OTTAWA -- Of all the COVID-19 symptoms, the most unexpected is election fever.

A third clinical trial ended Monday night, an election suggesting the best treatment for party leaders in these uncertain times is a snap inoculation by their voters.

Delaying the writ drop risks voter rejection as pandemic Band-aids are ripped off to heal unsustainable deficits while allowing real concerns about how governments have handled the pandemic to gain traction.

And so, a trio of solo premier acts has produced a choir of consensus that:

  • There鈥檚 no price to pay for going to the polls early.
  • There are no negatives to campaigning in a bubble, which actually delivers the positive of saving parties a pile of dough in touring costs.
  • And platforms can still be safely built on costly pandemic-fighting promises with massive deficits handed to future generations to pay.

Over the weekend, B.C. went from they鈥檙e didn鈥檛 even wait for mail-in ballots to be counted before calling the majority outcome.

Results so far have boosted Horgan鈥檚 share of the popular vote by 10 per cent, this despite a needlessly early election called on the flimsiest of pretexts. Voters just didn鈥檛 care.

Last night, for the Saskatchewan Party under slow-and-steady Premier Scott Moe.

This was not a Horgan-like power grab. Moe merely followed the fixed-election date prescribed in legislation and had a declared majority within 35 minutes of the polls closing.

But his repeat showing confirms the march to victory through the pandemic is a cakewalk. Moe鈥檚 opponents knew the writ drop was coming and still couldn鈥檛 dent his Saskatchewan stranglehold.

Add those two results to the New Brunswick campaign last month, where , as you have an undeniable pattern emerging.

Which brings us to a very different picture of the federal scene, where election fever is still above normal.

There was sobering news for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau on Monday night as

New Green Party leader Annamie Paul gave Liberal Marci Ien a night of fright before she reclaimed Toronto Centre.

And then came the shocker squeaker result in nearby York Centre which, at this writing, was barely tilting to the Liberals over the Conservatives.

The question confronting Trudeau is whether these were canaries croaking in the pandemic coalmine or simply the usual anti-government bias built into by-election results.

If the provincial elections prove anything, it鈥檚 that the voters are reluctant to throw-the-bums-out, even when there鈥檚 no compelling reason for an early election.

But those strange by-elections signal deep disappointment with the Trudeau government record.

What鈥檚 worse for Trudeau is that a nasty hangover is coming from his binge of deficit spending and program rollouts.

Trudeau will soon have to end the longest stretch in history without a federal budget and produce a fiscal picture that won鈥檛 be one bit pretty.

So we鈥檙e at a point of confusing indicators on the wisdom of Trudeau seeking a third mandate during a viral rampage.

He might well have pause to rethink his hell-bent hurry to force a ridiculously premature vote by those byelection disappointments.

But it鈥檚 more likely Trudeau will take greater comfort from this fall鈥檚 all-positive result at the polls in the provinces.

As the world鈥檚 most famous patient tweeted during his recovery with a presidential election in the offing: 鈥淒on't be afraid of COVID.鈥�

That鈥檚 one piece of advice from Donald Trump that an election-fever-infected Justin Trudeau may accept, hoping the pandemic is a vaccine against electoral defeat.

That's the bottom line.