This commentary is by Yaneer Bar-Yam, a founding member of the Covid Action Group and EndCoronavirus.org. He is president of the New England Complex Systems Institute, where he is an expert on pandemics and other complex systems.
Vermont has been one of the undisputed stars of the U.S. Covid-19 response, with the lowest Covid-19 infection and death rates in the United States, after Hawaii. And Vermont leads the country in the percentage of its population that is vaccinated.
As a pandemic expert based in Boston, I have often wished that my home state of Massachusetts would replicate Vermont’s success.
But despite Vermont’s strong performance relative to the rest of the United States over the last year and a half, cases are once again rising. The immune-compromised and elderly are again at higher risk of hospitalization and death. Unvaccinated children, as well as vaccinated adults who suffer breakthrough infections, are again at higher risk of long Covid and organ damage.
Even if Vermont temporarily succeeds in bringing down cases locally, out-of-state travelers — including from low-vaccination, high-transmission states — will spread the Delta variant in Vermont’s restaurants, bars, supermarkets, and movie theaters.
So what should Vermont do?
My answer might surprise some: Vermont should look to Canada. Specifically, Nova Scotia.
The Canadian province of Nova Scotia — population 970,000 — has averaged between zero and five Covid-19 cases per day for the vast majority of the pandemic. They did it by turning themselves into a mini-New Zealand: when transmission appeared, they instituted short, strict lockdowns to bring cases to zero.
But that was not all: During and after the lockdown, they required incoming travelers to quarantine upon arrival, with some exceptions granted to vaccinated visitors. Restricting outsiders through quarantine requirements meant Nova Scotians could be free to live without significant restrictions.
In this way, Nova Scotia has almost completely avoided the Delta variant and Nova Scotians have been able to live lives much closer to normal than many of their neighbors in the United States. And they accomplished this with a cumulative per capita Covid-19 rate six times lower than that of Vermont.
As much of the United States remains in denial about Covid-19 and buys into anti-vaccine disinformation, Vermont has a choice: On the one hand, Vermonters can “learn to live with the virus.” This means continuing to import infections from places where vaccines and masks are regarded as more dangerous than Covid-19. This approach will especially endanger unvaccinated children, as well as immune-compromised and elderly Vermonters. It will also expose healthy vaccinated adults to long Covid and organ damage resulting from breakthrough infections.
Or Vermont can go the route of Nova Scotia and learn to live without the virus. Vermont is well-positioned for success in eliminating transmission, given its high vaccination rate, dispersed population, and excellent public health infrastructure.
The cost of “living without Covid” would be a two-week hard statewide lockdown followed by tightly enforced quarantines on incoming travelers to prevent the importation of new infections. There would be an additional week or two-week lockdown for areas of Vermont where transmission was not fully eliminated in the first two weeks.
The benefit would be that Vermonters could then live relatively free of Covid-19. Vermonters would then feel secure in returning to restaurants and the office and teachers and parents would feel safe sending children back to schools for in-person learning. Outbreaks would occur, but Vermont would deal with them swiftly and decisively, just as Nova Scotia has done.
If Vermont decides to become the first U.S. state to pursue freedom from Covid-19 through elimination, many of the world’s top Covid-19 experts will offer advice and support. Since March 2020, I have joined with the scientists at the Covid Action Group to volunteer expertise in support of governments around the world seeking to eliminate Covid-19.
We would be thrilled to work with Vermonters to build a future free of Covid-19.
