This week’s COVID Misery Rank Index has been updated by Macdonald-Laurier Institute and the situation for Canada continues to look bleak.
Canada’s rankings amongst comparable peer countries remains stubbornly low at 10th overall in Total Misery. A major reason is that Canada’s “excess death” rate — or the change in mortality rate from the same week of the previous year — remains comparatively high. Additional contributing factors include the third wave sweeping through Canada, the blunt lockdown measures (some of which in Ontario were so unpopular that they were retracted following public backlash), and the resulting health service cuts to prevent hospitals from overflowing.
Evaluating Canada’s performance is difficult though, writes health statistician Richard Audas, author of this study, given the lack of data being provided.
“As time has dragged on, the impact of this shifting of priorities is being felt in Canada with significantly elevated excess death rates. But this metric comes with a crucial caveat: Canada’s data has not been updated for some time and reporting on this metric lags well behind every other country in our comparison. The best tool to fight a pandemic is information and Canada is failing in this respect.”
The good news: Canada is trending the right direction on the vaccine rollout front. Canada is now 3rd of all countries measured in the COVID Misery Index, though it remains very significantly behind the US and UK and is in fact closer to the average among its European peers. We are still languishing at 12th place overall out of the 15 ranked countries when it comes to rate of full vaccinations.
