It’s easy to overlook how much solidarity there has been in Canada. Still, governments everywhere are starting to flag.
It’s been two years stolen, endured, gone. The first identified case of COVID-19 in Ontario was Jan. 25, 2020; it was in a man who had travelled from Wuhan, China. The risk, we were told, was low. Since then 11,000 Ontarians have died, and over 32,000 Canadians. In a country that has sheltered itself from world history, world history came to your workplace, your school, your house. Some dealt with it better than others. Some could afford to.
Two years. The wave didn’t really hit here until March, until the NBA’s Rudy Gobert, until after Ontario’s premier told people to go away on spring break, have fun. In those early days of lockdown, the earth became so much stiller that seismologists could measure the stillness, the quiet. That didn’t last.
So after two years of various levels of incompetence from the federal and especially Ontario’s provincial government, after various levels of lockdown, various levels of crisis in the hospitals, the lonely heartbreak of long-term care, cutting off human contact to whatever degree we did, and the harms we still haven’t discovered yet, where are we now?
You’re probably tired. Some people are howling I’m Done With COVID, I’m Through, Let Me Speak to COVID’s Manager, as if loudly shouting at a virus makes it go away, and mostly you hope they don’t have to go to a hospital anytime soon, and or have to wait for surgery. Ask someone who works at a hospital or a long-term-care home if they’re Done With COVID.
You might be resigned to catching Omicron, or be one of the millions of Ontarians — one in four? One in three? We still don’t know — who got it already. And since at least two doses of a vaccine protects the vast majority of people from severe outcomes, especially people under 70, and boosters are even better, for most people you don’t need to be as scared of Omicron, personally.
But that, along with sheer endurance, is the test of this wave. The unvaccinated are at higher risk and many have done so by choice, which means the majority are being faced with decisions that carry both individual and societal implications. And we may be at the point where a lot of people aren’t willing to stay home to protect people who don’t trust vaccines, just now.
Meanwhile, the hospitals are still jammed and thousands of surgeries per week are still being postponed and the health system remains under pressure, again. We are still far above the Wave 3 record for COVID patients in hospital; ICU is rising, but slower; deaths may soon exceed the highs of previous waves, despite all the vaccines. We’re still waiting to see if schools do anything.
Two years. Exhaustion could be dangerous. It’s easy to overlook how much solidarity there has been in Canada, though it varies by province: vaccination is the easiest proxy, since the data supporting vaccine effectiveness is relatively unambiguous. 82 per cent of Canadians over the age of five have at least two doses, even with slow pickup in the five-to-11 age bracket; three doses is what adults should be aiming for. The vaccination push hasn’t been strong enough: not in terms of outreach, education or mandates. Ontario is one of several provinces that have fumbled that ball.
Still, it feels as though governments everywhere are starting to flag. British Columbia is putting COVID-positive patients in rooms with COVID-negative patients, and talking about treating Omicron like a cold. Ontario and other jurisdictions are pushing five-day isolation for a virus that is often infectious for seven to 10 days. Maybe now that we’re past the Omicron peak, that won’t matter enough to do real damage. But it feels like governments are assuming people won’t comply, and are gradually pre-uncomplying for them.
The truly frustrating part may be that the solution was already here. There is evidence that some older patients — who according to doctors on the ground, often have chronic health issues already — can still die, even when boosted. But vaccines are, on the whole, extraordinary. We have the tools.
And instead, after two years, a big chunk of Canada is still rejecting adult conversations. Conservative politicians across the country are lining up to stand with an anti-vaccine convoy that is attracting grift-looking donations and some of the most noxious far-right figures and ideas in the country. Former leader Andrew Scheer called Prime Minister Justin Trudeau “the biggest threat to freedom in Canada!” and shadow finance minister Pierre Poilievre agreed. The convoy is ostensibly about a trucker vaccine mandate, which is also being enforced in the United States; mostly, it seems to be a collection of anti-government, anti-vaccine, and far-right grievances. That actual supply chain issues may be easing would be both good news, and quite funny.
This is what we’ve been reduced to, some of us. Two long years, and the vaccinated majority are being asked to take responsibility for the unvaccinated, and some of the hardest-edged unvaccinated are being supported by the Official Opposition, and the cracks are more visible than ever. The pandemic is still a mirror. Mostly, everyone just wishes this was over.
It’s just not. Dr. Maria Van Kerkhove of the World Health Organization recently gave an interview to the BBC. She correctly noted that COVID is still mutating: Omicron BA.2 appears to be outcompeting original Omicron wherever it has been found, and it’s been found here, by the Mount Sinai lab last week. There is no guarantee the next variant will be milder. Canada’s in better shape than many. But saying we’re done with COVID seems, more than anything, an attempt to wrest back control.
“I know everyone is ready to be done with it,” said Van Kerkhove. “I am as well. But this virus is still evolving. It’s still changing. And we need to to change with it.”
Vaccine mandates, ventilation, better masks — that would be adapting. Giving up is just giving up. Two years we’ve been living with this thing. It’s hard. Hopefully, it hasn’t beaten us yet.
Article From: The Star
Author: Bruce Arthur
