henry also didn't realize how intense the backlash to putting public health measures in place would be.
"My very first press briefing, I started getting death threats," she said.
"People called my home. People tried to break into my house. They came to my home. They attacked my family online," she said.
Henry still has to have a security detail to this day.
"When people are going through crises, sometimes people lash out in anger. They want things to be different. And I was a touchstone for that," Henry said.
Although the threats were hard to deal with, she chose to emphasize the importance of kindness in her briefings and public interactions.
"[I] felt that I had the ability or voice to be able to try and give people hope and things that we could do to support each other and to really talk about [the fact] that we are all in this together."
She said once COVID-19 vaccines became available, it was a relief to open vaccine clinics and immunize people in long-term care, but also a time when disinformation stoked fear online and led to more threats.
"I think vaccine became a touchstone, which is really sad because it really is what got us out of the pandemic and means that we can actually live with this virus in our lives."
Henry has also had many people express support and gratitude. For some, she is still the face of the pandemic.
"This morning it happened. Somebody came up to me and said, 'Oh, Dr. Henry,' and burst into tears because I remind them of a very difficult time in our lives," she said.
Dr. Lynora Saxinger
Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Alberta, decided early in the pandemic that she should make herself available for media interviews.
"It's actually almost hard to remember the depth of the uncertainty and fear that people were carrying," she said.
"People were doing all sorts of things that they were hoping would be helpful ... and I was like, well, this is something I can do to help."
Saxinger was already immersed in learning everything she could about the virus and pulling together evidence to help guide policy-makers and realized that this was also information that the public needed to know.
"I wasn't sleeping much. It was like two in the morning [and] I was thinking people are going to die of misinformation because you could already see it happening, you could already see weird things creeping into the dialogue that were active misinformation and conspiracy-laden."
She repeatedly saw the consequences of COVID-19 misinformation while working in the hospital throughout the pandemic.
"You would see people who were coming in who had not been vaccinated, although they by then had ample opportunity to be vaccinated, and they were absolutely shocked that this was not only real, but that it was making them very sick," she said
"I found that immensely, immensely sad."
Saxinger said when people recognized her out in public, the majority of the interactions were positive.
But she was frequently targeted with "slanderous, misogynist, violent" backlash online.
"You know, alleging that I am responsible for the deaths of 5,000 Albertans and that they will happily build my gallows at Nuremberg 2.0, that kind of thing, that all kind of came in anonymously."
But Saxinger also received positive letters and thank-you cards, which she still keeps in her desk as an antidote to the negative backlash.
Overall, becoming a household name was "so weird," she said
"I spent a lot of this time working in a basement office, talking to my computer. And so it seemed very, very trippy that I was, you know, in the grocery store with a mask on, and someone would recognize me and want a selfie."
Dr. Robert Strang
Dr. Robert Strang, chief medical officer of health for Nova Scotia, says he doesn't spend a lot of time looking back at the COVID-19 pandemic, but the first word that comes to mind is "intense."
Strang and his team spent "a lot of long, long days" gathering information to prepare for daily media briefings, on top of responding to the pandemic itself.
But that work was worthwhile, he said. In fact, Strang said the importance of investing time in public communication is one of the key learnings from the pandemic because it was "critical" to building trust when asking Nova Scotians to follow public health measures.
Strang said the "vast majority" of people in his province complied with that guidance.
But as Strang became a public figure, he was targeted by people upset with those measures.
"Twice I had protesters outside of my home and to me it's absolutely inappropriate," he said.
People don't have to agree with him or the government and they can express their opinions, but bringing his family into it "crossed the line," he said.
However, the majority of his interactions with the public have been positive.
"I've had many people come up to me over the last five years saying, 'You were my voice at three in the afternoon' because people were at home [watching the briefings]," he said.
"People have communicated via emails, sent cards, letters, those kind of things. The vast majority — 99 per cent — have been kind and thankful," he said.
"That was actually very strengthening getting through this."
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