The last two years of cringing under pandemic restrictions must end because the side-effects of running and hiding from COVID-19 are now worse than facing it head on.
We have become a nation, a western world, cowering under an invasive and pervasive nanny state that is sucking the vibrancy from society and neutering the courage to respond to challenge.
With apologies to Dr. Bonnie Henry and all the other well-meaning health officials, it is time to let the virus rip.
Bring it on and let’s beat it together.
Yes, there will be casualties. Real life comes with risk. But the only way to overcome this virus and its continual variants is to let the population gain herd immunity.
That is what ended the last global pandemic, for which there was no vaccine, a century ago and it remains our best hope today.
We have been in full support of antivirus measure to date and believe that everyone eligible should get fully vaccinated.
But the survival rate from COVID-19 is already off the charts.
Of the 2.75 million coronavirus cases in Canada in the past two years, 2.36 million patients have recovered. The 31,530 deaths reported represent about 1 per cent of cases.
We have an effective vaccine and 87.9 per cent of the adult population is already fully vaccinated. There is now even a new pill to augment the vaccinations.
Imagine if we were threatened by a different alien enemy that, even in full attack mode, felled fewer than one target in 100. Would we cower from it or take it on?
Canadians can handle a 99 per cent survival rate without hiding their faces, keeping distance from friends and family, not going to work, shutting down their own businesses or staying stuck at home for months on end.
We are each capable of taking common-sense precautions to protect ourselves without a bureaucrat threatening to arrest us.
We need to open our businesses, cultural and sport venues, our schools, our churches and our borders.
Life under the mandates of COVID-19 is not truly living in the fresh air of a thriving and prosperous environment.
It is symbiotic of capitulation and cowardice.
We fear that Canada’s economy and its social fabric cannot take shifting lockdowns and lockouts for much longer.
Canadians are now twice as likely to die from suicide than from coronavirus and we are losing more people from opioid drug overdoses every day than from the virus. Both trends are harbingers of communities unravelling under COVID restrictions.
As a free society, we risk much more trying to shelter from the virus than by confronting it and getting on with our lives. •
- Frank O’Brien is the editor of Western Investor
