Poll: 29% say ‘learn to live’ with COVID
A new poll suggests almost
30 per cent of Canadians believe it’s time to lift pandemic restrictions and “learn to live” with the COVID-19 virus, while just over 40 per cent want measures to be eased carefully.
Public health experts said Thursday the results of the Leger survey indicate a level of fatigue among the population. But being tired of the pandemic doesn’t mean the threat is gone.
“We do need to adopt a more sustainable approach to COVID-19, but that doesn’t mean throwing caution to the wind,” said Roman Pabayo, an epidemiologist with the University of Alberta. “I still think we need to be cautious as we move forward and make decisions on removing restrictions in a scientifically informed, public healthinformed way.”
Forty-three per cent of Canadians surveyed by Leger identified their feelings about the current state of the pandemic as “prudent” — the most popular answer of four options — saying they did not want to lift restrictions too quickly.
But 29 per cent said they were ready to move on, indicating they were “adequately vaccinated” and viewed the Omicron variant as “less serious.”
The other 28 per cent were evenly split among those who said they were anxious and those who were angry.
Fourteen per cent didn’t feel comfortable at all lifting safety measures, while the other 14 said they have been opposed to mandates and measures “for a while” and wanted governments to “give us back our freedom.”
A Leger poll released this week suggested almost twothirds of Canadians opposed the protest in the nation’s capital — more than four in 10 surveyed said they strongly considered the demonstration a selfish display — but almost 30 per cent disagreed with that characterization of the demonstration, and 44 per cent said they sympathized with frustrations voiced by the protesters.
The latest survey, released Thursday, included online responses from 1,546 adult Canadians collected on Feb. 4 to 6. It cannot be assigned a margin of error because internetbased polls are not considered random samples.
Asked whether governments should lift all restrictions, 58 per cent replied no, but 32 per cent said yes — up from 20 per cent in January and marking the highest level of support among Canadian respondents since 26 per cent in June.
Respondents from Alberta were the most opposed to mandates, with 24 per cent saying they were angry about the current state of the pandemic,.
Vaccination status seemed to influence how people responded to the Leger poll. More than 75 per cent of unvaccinated respondents said they wanted their freedom back, while 46 per cent of vaccinated individuals called for a careful reopening strategy.
Eighty-four per cent of unvaccinated respondents said they were totally dissatisfied with federal government measures to fight the pandemic, while 60 per cent of vaccinated participants were totally satisfied with the way Prime Minister Justin Trudeau has handled the COVID-19 crisis.
Data from Health Canada show that more than 88 per cent of the country’s vaccine-eligible population has had at least one dose of a COVID-19 vaccine, and nearly 83 per cent are fully vaccinated.