In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first vaccines, there was little noise emanating from Canadian anti-vaxers. But later health authorities and political leaders continued to defend the vaccines without adequately acknowledging that Delta and Omicron w…
In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first vaccines, there was little noise emanating from Canadian anti-vaxers. But later health authorities and political leaders continued to defend the vaccines without adequately acknowledging that Delta and Omicron were making the vaccine dramatically less effective. This became fertile soil to nurture the fledgling doubts of the anti-vaxers.
In defense of the authorities, there wasn't any new advice they could offer other than tell us to stay the course and hope for the best. To this day, we await the arrival of a new Greek letter.
Perhaps the most under-used argument would have been to get Canadians to reflect on why the US per-capita death toll was three times ours. This cost Americans an additional 650,000 lives! They developed the vaccine, made it available everywhere, and rolled it out well before we got our first doses. They made horrible mistakes at the outset by underestimating the airborne spread of the virus but so did we. We had multiple disasters in Seniors' residences as did they.
What stands out was the early US vaccine hesitancy and their continued aversion to wearing masks. These were fueled by a historical tradition of feisty independence and by Donald Trump and his minions fanning the flames. We avoided these pitfalls and our outcome was much better. Fortunately for us, Canada's own wave of vaccine denial hit much later in the pandemic
As to the Truckers' Convoy, our federal government's response was certainly not Fabian, but rather Confrontation, Confusion, and finally, Draconian.
Thanks for an excellent post.
In the early days of the pandemic, when Canadians were anxiously awaiting the arrival of the first vaccines, there was little noise emanating from Canadian anti-vaxers. But later health authorities and political leaders continued to defend the vaccines without adequately acknowledging that Delta and Omicron were making the vaccine dramatically less effective. This became fertile soil to nurture the fledgling doubts of the anti-vaxers.
In defense of the authorities, there wasn't any new advice they could offer other than tell us to stay the course and hope for the best. To this day, we await the arrival of a new Greek letter.
Perhaps the most under-used argument would have been to get Canadians to reflect on why the US per-capita death toll was three times ours. This cost Americans an additional 650,000 lives! They developed the vaccine, made it available everywhere, and rolled it out well before we got our first doses. They made horrible mistakes at the outset by underestimating the airborne spread of the virus but so did we. We had multiple disasters in Seniors' residences as did they.
What stands out was the early US vaccine hesitancy and their continued aversion to wearing masks. These were fueled by a historical tradition of feisty independence and by Donald Trump and his minions fanning the flames. We avoided these pitfalls and our outcome was much better. Fortunately for us, Canada's own wave of vaccine denial hit much later in the pandemic
As to the Truckers' Convoy, our federal government's response was certainly not Fabian, but rather Confrontation, Confusion, and finally, Draconian.