Message of COVID doom does disservice

When British Prime Minister Boris Johnson lifted most pandemic restrictions on July 19, which the British called “Freedom Day,” there were howls of protest from many epidemiologists and public health experts on both sides of the Atlantic. Doomsayers prophesied catastrophe as cases were already on the rise, driven by the potentially immune escaping and highly transmissible Delta variant.

But almost a month in, COVID-19 cases are down from a peak of close to nearly 50,000 new cases on July 20 to less than 30,000 new cases per day. And this is well below the earlier peak of almost 60,000 new cases on Jan. 9 in a previous wave. We’ve been told throughout the pandemic that what matters are hospital admissions, especially ICU admissions and mortality, and not just the infection rate. In the U.K., hospital admissions have risen from a low point of about 100 admissions per day in mid-may to around 700 per day now. While this sounds high, it’s way below the peak of more than 4,000 per day in January.

There’s a similar pattern in Israel, which reopened in May. While cases and hospital admissions have risen, they’re well below previous peaks. On Wednesday, it was reported that health officials in Israel were predicting nearly 5,000 new hospitalizations in the coming weeks. This, along with the uptick in cases, has prompted officials in Israel to roll out booster vaccine doses for those above 60 and to increase hospital capacity. Importantly, there are no plans to re-enter lockdown.

Health officials in the U.K. and Israel, and equally importantly the politicians who make decisions based on their inputs, have realized that herd immunity is a chimera. In an extraordinarily frank interview, Sir Andrew Pollard, head of the Oxford Vaccine Group, and a key voice in the U.K.’S health policy space, said unequivocally that herd immunity is impossible, both because the Delta variant can infect vaccinated individuals, and because neither U.K. nor anyone else can prevent the emergence of new variants.

Likewise, Tal Brosh, in the Israeli health ministry, has said that many people will end up becoming infected at some point or other, and what is really relevant is whether they’re vaccinated or not, as this will determine the severity of their symptoms. Both countries have realized that the goal of “COVID zero” is both unattainable and the wrong target to aim at.

In Canada, and specifically in Ontario, the approach to further reopening is tied rigidly to specific immunization targets. For example, the government of Premier Doug Ford has made clear that the lifting of remaining restrictions will require that 80 per cent of those eligible have received one dose of the vaccine, 75 per cent of those eligible have received both doses, and at least 70 per cent of Ontarians are fully vaccinated in all of the province’s 34 public health units.

This is by far the most stringent standard anywhere in the advanced world. In fact, according to the Oxford COVID-19 Response Tracker, Canada has had the most stringent lockdowns and restrictions of any advanced country with the exception of Australia, which has now been trapped in limbo with their COVID zero policy.

While we’re close to attaining these immunization targets, thus largely decoupling hospitalizations from infections, the recent increase in cases and fear of the Delta variant is feeding a narrative of panic and paranoia and the apparent jettisoning of everything we’ve been told to believe until now.

Thus, for example, just last month, Peter Juni, the scientific director of Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table, said COVID-19 would be impossible to eradicate and should be treated as “more like influenza” than the measles. Fast forward to Aug. 11, and Juni is now saying (in an interview with CP24) that he won’t support any further easing of restrictions given the recent rise in cases. What changed in a month?

Juni asserted that we are now already in a fourth wave, and went so far as to claim that if Ontario were to pursue an Alberta-style approach lifting all restrictions, there could be as many as 20,000 ICU admissions in the next six to eight weeks. For context, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information, during the period January 2020 to February 2021, there were fewer than 8,000 ICU admissions in all of Canada except for Quebec — and this was before widespread vaccination. Juni doesn’t tell us where he finds this extraordinary prediction.

While the caution of experts such as Juni is laudable, it runs the risk of feeding fear and paradoxically strengthening the hand of anti-vaxxers and hardening vaccine hesitancy. Someone could rightly ask, if vaccines actually work, how could we possibly end up in a catastrophic emergency with ICU beds stretched way beyond the limit? And what was the point?

Given the platform they occupy and how seriously their every word is taken, experts need to stay on message: get fully vaccinated, and even if you get COVID-19, your symptoms will likely be mild. The media should do its part by not overhyping every day’s new cases, and ignoring the decoupled hospitalization and mortality rates, and by breaking down new infections into those who’re fully vaccinated as against those who are not.

Ontario now publishes such data, and it makes clear that the vast majority of recent infections are among the unvaccinated or those partially vaccinated. This is an optimistic message, but unfortunately what we seem to hear from any of the talking heads is still a narrative of impending doom and disaster. This is doing the public and policy-makers a great disservice.