Speaking honestly and rationally on COVID-19:
The COVID Misery Index

Dear Friend,

Nagged by the feeling that Canada’s management of the COVID pandemic has been less than stellar? Finding it hard to find clear dispassionate analysis on the issue as opposed to partisan talking points?  How is Canada actually doing?

All of these questions matter enormously as we struggle to assess COVID’s impact and Canada’s response. Did we protect Canadians as well as we could? Was the damage to the economy from lockdowns justified by the health outcomes? How well have we fared relative to our peers on rolling out vaccines and getting back to work?

Only MLI has just the answers you seek. We wrestled with these same questions and decided to create a tool to allow you to evaluate Canada’s COVID performance on all the right measures: the COVID Misery Index.

Comparing the performance of similar advanced countries in protecting the health and prosperity of their citizens, the COVID Misery Index is the only comparative tool to measure the misery wrought on Canadians by: a) the disease itself; b) our response to it; and c) the economic consequences of both.
Where does Canada place? The answer may surprise you.

Canada ranks a dismal 11^th out of 15 countries overall. We are among the worst in terms of delivering full vaccinations and other measures that will get us back to normal.

While Canada was spared the worst ravages of the disease, our response to it has brought significant misery, largely attributable to an overreliance on long-term lockdowns and a lagging vaccination and testing program. The economic misery has been severe, and the projections are that Canadian taxpayers will be paying this bill for some time to come.

Canada today has the worst response misery out of all countries measured. By way of comparison, our unnecessarily costly and poorly-organised approach led us to be ranked worse than the much-maligned United States overall, which is leading the world on vaccinations.

It did not have to be this way.

Countries like Norway, Australia, Japan, and New Zealand prove that Canada could have had lower misery wrought by the disease at a fraction of the cost. Had our response been more efficient and effective, we could have done just as well at preventing death and illness but without over-reliance on heavy handed lockdowns or unnecessarily high unemployment rates or eye-watering increases in public debt.

MLI is the only organization in Canada informing Canadians, in a rational, fact-based fashion, how to judge our governments’ responses to COVID. In order to continue updating the COVID Misery Index regularly and to keep holding governments in Canada accountable for their pandemic management, we need your support.

Will you donate $100 – or whatever you can afford – to support MLI’s COVID Misery Index?

Canada can and must do better. We hope that we can count on your support to help make that possible.

Sincerely,
Brian Lee Crowley
Managing Director, Macdonald-Laurier Institute

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