Leaders are failing us

Better days are on the horizon if people “keep following the rules,” Justin Trudeau told Canadians on Tuesday.

In his most sympathetic bedside manner, the prime minister said he shared the frustration of those upset at the parade of politicians who travelled abroad during the holidays. “Now is not the time to vacation abroad,” he said.

But politicians of all stripes are losing the trust of their voters — and not just because of their weakness for hypocrisy and sunshine.

Trudeau cautioned against non-essential travel, yet in the same breath expressed his frustration at seeing vaccine “in freezers, not in people's arms.” The federal government shipped 424,050 doses of vaccine last month, yet to date only 143,250 doses have been injected into the arms of Canadians by provincial governments.

If everything goes to plan — and it hasn't to this point — it will be September before the bulk of the population is vaccinated.

Yet, at the exact moment Trudeau was urging people to stay home, Canadian snowbirds in Florida were being injected with vaccine free of charge — life-saving medication they may have had to wait months to access at home.

Who can blame them for breaking the rules in that circumstance?

If governments want people to “do the right thing,” they are going to have to up their game because the pandemic is threatening to become unmanageable.

Canada's death rate broke through 16,000 for the first time on Tuesday, as the number of cases topped 600,000. Theresa Tam, the chief medical officer, noted that while it took five months to get to 100,000 cases, it has taken just two weeks to add another 100,000.

“The ever more rapid accumulation will continue until we make significant progress at interrupting its spread,” she said.

That is the backdrop to an announcement expected on Wednesday from Quebec Premier François Legault who is reportedly planning to announce a hard provincewide lockdown that will include an overnight curfew.

Legault is doing the right thing, as health experts warn the virus is out of control in Quebec.

He will face vocal resistance. Political leaders implore us to take their recommendations on faith — insisting we can rely on them because they are in control of the situation.

But there have been some epic public policy failures from federal and provincial governments during the pandemic.

Perhaps most egregious is a testing regime that has consistently proven itself unfit for the purpose.

It is widely agreed that the greatest under-leveraged opportunity to reduce COVID is to improve testing, tracing and isolation procedures. Yet, unbelievably, the number of tests dropped by more than 100,000 in the week before Christmas. We know the pandemic didn't take the week off because the drop in tests coincided with a record number of COVID hospitalizations.

Canada's testing record is abysmal — 48th in the world when it comes to tests per one million of population, which is less than half the rate in the U.S.

Despite Health Canada approving a number of rapid tests, provincial governments don't trust them and have left them gathering dust in warehouses. Unlike the PCR tests administered by health professionals that take 1-5 days to yield results, at-home antigen tests can tell the patient whether they are positive or negative within 15 minutes. A massive rollout of rapid tests would facilitate the testing of large groups of people frequently, even if they show no symptoms.

Antigen tests are particularly effective in the first week of infection when viral loads are highest.

Yet, because their sensitivity to viral load is lower than PCR tests, some have questioned their accuracy, criticism that has allowed governments to cover their eyes and ears.

“It's like they are sitting in the fire truck with all the hoses turned on,” said Sandy White, co-founder of Rapid Test and Trace, a volunteer group of academics, public health professionals and concerned citizens.

The origins of this antipathy toward the antigen test can be traced easily. Federal Health Minister Patty Hajdu told the House of Commons in October that “rapid tests have actually added confusion and increased the risk of infection” — an opinion one presumes is at odds with the department that approved the tests (i.e. her department).

On vaccine distribution, testing, the wearing of masks, closure of the border and, yes, their inability to live up to their own guidance, Canada's political leaders have contributed to the erosion of public trust.

Ultimately, their strategy of mitigating the pandemic and trying to keep COVID cases to manageable levels has not worked.

It follows that people are not going to blindly “follow the rules” if they believe the rules don't work. Governments must do better.

BRIAN MCINNIS / THE CANADIAN PRESS Debbie Lawless, right, is a registered nurse at a Charlottetown nursing home and was one of three medical Prince Edward Island workers who were the first to receive the COVID-19 vaccine on Dec. 16.