The Chronicle Herald (Provincial)
The pandemic’s lesson is trust the science
Every day we hear something new about the virus, the disease or the vaccines that are our best hope out of the pandemic.
The daily deluge from multiple sources worldwide — often contradictory and confusing — can be a dangerous distraction. Focusing on the fundamentals — public health measures, getting tested, and getting vaccinated when it's your turn — is a better bet for your physical and mental well-being.
But, even in the splendid isolation of our eastern sanctum, we need to heed lessons from the second and now the third wave that's sweeping much of Canada.
The shock of the initial wave taught us that our nursing homes are underfunded, understaffed and under constant strain to meet the needs of their residents. That was no surprise, yet it somehow caught provincial governments flat-footed. They now promise corrective action and we have to hold them to it.
The second wave showed us that, even when things are looking up, if we let our collective guard down COVID comes storming back with an unholy vengeance. It did exactly that west of here, starting in the fall and peaking — as if to emphasize the lesson — about two weeks after the Christmas-new Year's holidays.
And now, Canadians beyond our fragile refuge are experiencing a third wave, this one driven by mutant strains of the virus that we've learned to call Variants of Concern.
The third wave is the scariest yet. The variants – B.1.1.7., the U.K. variant, is now dominant in several provinces — are more easily spread, seem more virulent and, unlike the original, they hit younger people hard.
The third wave also seems determined to teach us that the first and second waves, as dreadful and deadly as they proved to be, were the warmup acts.
In some provinces, case counts, hospitalizations and, ominously, ICU admissions are approaching or exceeding previous peaks. Deaths lag behind, so while the third wave has yet to take lives to the same extent as the earlier waves, medical professionals fear that it's only a matter of time.
The variants have Nova Scotia's top public health doc, Robert Strang “very nervous” about the next month or two.
He knows — and he hopes we know — that it only takes one case running loose to put Nova Scotians in the same leaky boat as our fellow Canadians.
What we know about the virus, the disease and how to escape both, we've learned from scientists, often the medical type.
Less than a year after the pandemic arrived, science produced vaccines with the potential to end it.
There have been halts and starts as the medical/scientific community learned more about a novel coronavirus, but all along the way, as they learned, we learned. We learned about asymptomatic spread; that masks actually do work, and that large gatherings portend large outbreaks.
COVID also managed to shine a light on some of the grosser inequities in an economic system tilted inexorably in favour of those who already have.
We proclaim our undying gratitude to essential workers in a plethora of occupations necessary to keep us going, but we haven't done much to show that gratitude.
Many of those essential workers toil in low-paying jobs, without benefits like paid sick leave.
Our leaders voice the right sentiment — “when you feel unwell, stay home” — but those same leaders can't find the political will to ensure essential workers — many of whom can't afford to lose a single day's pay — can follow that advice.
Only P.E.I. and Quebec have legislated paid sick days for all workers. In P.E.I. it's one day a year, in Quebec, three. In Nova Scotia, like most provinces, it's none.
Weak or no protection for workers is but one economic inequity “exposed” by the pandemic. The virus has also disproportionately hit those on low income living in subpar housing and crowded conditions.
We need to trust the science to get us through the pandemic and not lose that trust when it's all over.
Social scientists have been telling us for years that the long-term benefits far exceed the short-term costs of addressing, in a meaningful way, economic inequities.
They're backed by many medical professionals who recognize that, as a society, we won't be healthy until those inequities are mitigated or eradicated.
One more pitch for science. We may not be the authors of our own misfortune this time, but we are most certainly the authors of the misery that will befall our kids and theirs unless we trust the science that says we're fouling our planet beyond repair.
Climate change and the loss of biodiversity — some estimates are that a million species (plants, animals, insects) face extinction over the next decade — are scientific facts, and science points the way to the solutions.
Trust the science.