Politicians paralyzed with fear

Politicians made such a powerful case in convincing the Canadian public to fear the spread of the novel coronavirus, they may have succeeded in scaring themselves stiff. Elected leaders now seem paralyzed in fear, terrified to let us venture too far out of our homes and start rebuilding our economy, even though the greatest threat from the pandemic, the one we’re sheltering in place to avoid, hasn’t even materialized.

Somewhere amid the horror at projections that COVID-19 would kill hundreds of thousands of Canadians, our initial, at least reasonable goal — ensuring our health-care system could cope with the pandemic — appears to have been lost. Leaders apparently think they must now stop people from catching it altogether.

At his Monday morning press conference, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau suggested he isn’t eager to see lockdowns end, as provinces make apprehensive plans to reopen. “We still need to be extremely careful, not just for our seniors but for everyone around us. So don’t go out unless you absolutely have to,” Trudeau said. Last week, Ottawa released a new modelling report saying it was “critically important that we maintain our current public health measures” until we had “control” over the epidemic’s spread.

Care homes and the elderly should have been better protected all along, but controlling the spread of infection to protect “everyone” is entirely unrealistic, given this is a coronavirus that is highly contagious and takes days to present symptoms. Dr. Neil Rau, an infectious diseases specialist and medical microbiologist, says politicians are now trying to “contain the uncontainable.” So while staying locked up in pursuit of that unrealistic objective might keep flattening the curve — slowing the rate of spread, but not stopping it — it will flatten what’s left of our already devastated economy.

In fact, six weeks after the lockdown began, our hospitals are managing well, even sitting largely empty, as surgeries and other procedures were cancelled (almost certainly causing other non-COVID deaths in the process). By the end of April, epidemiological modelling in Alberta had predicted a “probable” scenario of more than 400 people occupying hospital beds with COVID-19, and nearly 100 of those in intensive care. The province had reserved more than 2,000 hospital beds for COVID-19 patients just in case. The actual number of COVID-19 patients in hospital on April 30 was 90.

B.C. cleared 2,400 beds for COVID-19 patients. The number of people hospitalized as of May 1 was 79. Ontario’s hospitalization rate, meanwhile, has kept roughly to what the province had projected last month as its “best-case” scenario. In Saskatchewan, only about a dozen people were in hospital with COVID-19 as of this past weekend. Manitoba, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island and Newfoundland have all enjoyed some days (or even weeks) with no newly reported cases and hospitalizations are well under capacity.

With the possible exception of Quebec, which has seen a hospital crunch in Montreal, the reality that our health-care capacity has not only managed, but has mostly beaten expectations, is a terrific good-news story. Politicians make the persuasive case that this is precisely because we’ve been sheltering in place. Perhaps. But a growing body of literature suggests that effective tracing and quarantine measures are the most important strategies for keeping transmission rates down; lockdowns, not so much: in many jurisdictions, data show cases peaking before lockdowns could have any meaningful effect. That’s what happened in B.C., where reported cases peaked March 26, despite significantly increased testing. Yet more than a month later, businesses and workers are still waiting for the provincial NDP to reveal its reopening plan.

In Ontario, where entire sectors spanning cannabis stores to construction have been forcibly closed, Premier Doug Ford offered a “road map” to reopening early last week, which was entirely vague on details, including dates. “We won’t be rushed into anything,” said the once unapologetically pro-business premier who now sounds like he is no hurry to save jobs and businesses. (On Friday, he revealed a few minor concessions: seasonal businesses and a handful of construction projects deemed “essential” could reopen May 4.)

And while Alberta’s planned first phase, announced last week, will allow retail stores and restaurants to reopen at substantially reduced capacity — which is at least something — that won’t be until mid-May for some reason, yet dentists and physiotherapists, where contact is closer than retail environments, were nonetheless allowed to open this week. Meantime, pity Alberta’s increasingly squirrelly kids, as the province now says schools will stay closed for the rest of the academic year, while elsewhere, countries are sending students back to class in light of a growing body of evidence that children do not generally get COVID-19 and may not even transmit the virus. New Brunswick, too, is forcing its kids to ride out the school year in lockdown, even though, as of this weekend, it hadn’t had a single new reported case in two weeks.

Manitoba has been sensible enough to start opening restaurants and stores at reduced capacity this week. But Quebec has been the boldest in reopening, despite being the worst-affected province, resuming elementary school classes and letting storefronts reopen and factories restart, with precautions in place, as of this week. Quebec appears to be following the Swedish model, which has been the target of unhinged media scorn because death rates there have significantly exceeded those of its locked-down neighbours.

But while Sweden has been caricatured as reckless — it actually closed high schools and universities, but kept day schools, restaurants and bars open amid widespread testing, tracing and quarantining the sick — the reality may be that its more heavily locked-down neighbours are simply delaying the inevitable. They may ultimately see the same final death rate, spread over a much longer, more economically destructive period. Importantly, Sweden’s health-care system has managed to keep well within its capacity and the World Health Organization’s executive director of health emergencies, Mike Ryan, recently said Sweden was “a model if we wish to get back to a society in which we don’t have lockdowns.”

A world without lockdowns is surely what millions of Canadians want, and with good reason. If every month of a shutdown means losing one full year of potential economic growth, as one economist recently told the Financial Post, then every week counts dearly. Dr. Rau notes, “Quebec is moving on, the rest of the world is moving on,” because “you can’t stop this sucker.” But while other Canadian politicians remain scared stiff to move on, whatever public support lockdowns may have once had risks turning to anger and unrest should Canadians soon grow impatient. A public fed up and without faith in its government will only make more reasonable restrictions harder to impose and the risk of worse outbreaks greater. With so much economic rebuilding to be done, that’s last thing Canada needs.