COVID’s great social divide
COVID-19 has exposed many gaps in society during this two-year-long pandemic — the chasms between rich and poor, urban and rural, old and young, the healthy and those chronically ill.
And things are getting more divisive by the day between the vaccinated majority and the unvaccinated minority of Canadians.
In St. John’s, N.L., recently, unmasked anti-vax protesters disrupted a booster clinic at a high school by yelling at staff and people entering the clinic, forcing it to close earlier than scheduled.
The bitterness on both sides feels amplified as omicron’s spread fuels people’s anxieties.
Political leaders are hardening their rhetoric, as well, against those who refuse to be vaccinated (as opposed to those who cannot be, for health reasons).
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s Mr. Nice Guy approach may have gotten Canada to the enviable position of having more than 80 per cent of its population aged five and older fully immunized, but clearly he doesn’t feel it has convinced the hard-line holdouts.
At a news conference Jan. 5, Trudeau signalled that the days of trying to cajole Canadians into getting vaccinated have passed and he is taking a tougher stance, tapping into the frustrations of the fully vaccinated.
“It’s not just about governments and health workers frustrated that there are Canadians who still continue to choose to not get vaccinated. It’s fellow Canadians as well,” Trudeau said.
“When people are seeing cancer treatments and elective surgeries put off because beds are filled with people who chose not to get vaccinated, they’re frustrated.
“When people see that we are in lockdowns or serious public health restrictions right now because of the risk posed to all of us by unvaccinated people, people get angry.”
On Jan. 7, federal Health Minister JeanYves Duclos suggested that provinces could make vaccines mandatory for all citizens who aren’t medically exempt, pointing out that 50 per cent of COVID hospitalizations in Quebec are people who are unvaccinated.
“That’s a burden on health-care workers, a burden on society which is very difficult to bear and, for many people, difficult to understand,” he said.
That’s a huge philosophical shift from Trudeau’s position in May 2021, when he told YouTube talk show host Brandon Gonez, “We’re not a country that makes vaccination mandatory.”
While Quebec says it’s not considering making vaccines mandatory yet, it, too, is about to try the stick-versus-carrot approach, implementing a health tax on the unvaccinated. Other jurisdictions in the world have done the same, including Greece and Austria.
In Singapore, those who are unvaccinated by choice are going to be billed for the cost of their medical care if they get COVID.
Divide and conquer may be an uncomfortable approach in trying to get more Canadians vaccinated, but clearly there have to be disincentives to staying unvaccinated when COVID is spreading fast and putting both ordinary people and essential members of the workforce in harm’s way.