Covid-19 Journal, 17 Feb., 2022: Freedom convoy, border blockades, reopening, and why Canada has had fewer per capita deaths than the US

Events have been happening so quickly regarding Covid-19 in Ontario and the rest of Canada that it has been quite hard to keep up with all of the news.??It’s also hard to prioritize what I should and should not be talking about because there’s so much, and all interconnected. I will start with a comment I made in my last journal posting.

In discussing??Alberta’s??Premier Kenny’s comments on the news on Feb. 11, I noted that he didn’t seem to be following medical evidence in his push to reopen, and hoped that Ontario wouldn’t follow suit–but feared it would.??I said, “If past history is any basis for judging, Ontario has rushed its reopening timelines every time before, so it would not be surprising if they did it again”, and now, they have. Originally, at the beginning of the month, the Premier put forward a plan for staged reopening, based on advice from his Science Table.??It was a??measured series of timed reopening stages in which restrictions were to be gradually lifted. It made sense. Then last week,??he announced that more restrictions would be lifted early because we were doing so well against Covid-19, and true enough, we have been doing well, although the public health people still advised caution.??But the Freedom Convoy intervened, and the Premier felt he had to act.??

At first, he had supported the Freedom Convoy, but then he heard that they were headed to??Queen’s Park to create a blockade in downtown Toronto, after which he opposed them.??Following two weeks of inaction, he enacted a State of Emergency (Friday), and shortly thereafter (Monday), announced that he was going to remove all restrictions as of March 1. His given reasons appear to be, “Do you want these damn masks? … Or do you want them off?”?(Star Editorial Board, 2022). Not exactly sound science and the timing of this was such that the Freedom Convoy protesters could claim a victory, something that I consider appalling. I’m not the only one to notice that his timing was poor, to say the least, as Figure12 shows.

Figure?12.?Cartoon showing Ford asleep at the wheel.?(Moudakis, 2022c).

The situation appears to be more serious than first thought. Coutts, Alberta, is a border crossing area where there has been a blockade and where the RCMP have moved in decisively. According to the CBC news today, 13 people have been arrested on weapons charges and four of those have been charged with conspiracy to commit the murders of RCMP officers?(Grant, 2022).?“Of the four southern Alberta men accused of conspiring to murder RCMP officers, two have ties to a man who founded a neo-fascist, white supremacist group that aims to accomplish its goals through violence” (Grant, 2022). Apparently, these people have connections to an ultra-right, US-style militia called?Diagolon. Quoting UNB professor David Hoffman, “Those who believe in the Diagolon movement feel a civil war is needed to create a new state that would run diagonally from Alaska, through western Canada's provinces, all the way south to Florida” (Grant, 2022). It’s more than a little disturbing that some in our main-stream political parties are quite comfortable supporting groups that support the violent overthrow of our elected governments.

There is good news, however. We do indeed seem to be seeing the rate of Covid-19 among the population decreasing. Figure 13 shows my graph of hospitalization data for the month of February so far.

Figure?13.?Ontario hospitalization data for Feb. 1-17. As can be seen, there is a steady downward trend.

The steady downward trend can be clearly seen in both the raw data (blue) and the 7-day average (red). This is very good news, but as our public health have warned, people should still take sensible precautions.

More on the bright side, there was a recent BBC News article on why Canada has a lower?per capita?death and illness rate from Covid-19 than the US?(Debusmann Jr., 2022)?. First of all, it’s wonderful to hear this. Second, the article gives some details that are nice to hear.

The article states,?“There is a staggering difference, for example, in how many more Americans have died because of Covid compared to Canadians, both in absolute numbers and as the ratio of deaths per million inhabitants … As of 12 February - and even with infection rates falling across the country - new cases in the US stood at about 543 per million people, compared with 258 in Canada, according to Our World in Data, a collaboration between Oxford University and an educational charity” (2022).??Figure 14 shows a composite image of the data, showing case rates in the US vs. Canada, and reported deaths in the US vs. Canada.

Figure?14.?Case rates, US vs. Canada (left) and reported deaths, US vs. Canada (right).?(Debusmann Jr., 2022).

There is a lot of good detail in the article, which is very thorough. For me though, the most important bits relate to?whythis is so. Among the stated causes are …

·??????Vaccination rates?per capita?are higher in Canada than the US.

·??????“Unlike the US, however, Canada has a universal, decentralised and publicly funded healthcare system administered by its 13 provinces and territories” (2022). This allows Canadians to more easily get access to health care, and also resulted in fewer people winding up in intensive care. This is attributed to Canada’s health care system, “… intervening quicker, and in different ways” (2022).

·??????Canada’s mandates have been stricter and lasted longer.

·??????“Canadian public health experts and many government officials believe that the more gradual relaxation of these rules - which are dependent on improvements in public heath data - has allowed it to avoid the same the high levels of infections and deaths that have been experienced in the US, where numbers spiked in a number of locations that rushed to ease regulations” (2022).

The article notes however goes on to note, quoting Professor Upshur (no affiliation given), “People do get fed up and want to will [Covid-19] away …But you can’t will it away–or honk it away”. This brings this journal entry back full circle to the Freedom Convoy and the rush to reopen, rather than proceeding gradually and according to the stated plan.

That’s all I have for today. I will write again as the situation evolves.

References

Debusmann Jr., Bernd. 2022. "Why is Canada's Covid death rate so much lower than US?". BBC News, Last Modified 15 Feb., accessed 17 Feb. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-60380317.

Grant, Meghan. 2022. "The Coutts 13: New details on the men and women arrested at border blockade."?CBC News?17 Feb.

Moudakis, Theo. 2022. For the people. Toronto: Toronto Star Publishing.

Star Editorial Board. 2022. "For Doug Ford (and other politicians), emotion beats logic every time."?Toronto Star, 15 Feb., Editorials. https://www.thestar.com/opinion/editorials/2022/02/15/for-doug-ford-and-other-politicians-emotion-beats-logic-every-time.html.

* As always in these journals, Figure numbers continue from previous posts.

[This is part of an ongoing series of journal posts about my life during Covid-19. Suggested by a museum colleague, it is intended to eventually be a minor historical document–an account of how life changed during the pandemic. I make no claim to drama or interesting detail, just life as I am living it].