COVID-19 Vaccine Administration Could Be a Potential Disaster
Photo courtesy: Kaja Ciszewska
Prime Minister Trudeau promised that the entire country of Canada should be able to receive a COVID-19 vaccination by September 2021. I believe he has given a very dangerous false hope to Canadians. His promise smacks of naivete and ignorance on a grand scale.
Am I the only one who can do Grade 4 math? Here are the numbers.
As of today, January 4, 2021, Canada has administered just over 130,000 vaccine doses since the program began on December 14, 2020. That works out to just under 6200 per day (I'll keep the numbers round for simplicity). Canada has a population of about 37.59 million, AND everyone needs two doses. The math is simple. At the current rate, everyone will be immunized in about 6000 days with a single dose and about 12,000 days with two doses. That works out to 33 YEARS!!! Even if we allow for herd immunity of say 60%, it will still take 20 YEARS for 60% of the population to be immunized at the current vaccination rate.
To get the job done by September, Canada will need to vaccinate approximately 310,000 people per day for the entire population or 186,000 per day for herd immunity of 60%. I believe that assuming herd immunity will give us the "all clear" is a dangerous approach because the virus can still regain a foothold on our shores either through more mutations or just simple travel. But I'm not an epidemiologist.
There is clearly a lack of full comprehension by government health officials of the unbelievably Herculean effort required to immunize the entire population of the world, and in our case, Canada. This must be a full-out blitz to utterly and completely annihilate the enemy. It can only be done with creative planning the likes of which we have never seen before. While I have no idea if enough trained health professionals can be found to do this so that no other areas of their work suffer in the 8 months we have until September, I am inclined to think that there will not be enough.
If there is going to be as large a gap between Mr. Trudeau's promise and reality as I have calculated above, the country is in for yet another rude awakening as people's livelihoods continue to disappear. I urge public health officials and politicians to keep the population truthfully informed all the way along in the process. It is far better to have realistic hope so people can plan, than false hope that will lead to ruin.