Tag: who

Awkward Facts

April 17, 2024

The Covid crisis brought to my attention the Canadian Government’s recent flood of announcements to address the ‘housing crisis.’ To contextualize this ”crisis,” I delved into statistics. I discovered that sixty-five percent of Canadians own their homes (and therefore experience no housing crisis), and the income-to-house price ratio has skyrocketed over the last decade. This has created significant hurdles for young people, making stepping onto the property ladder increasingly tricky.

However, the billions of dollars announced to encourage home construction seem overkill. The demand for housing, which many studies concluded resulted from the recent surge in international migration, may be reduced by government policy, limiting future immigration flows. Mortgage rates may also come down soon, alleviating the need to solve a “crisis.” However, throwing vast amounts of money at a sudden “crisis,” which has evolved recently, reminded me of the pandemic’s beginning. Let me describe.

The Canadian Minister of Procurement ordered 419 million Covid vaccines at the pandemic’s onset, costing nine billion dollars. The experience of Italy and New York State with Covid was a stark reminder of the potential devastation without vaccines. However, with a population of 38 million people in 2020, Canadians would receive ten vaccines each. The Public Health Agency of Canada recommended two doses for vaccination and boosters every six months. So, the vaccines purchased would suffice for five years for all Canadians.

As a result of publicizing the dangers of Covid, over 80 percent of the population raced to get the first two shots. Although the vaccines kept coming, and booster shots were widely available, people decided that two vaccines were sufficient, and fewer and fewer people took a third or fourth dose. By the time the sixth shot, the XBB.1.5 Omicron subvariant designed to shore up protection against the SARS-COV-2 descendants came about in late 2023, only fifteen percent of the population decided to receive the dose.

By late 2023, people considered Covid more of a nuisance than a dangerous sickness, similar to having a cold. With all the vaccines ordered but not used, the British Medical Journal called Canada one of the most vaccine-hoarding countries in the world. The Director General of the World Health Organization, in 2022, remarked that Canada was hoarding vaccines at the expense of poorer nations. Of the over 400 million vaccines contracted, only 105 million were used by December 2023 in Canada.

It’s disheartening to note that policymakers seemed to overlook the fact that vaccines have expiration dates. They also seemed to disregard the reality that the virus mutates, necessitating the development of updated vaccines to maintain effectiveness. As a result, millions of doses expired and were unusable   However, the contracts for the original orders still have to be honored. For instance, Canada still owes C$350 million to Novavax, one of the vaccine manufacturers, for vaccines ordered. 

So, was Canada successful in avoiding Covid? Can we put some metrics to success? The Canadian experience with Covid indicates that Canada fared well among the G7 countries in handling the pandemic, with less than a thousand deaths per million people, second best after Japan. However, we did spend a significant amount of money, and much of it was wasted. It is astounding that Canada used only 25 percent of the vaccines purchased. I wonder if we could have been more agile and intelligent in our decision-making, considering people’s willingness to receive periodic shots over the years and the expiry dates of the millions of vaccines ordered.

I also wonder if the Government has learned anything from throwing so much money at the Covid issue that could be applied to their new “housing crisis ” so that Canada can avoid throwing good money away with minimal results.

Is Covid Over?

April 26, 2023

Is Covid over? Is it time for a post-mortem? No, not really; although President Biden announced that COVID is over, the World Health Organization (WHO) is still to announce it. And I just saw many people at my local grocery store with masks. It is over but let’s just wait until the masks disappear.

Although the pandemic was formally introduced by WHO on March 11, 2020, it was first identified in Wuhan, China, in December 2019. The pandemic in Canada triggered lockdowns and the government called for masking and distancing. And vaccinations would become the go-to weapon with which to fight it, whenever Canada could secure a supply of it. Do you remember?

But we did not have vaccines and a major pharmaceutical company was to be built. We were told it would take over a year for its construction to be followed by production and distribution in a couple of years! Fortunately, we did not have to wait for a Canadian vaccine.

By late summer of 2020, Pfizer and Moderna developed and began to distribute vaccines and our Minister responsible for procurement announced that she had ordered up to four hundred million vaccines without telling us when they would be ready. I was amazed that Canada would order almost ten times the number of vaccines required for our population, but we began to import and receive the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines before any vaccines were produced in Canada. The provincial government set up what turned out to be a cumbersome and slow vaccination process through community centers and schools.

The stores painted lines for one-way traffic to avoid crowding between shelves, and symbols appeared on the floor indicating where one should stand at the cash, six feet apart. The same was done outside of stores, markings were painted six feet apart and we lined up often in terribly cold weather, waiting to be let indoors, limited by the store’s capacity, based on its square footage. Attendants at store entrances monitored our entry.

My bridge club at the community center closed dictated by the local health authority. Subsuequently, when it was allowed to open, the club could not figure out how to” “distance” around bridge tables and how to clean cards for each hand to be dealt.

My gym closed.

And we hoped for a reopening of facilities in a brief period that did not materialize, and when it did, another lockdown was instituted caused by the next wave of the virus.

Vaccination has become the major instrument of defense against the virus. While most people receieved the vaccine volunarily, some vehemently opposed it based on faulty science.

Looking back three years since the pandemic started, I think that its consequences have been significant. For example, the combination of masking, distancing, and lockdowns has resulted in isolation. You stayed at home and avoided people; the government encouraged it. That, in turn, has brought about a need for socializing, for meeting and talking with people in person and not only on the phone.

Yes, ZOOM has blossomed, and many people were happy with the technology and continued with their bridge and book clubs. But after a while, many felt isolated and bored staring at the computer screen; at the fast dealing by the computer for bridge hands and lack of friendly conversation; at the truncated discussion of book clubs using ZOOM, without the personal get-together, supplanted by coffee and chit-chat.

People’s isolation was further exacerbated by private industry, and public agencies sending people home to work, in an attempt to reduce physical proximity among people. But in many businesses, people could not work at home and were laid off, with an enormous impact on the hospitality and service industries; coffee shops, and restaurants closed.

To avoid a cratering economy, the federal government started pumping out money, like water through a fire hose, to assist businesses and people to survive the effects of the pandemic. It has taken some time, but the long-term consequences of the infusion of enormous amounts of government money resulted in inflation. And surprise, surprise: inflation caused unionized people to push for higher salaries and as an example of this trend, we have the largest public service union in Canada on strike today.

In its ultimate wisdom, the federal government closed the border for most people to enter the country, even though the spread of COVID in Canada was internal from people having the virus already. The US responded in kind to the closure of the border by Canada, and that created a bit of a hardship for us, having all of our children and grandchildren in the US.

With a gradual easing of travel to and from the US, the government introduced the ArriveCan system, a computerized entry system that one had to fill in a day before the entry into Canada, requiring proof of vaccination. The US responded in kind and required vaccination from Canadians. This border entry control system often led to unpleasant experiences, such as getting tested for Covid in time on both sides of the border. And it has also led to a new and flourishing Covid-testing industry.

Reflecting on the past three years, I realize that I need a measure of social interaction and the number of such interactions may vary with people, but it is something that I need for my sanity.

 Yes, I participated in many ZOOM meetings. For example, we set up a group of friends and presented to each other, in turn, our travel experiences. We ordered a take-out dinner and ate and drank together with friends via ZOOM. But in the end, we concluded that going out together was much more fun.

This is where I am now; I shed the use of my mask but carry one in my back pocket should a medical institution or other agency require one (such as the Ottawa Hospital). When I go shopping and see masked people, I ignore them but respect their use of it. Hopefully, it will not be long before vaccinations become an annual affair similar to the cold vaccine and we’ll be able to forget about the last three years.