Canada\u0027s health\u002Dcare systems do not have many employees to spare even at the best of times
The Ontario government has allowed individual hospitals and hospital systems to implement mandatory vaccination for employees. Thus Toronto’s University Health Network has had roughly 200 staff members on unpaid leave for nearly a month, and has vowed to terminate those who don’t come around. And it stresses that a rigorous testing regime is in place where such mandates don’t exist.
It’s quite maddening how many people see this as a wildly dangerous or reckless approach, when the alternative, demonstrably, is fewer health-care workers. We are told constantly that vaccination is no guarantee against infection or infectiousness; we know that breakthrough cases are generally much milder or asymptomatic. The threat of spread from asymptomatic breakthrough cases is an ongoing topic of medical debate.
There is a cheap, easy and plentiful way to inject some peace of mind into the above equation without firing anyone: rapid testing. Ontario is doing that. If I were health minister it would be done every day for the unvaccinated workers and frequently for the vaccinated ones — because why not provide as much peace of mind as possible? But as it stands, it’s a perfectly reasonable compromise.
Logically, shouldn’t it be more reassuring to interact with someone who tested negative at the beginning of their shift, regardless of their vaccination status, than just relying on their vaccination status? But practical solutions don’t fire up the blood like mandates and terminations do.
Even after 19 months of misery, far too many Canadians seem to prefer advocating for a self-righteous perfection over dramatic, easily achievable improvement.
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