Jealous of the US COVID freedoms? Don't Be

Jeff Green | May 19, 2021

A lot of people are frustrated by the fact that we are still worrying about COVID in Canada, when the United States seems to have moved on. 

We are in lock-down and they are out partying, and now even the much vaunted United States Centre For Disease Control (CDC) is saying that fully vaccinated people can forego wearing masks, even indoors. 

And here, we are under a 'stay-at-home’ order. 

What gives?

Vaccination rates are higher in the United States than they are in Canada, and COVID case rates are lower. The vaccine roll out was faster in the US than in Canada, because of supply issues, and that is one of the reasons that the case rate has dropped there, in recent months, while we have been hit by a third wave of infection this spring.

It is hard to compare the two countries however, because the wave pattern is much more pronounced in Canada than in the United States. Partly because of resistance to safety measures, the case rate never dropped in the US when it dropped in Canada.

And, per capita, more Americans have died from COVID than Canadians, almost 3 times as many over the entire pandemic. 

Even now, while the weekly per capita case rate in the United States is lower than the Canadian rate  by 40%, the weekly per capita death rate is still 33% higher in the United States

To a certain extent, as a nation, the United States has decided that they are willing to tolerate a certain amount of illness and death from COVID in exchange for life “returning to normal”.

The problem with that strategy is that no one knows if the case rate will remain relatively low in the United States, because there is a high level of resistance to vaccination.

Every week, as supply increases in Canada, our vaccination rate gets closer to that of the United States. Our first dose rate is almost the same as theirs, and by mid-July our total vaccination rate will be higher than theirs, as long as Canadians keep wanting to get vaccinated.

The CDC strategy, to allow vaccinated people to take off their masks, is intended to encourage  reluctant US citizens to get vaccinated, which is more of a hope than a strategy because those who do not want a vaccine are already resistant to wearing masks.

For those that argue that our concern about COVID is hurting our economy, it is true that the unemployment rate is higher in Canada, 8%, than it is in the United States, 6%. But in 2019,  before COVID, the unemployment rate in the United States was 3.5% and ours was 5.7%, a similar gap.

It is frustrating to still be living under a 'stay-at-home' order, when our neighbours are enjoying themselves, and there are human costs that come from isolation as well. But, overall, we are faring better in Canada through COVID than people are in the United States, even now.

And when we compare our own region, the numbers are dramatic.

Our death rate in KFL&A, over the entire pandemic, is about 200 times lower than the average death rate in the United States.

The average community in the US with a population of 200,000 people, has had 800 deaths.

As of last week, 90% of those who are over 60, in our region, had received one shot of vaccine. As the vaccine roll-out hits all age groups, starting this week, if the younger cohorts in our region respond at a similar rate, we will be safe from COVID by the end of the summer. With a high vaccination rate, we will also be able to fully open up to visitors, allowing the most impacted sector of our economy, the tourism sector, to finally recover.

If the federal and provincial governments want to support any sector, targeted relief in the form of one time grants to businesses who have really suffered losses, would have little impact on the national debt load but a large impact on those businesses. 

Restrictions will ease more slowly this summer than we would like, but unlike last year, they will not be coming back in the fall.

Will that be the case in the United States?