Disclaimer #1: I have been triple vaccinated against Covid. I wore a mask when mandated and followed other Covid restrictions. I have never tested positive for Covid, although it is certainly possible that I have had a mild dose.
Disclaimer #2: I wrote most of this blog two or three months ago but refrained from posting it mainly because I didn’t want to have to deal with all the negative comments it would generate.
Disclaimer #3: Although I have training in how to conduct and evaluate research, I am not a scientist or a medical doctor.
So, as a non-professional, how do I dare to offer an opinion on Covid restrictions? Shouldn’t I leave that to the professionals?
I am convinced by the statistical data that the Covid vaccines greatly reduce the rate of becoming seriously ill, being hospitalized, and dying of Covid. So, I think that those who refuse to be vaccinated are wrong.
However, I also believe that they have a right to be wrong. The reality is that we non-professionals are required to make medical decisions all the time. Do I feel sick enough to go to the doctor or the emergency room? Should I have that risky operation, weighing all the possible benefits and risks that the surgeon has outlined? Should I bother to have a flu shot this year? What medication should I take for my cold? Should I take the Oxycontin or morphine the doctor prescribed after my operation? Our modern governments insist that “A woman has sole rights over her own body,” when it comes to abortion. Why should that absolute control cease when it comes to Covid vaccines? Governments generally do not require people to disclose whether they have other communicable diseases such as AIDS or require people to be vaccinated against the flu or other communicable diseases. So, why does the right to medical privacy and medical autonomy cease when it comes to Covid? (Some governments have ruled that hospital workers wear masks if they are not vaccinated against flu, a mandate that was met with considerable resistance.)
So, let us consider vaccine passports and vaccine restrictions.
Vaccine passports were introduced to allow the economy to open up somewhat during the pandemic. It meant that if I had been vaccinated, I could go to a restaurant secure in the knowledge that everyone else in the restaurant had also been vaccinated and could not pass Covid on to me—except for the cooks and servers, who did not have to be vaccinated.
Vaccine mandates seems to have been based on the assumption that the vaccines offered immunity or at least very strong protection against Covid. The flaw in that argument is that if the vaccines offered even very strong protection, why should I worry about going to a restaurant and being around unvaccinated people? They couldn’t infect me anyway.
But maybe vaccine passports were intended to prevent unvaccinated people from gathering in any public place and passing Covid to each other? If so, that was never made clear.
Vaccine passports seemed to work well during the Delta variant surge. It was a more lethal strain of the disease but not so easily transmitted. Delta was said to be “a disease of the unvaccinated.” This wasn’t strictly true, but it is true that unvaccinated people were much more likely to get infected, become very sick, be hospitalized, and die.
This changed with the Omicron variant, which was much more easily transmitted and was much less lethal. Both vaccinated and unvaccinated people contracted omicron, in large numbers. (This was what some health experts said would happen, as Covid followed the path of some other diseases that have tended to become more transmissible and less lethal over time.)
A useful test case was NHL hockey players. They were almost 100% vaccinated (all but one player, I think), and yet the vast majority of them contracted Covid. Every member of the Vancouver Canucks has had Covid, some of them twice. We know this because, in order to be allowed to play, players had to be tested every day. As a result, many of them tested positive while only having minor symptoms or no symptoms at all.
If we extrapolate that to the general population, we can assume that a majority of Canadians have had Covid at some time, perhaps as a mild cold or even without developing symptoms, over the past two years. (Governments are now admitting that a third to half of Canadians have had Covid at some point, but the numbers could be higher.) In fact, Omicron became so widespread that governments have essentially given up on testing the general population and counting cases. Since over 90% of us have been vaccinated and many of us have had the disease, we probably have about as much immunity as we are going to get.
And vaccine mandates, isolating unvaccinated people from everyone else, are not going to stop the spread of omicron. It is too transmissible. Canadian government rules preventing the unvaccinated from travelling across borders and requiring travellers to be tested no longer make much sense since the disease is so prevalent in our own population already. It is far too late to try to keep Covid out of the country. It is ludicrous that 20,000 unmasked fans can gather to cheer on the Toronto Maple Leafs but the team itself cannot fly across the border without being tested. It is ludicrous that thousands of citizens can gather for a political rally, but the government insists it is too dangerous for 300-odd MPs to gather in Parliament. It still makes some sense to require care home workers to be vaccinated (since it could reduce the rate of transmission or the seriousness of transition), but it does not make sense to require civil servants working in an office cubicle or from home to also be vaccinated. (I have a suspicion that the federal government’s insistence on maintaining restrictions long after provincial governments have eased up on theirs might have something to with the federal government not being willing to admit that the trucker protest might have been right. The government does not want to appear to be caving in to pressure.)
Furthermore, the vaccines seem to wear off and lose their effectiveness after a few months. This may partly be because they were not normal vaccines anyway. Normal vaccines inject a dead virus into the body, triggering the body to produce antibodies to combat it. Covid vaccines don’t work that way, and I have yet to see a clear explanation of what they are and how they work in terms that a lay person can understand. (Governments telling us to trust them on this is not enough when they are often less trustworthy in other areas.)
We non-professionals seem to have grasped this, as the rate of people getting booster shots and children being vaccinated seems to have plateaued. From their own experiences and observations, many people have concluded that while Covid is a significant threat, the vaccination protection they have already received is about as good as they are going to get. They have recognized that while children do get Covid, most do not get very sick. The old and vulnerable, on the other hand, are still dying of Covid even thought they have been vaccinated, just as the old and vulnerable die of flu every year even if they have been vaccinated. Governments also seem to have recognized this reality as they have ceased to strongly push for more people to be vaccinated or to get booster shots.
The reality is that the Covid vaccines do not provide immunity or even exceptionally strong protection against Covid. They provide strong protection perhaps. While health authorities have insisted that they are “safe and effective,” the reality is that they are relatively safe and generally effective.
It is helpful to understand that, although this was not always made clear by government and public health authorities, all of the vaccines, lockdowns, handwashing, mask wearing, and vaccine restrictions were never intended to stop or prevent the spread of Covid. That was impossible. They were intended only to slow the spread of the disease to keep it from overwhelming the health care system. That was a very real danger and could have resulted in very large death rates. (There were places in the world that at times ran out of ventilators and hospital beds.)
After all of the lockdowns, restrictions, and vaccine mandates, government and public health authorities are now telling us that we will “have to learn to live with Covid.” This means that the old and vulnerable will continue to die of Covid, just as they continue to die of flu and other communicable diseases every year. It also means that there will likely be lockdowns of seniors’ homes and some other places, just as there are occasional lockdowns due to outbreaks of flu, SARS, etc. Annual Covid booster shots may become as routine as annual flu shots; they, after all, provide some protection. And I suspect people will continue to have recurring bouts of Covid, just as people in tropical countries have recurring bouts of diseases such as malaria—it will be seen as serious but inevitable. There is also the possibility that a new Covid variant will arise, creating a need for further lockdowns.
The evidence suggests that masks, hand washing, quarantines, and lockdowns are still effective—against Covid and against other diseases—at least to some extent. In fact, these measures have been used in various settings and in specific situations for many years, just not for entire populations. As the rules on lockdowns and masks have eased, Covid cases have risen—along with cases of colds, flu, and other diseases. The government-imposed restrictions over the past couple of years protected us against more than Covid. But the reality is that the restrictions cannot be continued forever. Humans are social beings, and it is not good for us, physically as well as mentally, to remain isolated indefinitely. Nor can our economy remain shut down or restricted forever. There comes a point when the restrictions cause more problems than they prevent—and I think we have reached that point.