Premier offers vague assurances for loosening restrictions

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 02/02/2022 (1344 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Once again, Premier Heather Stefanson is leading her province into a raging thunderstorm with a tenuous promise that no one will get wet.

Stefanson and Dr. Brent Roussin, the chief provincial public health officer, told a news conference Wednesday that the process of removing social and economic pandemic restrictions would begin in earnest next Tuesday, when indoor occupancy and social-gathering limits will be significantly increased.

Stefanson and Roussin said modelling data — which they chose not to present with their announcement — shows the Omicron wave has peaked and is now “trending in the right direction.” As a result, it’s time to start allowing people to go more places and do more things in greater numbers.

What neither Stefanson or Roussin would discuss, however, was how removing restrictions will impact those positive trends.

The changes to take place next week will allow thousands of people to gather in one place at one time. Larger indoor facilities — theatres, sporting venues, churches, big-box retailers — will be allowed up to 50 per cent capacity. Remarkably, up to 250 unvaccinated people will be allowed to attend an indoor church service.

Politically, Stefanson and her Progressive Conservative government may see the removal of restrictions as a way of earning back the trust of Manitobans. Poll results show most of us believe the pandemic response has gone from bad under former premier Brian Pallister to worse under Stefanson.

Scientifically, however, this plan is a recipe for disaster.

Omicron may be subsiding now under current social and economic restrictions. But when you begin to remove those restrictions, that downward trend cannot be maintained.

That was the exact point made this week by Ontario’s Science Advisory and Modelling Consensus Tables, an independent committee of multi-disciplinary experts that advises the Ontario government, and is known in government as “the science table.”

This week, the science table warned Premier Doug Ford that even as Omicron recedes, his plan to remove restrictions “will increase the spread of COVID-19.”

The modelling released by the committee to back up its point does not paint a pretty picture.

Ontario’s hospital system is currently treating about 3,000 COVID-19 patients, a number health-care professionals claim is unsustainable. The best-case scenario under Ford’s more relaxed public-health orders is a continued reduction in hospitalizations to about 2,000 cases; better than current levels but still a significant burden on the health system.

However, the worst-case scenario shows the number doubling to 6,000 cases by March, which would likely bring Ontario’s health-care system to its knees.

Ford dismissed the advice, indicating he will proceed to remove restrictions. There will be no confusion about who is responsible if things go wrong.

Unfortunately, Manitobans have neither the detailed modelling nor the political accountability evident in our neighbouring province.

During Wednesday’s news conference, Roussin congratulated Manitobans on getting us to this stage, and said Manitoba will be “restriction-free” by spring.

His claim was, once again, a triumph of hope over science. It ignores the awful truth that the positive trends we enjoy now are a byproduct of the orders we have now and can’t possibly be sustained with fewer restrictions.

Global data has established a very clear relationship between social and economic restrictions and things such as deaths and hospital admissions. In other words, the fewer the restrictions, the greater the number of deaths and hospitalizations.

That is certainly the case in the United States. While some individual states have remained resolute about matching restrictions to the surge in infections, many others have not.

It’s hardly surprising, then, that among larger, wealthier countries, the U.S. has by far the highest rate of death from the virus. Most of us know by now that, in the age of COVID-19, we get exactly the consequences we deserve. Put another way, jurisdictions that prematurely abandon restrictions while also failing to embrace vaccination see more death and suffering.

It’s also hardly surprising that Manitoba, which has frequently thrown caution to the wind in its pandemic response, has the second-highest death rate in Canada. The numbers do not lie.

To this point, medical and scientific experts outside government have been — to their great dismay — better at predicting the awful outcomes of this province’s bad pandemic policy. As the Tories have dithered over imposing restrictions, and leaped at any opportunity to remove them, they have been warned by people outside government that what they were doing would make a bad situation worse.

In every instance, government did not defer and things got worse. In most instances, much worse.

Despite that woeful past performance, the Tories continue to demonstrate an unflinching commitment to their course of action and an unwillingness to assume the blame when things go wrong.

There is little chance now of this government adopting a different approach. At the very least, the premier needs to face Manitobans and admit the truth that just about everyone else has already figured out.

When you walk unprepared through a raging thunderstorm, you get wet.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com