COVID-19 Deaths in Burnaby and Vancouver Seniors Lodges - "the Little Mountain Disaster"

A TALE OF TWO NURSING HOMES

41 Dead at Little Mountain Place, Vancouver

29 Dead at Harmony Court, Burnaby

Because we are sentimental creatures, our smartphones are crammed with photographs. Only a very few record dramatic moments in our lives, because those events occur too quickly for us to even think in terms of pictures. Strange it is that, during this "greatest of modern pandemics" we are surrounded by intensely dramatic situations, and yet nobody is "getting the shot".  Our cities have been stricken by incidents of mass-death, yet these horrible dramas are played out in veiled secrecy. Who benefits?

On Wednesday I read a startling report that described the emergency vaccination of all survivors living and working at Little Mountain Place, a Vancouver nursing home. In total, 41 residents have died of COVID-19  during an outbreak that has lasted six weeks.  I hasten to add that 41 fatalities is a B.C. Provincial record - the largest number of COVID deaths at a single location. 

Equally startling was the comment of reporter Mike Howell (20 years of experience) who was, naturally, reluctant to enter a 'Hot Zone' that Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry had described as being "incredibly lethal".  Howell wrote that, "Over the span of two hours, no residents or staff were visible in the many windows of the care home, which still has a Christmas tree visible in its lobby and a string of lights across the entrance way."  Finally, the executive director of the facility emerged and dismissed the curious reporter by stating that all questions should be directed to Vancouver Coastal Health.

As it happens, one of my New Year's resolutions was to re-activate this news blog, and devote personal resources in 2021 to gathering facts and stories about what the Flu Pandemic and its bed-partner, the "Great Reset" promises to inflict upon our community, our nation, and our world.  In that spirit, on Thursday morning, after gym, I set out for Little Mountain to see things for myself.

 

Cold Reality in a Covid Hot Zone

Little Mountain Place - 421 confirmed dead at Care Home

330 East 36th Ave. (at Walden St.) Vancouver,  116 room facility

My primary goal was to acquire my own set of photos, and form my own impressions of the site.  On Thursday at noon,  I found Little Mountain Place just as Mike Howell had left it. Not a single employee in sight. Not a single resident peeking out a window!  I assumed that the 41 bodies had been removed, one by one, via the loading ramp at the back, so I started there. Birds were chirping, and a lone male jogger passed by, sans mask.  Moving to the fenced west-side of the property, nothing disturbed my shooting save for the distant snarl of a carpenter's sabre saw. Finally I drove around the block, past Cartier Park (a few mothers with toddlers in hand) and proceeded to the front of the care home. 

As I stood at the front of "L.M.P." contemplating the bizarre juxtaposition of horror narratives with a sleepy, nondescript streetscape,  I suddenly realized what bothered me.  This was a building where 99 of the residents had been infected (41 died) and 70 staff infected. They are still dealing with virulent contagion inside, and there is no health warning posted. L.M.P. is nestled in a very populous neighbourhood,  with condos and detached homes all around.  There is no security guard on the door, no cautionary tape, no warning posters - or anything that might hint of a viral Hot Zone. This is nothing short of a callous disregard for the neighbouring families, compounded by the fact that, as was recently exposed, L.M.P. staff and the local authority (Vancouver Coastal Health) had been suppressing information about the scale and scope of the outbreak. More on that later.

Until now I had only known of Little Mountain Place through friends who are members of the Taiwanese charity  Tzu Chi Foundation Canada.  Taiwanese volunteers often visit and donate funds to assist L.M.P., though the residents (and many of the 41 dead) are Cantonese speaking Chinese.

On Friday at noon, I photographed the front-half of AgeCare Harmony Court, which is located near the busy intersection of Canada Way and Edmonds.  Harmony Court bears the unhappy distinction of ranking highest in COVID Flu deaths among the many seniors complexes operating in Burnaby.  Since November 19th  a total of 29 residents have died, and there again we have the cold reality of hidden horrors. All passing pedestrians are oblivious to the ghastly events that have been endured by residents and staff alike. As you can see for yourself, (photo) there is not the slightest public notification of the health crisis inside.  No security, no warning posters, nothing.  

I can guarantee that if secrecy were abandoned, and the public not treated like fools, good-hearted people would have lain flowers outside, or could perhaps give a cheery wave to any frightened resident who appeared at the window.  Some of the details of these epidemic deaths emerged a week ago, but I am not convinced it is common knowledge. Most people I know gave up on watching "the Bonnie and Adrian show" long ago, and pay little attention to news reports.

MASS DEATH and MASS MEDIA

Our province and our country have been held captive for almost a year by the Corona-virus and by  governments that immediately imposed a hybrid form of Medical Martial Law.  We all placed our trust in figurehead leadership, and Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition in Ottawa, and in all ten Canadian provinces, stood down. Never in the history of Canada has government been totally spared of a single dissenting voice in the Legislature or the news media. In such a no-threat environment, even a bunny rabbit would grow complacent.  

Little Mountain Place may be managed by  a "non-profit society" but have no doubt that it is run by the Province. It has 116. single-occupancy rooms for which each resident pays 80% of their annual net income (ie. their pension cheques) with the Province carrying the larger portion of expenses. (The 2019 Operating Budget $15.9 million,  and shows Vancouver Coastal Health contributed $13.2 million dollars. The chief expense of course is labour. L.M.P. is a union shop. Approximately 120 staff are members of the Hospital Employees Union (H.E.U.)

An outbreak of COVID-19 was declared at Little Mountain on November 22, 2020.  Within very few days dozens of patients were crashing, and confined to their rooms on the second and thirds floors. The staff Director agreed to a conference call with families, arranged for December 7th. In the Zoom call she admitted that 59 were sickened and 5 had already died. A V.C.H.  doctor participated, and he praised the efficacy of ant-infection protocols that staff had been taught to adhere to. What wasn't admitted was that staff were becoming infected almost as fast as the residents. (70 staff have tested positive)  CTV News reported on December 16th, that 17 residents had died. The information derived from frightened and angry relatives, as the care home, the health authority, and government were not giving out death counts for specific homes.  Finally, Radio News 1130 was given access to the recorded conference calls, and on Christmas Eve, sounded the alarm.  93 residents had contracted the virus, and 31 were dead.

Most information on "the Little Mountain Disaster"** derives from Zoom conference calls that participants "leaked" to radio, television and print reporters. (Unless non-disclosure agreements were signed, I think the appropriate word is "provided". And thank God they did, or this whole disaster would have been stuffed down the Memory Hole, along with most of the history of Canada's first COVID-year.

** so dubbed in a story published by the South China Morning Post, of Hong Kong.

In a Zoom call convened on December 29th, a verbal summary was provided to families by Dr. Andrew Hurlburt, the designated "V.C.H. infection inspector."  Hurlburt who was as candid as he dare be,  admitted that "multiple infected staff" brought the disease into the facility.  The problem, he said, was that infected staff were either asymptomatic, or perhaps in the spirit of toughing it out for the benefit of their frail charges, showed up for work and did not report their symptoms.  Here Dr.  Hurlburt introduced a new term that we must add to our pandemic lexicon. "Presenteeism"is when a staff member, with all good intentions,  downplays medical symptoms, and shows up for work.

In the case of L.M.P. all of the residents were very old and infirm, and so 41 quickly died. All of the staff are of working age and healthy.  70 tested positive, but none died. Dr. Hurlburt described the disaster as a "perfect storm". Perhaps, but it was a storm the care home had nine months to prepare for, and 41  passengers should not have drowned.

Dr. Hurlburt says staff infected patients at Little Mountain - 41 Died

 

Dr. Bonnie Henry is Stung

Dr. Hurlburt's findings are what they are,  but if we are to have a public airing of the tragedy, it is only because the families turned to Ian Young, the Vancouver representative of the South China Morning Post,  Hong Kong's heavyweight English daily. Young spent the Christmas holidays digging, and his initial story appeared on New Year's Day. He reported that when he sat down with Angela Millar, the Director of L.M.P., he got the same treatment that had tormented the families.  Asked if the death toll  had risen to 31, as reported by NEWS 1130,  Ms. Millar stuck the lower number 17. "We've had four Zoom  meetings, so I don't  know which one you're referring to, but at the time we gave the information it was accurate."  With that Ms. Millar deflected the puck into the corner, referring Young to higher authority - Vancouver Coastal Health. 

After striding up the driveway at 330 East 36th Avenue, Ian Young turned for a last look before writing his story. "From the street, on a cold and rainy winter's evening on Wednesday, the only evidence of the outbreak was that most of the home's windows were ajar." In fact, in the upper floors men and women were still dying. Ten more (that we know of) would die after he stepped off the property. His article certainly caused a stir in Victoria, and it caused a few flak-catchers to pare down New Year plans.

Dr. Bonnie Henry is our Provincial Health Officer, and during our first COVID-year she achieved a level of public acclaim that rivals sainthood. She is our Mother Theresa. That reality was acknowledged by the New York Times which profiled Henry in June of 2020.  The Times published a photo of Dr. Henry posed beneath stained glass windows, the gaudy colours mottling her face and clothing.  The Little Mountain Disaster was dangerous for her, and she knew it. The S.C.M.P. story was solid and damning, and it was forcing our local media to take a closer look. 

At the scheduled press briefing on January 4,  Richard Zussman of Global Television  became the first reporter to take a direct shot on goal. He asked Dr. Henry why the province no longer released case and death counts for individual care homes, when those statistics "used to be provided daily". He emphasized "daily", and further asked at what point the Province might step ion and provide additional support to the ravaged senior's facility. 

She started by insisting that "there's been no change in policy", but then pivoted into a weak and convoluted claim that the surge in deaths during December had resulted in a decision to provide  "aggregate numbers" instead of making factual statements about casualties at individual outbreaks. A transcript of her explanation - "but as the number increased, the actual person power to get that information every day, and collate it, was taking hours, and hours, and hours of epidemiology time.  Um... because we do not have an IT system that allows us to do that efficiently, so we went top aggregate numbers." 

Dr. Bonnie Henry explaining missing data on COVID Deaths in BC Nursing Homes

If you want to understand just how dishonest was Dr. Henry's answer to Mr. Zussman's fair question, I invite you watch a few episodes of THE BEHAVIOUR PANEL on Youtube. The panel of four professional analysts is both informative and entertaining. (Recently they deconstructed the alibis of Carole Baskin, the female nemesis on Netflix's TIGER KING series.)  Better yet, if you want skills to apply in your own life, have a read of the 2012 book SPY THE LIE, written by veteran C.I.A. interrogators. The point of the exercise is not to tarnish Dr. Henry's reputation, but to challenge those with political power,  and demand they call a halt to hidden fiasco's, like hiding the ghastly death counts among our most vulnerable seniors. 

 GENUINE DATA AT LAST

Ian Young followed up, on January 8th, with an even more thorough investigation of the L.M.P. disaster. Fortunately, Dr. Bonnie Henry had been stung, and somehow she (and Health Minister Adrian Dix) not only sorted out their "IT" problem,  but on January 7th they issued a splendid new information packet - a fifteen page summary entitled Weekly COVID-19 Outbreak Report for Long-Term Care, Assisted Living and Independent Living Facilities, January 7, 2021. Up until now the news agencies were only given the names of nursing homes ravaged by the Flu, but no details. (The first COVID outbreak in B.C. was in the Lynn Valley Lodge, in March of 2020,) This document has details for 51 locations.  It remains to be seen if B.C. Health will continue to fess up, or if the  numbers will bounce around.  I had been collecting the monthly report of the B.C. Vital Statistics Agency all through 2020, and with each publication, the data was bouncing around. I will comment on what the numbers tell us,  in a future article.

As a public historian, I care about the creation of a permanent factual record of our shared pandemic experience. "Power" is concentrated in the hands of only a few hundred people in this Province, and they are responsible for all permanent outcomes. This article is a tale of two nursing homes, which shared 70 deaths in the space of only a few days. The big question I would ask, because of how the the COVID-narrative was spun over ten months, is how many of those 70 patients went to hospital I.C.U.s, and how many were simply made as comfortable as possible, and allowed to die in their residential units? That information, where the victims died, was not given in the data-drop.  **

** In the UK for example, the Office For National Statistics separates COVID deaths into four piles - "HOSPITAL, CARE HOME, HOME, OTHER" - extracting fact from Official death Certificates.

 

Here is the extracted  data for Little Mountain Place (Vancouver) and for AgeCare Harmony Court,  (Burnaby) dated January 7, 2021:

 

 

 

Chris Campbell, over at the BURNABY NOW, was quite blunt in his reaction to the B.C. Government's sudden launch of a weekly account of COVID-carnage in care homes. "The B.C. government finally stepped in this week where some health authorities have (deliberately) fallen down when it comes to more detailed data on COVID-19 outbreaks".  Mr. Campbell has a personal interest in forcing the NDP Government to be mores responsive to terrorized families. He revealed in an article published in 2020 that his own 83-year-old mom was a resident in a care home, and he was frightened for her. Because he is a newsman, he is perceived to have influence. "Many of those family members have literally begged me to write about the care homes since the pandemic began. They wanted to raise the alarm about the situation to force more action."

 

Just before Christmas I heard a ranking union official claim that the solution to Corona-virus deaths among the vulnerable elderly, was to unionize "all"  nursing homes and assisted living facilities in British Columbia. If you consult the magazine published by the H.E.U. you will find commentary on how this Flu Pandemic is providing organized labour a golden opportunity to enlarge the membership, and go after the "For Profit" facilities.  The Little Mountain Disaster provides concrete evidence that deadly contagions do not respect union cards, nor would the rank and file benefit from attempts at making direct comparisons. The urgent solution, as Dr. Hurlburt found at Little Mountain,  is 100% adherence to safety protocols. Many non-union caregivers are already achieving that level of competence.