I Am Stuck in Toronto in February Watching the World Get Vaccinated
Toronto’s brutal winter, long lockdown, and the lack of vaccines are wearing away the resolve of Torontonians to take care of one another
It is -12C (10.4F) in Toronto today but people in this city are feeling hot under the collars of their puffies. We have been in unremitting lockdown since November 23, our paltry vaccine supplies were exhausted weeks ago and the promised shipments are still days if not weeks away. To add to our frustrations, the escape hatches from our frozen country are battened down to keep out the marauding new strains of the corona virus.
Since lockdown apparently comes in fifty shades of grey, I should add that Toronto’s ongoing lockdown is night shade. Stores are limited to curb side pick-up, restaurants can only provide take-out service, gyms and movie theatres are closed, secondary and post-secondary schools are providing on-line classes only and we have been prohibited from gathering indoors with anyone outside of our immediate households. I think it is the last restriction that is the most challenging for Torontonians. Outdoor gatherings are not really an option in this climate. Why not just tell us that we can’t have friends?
Toronto has been under the longest lockdown in Canada. We are pandemic weary after three months of living in isolation, deprived of the comforts of socializing with one another and of the amenities of the city. Canadians are fed up and Torontonians, even more than other Canadians, are feeling grumpy.
I am guilty about admitting to these feelings since they are out of character for a proud Canadian. We are a famously polite and patient people. In better times, we could be easily identified in airport baggage checks and public bus terminals waiting quietly in long line-ups. For decades, Canadians have lauded our publicly funded education and health care systems as reflective of the value we place on universal access to these services.
Our need to ensure that no one is left behind was reflected in the recent controversy over the federal government’s decision to utilize the share of vaccines allotted to Canada under the COVAX system, to vaccinate Canadians. Canada contributed $440M to COVAX in September on the understanding that this would secure an equal number of vaccine doses for Canadians and for the populations of the low income nations participating in COVAX. But at the beginning of February, when the supply of vaccine from Europe and the USA to Canada had completely dried up, the news that Canada would actually be taking delivery of vaccine from COVAX, was roundly criticized https://www.bbc.com./news/amp/world-us-canada-55932997. Apparently, Canadians, unlike Americans or Europeans, are uncomfortable prioritizing their own vaccine needs.
That said, the lack of vaccines in Canada this February, is a major source of unhappiness. The government apparently bungled its contract discussions with the drug companies, failing to negotiate on price like Israel and the UAE, who reportedly paid a premium to secure supply. Similarly, Canada didn’t negotiate early delivery, as it is now clear that Canada has no priority in Moderna’s or Pfizer’s shipment schedules. Canada’s decision to enter into contracts with European drug companies to reduce its reliance on US suppliers, seems to have backfired. Global News reported last week that the EU was considering exercising its power to deny authorization for vaccine exports if the vaccine developers did not first honour their obligations to European countries. https://globalnews.ca/news/7604633/eu-vaccine-export-ban-canada-explained/
Whatever the reasons for Canada finding itself in this unvaccinated state, the fact is that by February 11, we had slipped to №38 in global rankings of per capita vaccinations.https://www.citynews1130.com/2021/02/11/canada-ranking-covid-19-vaccine/. As at Feb.18, the US had vaccinated 57.7M people over the same period that Canada vaccinated 1.35M. https://ourworldindata.org/covid-vaccinations
Trapped inside our homes by the virus and successive stay-at-home orders, scanning our cellphones for news of a vaccine rollout that is all uphill, I admit that me and my fellow citizens are feeling self-righteous and more than a little resentful of those who have managed to escape this trying situation.
In mid-January, the Toronto media aired a story about a Sunday vaccine clinic offered by one of Toronto’s most respected hospitals to its staff, including researchers and others in non-patient facing positions. https://www.theglobeand mail.com/amp/canada/article-non-front-line-staff-at-uhn-michael-garron-among-ontario-hospital/ Although hospital officials claimed that they were simply trying to use up the “left-overs” of the vaccine shipment they had administered to the priority groups identified by the government, many Torontonians were unconvinced by this explanation. They suspected that senior staff in the hospital were taking advantage of their positions to “elbow their way” to the front of the vaccine line with apparent indifference to the strong disapproval Canadian society reserves for queue jumpers.
Equally abhorrent to Canadians is the spectre of snow birds, as they are known in Canada, who are defying government travel guidelines restricting non-essential international travel https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/services/diseases/2019-novel-coronavirus-infection/latest-travel-health-advice.html to holiday in Florida and the Caribbean this winter. Shortly after Christmas, stories about these scofflaws began surfacing in the press. Severe public censure greeted politicians who made public pronouncements supporting lockdowns but were then spotted rolling their luggage through the airport, tanned and relaxed after a week in the sun. Since January, when it became obvious that many of the snow birds were taking the opportunity to get themselves vaccinated while on holiday, mild disapproval has turned to outrage for those who abandoned their countrymen to enjoy a carefree life in the southern United States.
The pandemic weariness afflicting Torontonians should not be dismissed as neurotic. Toronto has suffered enormously during the pandemic. The downtown core of the city, home to dozens of shiny high rise office towers, has been deserted by the professionals and office workers who have been working from home since last March. The commercial streets of Toronto’s inner city neighbourhoods are lined by restaurants and stores that have gone out of business. A growing population of homeless are setting up tents in parks throughout the city, preferring the risk of freezing to death to that of contracting COVID in a city shelter. The pandemic pall which hangs over this city means that every Torontonian has experienced a decline in quality of life, even those whose livelihoods or health have not been directly affected.
Some days when I am able to get beyond the day-to-day tedium of lockdown, I can see that Canadians have handled the pandemic relatively well. By living the monastic lifestyle our governments have encouraged, Canada has managed to keep the rate of COVID-19 infections in our population to 2%. This compares very favorably to the US infection rate of about 10%, or the UK rate of 6.5% https://www.cnn.com/interactive/2020/health/coronavirus-maps-and-cases/ Although our hospital resources were stretched at times, they were never overwhelmed. This should also be a source of pride to Canadians as our hospitals never turned patients away as they had to in many other countries.
Unfortunately, knowing that we did the right thing for the past year is providing little comfort to Torontonians this February. Since the pandemic began a year ago, Toronto has been festooned with signs proclaiming that “we are in this together” but at this point, our commitment to the collective good seems to be faltering. The knowledge that many of our fellow citizens are driving to vaccination centres in the sunny southern United States to receive injections of the elixir that will protect them from the virus, is making it that much harder for those of us left out in the cold, to tough out the grey monotony of a Toronto winter.
When do we get our reward for good behavior?
Alexandra Raphael is a former Canadian government lawyer who lives in a downtown neighborhood of her favourite city, Toronto, with her partner and her dog, Moses.
