Hooray! No more travel restrictions! Anyone carrying the COVID-19 virus and all its variants is free to enter Canada and infect Canadians. More Canadians will die. Hooray!
Of course, I am being sarcastic. I understand perfectly well that we need to move back to some form of “normality” with respect to our borders. But let’s not get too excited about the decision. Let’s not declare it a “win” as Pierre Poilievre did. Nor, by the way, was removing the travel restrictions something the Conservatives managed to do despite their claims to the contrary.
COVID-19 and its ongoing metamorphosis is going to be with us for a long time unless we maintain strong vaccination rates. One way to accomplish this is by making vaccinations mandatory. Removing mandates for vaccination will develop into an attitude of “why bother?” and feed the self-righteousness of those who think vaccination is wrong.
We forget our history. We forget the ravishes of diseases such as polio and smallpox. We forget that our great-grandparents would see infants die of curable diseases as a matter of course.
COVID-19 kills 1.07 per cent of the people it infests. That is one in every 100 around the world. That is one in every 100 Canadians. Not to make too much light of those numbers but yes, your chances of dying from COVID-19 are not high. However, every death is a tragedy – particularly when they can be prevented.
I was in New Zealand when the pandemic took hold. The prime minister shut the doors on the country. As an island nation, New Zealand isolated itself from the rest of the world. For two years, New Zealand had still only 32 deaths, despite having a population comparable to British Columbia.
But isolation could not last. Eventually, the NZ government had to open the doors and the number of deaths jumped dramatically – from 109 on March 14, 2022, to 3,010 on October 8. That’s the direct result of allowing the free flow of the population in and off the island.
I am not saying Canada should keep its borders closed. But removing the testing restrictions is not a win. Not when each new outbreak will kill one per cent of the people infected. A necessity but it shouldn’t be something to cheer about.
Todd Whitcombe is a chemistry professor at UNBC.
