Now that things are finally getting back to normal, it’s time to ask the all-important question “was it all worth it?”, and by “all”, I mean all of the many restrictions imposed to first “flatten the curve” and then keep people safe.

Initially, there is no question that the restrictions were warranted. The COVID-19 virus was spreading like wildfire and threatening to completely overwhelm the province’s health care system.

Businesses lockdowns, social distance measures, banning large gatherings and limiting smaller ones, were all necessary to slow down the spread of the disease and buy time to allow for the development of COVID-19 vaccines.

Once effective vaccines were developed by Pfizer, Moderna and Johnson & Johnson in late 2020, it took several more months for people to get at least two doses. By Sept. 27, at least 80 per cent of Canadians over the age of 12 had been fully vaccinated, which is when the restrictions should have been lifted. Instead, they stayed in place for another six months, fueled by fear of the Omicron variant. In the meantime, inflation continued to rise along with housing prices. Small businesses continued to take on more and more debt as they stubbornly staved off bankruptcy.

It will take years for the economy to bounce back to pre-pandemic levels, and at least that long for the country’s restaurants, small gyms, and personal care businesses to pay off their government COVID loans.

Housing prices, which have made it impossible for anyone under the age of 35 to buy a first home unless they’ve either won the lottery or inherited one, will likely never come back down and the supply chain issues which have plagued everything from car sales and home electronics to newspaper publishing, will take months to sort out.

And for what? More people have COVID now than at any time during the pandemic. Just how many people nobody knows because it’s impossible to get a PCR test unless you’re a front line health care worker, but it’s lot, and very few of them are ending up in hospital or dying. That’s because A) they’ve been vaccinated, and B) the current strain of COVID making the rounds is not as virulent as the earlier ones.

So, to answer the question: were the initial COVID restrictions worth it? – the answer is yes. But as for the question of whether or not the continuation of restrictions were worth it once the 80 per cent threshold of vaccinations was achieved, the answer is no. They merely delayed the likelihood of catching the virus while deepening the economic hole we know find ourselves in and from which will take years to get out of.