These days much of the talk (virtually, of course) around town is that the governments handling of COVID, from mandated stay at home orders to vaccine supply and distribution blunders, are stupid, pointless or unfair. Citizens are up in arms, flapping on social media that the government is punishing citizens for its own incompetence. Others still outright deny COVID in severity and reality.
Many of these concerns and frustrations are completely valid. For one, the rules are inconsistent. The government of Ontario implemented a strict 6-week lockdown, not allowing people to leave home except for essential services like health or food. Those that do can be stopped and carded by police, and fined (this will be reversed, based on regional police unwillingness to do so). Simultaneously though, they are allowing as many as two million workers classified as essential to be exempted from the very same order. Canadians are also discouraged from any travel whatsoever, meanwhile international travelers from some of the most COVID stricken regions on earth like India and Brazil fly into Canada every day, on average bringing in an 50 new cases with them. Most of these new cases are the more deadly variants. We could just cancel flights. Norway, Libya, and many others have done so. Angola and Yemen are closed to flights from Canada, but we sitting here with open arms. Even the testing rules are illogical. If you test negative after 3 days in the quarantine hotel, the test is deemed valid enough to allow you to leave the hotel. But a negative test at home after 7 or 10 days in quarantine does not allow you to return to normal life. You must tough out the whole 14 days. Then why spend taxpayer money to test at the 10 day mark at all?
On a commercial level, businesses have been ordered to shut down. This too is replete with exemptions for big box retail and government owned business like the LCBO. Small businesses - so critical to our economy - have been ordered to shut their doors to clients, allowing only curb side pickup for those that sell goods and full blown closures for ones that offer services, like gyms and salons. This uneven playing field disproportionately benefits corporations while crippling their competitors, small business owners say.
Most frustratingly, Canadians feel as though they’re now in this alone. Our neighbours to the south are returning to normal life. The UK is already phasing in a full reopening. People are socializing at pubs. The US population is getting vaccinated at a blistering pace. But in Canada, vaccine purchases and rollout have been mired in controversy and ineptitude. As of writing, only 23% of Canada’s population has received one dose, while in the US that number is 38% and over 20% is already fully vaccinated. In the UK, 50% of the population has received at least one dose. The federal government here blames provincial distribution strategy, the provinces blame the feds for lack of supply.
So why then is our government sending us back into a full fledged, police enforced 6-week lockdown? We’ve spent the better part of four months (if not a year) in lockdown already, and cases are rising. Clearly, they’re not working, right?
Not quite. In defense of the government, we as citizens only have part of the information and usually not nearly enough to make the right decision. We are not privy to the reports that government officials receive from all concerned parties. We hear of only a fraction of the calls from constituents of all ages, doctors, nurses, business leaders, scientific roundtables, union leaders that elected officials receive. We don’t see updated modelling or hospital utilization numbers as frequently as they do. Our governments do, and base their decisions off of said information. That makes their decisions more informed than ours.
Our situation is also worse. According to Vice, Canada is one of the only countries on earth currently battling all three variants at once. That alone makes our current battle more difficult than most places have to deal with. We also share a land border and an intertwined trading system with the US, the largest case count in the world. Unlike Australia or New Zealand, we cannot shut down our border to all travel. We’re not an isolated island and therefore cannot operate our restrictions in the same way that those countries can. We share over 130 border crossing checkpoints with another country. Australian and New Zealand? Zero. And tens of thousands of trucks cross between Canada and the US every day, many of which bring us the very things we need to survive— food and medicine. This makes our plan of attack inherently more difficult than for other countries.
Further, as much as we all loathe lockdowns, controlling the spread is the only way to prevent overcrowding in hospitals. And control the spread we must. In Ontario, there are only about 2300 ICU beds, although reports are that there are only enough staff to service about half that number. That means we functionally have roughly 1100–1200 ICU beds. As of mid-April, 741 are already taken, and 2107 people are already hospitalized. Two weeks ago, That number was 400. With our case count doubling every 4 days Ontario is at a dangerous risk of filling up all beds, at which point doctors and nurses will be in the horrific position of having to choose who gets intensive care and who does not.
And that assumes the the ICUs are staffed with willing doctors and nurses. Our quest for freedom to return to normal life is only made possible by the doctors and nurses who work overtime, tirelessly caring for those that do get sick. What our leaders hear every day from the doctors and nurses directly, as well as from the unions representing them, is that the nurses association was threatening to quit if the government didn’t shut down. Why should they risk their lives working 16 hour days so you can sit at Starbucks? They feel they have done more than their fair share, and that it’s time for everyone else do to the same. Fully one third of nurses are ready to quit and I don’t blame them. It would be a grim outlook should that come to fruition.
Or consider that even when vaccinated, the efficacy is only 95%. A very high value for sure, but by no mean is the risk reduced to zero. A 95% efficacy figure means in any encounter with COVID there is a 5% chance of contracting the virus. Controlling community spread is the only way we can get ahead of the virus. The larger the head start the virus has (including and especially the variants) the harder the vaccine rollout strategy has to work to win. Hence why the government has put such an extreme emphasis on staying at home. It’s the best way to quell the spread. New data from France on the vaccine effect illustrates that even with vaccines, cases are rising again because the variant is spreading so quickly. This doesn’t means vaccines aren’t working (The green shaded area in the same analysis suggests that the vaccines have prevented further spread) but instead shows why we need to keep cases at bay until the number of people vaccinated is higher.
Even knowing this, the Ontario government did try to placate the masses. In early March, exactly when doctors and the scientific roundtable were calling for three weeks of strict lockdowns, many citizens were calling for an end to restrictions with which they already (sort of) complied for the past few months. The government relented, and cases since then have gone out of control. We now have more cases per capita than the US. And now the government has seemingly no choice but to implement a 6 week lockdown. There’s an old saying about an ounce of prevention. We opted for a pound of cure.
All of that said does not mean the government has made the right decisions along the way. Rather, I’m suggesting that this is a novel pandemic that no one, including and especially our politicians, know how to properly handle. The “right” solution is always easier in retrospect, and so we should give our leaders some leeway. People are yelling at them from all sides and they have to choose between groups that are demanding all kinds of conflicting action. For every person that wants us to open up, there is a doctor demanding stricter shut downs. Government officials are damned if they do, damned if they don’t. If governments go the strict route and the lockdowns and restrictions work, the inherent result of the action will make it look as if the government overreacted. If they are lenient, many more people would die and the criticism then would be the government did not do enough. Rock-Government-Hard Place.
What should they have done instead? Depends on your baseline viewpoint. In my opinion the government should have a better read of the room. The virus isn’t perceived as that deadly by most people, therefore most people are not listening to stay at home orders especially when they feel the order is making up for government incompetence. They also see states like Texas and Florida wide open, Ontario locked down, but our cases are surging and theirs are not. No one is parsing the facts to understand why. They see the headlines.
Therefore, the government could have done more, and can change course. All of the following are still actions they can take:
- Allow all businesses to stay open but under the same rules. Do not selectively pick and choose who can stay open. Also, curbside pickup only.
- Allow those under 40 to go to work and restaurants (if they choose) all while complying with mask regulations. To date, 215,984 people under 40 in Ontario have contracted COVID that we know of. Total deaths: 44. That is a 0.02% chance of dying. You’re twice as likely to choke to death and almost 4x as likely to drown. As far as I know, we haven’t banned swimming.
- Implement a stay at home order for the most vulnerable (65+) until they are vaccinated
- Ban all international flights from South America, India, and anywhere else where cases are surging. It’s not xenophobic, it’s pragmatic.
- Vaccinate those in high density essential settings (think food production facilities and distribution centres)
- Implement paid sick leave for those not feeling well
- Immediate increases to nurses and doctors compensation for their overtime.
- Allow people to test out of quarantine after 7–10 days, as it would increase compliance. (N.B. Currently even if you test negative after 7 or 10 days, you still have to quarantine for the full 14 days)
- Allow those who have been fully vaccinated to work, shop and go about normal life. Vaccinated people interacting with other vaccinated people is extremely safe. To quote Dr. Fauci, “If you’re around other vaccinated people, you shouldn’t worry about it at all. Zero.” This would slowly revive the economy and encourage people to get their vaccines.
- Encourage outdoor activity instead of shutting it down. Lockdowns will only encourage people to hide in the shadows, indoors, where the virus spreads much quicker. Sunshine, air and activity — living healthy — is about the best way to prevent serious illness. Just enforce mask wearing.
Later we can debate the whys of the situation we’re in ad nauseum but for now, we need to deal with the situation at hand. And that situation is rising cases, new variants, an open border for trade, and doctors and nurses ready to quit from being overwork. It doesn’t matter to which side of the aisle you lean politically, leaders from all sides are being lambasted for their responses. Elect different leaders next time if you feel they can do better.
Besides, there’s never been a better time in history to undergo a lockdown. A pandemic was bound to happen, Bill Gates even said so. At least we have every TV show, movie and piece of music available 24 hours a day. Food delivery (both groceries and cooked meals) are available at your fingertips. And for those out of a job, the government is paying you in lieu of working. So tough it out, this round may just be our ounce of prevention.
Giovanni
