Canada Has a COVID Crisis - Especially in Ontario

On Canada Day last July 1st, I wrote about missing my home and native land and contemplated moving back there.

At the time, I was unemployed and the Trump Administration was still in office. Both of those conditions have changed. Canada was doing significantly better when it came to COVID-19. Alas this too has changed. 

It wasn't so long that former President Obama and the head of the WHO praised Canada's COVID response. Perhaps it was premature but on September 11, 2020, Canada actually had a day where no one died of COVID-19. Back then there were slightly over 135,000 cases. Today, it's approaching 1.1 million cases with 23,500 deaths. That might pale in comparison to the U.S. But consider the factoid. Whereas the COVID mortality rate in the U.S. is 1.8%, it is 2.1% in Canada.

The crux of the problem is that Canada has a vaccine shortage in large part due to the fact it cannot produce its own vaccines which has been a failure of government policy going back decades but right now the buck stops with Justin Trudeau's Liberals. Simply put, Canada must import its vaccines which would be fine if the supply chain was working effectively but just today Moderna announced it would be cutting shipments of its vaccine to Canada, the U.K. and several other countries. Throw in the pause with the administration of the Johnson & Johnson vaccines due to blood clotting issues and we can expect to see more clinics closed and appointments cancelled.

This compounds an already bad vaccine distribution situation. My mother received her first Pfizer vaccine last week. But she is not due to receive her second dose until the end of July. Given the current problems it is entirely possible that date could be pushed back. 

No Canadian province has been harder than my native Ontario where most of immediate family and maternal relatives live. There have been a litany of lockdowns. Today, Ontario's Tory Premier Doug Ford announced a two week extension on the lockdown giving police the authority to question people who are outside their homes and compel them to provide their address. Many fear that police will disproportionately target Aboriginal and visible minority communities many of whose members are in jobs which preclude them from working at home. However, provincial and local police forces use this power it is a power they ought not to have. Canadians are not getting peace, order and good government from the Liberals or the Tories and probably wouldn't fare any better with the NDP either.

While Georgia isn't always peachy where it concerns efforts towards voter suppression, a high rate of crime and not to mention being last in the nation in terms of fully vaccinating its adult population, I am at least for the moment better off here in the Deep South than in the Great White North.