StarEditorial: A renewed campaign will help to keep the pandemic under control. And it will help those frustrated by a leadership that in important ways has gone AWOL before the crisis is over.
Is this how it ends? Not with a bang or even a whimper, but in a morass of confusion, anxiety and anger?amid a conflicting barrage of signals from public health authorities and resulting frustration among a traumatized public.new reporting by Nadine Yousif, who covers mental health issues for the Star.
Their collective frustration may be largely inevitable, given the ability of the COVID virus to mutate, presenting tenacious new variants that test the best efforts of public health authorities, seemingly from month to month. Surely it doesn’t have to be this way. “Living with the virus” does not equate with “crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.” There are things the authorities could do that would increase the chances of truly putting the pandemic behind us, and, importantly, provide reassurance that we haven’t simply been abandoned to figure it all out for ourselves.
Don’t give up on persuading people to get all the vaccine doses they need — which at this stage means at least three. For some reason both Ottawa and the provinces have stuck with the label of “fully vaccinated” for people who got two doses of most vaccines, long past the point where that is inadequate.