CANADA needs an ambitious COVID elimination strategy
A stone angel, head bowed, looks down from the Vimy War Memorial in France, as if reading the names of the 3,600 Canadians who died there.
Incredibly, we would need six such monuments to honour the Canadians who have already died of COVID; so many lives sacrificed for want of political resolve.
Canada’s faint-hearted response to the COVID variants is typical — delay, until the virus has spread to every province; isolation, encompassing just three of the virus’s 14 day incubation period; exemptions for air crews and all those arriving by land — while premiers rush to reopen.
It’s no surprise that Australia’s Lowy Institute has identified 60 nations more successful than Canada in defeating the pandemic and in preventing needless deaths.
It seems to me that Canadians face a stark choice; either we can prevail by adopting the ambitious coordinated elimination strategies of bolder nations, or surrender and start work on a seventh, eighth…memorial.
Mike Ward
Duncan
