Roundup: Kenney’s boggling re-opening

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Because the state of the pandemic is going so well in Alberta, Jason Kenney announced that they will start lifting some restrictions starting February 8th, and I am boggled. Just boggled. Kenney says that tagging the decisions to lifting restrictions to hospitalisation rates in three-week increments is somehow responsible because it’s a lagging indicator, but that’s precisely why it’s the wrong thing to do. It’s a lagging indicator. When hospitalisation rates go up, it’s already too late. New positives caught by testing can be up to two weeks behind infection, and hospitalisations can be a couple of weeks behind those, and this is a virus where the growth is exponential. It’s too late by then, and we have to remember that the province’s contact tracing still hasn’t been fully re-established after it got overwhelmed.

The notion that you can have “just a little COVID” and re-open the economy does not work – it grows exponentially, and hospitals get overwhelmed. It especially will not work a second time now that there are UK and South African variants in the community, which are way more easily transmitted, and places like the UK saw infection curves that went nearly vertical. Kenney is demonstration that he has learned absolutely nothing over the past eleven months, and he’s willing to let more people die for the economy.

I also wanted to take particular exception to Kenney’s health minister, Tyler Shandro, and his insufferable whinging that because of the vaccine delays, that Canada and Alberta are “not a priority,” to which I am forced to ask why they should be. Why are we so special as a country that we deserve vaccines before anyone else, particularly those countries who have been much harder hit that we have been? And I get that he is counting on the vaccines as their way out because they let the infections spread so badly that their hospitals were overwhelmed, and they had to largely shut down their economy again, but that’s on him. Vaccines were never going to be the solution for many, many more months. This sense of entitlement that Shandro is exhibiting is extremely off-putting, and needs to be questioned and called out.

Good reads:

  • Justin Trudeau announced new travel restrictions including hotel quarantine, and that non-essential flights to Mexico and the Caribbean will be suspended until May.
  • It looks like the next Moderna shipment may be smaller than anticipated, but AstraZeneca’s vaccine is days away from approval.
  • A senior public servant has been named the new Secretary to the Governor General.
  • At Heritage committee, Facebook denied that they were trying to recruit bureaucrats from the department as they prepare for social media regulation.
  • Facebook, incidentally, says they would welcome social media regulation.
  • Here’s a profile of Conservative MP Eric Duncan, the party’s first openly gay MP and the balancing act that he faces in a party that is trying to broaden its appeal.
  • Paul Wells savages this government’s self-congratulatory back-patting on “taking action” when in truth they ignore problems until they hit the evening news.
  • Matt Gurney points out that the new travel restrictions are probably too late to do any good, but may spare us from new variants.
  • My weekend column delves into why MPs (and the Liberals in particular) staying away from the Commons right now is sending the wrong signal to Canadians.

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2 thoughts on “Roundup: Kenney’s boggling re-opening”

  1. “Why are we so special as a country that we deserve vaccines before anyone else, particularly those countries who have been much harder hit that we have been?”

    White entitlement? I’m not sure why Kenney and co are all up in arms (pun intended) about the vaccines anyway — probably half the UCP base won’t even take them, because they figure they’re full of Bill Gates microchips from the Chinese mind control factory that great-resets your brain to vote Liberal. Just another thing to blame Trudeau for, despite all the tin foil Maverick Wexiters convinced it’s a Laurentian media hoax.

  2. When Trump said he loved the uneducated he was speaking about conservatives, the dogmatized, unthinking and stupid minions who really don’t give a damn about anybody except themselves, he was correct. Kenney fits his mold perfectly. It is time for Albertans to take a good hard look at where these Cons have taken them. This last fiasco proposed by their imported corrupt leader should, when the chips are counted must at last find a more human leader and party. As an optimist one could say that they will but the pessimist would say they are not apt to do so. What a disgrace Kenney is and what a disappointment. The saddest thing is that there are jurisdictions across Canada who espouse this idiocy. We are in big trouble.

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