I’ll be wearing a mask after rules change

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 13/03/2022 (1447 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

On Tuesday, the provincial government will remove public-health orders mandating masks in indoor public places and eliminate isolation requirements for individuals testing positive for COVID-19.

Saskatchewan, the first Canadian province to remove restrictions, did so February 28. Our western neighbour is two weeks deep into its great re-opening.

It’s hard to see any success yet as the situation is still critical. Hospitals remain thirty to forty per cent over capacity, leading provincial medicine head Dr. Haissam Haddad to state this week that the situation is “without precedent” and “unsustainable.”

Like Manitoba, Saskatchewan has long given up trying to track COVID-19 new cases so it’s anyone’s guess where the province is at.

There is some good news. According to provincial data, death rates in Saskatchewan due to COVID-19 infections are down a third, hospitalizations appear to be plateauing and ICU rates have dropped.

If the argument that COVID-19 infections don’t see their greatest impact for two weeks still holds, this upcoming week will be the true test of what happens when a province removes public-health restrictions and leaves citizens to protect themselves.

It’s a time when governments have chosen individualism over collective responsibility, with privilege and entitlement being the true winners.

We already seen glimpses of this, such as when Alberta Premier Jason Kenney chose business over health last summer and gleefully announced his province was “open for business” — before getting slapped back into COVID-19 reality.

The rising support for the People’s Party of Canada and their anti-mask and anti-vaccine platform was another move in this direction.

The real turning point, though, was the so-called “freedom convoy,” led by a loud minority of mostly right-wing white men who colonized Canadian downtowns, border crossings and public infrastructure.

Though every Canadian court, government, and the vast majority of Canadians disagreed with it, the “freedom convoy” basically got everything it wanted. Well, besides dumping the Canadian constitution, overturning democracy, and installing their leadership as dictators, but I digress.

In virtually every province where a large number of Freedom Convoyers exist, premiers are removing health restrictions and people will now be able to go to restaurants, hockey games, and malls with no masks and will not have to prove vaccination.

Privilege and entitlement have been the winners of the COVID-19 pandemic.

The rest of us, however, now face an uncertain reality. In case anyone hasn’t noticed, COVID-19 isn’t over. Not by a long shot.

No one knows the current case counts in Manitoba, but this week CBC cited research that “somewhere between 51-82 per cent of Manitobans have contracted the Omicron variant since Dec. 1.”

That makes COVID-19 more widespread in this province than anywhere else.

Though provincial data suggests hospitalizations are down 2.9 percent, (currently 417 Manitobans are hospitalized), this small decrease is negated by the fact ICU cases in Manitoba doubled last week (to 21) and another 18 people died.

Of the dead, 13 were over the age of 60.

For the entirety of the pandemic, Manitoba has been the site of the second-highest COVID-19 death rate in Canada, with 123 deaths for every 100,000 people (1,710 total).

Health experts attribute this to conditions in senior facilities, immigrant communities, and First Nations.

It’s clearly not going to be safe to be a member of any of those groups after Tuesday. You don’t have to be a researcher to know this.

Why are politicians and health-care leaders choosing the privileged over the vulnerable?

Over the next few weeks, as the data rolls in showing the effect of removing health restrictions, I hope Manitobans consider who is bearing the brunt of the decision to let people win their argument to not wear masks and go to restaurants.

On the road to the end of this pandemic — if this is what we are seeing — Manitoba is choosing some people’s privileges and entitlements over their neighbours’ lives.

By the way: Manitoba also leads most provinces in the unvaccinated, who also die disproportionately due to COVID-19. Since last fall, a third of Manitoba’s deaths due to the disease were in the Southern Health region, which includes areas where the vaccination rate is less than 30 per cent.

I’m not sure it will be safe to be a “freedom convoyer” after Tuesday either, but apparently what’s about to happen is what they wanted and received.

I’ll be wearing a mask after Tuesday.

In what’s become a battle between safety and inconvenience, I choose safety. And life.

niigaan.sinclair@freepress.mb.ca