It’s true, you can sense palpable relief now that pandemic restrictions are easing. Near-normal is new-normal.
But does anyone really think it is time for a victory lap with the coronavirus?
The race isn’t over. There may not even be a home stretch, much less a finish line.
A fourth wave arising from the delta variant is not a matter of if, but when and how serious. It is spreading 55% faster than the alpha strain identified in late 2020, which was 50% faster than the original version in 2019.
Any expectation of “COVID zero” is unquestionably out of reach. World markets are lately betting we are destined to live, and die, with COVID indefinitely.
Canada has reached a 78% rate in first vaccinations and a 46% rate in second doses, with more than 80% with first doses and 54% fully vaccinated in British Columbia – even though our province houses a lot of vaccine resistance and rejection. The double-vaxxed rates will grow, but first-dose rates are cresting, so we won’t get anywhere near the 80%-90% two-jab rate authorities say would keep COVID rates under control.
Yes, it is exhausting to absorb yet more pandemic data, but it is worth worrying how caseloads are growing substantially elsewhere, particularly among the non-vaccinated, as countries reopen in conditions similar to ours. In the Netherlands, for example, restrictions were lifted in late June when the national new case count was 552; last week it reached 11,000.
Our insights about the pandemic have been learned largely after the fact. It is obvious now, for instance, that authorities would have been wise to require indoor masking until Stage 4 of reopening. So many are on our transit system, in stores and in home gatherings without the restrictions and without fullest protection of themselves and prevention of the spread to others.
Much as there is elation at the eased restrictions, there seems an increasingly casual quality of our fight with the coronavirus, as if ripping off the Band-Aid had revealed there was never a wound. It is too late, too, to turn back the clock and restage even the earlier constraints. As we approach Stage 4, we won’t accept going back to Stage 2.
There is too much public energy from the freedom and public enervation from the restraint. Shortening the leash would be ineffective, as well, because of so many stutter steps among the months of impositions. This far into the pandemic, it would take a serious outbreak to provoke enforceable new limitations. It is hard to imagine what those thresholds might entail. Let’s not go there, nor into an era of just letting it go.
Instead, let’s focus on how to help those who might face the most serious of the next afflictions: those lacking the two jabs, the one in five among us who think they are unnecessary or unhelpful. They need to be the public-political priority at this stage – and before we resume indoor activities.
Canada hasn’t been as active in enticing reluctant recipients to be vaccinated as have our southern neighbours. Manitoba is providing community grants as rewards, and Alberta has a travel-prize lottery as an incentive.
But compensation is a form of surrender to the reluctant or intransigent. Punishment, like taking away health coverage if someone is going to defy a health warning, also isn’t an answer when we want commitment more than compliance. The fairest course is to withhold some restored benefits of freedom, which is why Canada needs an Emmanuel Macron-style edict.
The French president declared that all sorts of activities – theatres, restaurants and other public spaces – would be off-limits to the non-vaccinated. He will soon take salaries away from non-vaccinated nurses. Macron appealed, in the country of Louis Pasteur, to a sense of duty to one another. Within a couple of days a couple of million more were jabbed in the coercive strategy.
An Ontario science advisory panel last week suggested that the creation of a vaccine “certificate” would be an incentive to immunization if paired with privileges. It would enable a swifter reopening of the economy, particularly in high-risk settings, and would even serve to exempt the double-vaxxed if another round of restrictions were imposed.
Theoretically any mitigation of health threats would reduce case counts, but there is no evidence yet of a direct link. There are also several ethical, legal, privacy and accessibility concerns in how these certificates are designed and implemented. But a certificate, with some teeth to the perks it provides, might help the country over the hurdle in the short term.
The country has more to concern itself with than who their MPs will be for the next four years.
Nevertheless, Canada is heading into a federal election within weeks in the window of a deceptive caseload respite, and it’s unlikely Justin Trudeau will follow his francophone friend across the ocean into ministering tough love of the country. Our leaders seem to think you don’t win votes in Canada by cracking down on anyone other than the wealthy.
Still, an election shouldn’t be called before thorough vaccination levels are reached, because government goes to sleep – insert joke here – in a campaign.
The sad truth is that we will not get through this without working through the challenges with the holdouts. Our businesses will not sufficiently reopen, our venues will not sufficiently secure safety and our psyches will not sufficiently reset themselves to pre-pandemic vigilance.
There has to be a focus on the outliers and some restraint among double-dosers. Both have come down with a bad case of hubris.
Kirk LaPointe is publisher and editor-in-chief of BIV and vice-president, editorial, of Glacier Media.
