Blayne Haggart, Associate Professor of Political Science at Brock University, had a piece recently published in The Conversation about the need for more stringent regulations to eliminate community transmission of COVID-19 and save the economy.

He writes:

“Rising COVID-19 numbers have placed much of Canada on the edge of seemingly inevitable lockdowns, just as winter begins. Having failed to contain the disease, with one lockdown behind us and another before us, it feels as if Canadians outside of Atlantic Canada are trapped on an unending rollercoaster of despair.

Even more demoralizing, it’s increasingly obvious that we don’t even need to be on this ride.

As the International Monetary Fund notes, Asia-Pacific countries as diverse as Australia, New Zealand, South Korea and Taiwan have crushed the curve, and their citizens are able to get on with their lives. Cafés are full, crowds cheer live sports events. People aren’t dying.

COVID-19 may be a natural phenomenon, but our economic wounds are almost entirely self-inflicted, driven by the faulty assumption of a trade-off between keeping the economy going and fighting the pandemic.”

Continue reading the full article here.