Public health risks damaging its image with mixed messaging

As we rounded the two-year mark of the pandemic, we entered a very strange time of being both OK and not OK.

Our leaders, and public health agencies, have essentially said, “you’re on your own” as things are getting back to normal, yet it seems like people have been getting COVID-19 in record numbers.

We’re OK, but not OK.

Though everyone seems to be getting COVID, cases among the fully vaxxed seem mild. That’s OK, maybe? Some people with unvaccinated children or who are immunocompromised are saying that they’re not OK, though.

The sixth wave is rising, possibly cresting, but we have barely any information since testing has been largely abandoned, beyond do-it-yourself rapid tests that aren’t officially tallied and not as reliable as PCR tests. Instead, we rely on anecdotal information, on wastewater COVID levels, and hospital admissions. It’s very much like trying to see something by watching its shadows.

This shadowy pandemic is nothing new. From the beginning, it’s been a struggle to get clear information about outbreaks, and it took months of pressure on public health authorities for them to start releasing information about workplace and other outbreaks so people could understand situational risk, and where and how COVID was spreading. That deliberate fog was excruciating, and it’s sort of back.

It did not help that in Toronto, in particular, progressive councillors were hamstrung by their ideological inability to question public health authorities.

Still, in so many ways, our local public health agencies have been heroic in getting people vaccinated, especially in Toronto. They did incredible work setting up vaccination clinics in communities that were otherwise hesitant or found it difficult to get to clinics. It’s the closest most of us have ever seen of a “wartime effort” and it was epic, with hundreds of workers and volunteers involved, resulting in some of the highest vaccination rates in the world.

Lives were most certainly saved by these actions, and it drove home to many why public health is such an essential part of our civic infrastructure only a few years after the Ford government decided to target public local health authorities with cuts. Remember that this June.

After all this, it was so strange last month when city council nearly unanimously approved Toronto Public Health’s plan to end the mask bylaw. Left and right, mayor included. Toronto followed nearly lock step with the province, though the city could have taken a different path.

At the provincial level, Dr. Kieran Moore, the chief medical officer of health, has not held a public briefing or answered direct questions in four weeks. The unavailability is conspicuous when people are confused and cases keep rising. We are indeed on our own, but this has at least proven that public health decisions at the provincial level are politicized.

The city of Toronto is more curious. Remember, this is a city that was all-in on public health measures, sometimes taking it to unnecessary extremes. Soon, it will be the anniversary of the second year in a row the High Park cherry blossoms were fenced off, the first year seeing the entire park fenced. This is the same city that ticketed and harassed people in public spaces, in parks and on benches.

Instead of slow change, such as keeping mask mandates that we were told for two years were effective, suddenly they’re gone.

Dr. Eileen De Villa, Toronto’s top doctor, and other officials said this week that it would be a good idea to wear masks. It’s up to you! What this does is pit everyone against each other. The advice is to wear them, so now people can choose which advice to follow, effectively downloading the tension and conflict onto individuals.

Transit riders know this. The TTC always required masks — and still does — but the TTC itself never enforced it. How often did you find some grinning yahoo sitting in the back of the streetcar? Showing its priorities, though, the TTC didn’t stop fare enforcement.

It’s like there are two different realities coexisting right now, and our leaders and public health officials are playing both sides. It is an election year, after all.

The mixed messages are confusing, and you don’t have to be prone to conspiracy theories to wonder what’s going on. It’s unsettling. Some councillors who voted to end the mask mandates are still attending their meetings remotely and some are continuing with virtual offices in order to help everyone “stay safe.” None of it makes sense.

It might very well be OK right now, and life here in the shadows might be fine! But if the message is actually “we expect many, many people to get COVID and we think that it will be OK,” then have the nerve to say that rather than saying and doing contradictory things.

It would be a tragic shame if the superior and heroic work so many public health agencies and workers did over the pandemic to build trust in and appreciation of the institution was undone by these politicized, mixed messages.

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