Apropos the current hospital situation — as well as the Melancthon quarry and the East Luther explosives storage ones — there is a theory about humankind that I interpret as being generally that we are able to adapt only to

limited number of changes in our lifetimes before arriving at the “fight or flight” decision — or just roll over and play dead.

To my knowledge, the theory as such has never been applied generally to any study of group reactions, but only to individuals. Yet I have to wonder if it shouldn’t be better recognized by all levels of government and other authorities as they make decisions affecting a class or a group within the public.

In the Shelburne area, the community perspective is that there has been a constant erosion of health care for the past 17

so years. The record of where the area was prior to 1992 and where it is now would appear to support the perception.

The proposal to take away Shelburne hospital’s long-term care program for budget considerations seems to have been more of a stripping than the community could bear. To the collective community, seemed like a thunderbolt statement to the effect of “sorry folks, we can’t afford to let you have it, so we’re taking it to Orangeville.”

It is unfortunate that the proposal started out as purely a monetary issue.

It should have begun with consideration for improvement of health care available

Shelburne for the central and north Dufferin residents.

Budget considerations should have been

factor influencing the aim of improving health care. With proper planning considerations, rather than purely financial considerations, it might well have turned out that everyone could be better served by replacing the long-term care program with something else.

That might still be the case. But the Headwaters Health Care Centre administration and Board, along with the Central West Local Health Integrated Network

LHIN) waited until after the community reacted to suggest the hospital could become a Health and Care centre for the Shelburne area.

Meantime, I was accused of bias in my reporting. But the truth is that the facts of the announcement appeared to indicate a hospital board bias against the Shelburne hospital.

As I recall the Shelburne situation prior to the closing of the emergency services at the hospital, there was no shortage of doctors and no difficulty attracting them to the town.

That was the medical situation — at least from 1951 to 1992 — after the present hospital was built thanks to land donation and money from the Town of Orangeville plus $100,000 from the County of Dufferin along with government grants — and generally prior to the amalgamation of Dufferin Area and Shelburne District hospitals to form what was initially called Headwaters Health Care Corp. and Dufferin Caledon Health Care Corp.

Now, because there were budget considerations only in the beginning of plans to move long-term care beds out of the HHCC Shelburne campus to Orangeville, planning for alternatives has yet to begin — and the hospital Board is on the cusp of its deadline for passing its budget. The budget will determine the fate of 22 of the 26 beds now at Shelburne.

Along with that, any decision taken by the Board and the LHIN might well affect how businesses and service clubs react to HHCC fundraising efforts.

Chamber of Commerce president Ron Munro raised that spectre at the public forum on the Shelburne situation when he said he was there representing 1,000 businesses.

The Chamber and the County are both working to attract employment development to Dufferin.

Companies looking to move their operations are attracted by a number of factors including such as transportation and availability of serviced land, but also by lifestyles including educational facilities and health care.

In that sense, any erosion of health care in the whole or any part of the county would not bode well for efforts to attract new employers here, at a time when both Shelburne and Orangeville need to rebuild their industrial tax bases.