I am heartily amused by the fact that Justin Trudeau is “as frustrated” as the rest of us Canadians over the slow rate at which COVID-19 vaccines are being rolled out in Canada. Thanks Justin, but the difference between you and the rest of the great unwashed is that you can do something about your government’s lacklustre performance!
Meanwhile, “India plans to vaccinate some 300 million people between January and July“. That’s about eight times the population of Canada by two months sooner. These are projections, of course, but it shows you how low the Canadian government is aiming.
Now, I know that we’re reliant on foreign supplies of vaccines since the Conservative Party ran the drug companies out of Canada (someone needs to tell Michelle Rempel that when she hypocritically accuses Trudeau’s government of “incompetence”), but there just doesn’t seem to be a sense of urgency. We’ve had vaccines for about a month now, and only a third of them have been injected. I heard one of the doctors explain on one newscast or another that we just don’t understand; it’s a multi-step, time-consuming process that requires consent and record keeping. Meanwhile, Israel (who I do recognise are a tiny country compared to Canada without the geographical and meteorological challenges of Canada) is racing ahead and putting the rest of the world to shame in terms of the percentage of their population they’ve vaccinated.
Here’s an idea: If we can run an election across the country in a twelve-hour period (that also requires multiple steps and record keeping), why can’t we use the same infrastructure to do the same with vaccines? I’m not suggesting that we’ll vaccinate all 40 million people in twelve hours, but we certainly won’t have vaccines sitting in fridges doing no bloody good!