It’ll take more than vaccines to end the COVID-19 pandemic

We are not out of the woods yet.

True, things are looking up on the pandemic front. The average number of new daily cases is going down. When it comes to available intensive care units, hospitals are no longer at a crisis point.

The provincial government has even said that authorized non-essential surgeries may resume.

Meanwhile, efforts to supply all adult Ontarians with at least the first dose of an anti-COVID vaccine appear to be working.

Indeed, some critics argue that the government is moving too quickly and is in danger of running out of vaccines in the short run.

But experts agree that in the longer run, Canada is well-positioned to achieve its vaccination goals.

However, vaccination is not the magic bullet that will kill the pandemic.

First, it is not yet clear how long vaccines will protect against COVID-19. Six months? A year? Longer? No one yet knows.

Second, it is unclear how effective existing vaccines are against the new variants of the disease.

This leaves us to face a harsh reality: Vaccines alone will not do the job. Still needed are public health measures designed to prevent the spread of the disease.

The focus on the intricacies of vaccination is great fun. It also allows us to ignore the more fundamental question, which is how to control the spread of the disease

Or, to put it another way, we may need more lockdowns.

This is not a popular position. Far more popular is the notion that vaccines will allow Canadians to return painlessly to our old ways.

That’s what Prime Minister Justin Trudeau seems to mean when he refers to a “one-dose summer” and a “twodose fall.”

In effect, he is saying that as long as Canadians meet their vaccination targets, we are on the path back to normalcy.

Indeed, Canada is doing so well on the vaccine front that it is suffering an embarrassment of riches. We have more vaccines than we know what to do with.

Thus the key political questions are no longer focused on the pandemic itself, but on the morality of various vaccination combinations.

Should Canada give its allocation of the controversial AstraZeneca vaccine to poorer countries who need it more? Or should it reserve that vaccine for second shots to those Canadians who were given AstraZeneca in the first round?

Or conversely, should we give priority to those who prefer to mix and match vaccines by combining, say, an initial shot of AstraZeneca with a second dose of Pfizer?

The focus on the intricacies of vaccination is great fun. It also allows us to ignore the more fundamental question, which is how to control the spread of the disease.

In particular, we have not come to terms with the spread throughout the workplace. We are now vaccinating many essential workers — which is an improvement. But we have not made the necessary long-term changes to the nature of work that the pandemic requires.

Such changes would take into account the so-called gig economy, the growth of contract work and the increased pressure on people to work from home.

Instead, we zero in on the trivial, such as whether golf courses should be open. (The answer, by the way, is yes.)

If this pandemic were solely about shots in arms, Canada would be doing fine. We are on the way to near universal vaccination.

But it is about more than that. It is also about stemming the spread of this dangerous disease — about stopping it dead in its tracks.

And that demands more than a simple vaccination.