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A question I and others have asked throughout the pandemic is becoming all the more important, I think, as the giant syringe of salvation grows larger on the horizon. Will Canada, surely among the luckiest and most self-satisfied of nations, learn the lessons it needs to learn? Will the governments and bureaucracies in charge of keeping us safe internalize those lessons and not forget them over the decades it should ideally take before they’re needed again?
Some commentators have cast Canada’s middling pandemic performance as part of a sort of existential malaise: “Our official residences fall into disrepair, our military is too small and chronically underfunded, and we have enormous infrastructure deficits all across the country,” Matt Gurney wrote in the National Post in February. Not enough people care to change things, because not enough people really need to care.
TORONTO It was a disappointing result for the Toronto Maple Leafs on Monday night. Nonetheless, health-care workers who attended the game in person says the experience was a step towards normalcy after more than a year of pandemic fears and restrictions. Maha Hassan, who is an emergency department nurse at St. Michael s Hospital in downtown Toronto, was one of the 550 fully vaccinated frontline health-care workers who were selected via a lottery to attend Game 7 of the Leafs playoff series against the Montreal Canadiens at Scotiabank Arena. It was the first time since March 2020 that fans were welcomed into the arena for a Leafs game. Even though the 3-1 loss wasn t the result she was hoping for, Hassan told CTV s Your Morning that she still had a blast.
Toronto Dr. Jeff Kwong, who also helps at pop-up clinics, said he s seen the same kind of hesitancy about Moderna but is also able to challenge that thinking. I think people are less familiar with the Moderna name, but the reality is both are very good vaccines, he said. The majority of people will change their minds and say, OK I think it s reasonable to get the (Moderna) vaccine.
For Shah, it s exciting that entire families are now getting vaccinated together. The kids sit down at a table and get Pfizer. The parents sit down and get Moderna and they all walk out happy.