We are facing our 3rd lockdown in parts of Canada. It sucks, could have been prevented, but here we are. How can we make sure this is the last time this happens? With vaccines and summer weather coming, we have a golden opportunity to eliminate Covid completely...
We should adopt common sense measures used by Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Australia etc. to hammer case numbers down. Life in these places is mostly normal, with brief lockdowns whenever an outbreak happens. Schools are safe, businesses are thriving, and no one is dying
Why is it important to do this? Although most adults will be vaccinated, children will be left unprotected. Most don't get seriously ill with Covid, but they can get disabling long-term symptoms. No one knows for how long, but can we take that risk with 10% of all children?
Rapid testing was underused in the pandemic, but we can use them to catch outbreaks and nip them in the bud. We can make workplaces, businesses and schools into safe spaces. We have a few months to scale production up. Cases we prevent will more than pay for the costs involved
We will need to control our borders, including real penalties to those who violate testing and quarantine measures. We need to implement these even between provinces, as Australian states have done, and as Atlantic Canada did to create its successful bubble.
We need to step up vaccinations. We should have enough to give every adult in Canada one dose by the end of June. Each protected adult is less likely to spread to others or take up an ICU bed. Some regions are doing very well, others are lagging very badly.
Open up safely, close quickly and briefly: when cases do flare up, we can quickly identify them through monitoring and rapid testing, and briefly close and then reopen again. Nova Scotia and Newfoundland have done this successfully repeatedly and are living mostly normal lives.
We can eliminate Covid from our communities. It won't be easy. If we don’t, we are the mercy of all the new variants that keep popping up, some that are vaccine resistant. We can prove as a society that we are capable of taking on hard challenges and winning.
The cost of doing nothing is visible right now. Scores of essential front-line workers are getting sick and coming to our ICUs, many young people in their 30s to 50s. Many more will get sick in the coming months unless we change our mindset
@YoniFreedhoff @ASPphysician @jkwan_md @imgrund @MaryFernando_ @IrfanDhalla @DFisman @Billius27 @lisa_iannattone @DrScottLear @FurnessColin @DGBassani @CorsIAQ @RobertGreenhill @DrZoeHyde @ZeroCovidNow1 @NaheedD @SharkawyMD @Samir_Grover @SabiVM
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