Earlier this week, rookie backbench MP and current candidate for Conservative leader Derek Sloan questioned the loyalty of Theresa Tam, Canada’s chief public health officer, musing aloud if her loyalties were with China over Canada.

The underlying xenophobic sentiment is abhorrent, though that is not the point of this commentary. The crux of what Sloan said in both an initial video posted to Facebook and a subsequent email to supporters — that Tam was wrong on two specific issues: masks and travel bans — have been echoed by some conservative politicians and even some political and opinion journalists.

The issue of masks has been covered extensively by health and science reporters, including in this excellent piece by Ed Yong in the Atlantic.

The subject of universal mask-wearing to confer protection to the wearer, or to reduce asymptomatic or subclinical spread, is not, as some politicians and media make it seem, a clear black-and-white issue.

One of the more comprehensive looks at mask-wearing was done by science journalist Tara Haelle for Forbes, in which she answered the question of universal mask-wearing.

“Quite possibly, yes, universal mask-wearing might decrease asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic transmission of the disease,” she wrote. “The evidence isn’t strong, solid or crystal clear (it rarely is), but it might be better to err on the side of trying it.”

She also made this rather pressing point: “If anyone tells you that the mask question is ‘simple’ or that everyone ‘obviously, unquestionably’ should wear masks, that person is not coming from a thoughtful, conscientious exploration of the evidence.”

One thing that seems to be lost on Tam’s harshest critics, many of whom sound like they would not have passed a high school science class, is the fact that this is a novel virus. We have literally never encountered this virus before. That means that public health officials are responding to new information in real time and making policy decisions dependent on the data that is in front of them.

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When I asked Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Toronto and Toronto General Hospital, about some of the reaction to Tam’s policy, he told me: “Nobody should be free from scrutiny, and we should always hold our politicians and other officials to account, but we’ve had reasonable policy throughout this. The federal policy evolved with the evolving epidemic.”

David Fisman, a professor of epidemiology at the University of Toronto, made a similar point to me, saying: “You have to make the decisions prospectively. The Monday morning quarterbacking is predictable; the politicization, and some of the nastiness directed at Dr. Tam, is offensive to me.”

Given the fact the virus was already making its way around the globe in early January, any border restrictions or travel bans would have to be much more comprehensive than country-specific bans. And even then, we have to keep in mind that it would not have applied to Canadians abroad. Canadians always have a right to come home, even if they are coming home from countries with cities that you can’t pronounce.

For all the clamouring about needing to have closed off travel to certain countries, it’s rather curious that so few of Tam’s critics seem to include the United States in this. Yet both Fisman and Bogoch agreed that overlooking the United States as a hot spot for COVID-19 was an oversight.

Fisman said he found “the lack of focus on the U.S. surprising,” while Bogoch said: “It was painfully obvious there was a significant burden of infection in the U.S., so this was really frustrating.”

It’s clear that there are things Canada could have done differently. And there is plenty of legitimate criticism to go around.

But we have to be honest with ourselves about how we can be better prepared next time — and there will certainly be a next time — part of which means being truthful about what went wrong this time around.

It’s not too late to start doing that.

Supriya Dwivedi is co-host of The Morning Show on Global News Radio 640 Toronto and a columnist for Global News.

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