Thought of the Day - December 29 2021 - Is The Great Shutdown Coming to Canada?

No, I am not talking about government measures to stop the spread, I am thinking ahead to what the significant Omicron case rates will mean to daily life here in Canada.

We have convinced people that if they have the sniffles they should get tested. We are again ramping up testing centres and handing out rapid test kits, and thus our detection capabilities are increasing rather than decreasing. When you add these factors to the transmissibility of Omicron we will soon be seeing more than 75,000 new cases a day being diagnosed. This is an order of magnitude more than at any time in the past.

Unless we change our quarantine/self-isolation rules this translates to millions of Canadians needing to isolate across the country. Remember you need to isolate not only if you are symptomatic, not only if you are diagnosed with COVID, you also need to isolate if you have been exposed in your household or if your kid is sent home from school. While this is a major inconvenience at a personal level at a country level it means that people-dependant areas of the economy will soon start to shut down.

Moreover, the current momentum from the provinces is moving us toward this abyss. Ontario, for example, recently went the wrong direction requiring household contacts to self-isolate regardless of vaccination status.

Luckily countries that are ahead of us on the Omicron curve are already experiencing the problem and are thus changing their policies. South Africa has stopped testing and shortened the symptomatic quarantine period to five days. The UK has recalibrated its app to make sure it does not trigger another Pingdemic ( Thought of the Day - August 18 2021 - Apps Gone Wild ). The US has also just shortened isolation to five days.

It is good to see policy-makers in Canada starting this discussion with the Canadian public, for example, as mentioned delays in school openings, adjustments to quarantine for essential workers etc, before the "Great Canadian Shutdown of '22" is upon us.

Cheers

Cliff