Premier Doug Ford‘s assurance that when the COVID-19 vaccines are widely distributed, life will get back to normal is, in fact, not the least bit reassuring to those of us who are dealing with the virus and the collateral damage that the virus is causing in our communities.
Conventional wisdom suggests that, even with the latest good news about vaccine development, it will still be sometime next summer before any vaccine will be available to most of us.
The premier can hire whomever he wants to oversee the distribution of vaccines, but that distribution will be totally dependent on how many doses are available and when they’ll be available and the province will have little control over that.
Too many of the government’s COVID-19 policies are banking on success sometime down the road.
But what about the here and now?
We’re told that the government’s hiring program for long-term care facilities won’t meet its goal for another four years.
The average residency in those facilities is a little more than two years.
Does that mean the government is writing off the suffering, current residents as collateral damage to the government’s ineffective response to the long-term care crisis?
Is the government response to the skyrocketing number of new COVID-19 cases in this second wave to just ‘hang in there’ until the vaccine arrives?
That could be too late for some families and some businesses.
Instead of planning what to do when the vaccines arrive, the government should be focused on what to do until the vaccine arrives.
Bill Kelly is the host of the Bill Kelly Show on Global News Radio 900 CHML.
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