{"id":8866,"date":"2025-07-02T10:00:00","date_gmt":"2025-07-02T14:00:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/?p=8866"},"modified":"2025-07-06T19:45:09","modified_gmt":"2025-07-06T23:45:09","slug":"public-health-and-icarus-what-history-reaches-about-hubris-and-mistakes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/public-health-and-icarus-what-history-reaches-about-hubris-and-mistakes\/","title":{"rendered":"Public health and Icarus: what history [t]eaches about hubris and mistakes"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Icarus had a problem: Desperate to escape from prison, he made wings out of feathers and wax. His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus couldn\u2019t resist the freedom of soaring. His wings melted and he plunged to his death.<\/p>\n<p>Like Icarus, public health is given advanced warning, but struggles between freedom and rules. And as in Greek myths, each failure offers a \u201cmoral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here are five examples:<\/p>\n<h2>Referring to the pandemic in the past tense<\/h2>\n<p>COVID-19 is still spreading in unpredictable waves. Although hospitalizations are currently low, the virus landed over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publichealthontario.ca\/en\/Data-and-Analysis\/Infectious-Disease\/Respiratory-Virus-Tool\" target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1,000 Ontarians in hospital and killed nearly 500<\/a>. New variants keep emerging, including the latest NB. 1.8.1, also known as \u201cNimbus.\u201d It took just three months to become Canada\u2019s dominant variant. Each time a new variant takes over, it threatens built-up immunity from vaccines and previous infections. Although Nimbus isn\u2019t deadlier than previous variants, there\u2019s no guarantee that future variants won\u2019t cause more severe disease.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Icarus had a problem: Desperate to escape from prison, he made wings out of feathers and wax. His father warned him not to fly too close to the sun, but Icarus couldn\u2019t resist the freedom of soaring. His wings melted and he plunged to his death.<\/p>\n<p>Like Icarus, public health is given advanced warning, but struggles between freedom and rules. And as in Greek myths, each failure offers a \u201cmoral.\u201d<\/p>\n<p>Here are five examples:<\/p>\n<h2>Referring to the pandemic in the past tense<\/h2>\n<p>COVID-19 is still spreading in unpredictable waves. Although hospitalizations are currently low, the virus landed over <a href=\"https:\/\/www.publichealthontario.ca\/en\/Data-and-Analysis\/Infectious-Disease\/Respiratory-Virus-Tool\" target=\"_blank\" lang=\"en\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">1,000 Ontarians in hospital and killed nearly 500<\/a>. New variants keep emerging, including the latest NB. 1.8.1, also known as \u201cNimbus.\u201d It took just three months to become Canada\u2019s dominant variant. Each time a new variant takes over, it threatens built-up immunity from vaccines and previous infections. Although Nimbus isn\u2019t deadlier than previous variants, there\u2019s no guarantee that future variants won\u2019t cause more severe disease.<\/p>\n<div class=\"more-link-wrapper\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/news\/public-health-and-icarus-what-history-reaches-about-hubris-and-mistakes\/\">Continue reading<span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Public health and Icarus: what history [t]eaches about hubris and mistakes<\/span><\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[96,18,97,309,14],"class_list":["post-8866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-canada","tag-covid-19","tag-pandemic-response","tag-pro-virus-policies","tag-sars-cov-2","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8866"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8879,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8866\/revisions\/8879"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stillcoviding.ca\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}