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Lessons learned from a changing pandemic

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This year is the fifth anniversary of the COVID pandemic and the 50th anniversary of the blockbuster movie Jaws.

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Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 15/03/2025 (204 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

This year is the fifth anniversary of the COVID pandemic and the 50th anniversary of the blockbuster movie Jaws.

In Jaws, the mayor of Amityville tangled with marine biology experts about keeping the beaches open even as a predator shark hunted and killed in its waters. In the pandemic, governments wrangled with public health experts about how to keep society open even as the predator virus hunted and killed in our communities.

This illustrates one of many pandemic paradoxes that have undermined trust between government and the governed.

There were no good choices available to respond to the pandemic. Shutting down to prevent virus spread meant killing jobs and hurting the economy. Keeping communities open meant people would get sick and die while the health-care system would be strained and stressed beyond capacity.

Today, no one wants to talk now about something we once only talked about. Exhausted and numb from it all, Canadians and their governments have moved on.

Canada’s overall pandemic story is, on balance, a good one. Stringent public health orders and new vaccines saved lives, reinforced health care systems, and helped get us out of the pandemic with fewer deaths per capita than most other countries and one of the highest vaccination rates in the world. Massive government supports for people and businesses helped maintain the economy during the pandemic and spring us forward afterwards.

Even in hard-hit Manitoba, with proportionally higher deaths than some other provinces and a severely strained ICU network, there were successes. The auditor-general found that the vaccine rollout and management of COVID in schools were “effective” in both instances.

Yet, that is not what dominates pandemic flashbacks. A Leger poll last September found that over one-third of Canadians think government’s reaction to the pandemic was “exaggerated” and about one-sixth regret their decision to get vaccinated.

What this means is that next time (and there will be a “next time”), Canadians and their governments will be less trusting of each other.

Partly, that is the fault of a mutating virus that kept moving the goalposts and partly it is the fault of those of us who were in government.

As clerk of the executive council in Manitoba at that time, I lived and breathed the pandemic every day as the government’s “central COVID desk officer.” My calendars from that time show 80 COVID-specific meetings in January 2021 — 58 in February, 53 in March, 71 in April, 78 in May, and 88 in June. This doesn’t include the numerous daily conversations and sessions with the premier and others taking place.

Yet, for all the meetings on writing public health orders, improving contact tracing, ramping up testing, increasing vaccination uptake, forging business supports, and adding ICU capacity, there was a bigger picture at play. That was the need to bring people along each step of the way and let them in on what we knew and, just as importantly, what we didn’t know.

People want certainty in a crisis. They want their leaders to lead without hesitation. They don’t like ambiguity and nuance. But sometimes that’s all there is.

COVID lasted far longer than expected and far differently than predicted. Two weeks to flatten the curve became two years of disruption. Getting vaccinated was the way out of the pandemic, until it wasn’t with the advent of the Omicron variant with its high transmissibility and “vaccine escape” in Fall, 2021.

This leads to another paradox about public governance in a pandemic — stability and predictability to convey confidence versus adaptability and agility to respond to changing circumstances.

Every time government took new or unforeseen actions to respond to the virus, its core message of “stay the course” and “we’re in this together” was being undermined. Over time, trust in public health expertise declined. And that meant acceptance and adherence to public health orders, including getting vaccinated, went down too.

So, how can governments bridge these paradoxes and ensure public trust throughout the next crisis? An independent pandemic public inquiry would have helped create a shared public narrative about how and why decisions were made, what worked, what didn’t, and what we should do differently next time.

In its absence, here are five lessons I’ve learned from COVID.

First, since there is no single best response that addresses all contingencies, don’t pretend or act like there is.

Second, since responses will need to change over time, take that time to prepare the public for what’s coming.

Third, mobilize the public as an active participant in both providing input into decision making, and giving them the resources and tools to act in concert with government on the front lines.

Fourth, be humble and transparent, tell the public what you know and what you don’t know.

Fifth, conduct a “lessons learned” exercise and share it with the public.

This won’t keep all the sharks at bay, but it will open the beaches sooner and keep the swimmers safe.

David McLaughlin is a former clerk of the executive council and cabinet secretary in the Manitoba government.

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