Westneat: Canada puts U.S. in place

Meanwhile our borders remain locked to Canadians who want to come south. Eventually we will open them — maybe soon, as the U.S. government’s recurring border closure order technically expired Wednesday. But the fact that the Canadians went first, and then dropped a vaccine passport system on us, is awkward for all sorts of reasons.

For starters, the reason they did this now is because they have rocketed past us into first place in the vaccination race. “Canada has gone from a vaccine laggard to a world leader in COVID-19 immunizations in just a few months’ time,” Canadian public broadcaster CBC trumpeted the other day.

Canada is now No. 1 in the world in COVID-19 protection, with 70 percent of the population having received at least one vaccine shot. The U.S. has slipped to seventh, 14 percentage points behind Canada, according to the Our World in Data vaccine tracker.

Despite already being that far ahead, the Canadians’ daily vaccination rate, adjusted for population, remains six times higher than it is here in the U.S., where the vaccine program has flatlined.

This has all led to a flood of new exports from up north — of smack talk. “Why would some people rather risk death than get vaccinated? It’s the American way,” the Toronto Star heckled us on Tuesday.

It’s a “tragedy of belligerent self-destruction,” it went on. “The U.S. is among the few countries in the world with the means to quickly extinguish the pandemic within its borders. It lacks only the will.”

That’s cold, Canada. Not wrong, but cold.

Culture war

Anyway, Canada put the screws to us politically, too. By requiring vaccination for entry, Canada is saying: We’re now No. 1 in the civilized world. If you want to come here, you have to be civilized, too.

As an economics columnist in Canada put it: “When it comes to businesses trying to navigate a high-risk pandemic, Canada looks safer and steadier than most other places — and that’s of great value during a period of so much fear. The extensive precautions and our rising vaccination rates serve us well, as marketing tools as well as in pandemic management.”

In the U.S., though, the vaccine has become another flash point in a culture war. On our side of the border, in Bellingham, it was reported Tuesday that the sheriff had to be notified because the Whatcom County health director started getting threats after a council member posted her cellphone number on social media and said she needed to be “reined in.” Her crime? Running a campaign to encourage vaccination among 18- to 26-year-olds.

Look, I’m against mandatory vaccination. But asking that we do it as a ticket for certain things like travel seems reasonable as part of a global community during an infectious disease pandemic. What Canada is saying is “no shirt, no shoes, no service, America.”

Meanwhile we are paralyzed on this issue. Legislators in 40 states, led by Republicans, have now introduced bills to ban vaccine passports or passes like this (the states have no say over border policy). The Biden administration seems rudderless on it one way or another. So increasingly other countries are going to be following not our lead on this, but Canada’s.

That’s only going to hurt our border-town businesses, and will leave Americans behind in the recovery.

Being dictated to by Canada? That wasn’t in the cards even a few months ago. Get used to it. Because like Canada, other countries likely will soon pass us in the vaccination race, and then they will be in a position to dictate to us, too.