Albertans prove they can be trusted with relaunch

Albertans have triumphantly answered one huge question about our response to COVID-19 with a grand slam home run.

We have proven that we’re wise, diligent and responsible enough to drive down infection rates.

This should give confidence to Premier Jason Kenney and chief medical officer of health Dr. Deena Hinshaw when it comes to reopening the province sooner than later.

At the start of this pandemic, our medical authorities and model makers couldn’t be sure how well Albertans would do when it comes to hand-washing, self-isolating, mask wearing and, most importantly, keeping away from others when we’re sick.

Some of Alberta Health’s models were dire when it came to the spread of the disease. It was expected the virus would spread here like it had in the United Kingdom. The Alberta Health model in early April predicted a probable peak infection in mid-may with as many as 900 COVID -19 patients hospitalized.

Instead, our number peaked at 101 hospitalized on April 30. As of May 20, it dropped to 59 hospitalized.

We set aside more than 2,000 hospital beds for COVID -19 patients and only used a small fraction of them. In a province of 4.37 million, where anyone with the slightest sniffle or twinge in their throat can get tested, we have just 926 active cases.

Albertans haven’t just flatted the curve, we have steamrolled it and chucked it down a big hill.

We had such success even as Alberta has had some of the least restrictive public health orders anywhere in the western world.

Alberta had a light touch when it came to restrictions, Kenney said on his cabinet’s May 21 Facebook Q -and-a with the public. In Quebec, for example, no public gatherings of any size were permitted. In Alberta, we allowed groups of up to 15 to meet, he said.

Small businesses took a huge hit, but Kenney noted that 85 per cent of business still operated during the initial lockdown. In Quebec and Ontario, manufacturing and construction were both shut down, but not in Alberta.

Kenney came across as proud of that business-friendly approach and ready to maintain it, so long as the metrics support it: “I’ll make no bones about it: we’ve been eager as a cabinet to move forward with a relaunch as quickly as we carefully can. We don’t want to harm business people a day longer than we believe is strictly necessary to protect public health. So we’ll watch the numbers.”

The key numbers are the rate of new hospitalizations for COVID -19. Indeed, the whole point of the shutdown was not to snuff out the disease, something that’s not possible with a highly infectious virus that’s spread around the world and has no known cure or vaccine. The goal was always to stop rapid spread of the disease so that our hospital system would not be overwhelmed, so that we could buy time to better fight off an unknown biological enemy, and so that we could better identify and prepare for weak spots, such as we discovered with seniors’ homes and meat-packing plants.

For the phased relaunch to proceed, Hinshaw now says we must not see a five-per-cent increase per day in hospitalizations over a two-week period.

If we apply this to our current 59 hospitalizations, we’d have to rocket up in the coming two weeks to 116 hospitalizations to reach that limit. Essentially, we’d have to more than double our current number of hospitalizations, something we haven’t seen in Alberta since the two-week period of March 23 to April 5, when we went from 23 to 46 hospitalizations.

As for the current relaunch and beyond, Kenney puts the responsibility for success on Albertans: “We will be able to get to a situation where we get closer to normal if Albertans continue to act so responsibly and with such discipline, as they have been.”

I don’t see the behaviour of Albertans as an “if ” any more. I see it as something Kenney and Hinshaw can now count on.

It’s evident our leaders took a cautious approach about any relaunch through April and into May. But it’s equally evident that Albertans were up to the task of clamping down on the virus. We’ll do the same when it comes to safely getting back to work.

Two months ago we trusted Kenney and Hinshaw when they brought in their public health orders. Now, as the premier and the doctor calculate their relaunch plans, they should factor in our proven diligence as a given. We’ve amply demonstrated it.

It’s no longer time to err on the side of caution, but on the side of trust.