Passengers are sprayed with disinfectant after disembarking from the hantavirus-stricken cruise ship MV Hondius at Tenerife airport in the Canary Islands, Spain, on Sunday.Arturo Rodriguez/The Associated Press
Various experts have been assuring the public over the past several weeks that the risk of a major hantavirus outbreak is low.
This is a known virus, they say, unlike the novel coronavirus first observed in 2019.
It doesn’t pose pandemic potential, they say, because this Andes variant requires prolonged close contact to be transmitted from human to human.
And we are better prepared if this thing does start to spread, they insist, because we have learned important lessons from the COVID-19 pandemic.
The first lesson many of us laymen learned from living through the turmoil of the early part of this decade is to be skeptical of these very early assurances from public-health officials.
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In the early months of 2020, Canadians were repeatedly told that the risk to the general public posed by COVID-19 was low. Health Minister Patty Hajdu claimed that border closings were “not effective at all” in terms of containing the outbreak, and then quickly did an about-face. Chief Public Health Officer Theresa Tam initially said that masks were “not beneficial” if worn by asymptomatic people, but changed her position on that also. In March, 2020, the World Health Organization said it was a “fact” that COVID-19 “is NOT airborne.” That, of course, was incorrect.
This time around, WHO officials keep insisting that transmission of the Andes virus requires prolonged close contact, though an outbreak of the virus in Argentina in 2018-19 included transmission that had occurred between people who simply shared the same indoor space at a birthday party. When passengers on a cruise ship where the virus had spread first began disembarking this week, a representative from the Public Health Association of Canada said that four asymptomatic Canadians would not be required to isolate when they were repatriated. That advice has since changed.
Mistakes will obviously be made in the early stages of a crisis, particularly when public-health officials are learning about the precise nature of a particular strain of virus. But people remember those mistakes – even years on – and the effects on public trust can be profound and devastating. We’ve seen, for example, a worrying decline in routine vaccination coverage for children since before the COVID-19 pandemic started.
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Though most of us would surely prefer to memory-hole those early pandemic years, it cannot be overstated just how much COVID-19 upended this country. It took tens of thousands of lives, destroyed family connections, exposed the crippling vulnerability of our health care and long-term care systems, and shattered Canadians’ faith in our public institutions. It was the single most disruptive event in Canada in generations, and we haven’t even attempted to try to understand what happened, and what to do next.
There have been individual papers published and provincial reports about our handling of COVID-19, but nothing comprehensive. Nothing with subpoena power, nothing that includes true multidisciplinary testimony about what went right and wrong. Nothing that provides a clear national framework to deal with continuing effects of COVID-19, or chart a path to strengthen our institutions in anticipation of the next viral outbreak.
It’s as if a meteor crashed into the Earth in 2020, destroying nearly every facet of Canadian life, and instead of going back to the site of impact to figure out what happened, we’re walking away with our hands in our pockets, whistling through the smoke. Our apparent disinterest in a comprehensive postmortem makes us an outlier among many of our peer nations.
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After the 2003 SARS outbreak, Canada did assemble an advisory committee that was tasked with conducting an inquiry into the epidemic that killed 44 people. The committee tabled a final report that included 77 recommendations, some of which Canada heeded (such as creating an arm’s-length public-health agency separate from Health Canada), and some of which it clearly did not (such as adopting the “precautionary principle” in the event of another potential outbreak).
There is a risk, of course, that the same thing happens if and when Canada decides to launch an inquiry into our handling of COVID-19. But that is not a reason for not doing it. When something catastrophic happens, it is generally prudent to try to figure out what to do next time, even if there is a risk that the guidance will not be properly followed.
The next public outbreak, whether it involves hantavirus or something else, will pose greater containment challenges insofar as we know that there won’t be the same level of compliance to public-health guidance that we saw in March, 2020. People are now more vaccine-hesitant and significantly less trusting of government and public-health authorities. Under the right conditions, and with the right type of virus, that could mean utter calamity for Canada. We ought to start preparing for that future now, which necessitates taking a hard look back.