Last Updated on: 23rd February 2022, 03:03 pm
Here’s a good segment from the Morning Edition on CBC Kitchener Waterloo talking with Dr. Peter Lin about what the phrase “living with COVID” should mean in a world in which we hope to get things right. Spoiler: it doesn’t mean what the anti-vax, COVID minimizing and denying types or Doug Ford are telling us it does. It only runs about eight minutes, but if you need a TLDL summary, it pretty much goes like this:
We can’t wish ourselves back to 2019, no matter how much we’d like to. If we’re going to get normalcy back, it’s going to have to come with some conditions for a while. We don’t have to do largely useless things like obsessively clean every surface, but the masks and some safe distance should probably stick around for a time even when they’re not mandatory if we hope to protect ourselves, each other, and by extension the economy, the health system and life in general.
He says that dropping the vaccine passport system makes sense mostly, since there’s no way to guarantee that the virus doesn’t exist in a vaccinated person who can then spread it to others. But importantly, he still recommends vaccines, because there’s a difference between a virus existing in you and it hospitalizing or killing you. For me, the difference between spread and severe illness is a crucial distinction that we need to make when figuring out the road ahead. Unfortunately it’s also a concept that’s been co-opted by the unvaccinated crowd to argue that vaccines are useless, and I’m not sure how we deal with that since being rational with them doesn’t appear to work.
There’s more, but those were the biggest takeaways for me. You can listen to it here since I can’t embed it.
And from that, we move to Doug fucking Ford, the polar opposite of the calm, reasoned voice you just heard. Christ, this idiot. This tantrumming baby. Just out here giving bad March 2020 advice and torpedoing the entire vaccination effort that still represents our best hope for cautiously getting to where he’s now rushing us because it’s almost election time. There’s a way to voice frustration from a position of power and authority. This is not it.
“We are done with it,” Ford said of limits to public activity. “Let’s just start moving on, cautiously. The world’s done with it, let’s just move forward.”
“We just have to be careful, make sure we wash our hands and move forward.”
He suggested there was little value in further rounds of vaccination, pointing out third doses do not provide ironclad protection from infection with Omicron.
“We also know that it doesn’t matter if you have one shot or 10 shots, you can still catch COVID-19,” he said.
“You see the Prime Minister he has triple shots and I know hundreds of people with three shots, who caught COVID-19, we just need to be careful, always make sure we wash our hands and move forward.”
Ontario’s COVID-19 Science Advisory Table estimates a third dose is more than 60 per cent effective at preventing symptomatic COVID-19 infection.He said the public needed to respect the beliefs of those who refuse to get vaccinated against COVID-19.
“There’s rebel rousers, and there are just hard-working people that just don’t believe in it, and that’s their choice. This is about democracy and freedoms and liberties. I hate as a government telling anyone what to do, we just have to get out of this and move forward and protect the jobs.”
He said the vaccination question has ruined personal relationships and divided the province.
“I’ve never seen this province and this country so divided. It’s affected friendships, it’s affected coworkers, it’s affected families.”
He even alluded to divisions inside his own family.
“I can tell you guys, I’ve faced all three of them, and let me tell you something, it’s challenging, especially on the family side.”
Ford’s daughter, Krista Haynes, has repeatedly criticized vaccine mandates and the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines on her social media accounts.