‘MONTHS BEHIND’
National COVID response is not OK
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau is quite obviously softening Canadians up for a blow: As early as next month, and for several months thereafter, they are likely to see millions of people around the world being vaccinated against COVID-19. And for quite a while, none of them will be Canadian.
“One of the things to remember is Canada no longer has any domestic production capacity for vaccines,” Trudeau said at his Tuesday news conference. “Countries like the United States, Germany and the U.K. do have domestic pharmaceutical facilities, which is why they’re obviously going to prioritize helping their citizens first.”
Also Belgium, where Pfizer will be making its vaccine. Also Spain, where the pharmaceutical firm Rovi is part of Moderna’s production line. Also the rest of the European Union, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen suggested last week. Also Mexico, apparently: Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said Tuesday that his government expected to start rolling out the Pfizer jab next month.
In Canada, politicians are teasing March. Based on this country’s performance throughout the pandemic, healthy younger Canadians should probably bank on waiting at least until autumn 2021.
It will be interesting to watch. Canadians have been remarkably willing to forgive demonstrably sub- par anti- pandemic performance from their governments, most of which still enjoy high approval ratings.
It is not OK that Ontario rolling out 1.2 million rapid antigen tests to long- term care homes “over the next number of weeks” counts as a big- ticket announcement. It is not OK that Health Canada obviously hates those tests for no good reason. It is not OK so many public health officials clung so long to their aversion to wearing masks. It is not OK that so many jurisdictions can’t test people or trace COVID- positive people’s contacts at remotely adequate levels.
On Tuesday in Toronto, bylaw officers and police did nothing to prevent a very opinionated barbecue chef from opening his restaurant for indoor and outdoor dining, in flagrant and deliberate violation of lockdown rules, despite him publicly vowing to do so in advance. Police on the scene then deemed it “not safe” to disperse the enormous crowd that gathered to protest the lockdown and eat savoury meats. More senior police later apologized for this, and vowed to enforce the law if the restaurant opened Wednesday. The restaurant opened Wednesday, and nothing happened.
That’s not OK. It’s pathetic.
Also on Tuesday in Toronto, CBC News reported that during off hours, when staff drivers are off duty, Toronto Public Health has been calling taxis to transport people who “may or may not have COVID-19” to isolation centres. Regular taxis! Regular drivers! “The driver may opt out of providing transportation if they do not feel safe to do so,” a city spokesperson told CBC.
That’s not OK. It’s insane. None of the above is OK. None of it was ever OK. But evidently it can be explained away, rationalized, worked around.
A vaccine is different. A vaccine is the salvation we have all been waiting for. We all know there is no getting back to normal without it. And it seems we’re nowhere near the front of the queue. Would that be enough, finally, to blow Canadians’ stacks?
A bigger question: Would that be enough to get us better prepared for next time?
COVID- 19 has savagely exploited Canada’s relaxed attitude toward disaster preparedness, and none of it seems surprising in hindsight. No doubt scrapping the pandemic early warning system made perfect sense to whichever Health Canada bureaucrat hatched the idea. We haven’t had a pandemic in ages! Warehouses full of expired personal protective equipment, you say? Frank, can you try to get around to that next week? Oh, Frank’s on vacation.
A 2016 report form the industry group BIOTECANADA suggested “subsidizing idle manufacturing capacity that could be used in emergencies” as a way of “preventing vaccine shortages.”
“Idle capacity”? You can just see Canadian officialdom turning up its collective nose.
In many ways this Canadian aversion to spending money on things we don’t “need,” to sneak up on problems rather than attack them and risk overkill, serves us fairly well. It’s why we only waste millions studying high-speed rail, for example, instead of billions building and running it. But it’s not just the squeaky wheels that need grease.
That instinct is also why we let long- term care home systems languish in mediocrity, at best. It’s why after every pre- COVID- 19 pandemic, addressing obvious problems like contact tracing capacity, data management, PPE stockpiles and so many others gradually fell off the to- do lists. It’s easy to imagine Trudeau’s promise to invest in vaccine production capability doing exactly the same, five or 10 or 20 years out from this nightmare.
COVID-19 has obliterated many smug assumptions Canadians had about their country and its systems. Yet millions of us don’t even seem to have noticed. Many of us seem perfectly happy, as ever, simply to outperform the United States. If being back of the line for these vaccine doesn’t knock some heads together, it seems unlikely anything ever will.
perfectly happy, as ever, simply to outperform the United States.