Vaccines will arrive fast, but so will variants
If you feel like it’s been a Groundhog Day year, imagine how the scientists feel. Groundhog Day, it should be noted, isn’t based on science so much as tradition. The pandemic sometimes feels that way, too.
But it’s going to end. For a second straight week, Health Canada approved a vaccine on a Friday, and four working COVID-19 vaccines is staggering, incredible, a scientific miracle. The Johnson & Johnson approval was accompanied by the prime minister announcing Canada would receive an extra 4.5-million doses of Pfizer over March, April and May. Ontario, meanwhile, seemed poised to finally unveil a vaccination plan, which is super. Every week, there is more reason for optimism.
“Folks, please stay patient,” said Premier Doug Ford, at a press conference about the province’s new vaccination timeline. “There is light at the end of the tunnel, and I’m feeling real positive this week, and more positive every day as we move forward.”
Not coincidentally, for the second straight week, the province announced it would relax restrictions, even as the more transmissible variants surge beneath the surface, and for the second straight week, it could have been worse. The mayors in Peel Region, Bonnie Crombie and Patrick Brown, wanted to reopen indoor dining, and more, in red level. The medical officer of health, Dr. Lawrence Loh, asked for the more restrictive grey. Toronto will move there, too, starting Monday.
The province chose the medical officer of health on a position that does not necessarily align with provincial priorities. That’s something. The move to grey isn’t a leap, either: it reopens retail, which on its own is not an epidemiological earthquake.
But it will increase mobility, increase contacts, and the variants were already feasting under the old restrictions. Again, this province is pursuing what appears to be one last reckless, unscientific course. Since the phased reopening of other regions, case counts have started to rise across the province. The overall case count trend has been held down by the continuing restrictions in Toronto, Peel and, until recently, York.
So naturally, we are relaxing restrictions, as the more transmissible variants surge under the surface of superficial case count totals. It’s not Texas opening the saloon doors to every virus within a day’s drive, but it’s reckless nonetheless. The seven-day average on variants is at 27.5 per cent; it has been at least 29.9 for the past three days. Around 30 per cent the variants have turned the curve up sharply in other jurisdictions. What makes Ontario special?
“I think there’s an extremely high likelihood that we’re going to have a third wave,” said Dr. Andrew Morris, a professor of infectious diseases at the University of Toronto, and the medical director of the Antimicrobial Stewardship Program at Sinai-University Health Network. “It’s not certain, but … there’s an absolutely expected exponential growth in the new variant. Nothing has halted that exponential growth; our current measures haven’t halted the exponential growth. And there’s nothing I can imagine, unless there is some miraculous behaviour change that coincides with potentially warmer weather in the next 30 days or so, that would halt the exponential growth.
“Exponential growth in the early days is very hard to differentiate from linear growth. And that’s the biggest mistake that people make, is that it looks like it’s slow and gradual, and you’re going to have time to continue. But that isn’t what happens with exponential growth. What happens is that, with time, it begins curving upwards. And I’m fairly certain that’s what we’re going to see. The best data we have is from Denmark, and they haven’t relaxed their restrictions at all, and they’ve upturned.”
That is the scientific trick here. Classic COVID is collapsing, the variants are rising, and the combination hides the growth if all you look at is the daily case count. The variants are doubling every nine or 10 days, down from 11 earlier this week. The alarm bells have been sounded. Ontario is relaxing restrictions anyway.
“I think if you believe and trust the science,” Morris said, “it’s very hard to ignore what the variants do.”
Not impossible, though. This province has been starry-eyed towards vaccines as a solution to all the very difficult work of the premier having to manage his caucus and answer his cellphone to be shouted at by another business owner.
The rollout may be shambolic — retired Gen. Rick Hillier’s timeline was essentially imaginary last week, and this week’s was obfuscated, too. He said every eligible adult could get a shot by June 20, but eligible doesn’t mean everyone under the framework: it means 60plus, and other categories. The general is a weekly communications blooper reel, except it concerns life and death and hope.
On vaccines, the province is embracing the easy science, while at least half-ignoring the more unpleasant science behind the variants, and it feels like Groundhog Day to have to say all this again, and again, and again.
The vaccine rollout will overcome its ragged start, and has incorporated genuinely inspiring aspects that balance equity and risk abatement. Toronto Public Health expects to be able to administer up to 400,000 shots a week; Peel, 280,000. That is the kind of pace we will need. And barring disaster, the vaccines will arrive, faster than you think.
Maybe not faster than the variants, though. Which was always a good argument for not relaxing restrictions when we did, because Ontario could have held fast, held the variants down, and gotten vaccines. It just chose to lean into the wind the other way, and gamble on the result. This has all been written before, but again: Groundhog Day.
In some places the pandemic response has gathered the best of its scientific and political thinking, unpolluted by badfaith influence peddling, and managed the virus better than most. Science, with enough global will behind it, has produced four vaccines that have been approved in Canada within a year, with a fifth in trials. It’s incredible. Humans can be incredible.
And we can be the most confounding species of all, since we should know better. On pandemics and climate change and more besides, the best scientists keep trying to save us from ourselves. With vaccines, they may have, soon enough. We should listen to the best scientists more often.