List of Important Problems Caused by the Pandemic
Disrupted Working Environment
The pandemic presented the corporate world with issues about operational health and safety. Companies had to comply with strict public healthcare restrictions such as physical distancing. This was challenging for firms based in tall downtown skyscrapers. For example, physical distancing rules meant that only a specific number of employees could use elevators at a time (Buckner, 2020). This increased waiting times for employees at lifts and disrupted productivity.
Impact on Public Transport
The pandemic caused problems in the public transportation systems in Canada and the U.S. For example, the City of Toronto lost more than ninety million dollars in fares due to Covid-19-related disruptions (Boisvert, 2020). Passengers avoided the crowded public transit and opted for cars, which provided them with more safety and security (Shelat et al., 2021). This made maintenance of these crucial services challenging due to limited resources.
Reduced consumer spending
The pandemic led to reduced consumer spending (Dunn et al., 2020). The economic uncertainties caused by pandemic-related disruptions made consumers cut down on discretionary products like entertainment, clothing accessories, and travel expenses. April 2020 recorded the lowest home sales in Canada in over three decades (Evans, 2020).
Inflation
Pandemic-related disruptions, such as supply chain issues and increased demand, caused inflation in the US, Canada, and other Western nations (The White House, 2022).
Decisions of Governments and Public Health Authorities to Deal with the Pandemic
The pandemic saw governments in all developed nations, including the U.S. and Canada, move quickly to protect their citizens. They collaborated with the medical industry to create and implement vaccines to the pandemic. For example, Canadian authorities allowed pharmaceutical firms to fast-track the vaccine approval process (Health Canada, 2021).
The highly decentralized Canadian government, which has federal, provincial, and territorial (FPT) governing bodies, had layered plans, infrastructure, and experience from previous outbreaks to handle the pandemic effectively. Authorities in the country adhered to health officials’ insights as they tackled the pandemic. For example, local governments created COVID-19 response teams that worked with political leaders regarding the pandemic and the economy (Allin et al., 2022). This led to better response in some parts of the country, like the British Columbia province, which was hailed as an example of successful containment regulations (Young, 2020). Despite the early successes, subsequent waves of COVID-19 infections threatened to overwhelm public health systems in several regions in Canada (Allin et al., 2022).
Criticism of the Government Response in Canada and the US
Both Canadian and American health authorities responded poorly to the initial wave of the pandemic. Underfunded public health institutions in these nations used obsolete tracking techniques to track global outbreaks like COVID-19, which allowed the virus to spread fast (Brewster, 2020). As developed economies, Canada and the U.S. should have utilized emerging technologies like big data analytics and artificial intelligence to analyze data from online sources and spot outbreaks around the world.
The pandemic exposed underlying social inequalities in Canada and the U.S. as it disproportionately affected disenfranchised groups. In the U.S., political division and inaccessible health care increased suffering due to the pandemic among minorities like black and Indigenous communities (Sabatello et al., 2021). A report by the OECD shows that the U.S. is the only developed nation in the OECD that does not provide its citizens with universal healthcare (Combden et al., 2022). Health insurance in the U.S. depends on employment, and thus, groups with high unemployment rates suffered greatly during the pandemic.
Recommendations
Public health authorities in Canada, the U.S., and other nations should invest in improving disaster and pandemic preparedness. This includes developing intelligent systems to track disease outbreaks and training personnel to analyze the data to inform policy development. These systems would have allowed Canadian and American public health officials to identify signs of the outbreak in Wuhan, China early and advised immigration officers accordingly.
References
Allin, S., Fitzpatrick, T., Marchildon, G. P., & Quesnel-Vallée, A. (2022). The federal government and Canada’s COVID-19 responses: from ‘we’re ready, we’re prepared’to ‘fires are burning’. Health Economics, Policy and Law, 17(1), 76-94.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8326669/
Boisvert, N., (2020). TTC facing $92M monthly shortfall, plummeting ridership due to COVID-19, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/toronto/ttc-finances-covid19-1.5569867
Brewster, M. (2020). Inside Canada’s frayed pandemic early warning system and its COVID-19 response. CBC News, 22. https://www.cbc.ca/news/politics/covid19-pandemic-early-warning-1.5537925
Buckner, D., (2020). Will COVID-19 lead to an exodus from crowded offices in downtown towers? Don’t count on it, experts say, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/downtown-offices-pandemic-1.5577487
Combden, S., Forward, A., & Sarkar, A. (2022). COVID‐19 pandemic responses of Canada and United States in first 6 months: A comparative analysis. The International journal of health planning and management, 37(1), 50-65.https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8652721/
Dumanska, I., Hrytsyna, L., Kharun, O., & Matviiets, O. (2021). E-commerce and M-commerce as Global Trends of International Trade Caused by the Covid-19 Pandemic.https://www.wseas.com/journals/ead/2021/a765115-016(2021).pdf
Dunn, A., Hood, K., & Driessen, A. (2020). Measuring the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on consumer spending using card transaction data. U.S. Department of Commerce, Bureau of Economic Analysis. https://www.bea.gov/system/files/papers/BEA-WP2020-5_0.pdf
Evans, P., (2020). Canadian home sales had their worst April in 36 years, but prices holding steady for now, CBC News. https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/crea-home-sales-1.5571143
Health Canada. (2021). Vaccine development and approval in Canada, Health Canada. Government of Canada. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-health-products/covid19-industry/drugs-vaccines-treatments/vaccines/development-approval-infographic.html
Sabatello, M., Jackson Scroggins, M., Goto, G., Santiago, A., McCormick, A., Morris, K. J., … & Darien, G. (2021). Structural racism in the COVID-19 pandemic: Moving forward. The American Journal of Bioethics, 21(3), 56-74.https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/15265161.2020.1851808
Shelat, S., Cats, O., & Sv, C. (2021). Avoiding the crowd: traveller behaviour in public transport in the age of COVID-19. https://europepmc.org/article/ppr/ppr343175
Smith, A., (2020). Canada’s Housing Market to Feel Effects of COVID Until 2022: CMHC, Storeys. https://storeys.com/canada-housing-market-covid-cmhc/
Stat, O. E. C. D. (2020). Health expenditure and financing. Organisation for Economic Co-operation &. https://stats.oecd.org/Index.aspx%3FDataSetCode%3DSHA
The White House., (2022). The U.S. Economy and the Global Pandemic, Chapter 3. https://www.whitehouse.gov/wp-content/uploads/2022/04/Chapter-3-new.pdf
Young, L. (2020). Why has B.C. handled the pandemic better than other provinces. Global News. https://globalnews.ca/news/7085828/bc-coronavirus-strategy
write