The lessons of COVID-19: Act quick, go big
It’s been just over a year since we started learning about a new virus that was infecting people in China and starting to spread around the world.
The Star’s first report about an “undiagnosed viral pneumonia” was published on Jan. 8, 2020. Public health officials were soon assuring Canadians they were prepared if the novel coronavirus (by then it had a name) appeared in this country. And a few days later we said in an editorial: “We can all hope this heightened concern amounts to an emergency drill for a crisis that doesn’t happen. But new viruses are a growing global concern and we won’t be immune.”
Twelve months later we know that was the understatement of this young century. COVID-19 has consumed our lives, killing more than two million people around the world, including some 18,500 in Canada, and shutting down much of normal life.
We’re still in the midst of the battle against the pandemic, but it’s not too early to start drawing lessons in how governments handled the response. An independent panel appointed by the World Health Organization (WHO) has just done exactly that, and it doesn’t make for pretty reading.
In a phrase, governments and international organizations basically booted the job. The WHO itself was slow to alert the world about the danger of COVID-19, and governments were even slower to act. “We have failed in our collective capacity to come together in solidarity to create a protective web of human security,” the panel members write in an interim report.
This is the 50,000-foot view. The panel, headed by Helen Clark, a former prime minister of New Zealand, and Ellen Johnson Sirleaf, a former president of Liberia, doesn’t assess how individual governments have handled the crisis.
But some of their conclusions bear close reading in the context of Canada, where the response has been at best uneven. In province after province, we’ve had endless discussions about how far to go in shutting down the economy to slow the pandemic, and how quick to reopen once the numbers start falling.
For the most part, provinces have tried to have it both ways — closing and opening at different speeds as they try to navigate public health advice and pressure from business, independent experts and the general public.
Sometimes it’s hard to know who’s right, but here’s what the WHO panel concluded after taking a look around the world at which countries have done relatively well and which ones have flopped on COVID-19. On the key point of finding what Ontario Premier Doug Ford would call a “happy balance” between shutting down and keeping the economy open, they say this:
“Prioritizing health or prioritizing the economy has proved to be a false dichotomy... Economic outcomes have been better in economies where strict public health control measures have been implemented effectively, and in those countries health outcomes measured by the numbers of cases and deaths have been substantially better. The same pattern appears to apply to the pace of recovery, with more strict public health measures being followed by stronger economic recoveries.”
And further: “There is evidence that unless people feel safe, they will be reluctant to re-engage in key economic and social activities, such as schooling or commerce. Similarly, social protection and labour regulation measures are key levers to reduce transmission risk.”
So memo to Ford & Co.: We’re not out of the woods yet on this pandemic, far from it. We still have months to go while we wait for large quantities of vaccines. So take on board these hard-won lessons.
Don’t dither when things go in the wrong direction. Act quickly and act firmly, or we’ll all pay more in the long run. Don’t skimp on public health measures, even when the bill looks steep. “This is clearly a case where billions can save trillions,” says the WHO panel.
And, for Ford in particular, listen to what the global experts say about “social protection and labour measures.” Stop finding reasons not to provide paid sick leave for workers so they can stay home if they have symptoms and avoid spreading COVID-19. Do your part.
There’s lots more in the WHO report that bears attention. The global alert system designed to give early warning of pandemics did not do its job. Governments failed on providing personal protective equipment in the early stages of the pandemic, and they failed to set up adequate systems for testing and tracing.
The WHO itself issued bad advice, such as advising governments that international travel bans were ineffective and indeed counter-productive. Canada was one of the countries that followed that advice, to its cost. The panel also warns of an impending crisis that has barely registered in countries, like Canada, that are understandably absorbed by their own domestic battle against the pandemic. While we focus on how quickly we’ll get vaccines compared to people in Britain and the United States, much of the world isn’t even in the race.
Many poor countries will still be waiting for vaccines into 2022 and even 2023, long after we’ve achieved “herd immunity.” And that, tragically, means the pandemic will be with us for a long time to come.