During Thursday morning's Windsor Essex County Health Unit briefing, doctors from around the area joined acting medical officer of health Dr. Shanker Nesathurai to speak about the ongoing COVID-19 situation.
But the discussion veered into questions about the anti-vaccine mandate protests taking place in Windsor and Ottawa.
Dr. Andrea Steen, the chief of staff from Hôtel-Dieu Grace Healthcare, says it's very discouraging to see for the many in the community who have been working very hard to battle the pandemic for the past two years.
"We follow the science, we follow the data, we follow our public health recommendations. The idea of just throwing it all up in the air and kind of walking away from the science and everything that we've done I think is very discouraging. We have to be in this as a community and it's not just about me, or him, it really is about all of us looking after each other," Steen said.
The President of the Essex County Medical Society, Dr. Vikesh Miraj, says we have to try and understand where this sentiment is coming from which he suspects is due to widespread misinformation.
He says as members of the medical community and family doctors, they're uniquely positioned to help overcome misinformation in the community.
"In office I often have patients who come in for unrelated issues, of course with every patient who we see we inquire about vaccination status," he continued. "In 95% of the patients who are unvaccinated, when you take the time to inquire further, it's because they have these misunderstandings."
Dr. Miraj says some are very easy to set straight, but others require a longer conversation to hash out the truth.
In medicine and in the public health service, Dr. Nesathurai says they welcome dialogue as long as it doesn't become disruptive.
Every medical treatment has risks and benefits, but at this point given the levels of disruption we're seeing he's very concerned about the situation.
"And we have to make clinical decisions and public health decisions based on the risks and benefits. The benefits of getting vaccinated so exceed the risks that we recommend it strongly. When we reach out to unvaccinated people to encourage them to get vaccinated, it's because of the affinity to those individuals, we want them to have good health."
Dr. Nesathurai says many of the deaths in unvaccinated people are senseless deaths, as they're people who otherwise would've lived many years with their families had they not gotten COVID-19.
He says he's personally worried about the amount of obstruction to daily life that these protests have created.