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David Staples: Lockdown restrictions on the fully vaccinated a bitter pill - Edmonton Journal

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This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated but it's a lockdown also of the fully vaccinated

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Alberta is now entering its fourth major lockdown.  Its harshest measure — a vaccine passport — is targeted at the unvaccinated, but it nonetheless has numerous measures that will limit everyone else’s freedoms.

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This is a pandemic of the unvaccinated but it’s a lockdown also of the fully vaccinated.

That’s a toxic pill for me and no doubt for numerous other Albertans who are fully vaccinated. We lived up to our end of the bargain. We sized up the health risks of the vaccines for ourselves and our families, took in mind the need for widespread vaccination if our world was ever going to open up again, and decided to get the jab. If more adults had done the same, we would not be in this mess.

Little wonder there is now such anger at the unvaccinated. Some folks can barely contain their rage, as I’ve seen repeatedly both talking with friends and family in the past month, as well as any time I go online and read comments.

With that in mind, one of the most important things that Dr. Deena Hinshaw, Alberta’s chief officer of medical health, said as the province announced new and widespread restrictions on Wednesday evening was her piece on the need for kindness during a crisis.

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Hinshaw asked all of us to be mindful of the mental health of others, then said, “Kindness has never mattered more. Please be gentle with yourself and with others.”

Many folks, including me, are indeed at a boiling point, lashing out with whomever disagrees with them. A major new target is Hinshaw herself, who was widely seen as a hero by most Albertans early in the pandemic and is still held in high regard by many. Her wise and perceptive call for kindness is indicative of her thoughtful manner throughout the pandemic.

At the same time, as she’s now admitted a number of times, she got it wrong in June when she looked at the Delta variant in the U.K. and other jurisdictions and concluded that what had happened there would also happen here, that our high level of vaccination would protect us from the kind of outbreak that would threaten our health-care system.

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Instead, the challenge is greater than ever, with 270 COVID patients now in ICU. Our previous high was 182 in May.

Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw provides an update on the province’s response to the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. cine requirements and COVID-19 measures.
Alberta’s chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw provides an update on the province’s response to the fourth wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, Wednesday, Sept. 15, 2021. cine requirements and COVID-19 measures. Photo by David Bloom /Postmedia

Hinshaw apologized once more on Wednesday. “I regret we began a move to an endemic transition too soon,” she said. “We shifted our approach as soon as evidence showed hospitalizations were not decoupling from cases as we had expected.”

The Kenney government has certainly shifted now, but it moved too slowly. It should have announced a vaccine passport a few weeks ago.

Asked by a reporter if Hinshaw should resign, Premier Jason Kenney stepped up forcefully in her defence

“Dr. Hinshaw has my full confidence,” he said. “I think we’ve been very fortunate to have a thoughtful and dispassionate chief medical officer who has taken a balanced approach.”

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Kenney said he was proud of Alberta’s overall record, noting that until now the province had a lower fatality rate than the rest of Canada, one quarter that of the United States and one third that of Europe, doing so with lesser lockdown restrictions than many other jurisdictions.

Kenney defended the decision to lift lockdown restrictions in July, saying case counts dropped that month, even with large public events. If the government had kept strict lockdown restrictions in place, it would have resulted in massive non-compliance and ever more anger than we now see.

“What I have sought to do as premier — based on the best public health advice — is to navigate a safe and sensible middle ground approach, one that did not immediately return to damaging restrictions as the only policy response.”

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But Kenney also recognized he and his team got the balance wrong this summer, which put our hospitals in crisis.

“It is now clear we were wrong,” he said. “And for that I apologize.”

Whether you buy Kenney’s apology will almost certainly depend on your attitude towards the pandemic.

If you see COVID as a singular threat that must be stamped out at every turn, you’ll call for Kenney’s resignation. That’s fair enough.

But if you believe that COVID is a major threat but that lockdowns also impose brutal harm to our mental, physical and economic health, you’ll be more inclined to accept Kenney’s explanations. That’s where I’m at.

As for the unvaccinated, as angry as others are with them, you can now double that wrath in regard to their own displeasure with Kenney.

dstaples@postmedia.com

twitter.com/davidstaplesYEG

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