“We’re all in this together” has been a rallying cry during COVID-19, if not an official tag line. But, since the prime minister said those words at a news conference in March 2020, they have taken on a different meaning. After everything we’ve done to prevent the spread of the virus, the pandemic is still here. And, for many, the recent surge has felt overwhelming if not surprising. Watching the reopening of many provinces and the end of most mask mandates coincide with different levels of immunity across the population, it has seemed like it’s everyone for themselves.
Experts may look back over the last two years and be able to point to exactly where and when specific actions and decisions could have prevented this outcome. What’s surprising about the most recent wave is that nobody—neither government leaders nor public health officials—has stepped forward to apologize for it. Nor, so far, does anyone seem to expect them to. “We have to learn to live with COVID-19” is the new catch phrase—even if we don’t all share in the virus’s effects equally. We’ve mostly had to make our own decisions about masks and whether to observe five or ten days of isolation. With the shift to personal responsibility, we are micromanaging 38 million pandemics instead of working together to stop a single, national one.
