Dear Editor:
RE: ‘Truly remarkable’, March 4.
I agree with Peter van Vloten that we need to be extremely grateful for science developments in vaccines.
Mainstream media and general perception a year ago could not predict where we are today. However, try as hard as I can, I cannot attribute much credit to Prime Minister Justin Trudeau. He was hell-bent on developing vaccines with, of all people, China? It’s simply not possible to explain away the loopy logic in that idea given the landscape. When blocked by China he delayed for months before buying vaccines from successful producers, although by then at the end of a queue.
He will not show the Canadian public the procurement contracts because the truth would likely not be helpful. Ironically in the UK the minister responsible for the similar procurement was severely mauled by their “public watchdog” last week because they were three weeks late in posting contracts to the public website. Apparently, something they do and a part of the UK’s government transparency laws. Do we ever need those laws here or what!
Indeed “transparent” is not a word we can use to refer to Trudeau. He has been quite the opposite in most of his activities (WE, SNC, Att. Gen., Adm. Norman, GovGen and it goes on and on).
The clock is ticking on how late we’ll be in getting the vaccine into citizens’ arms. Everyone I know my age in the UK was already vaccinated by mid-February. We will be several months behind.
Recently we ranked about 60th in the world in administering vaccines! In summary, Trudeau didn’t start COVID-19 but he’s certainly been very sloppy at dealing with it!
However, I am eternally grateful that we live in a time where biological understanding makes near miracles possible and look forward to sunnier days!
Mike Hall,
Rockwood