Each of the 1,000 local lives lost over the past three years was somebody\u0027s loved one. Let\u0027s reflect, and act to save lives in future.
But the pandemic has never been a matter of simple statistics. Among those who succumbed to the illness was one of our former newsroom colleagues, Dave Dutton, who died in the spring of 2021 at The Ottawa Hospital. Although Citizen staff had been reporting on the virus for more than a year at that point, the death of someone we had once worked with so closely was a devastating shock. Numbers be damned.
Yet Ottawa has been lucky — relatively speaking. Without mitigating measures, that 1,000 would have been a much bigger number. Here, a higher proportion of people than in many parts of Canada are able to work from home. Lots have paid sick leave. A high percentage got their initial vaccines and boosters, though we have not done as well on our free, easily obtainable follow-up shots.
We boast both science innovators — hello, Ottawa waste-water analysts! — and entrepreneurial adapters who took on the challenges of lockdowns and supply-chain gaps to keep serving customers. Our families re-learned “home economics” skills, such as cooking and baking, and we embraced outdoor activities, from urban cross-country winter skiing to summer hiking and river swims.Article content
Future risks, however, lie in our innate desire to forget bad things, a collective amnesia fuelled by Canada’s jittery political class. Health care buckled under COVID; the economy lurched. People tuned out public health messages and some drank in misinformation, then regurgitated it online. Fears about personal freedom rose to the boiling point, culminating in the downtown occupation last winter.
This city’s bleak statistical milestone should prompt us all to reflect — and commit to action. Start with that vaccine booster. Maybe dig out that unused mask, too. We don’t want another 1,000 lives lost in Ottawa. We don’t want even one.
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