I have made no secret of the fact that, in my humble opinion, Canada (and most of the rest of the world), took a wrong turn in 2022 as regards dealing with the COVID-19 pandemic. Like many other countries, Canada and its provinces bought the "freedom" CoolAid - i.e. any restrictions whatsoever on the people's movements and lifestyles are necessarily a "bad thing", and we should at least pretend that the pandemic is over, even if it quite clearly isn't.
Studies suggest that Canada's public health agencies have actually done a pretty good job, at least compared to ten other major industrial nations with largely similar health systems. Our relatively strict approach and high vaccination levels did in fact result in fewer cases and deaths on a per capita basis, with only Japan (which maintained even stricter controls) performing better.
Since then, though, Canada, like many other countries, has almost completely relaxed vaccination requirements, travel restrictions, mask mandates, testing, tracing, and even basic data collection and useful statistics, etc, all in an attempt to persuade people that the danger is past (and to kowtow to various business and industry lobbyists and pressure groups).
But the danger is not past. This pandemic is far from over, and new waves and variants are coming thick and fast (and will continue to do so). But now we are flying blind, with little or no management or monitoring. Our public health services, under pressure from various levels of government, have essentially given up, and abandoned us to the vagaries of fate. And that could still come back to bite us.
A good analysis of just how far we have strayed from the straight and narrow appears in this article on The Tyee. Disregarding the rather sensationalist title - "Get Ready for the Forever Plague"! - it is actually a good, thoughtful, research-based article on what we should be doing at this point in the pandemic, and the extent to which we are not.
There is increasing evidence that the new Omicron variants are evading our vaccines (which were never the whole answer to the problem anyway), and destabilizing our immune systems. Even some trained health professionals are dismissing COVID infections as inevitable, even beneficial. But that does not gel with the research. COVID infections can lead to immune dysregulation, blood clots, nerve cell death, lung damage, kidney failure and brain damage, and repeated infections (as is increasingly happening of late) just increases the changes of these outcomes, long COVID, and other unrelated infections (it may be implicated in the recent hepatitis outbreak among children, and possibly even the global monkeypox outbreak and Florida's meningitis outbreak).
It seems that repeated reinfections do not confer any additional immunity, as had been hoped, and as more variants arise and take hold, reinfections will become the norm, especially among the unvaccinated (but increasingly among the vaccinated and boosted). A US Veterans Affairs study has shown that a second infection doubles the risk of death, blood clots and lung damage, and triples the risk of hospitalization. It also has a negative effect on future immunity, as it subverts the body's immune recognition and depletes, not strengthens, T-cells. A Danish study found that COVID infections is associated with a 3.5 times increased risk of Alzheimer's disease, a 2.5 times increased risk of Parkinson's disease, and an increased risk of ischemic stroke.
So, letting the virus run unchecked, as we seem to be doing now, is surely a recipe for a whole epidemic of neurological and chronic illnesses. And then, of course, there is the spectre of long COVID - with its laundry list of symptoms, from brain fog and fatigue to muscle pain, chronic inflammation, blood clots and kidney failure - which is already affecting anywhere between 5% and 60% of cases, depending on which study you prefer. This is a serious and persistent condition; it is not just "the flu".
In the absence of common-sense public health measures, the virus can, and will, run rampant, and the more people the virus infects, the more opportunity it has to mutate and produce increasingly contagious variants. Here in Ontario, we are already in a new wave - the sixth? seventh? who knows? - courtesy of the BA.5 variant, despite the fact that we are entering into high summer, traditionally a time of low cases and relative freedom from public health restrictions. Hospitalizations and deaths - the only data that is still reported on a reasonably regular basis - are already on the increase, and health experts are warning those who will listen.
This pandemic is likely to run for years, and the more hands-off we are, the easier it will spread and mutate. New variants are arising way faster than our vaccine developments. The BA.4 and BA.5 subvariants are less lethal than earlier variants, but substantially more transmissible, neck-and-neck with measles, which up until now was considered the most infectious disease known to man ( it is as yet unknown how transmissible the growing BA.2.75 subvariant will be, but the trend is towards more and transmissibility). Reducing the continued spread and transmission of the virus is the only way to slow down viral evolution, and there is no guarantee that it will evolve into a benign or endemic state in the next year or two.
So, it may not be what you want to hear, and certainly not what businesses and governments want to hear, but we actually do need to go back to N95 masking (preferably free), improved ventilation and HEPA filters in schools and workplaces, paid sick leave for the infected and, yes, transparent and effective data collection and reporting. This is only what many public health experts are already saying, just not the public health experts that have the ears of our governments.
And, for individuals, the "three C's": avoid closed spaces with poor ventilation, avoid crowded spaces, and avoid close contact settings wherever possible. And, of course, mask up: it's really not a big deal.
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