Premier Scott Moe had to self-isolate the week before the fall sitting of the legislature started.
He did so because he came into contact with someone at a restaurant in Prince Albert after a family funeral.
Essentially, Moe was simply staying home and self-monitoring — really, no different than the reality for thousands of others in this province who have faced the increasingly growing prospects of encountering someone with COVID-19 that is now everywhere in the province.
For his political enemies, it became an opportunity to take a few cheap shots. This is one of the big problems in the COVID-19 fight.
It’s been far too politicized by fear, exaggerations and misinformation that have become the favoured weapons of both sides.
The only way to defeat this virus is with facts, fair-mindedness and reason.
And that fight needs to begin with the stated and collective goal of reducing new and active cases by all of us doing what’s reasonable to reduce the spread.
The challenge, however, is that to accomplish this requires a buy-in from everyone without the distractions of political references about things like rights and freedoms.
That shouldn’t be much different than following the rules of the road, but even traffic laws need to be enforced by fines.
This is where it’s up to Moe’s government to impose stricter rules of the road and make sure through enforcement that people are following those rules.
We need to do this because where we are at right now suggests that we’ll soon be in trouble if we don’t get a handle on the spread.
Sure, we have so far managed to avoid the death toll we’ve seen in Alberta or even Manitoba because we aren’t seeing as many deaths in care homes as elsewhere.
While the dispute is one that’s been frequently categorized as one between the doctors and the business community, this really doesn’t really reflect the core concerns on either side.
One can understand why businesses — especially small businesses that have been barely hanging on for the past nine months — are frustrated by the prospects of shutdowns. Coming at the business crisis season for retail, this is a particularly frightening prospect.
The prospects of hospitals — specifically, intensive care unit beds — being overrun by COVID-19 patients is as frightening to medical professionals as temporary shutdowns are to business people.
And their fear isn’t just for their patients. The fear for many medical professionals is the health of themselves, their own families and their staff as the people most likely to be exposed to COVID-19.
It is more important for everyone to understand what hundreds of new cases each day might really mean. With only around 100 ICU beds in the province, that means no beds available for those in serious car accidents or those suffering heart attacks if these beds are already occupied by COVID-19 patients.
Recent information from government shows close contacts in houseshold are the top spreader of the virus.
However, the information also showed 25 per cent of infections come from recreational facilities like rinks, bingo halls, bowling alleys and casinos.
We need set aside our personal and political views and look objectively at what needs to be done.
