In over 30 years of practice, Dr. Errol Billinkoff rarely saw a man without kids come into his Winnipeg clinic to get a vasectomy. But since the pandemic began, he says it's become an almost daily occurrence.
And he's not alone.
"At first, I thought I was the only one who was noticing this," Billinkoff, who brought a no-scalpel vasectomy procedure to Winnipeg in the early 1990s, told CBC News in a November interview.
"But I am part of an international chat group where doctors who do vasectomies participate and the topic came up, and it's like everybody notices it."
I mean, yeah, why not? There are international whatevers for almost anything, specially professional practices. It's less cumbersome and cheaper than relying on regulatory bodies to organize and run conventions or seminars. Most of these chats are informal and born from that kind of events as well.
Something I also learned from working with the health sector is that there are really very few 100% dedicated to their niche specialists in every area. Sure, there are many heart surgeons, but very few experts on ventricular septal defect surgery on children. And some of that stuff can be so complex as to be a sole area of dedicated study. It allows these kind of informal forums and encourages a strong mentor-apprentice dynamics. So it is not rare they hit the group chat every once in a while. I also learned there are over a dozen different ways to make a vasectomy procedure and some doctors know how to do a few but not all of them and there are reasons to prefer some over the others depending on the patient.