Vaccines will get us back to normal

Why is Canada pretending otherwise?

Over the weekend, Canada’s chief public health officer, Dr. Theresa Tam, told an online audience that even the fully vaccinated can still spread and contract COVID-19. “There’s reduction in your risk of transmission, but it doesn’t necessarily eliminate your risk of transmission,” she told a virtual town hall.

The statement is technically true. But the risk of transmission for the fully vaccinated is so infinitesimally low — about 0.01 per cent according to U.S. data — that Tam may as well be highlighting the dangers of getting strangled by a seatbelt.

Nevertheless, the statement is in keeping with an official Canadian line on vaccines that has persistently understated their effectiveness and ability to restore the country to normal operations. In a world where vaccinated populations are getting back to work, Canada is continuing to prescribe masking and social distancing for the vaccinated that is well beyond what the science would suggest.

On Monday, England, Scotland and Northern Ireland all reported 24 hours without a single coronavirus death — the first time since the onset of COVID-19.

Second only to Israel, the Brits are the most vaccinated people on earth. The sudden absence of any COVID-19 deaths is not only a testament to the U.K.’S triumph at early vaccination, but the best real-world example of a phenomenon that is appearing all over the world: COVID-19 vaccines are working better than anyone expected at preventing the spread of the virus — even amid a global rise in new and more powerful variants.

In February, it was data out of Israel that provided the first compelling evidence that vaccines would not only stop COVID-19 patients from dying, but could check the virus’ spread through the population. A February study out of Israel’s Sheba Medical Center, for one, found that after the hospital’s 7,000 staff received just one dose of the Pfizer vaccine, both symptomatic and asymptomatic cases of COVID-19 plunged by 75 per cent between 15 and 28 days after the shot.

The interim months have seen a near-miraculous Israel-wide plunge in COVID deaths and infections — as well as the introduction of a “green pass” allowing fully vaccinated Israelis to once again pack into stadiums, gyms, restaurants and festivals.

“In all age groups, as vaccine coverage increased, the incidence of SARS-COV-2 outcomes declined,” reads the understated assessment of a May 5 study in The Lancet trumpeting the success of the Israeli mass-vaccination campaign.

Israel’s first death-free day since vaccination occurred in late April. On May 9, Israel saw only eight new cases in the whole country; the lowest since the spring of 2020.

Aggressive vaccination in the United States has similarly blunted the worst effects of the pandemic.

Deaths have been in free fall since January, and now stand lower even than July 2020, when much of the country was under some form of lockdown in the wake of the first wave. Not only is the virus less dangerous, but its spread has been significantly slowed: The United States is now seeing fewer new cases than at any other time since the end of its second wave in September.

There are indeed cases of “vaccine breakthrough” (patients who contract COVID-19 despite being fully vaccinated), but they are low enough that a fully vaccinated American effectively faces the same risks from COVID-19 as from the common flu.

As of April 26, more than 95 million people in the United States have been fully vaccinated. Of those, only 9,245 have become vaccine breakthrough cases, and 132 have died. For context, in a given week any group of 95 million Americans can statistically expect to see 1,100 accidental deaths due to injuries and 250 deaths due to suicide.

A recent study in the New England Journal of Medicine followed 417 fully vaccinated employees of New York City’s Rockefeller University to see if any would become “breakthrough” cases. Two did — both women in their 50s and 60s — but the infections subsided after only a few days of flu-like symptoms.

It’s these kinds of indicators that have caused the Centres for Disease Control to now recommend that the fully vaccinated can gather, remove their masks and even be in the presence of COVID-19 patients without needing to self-isolate.

In the U.K., meanwhile, new data continues to bolster the efficacy of COVID-19 vaccines. On Monday, a study using data from Public Health England found that, after only one dose, both the Astrazeneca and Pfizer vaccines leave patients with an 80 per cent lower chance of dying from COVID-19. After two doses of Pfizer, that rises to 97 per cent.

As virtually every day yields more evidence of the miracle of vaccines, Canadian public health officials continue to downplay the obvious: That vaccination is ultimately a ticket back to normal life.

The country’s official post-vaccination guidelines prescribe no change to daily routines, and recommend full adherence to mask and social distancing mandates. In March, Tam said that even after the bulk of Canadians were vaccinated, social distancing measures “are going to continue for some time.”

In late April, Canadians were told that a loosening of restrictions wouldn’t come until 75 per cent of Canadian adults had received at least one dose of the vaccine — a milestone that not even the U.S. is expected to reach until July.

Canada is fortunate to have a relatively low rate of vaccine hesitancy; only 23.1 per cent, according to March Statistics Canada data. It means there are hopefully enough willing participants for Canada to smoothly vaccinate its way into herd immunity as soon as it can.

But Canadians would be right to question why their government is pushing a vaccine while simultaneously dismissing its many and increasingly documented benefits.

ON MAY 9, ISRAEL SAW ONLY EIGHT NEW CASES OF COVID-19.