Closing the trust gap

The L-word — as in lockdown — is back. Premier Doug Ford is hinting strongly at something along those lines for the COVID-19 hot spots of Toronto, Peel and York regions. And a group of doctors are making waves by calling for a much stricter “#COVIDZero” strategy that would involve a hard lockdown over much of the winter.

After eight-plus months of the pandemic, this is tough to hear. With COVID out of control in much of the country, has all the human and financial sacrifice been for naught?

It’s clear we collectively dropped the ball, and a lot of that comes down to stubborn personal behaviour. Political leaders have worn out their voices pleading with people to do the simple stuff: wash your hands, wear a mask, stay home as much as possible. The evidence that those pleas aren’t working is in the rising number of new cases and deaths.

In that sense, the people have failed the governments that are trying to beat the pandemic. But the #COVIDZero campaign also makes it depressingly clear how badly governments have failed the people.

The concept has an obvious allure: Accept more pain now in return for a COVID-free world some months down the road, after a second lockdown and (hopefully) the arrival of a vaccine. The campaign’s second action point, however, right after tight restrictions, sounds all too familiar: “World Class Test-Trace-Isolate.”

Wait, weren’t we supposed to get that months ago? Didn’t the politicians and public health experts spend the summer telling us that the key to keeping the virus under control once we had “planked the curve” was putting in place a comprehensive (“world class,” if you like) system of testing and tracing so that outbreaks could be quickly identified, isolated and extinguished?

And didn’t the federal government, as part of its $19-billion “Safe Restart Program” in August, earmark $4.28 billion for the provinces to build such systems? Didn’t Ontario itself get $1.16 billion of that? And didn’t Premier Doug Ford, for one, promise over and over that he was on the testing/tracing issue like “a dog with a bone”?

Yes, yes, yes, yes and yes. And yet, when school returned in September and Ontarians quite predictably went looking for those tests, the lines were so long that many people just gave up, and the government effectively restricted them by requiring appointments. And Toronto Public Health gave up for a time on contact tracing for most people. The system wasn’t up to the challenge and fell far short of those summer promises.

Even now, deep into the second wave, Ford and his health minister, Christine Elliott, are still promising robust testing and tracing … sometime. “We need mandatory 100 per cent testing across the board,” the premier said on Monday when asked how to stop the spike of new COVID cases in long-termcare homes.

After so many months, with more than a billion federal dollars pledged for the effort, surely the time for excuses and promises in this area is past. The way to get mandatory testing is for the government to mandate it, not to keep on issuing increasingly hollow-sounding statements of intent. For heaven’s sake, just do it.

Ford himself acknowledges that public health authorities need the public’s buy-in for a big second push against the second wave. But the promise of governments, not just in Ontario, to deliver on the basic bargain of last spring (lock down now and we’ll build a system to protect you down the road) has not been met.

That’s one reason why public buy-in for another long, strict lockdown is unlikely to be there. More specific measures targeted at areas that are especially hard-hit, such as Toronto and its neighbouring regions, are another thing. If that’s what it takes now, then that’s what should be done.

Certainly, too many people have ignored public health guidance and exposed all of us to needless risk. That’s completely unacceptable. But governments have also fallen far short of what they promised to do. That has also increased risk, and it, too, is unacceptable. They need to close the gap between what they promise and what they actually deliver.

Premier Doug Ford says health authorities need the public’s buy-in for a big second push against the second wave