Let's do a little thought experiment. Let's imagine that we give those who want to blame the unvaccinated for the spread of the Omicron variant everything they could possibly ask for.
Imagine that back in October police squadrons accompanied flying squads of jack-booted public health nurses in a successful campaign to force-vaccinate every single Canadian without exception, right down to infants and toddlers. Imagine that today we live in a Canada where every single Canadian has been fully vaccinated. The dreaded unvaxxed have been vanquished. How is Canada different?
Would Canada be Omicron-free? No, Omicron would still be here. Omicron entered Canada on fully vaccinated travellers, after all.
Would the number of Omicron cases be less? No, We know from countries with good data tracking like Denmark that Omicron infects the vaccinated and the unvaccinated at just about the same rate. Omicron would be spreading through the Canadian population at almost exactly the same rapid rate it is now. Your risk of catching Omicron as a vaccinated person would be exactly the same as it is now.
Hospitals, police and fire departments would still be struggling with staff shortages caused by a rapid spike in Omicron cases among their fully-vaccinated staff.
Omicron would still primarily be killing the very old and the frail. Double or triple-vaccinated, they would die just the same.
Yes, we would be having a smaller surge in hospitalizations, but only modestly smaller. (Evidence from Denmark and England suggests that roughly three-quarters of those in hospital with Omicron in both countries have been vaccinated.) If South Africa is any guide, the surge in hospitalizations will be over quickly in any case.
Yes, if you are vaccinated you can take comfort in the fact that you are less likely to die of Omicron than if you were unvaccinated, but that's the sole benefit. The epidemiological evidence strongly suggests that your being vaccinated does not protect anyone else from catching Omicron, contrary to what public health officials would encourage you to believe.
I'm sure those in charge of Canada's vaccine programs are grateful for the unvaccinated, because blaming the unvaccinated has distracted most Canadians from noticing the obvious: Omicron is moving through the Canadian population at roughly the same rate it would have done if absolutely no-one had been vaccinated. From a disease-prevention perspective, the mRNA vaccines have been a truly spectacular failure.
Even reality-averse public health officials like BC Provincial Health Officer Bonnie Henry have had to admit: Virtually everyone is going to be exposed to the Omicron variant in the very near future.
The silver lining in that sad reality is that we are all going to develop a robust natural immunity to this most recent variant of COVID. This preponderance of natural immunity can be expected to bring the COVID pandemic to a screeching halt in the coming weeks.
Rather than continuing to falsely blame the unvaccinated for the Omicron wave, perhaps we should instead be celebrating the fact that it appears that Mother Nature may have saved us from a perpetual COVID pandemic with a very mild but extremely infectious new variant.