It was Winston Churchill who warned the world that those who cannot learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
What did we learn from the COVID-19 pandemic? That it was a killer virus that infected the entire planet? That it took two-and-a-half years of our lives (and counting) that were filled with lockdowns, death and disruptions?
That it had us masking ourselves like bandits? That we had to standby helplessly while our loved ones died alone?
That it was inhospitably contagious with a number of sinister variants?
But what else?
There are thousands of other things, of course, but none has been archived into workable documents, and no definitive narrative written.
It is overall a mystery which doctors, scientists and health authorities would rather forget but do so at their (and our) peril.
It needs an autopsy.
To understand what worked and what failed — and to settle some debates — a truly comprehensive review would start with the state of pandemic preparedness in early 2020.
It would then move on to consider all the public health issues that came to the fore in the weeks and months that followed: border controls, contact tracing, masking, public health restrictions on businesses and individuals, data collection, the procurement of personal protective equipment, rapid tests and vaccines, long-term care, federal-provincial coordination and the use of vaccine mandates.
But a proper study would look beyond the public health response to consider the unprecedented fiscal response, largely led by the federal government. The most recent official tally says the Liberal government threw $352 billion as supports for individuals, businesses and provincial governments.
A proper study also would have to explore how the government’s pandemic response intersected with race and wealth to expose and exacerbate inequality.
Given the stakes, it’s surprising that no royal commission or national study has been announced already. But later this fall, the House of Commons will consider at least one proposal — this one from a Liberal backbencher — to launch a review.
“I can understand that reviews like this can be politicized and every expenditure can be politicized. And that’s really not my goal here,” Liberal MP Nathaniel Erskine-Smith told the CBC late last week.
“The goal is, let’s learn the lessons for better and worse in order to inform our efforts going forward, so we are on the absolute best footing going forward to prevent future pandemics and to prepare for future pandemics.”
The bill Erskine-Smith has tabled would compel the health minister to create an advisory committee that would pursue a potentially broad study of the response to the COVID-19 pandemic in Canada.
That committee would review the actions of the Public Health Agency of Canada and the federal department of health.
It also would look at the responses of provincial and municipal governments and “analyze the health, economic and social factors relevant to the impact of the pandemic in Canada.”
COVID-19 has been, first and foremost, a health crisis with deadly consequences. But it also has tested public policy in many ways that were relatively novel. And while it was tempting at times to say political differences had been put aside during the pandemic, nearly every aspect of the public policy response eventually was second-guessed and criticized by one side or another.
All this needs to be straightened out.
A template has to be developed, and put into layman’s language, that will guide authorities when the next pandemic hits. And there will be a next one, with climate change being blamed for easing its path.
In addition to striking that advisory committee, Erskine-Smith’s bill would give the health minister two years to draft a pandemic preparedness plan and would compel him to select an official at the Public Health Agency of Canada to serve as a “national pandemic prevention and preparedness coordinator.”
The official pandemic plan would have to be tabled in Parliament and then updated at least once every three years.
Winston Churchill was spot on.
Surely there were lessons learned from the past two-and-a-half years.
If not, we are doomed to see it all repeated.
