When pressed repeatedly on the target goal for ending mandates, the Public Health Agency of Canada said, “there aren’t any specific numbers.”
Yesterday, Conservative MP Michael Barrett had the opportunity to grill the President of the Public Health Agency of Canada, Harpreet Kochhar, on what level of vaccination, COVID infections, wastewater data, etc., would need to be achieved for the federal government to give Canadians their human rights back.
After being pressed several times, Kocchar gave a non-answer, saying it’s based on a myriad of ongoing metrics with no firm goal.
“I am actually mentioning that all of these variables, they are taken into consideration,” Kocchar said for the third time.
“We understand that sir,” Barrett responded. “But what are the numbers?”
“As I mentioned, this is a combination of different metrics,” responded Kocchar. “There aren’t any specific numbers, which we could actually say [this is over]. Because it depends on the activity of the virus in the different communities, as well as different settings.”
“And also the protection that is provided to the population from vaccination and other public health measures like masking, handwashing and others. So, there’s a multitude of [a] combination of factors, which allows us to take those kinds of public health advice options.”
The factors that Kocchar just listed, which contribute to the “multitude” of factors, have been tracked throughout the pandemic, except for handwashing. There are averages for compliance of all of them, and a firm number could be set, as other countries have done.
Nonetheless, if whether or not Canadians will see a return to normal is based on “the activity of the virus,” then the message is clear: this is over when COVID doesn’t exist, which will never happen.
More likely, this stops when the federal government decides Canadians deserve their rights back. Unfortunately, this may also never happen.
