One of the reasons we put forward the recommendation for a national adult vaccination strategy is that we let epidemics come to seniors every single year in the community and in long-term care, and we do very little about them. It's so simple to vaccinate, but we leave it up to provinces and local health units to order the seniors-specific flu vaccine, the pneumonia vaccine and the shingles vaccine. This time we saw the federal government step up and actually purchase and distribute the seniors-specific flu vaccine to long-term care. That was transformative.
We could take small steps like that on an ongoing basis. Doing that would reduce these yearly epidemics, and hopefully the pandemics, and it would make sure we would never be in some of these circumstances again. That's a very tangible thing to do.
The other piece I would offer is that once people are vaccinated against COVID-19, we need to loosen these restrictions. They are now being stuck because of concern around liability and concern around insurance. Violations of seniors' rights are happening all across this country. There's no reason, if the mom has had two doses of vaccine and precautions are in place, that she shouldn't get a hug and a walk outside.