Pandemic-weary Canadians need freedom roadmap

With vaccines on way, time to hear off-ramp plans

Occasionally over the past year, journalists both domestic and foreign have attempted to cast Canada's pandemic response in a relatively positive light. It's not an inherently futile exercise. There's not much to applaud about Ontario's performance, for example, but when otherwise intelligent people on social media start likening Premier Doug Ford and his ministers to mass murderers, it's probably worth taking a step back.

Unfortunately, these “Canada did OK” arguments are often laborious and weird.

In June, Time magazine columnist Ian Bremmer deemed Canada “best of the G7,” with 2,594 cases and 212 deaths per million population, respectively. Japan, whose G7 membership seems to be uncontested, was at the time reporting 137 cases and seven deaths per million. An updated “one-year-later” version published Feb. 25 did not correct this — and observed, bafflingly, that Canada's “vaccination drive has started in earnest.”

CBC News got past the Japan problem this week in a piece comparing Canada's “pandemic experience” to “the five other Western members of the G7.” It found, correctly, that Canada was best in this bespoke class of nations. Except Denmark, Norway, Finland, Estonia and Serbia were even better. There are perhaps good reasons not to compare Canada to those countries; G7 membership status isn't one of them.

More to the point, especially considering our dramatically reduced mobility, it's silly to think of Canada having a single “pandemic experience.”

We have the nearly COVID-free Maritimes. We have British Columbia, with the loosest restrictions on everyday life and the best case and fatality numbers west of New Brunswick. We have a bunch of provinces in between. And then we have Quebec, which has combined the harshest restrictions with consistently horrifying results. At 243 deaths per 100,000 population, Montreal is exceeded by few comparable cities: New York (351) and Milan (284) are two. Comparable statistics are difficult to come by, but it's likely that nowhere in the world has seen a higher rate of deaths in long-term care homes than Quebec. Ontario, while not nearly as bad, might well be in second place.

All of which is to say: those of us who have had it bad have had it world-class bad, and it's not over yet. A “third wave” driven by the British COVID-19 mutation might not be inevitable: Cases continued to fall in Ireland, Slovakia and Denmark even as the strain became dominant. But optimism hasn't paid off much in Central Canada for a year now, with one glaring exception: Not to say we shouldn't be doing much better and faster on the vaccination front, but even the prospect of the most vulnerable being vaccinated by summer, and everyone else by year's end (never mind the promised September), represents salvation that seemed unthinkable not very long ago.

We need to start talking about that. Governments need to start mapping the off-ramps. As National Post's Sharon Kirkey reported this week, wise public health experts realize people cannot (and many will refuse to) subsist for six months on a diet of “even if you're vaccinated, keep hiding under the bed.” People need hope, and it is entirely reasonable to offer it.

To pick one example: The Toronto Star reported this week that overnight camps are hoping modified procedures will allow them to open this summer. That shouldn't even be a question. Hell, governments should be trying to find ways of getting as many kids to summer camp as possible. Kids deserve it, and there's likely nowhere safer for them to be.

A CDC study released in September details how four Maine overnight camps operated last summer without a single COVID-19 case transmitted. It's neither complicated nor counterintuitive: campers quarantined at home before arrival, were tested before and after arrival, were kept within cohorts for 14 days, and were monitored daily for symptoms. Staff spent their off days on-site.

Anyone suggesting that an almost hermetically sealed population of the people least vulnerable to COVID-19 is too risky to contemplate need to be headed off at the pass. If you don't want to send your kid to camp, don't send your kid to camp.

As for riskier, more open environments: It is true that vaccination doesn't necessarily prevent transmission (though the evidence is overwhelmingly encouraging on that front). But once we vaccinate the most vulnerable — an easily identifiable population that accounts for the vast majority of fatal outcomes — it becomes more and more imperative to let the rest of us assess risk on our own behalf: overnight camps, day camps, restaurants, bars, gyms, cinemas, concerts, hair and nail salons, beerleague hockey, beer-league beer drinking.

Through all the “red zones” and “lockdowns” and “stay-at-home orders,” Canadians have mostly shown an admirable willingness to sacrifice for the greater good. The prospect of herd immunity in just a few months' time is the time to reward them with concrete plans for when and under what circumstances they can get their lives back — and to encourage everyone to stay the course until that time. Let's hear those plans.