Moe caught in a Christmas rush of his own
Premier Scott Moe is now stuck in a quagmire somewhere between what he probably should have already done to stop the spread of COVID-19 and what he still needs to do ensure it doesn't get much worse.
It's left us all spinning our wheels as we approach Christmas.
As an old farm boy, Moe has no doubt found himself stuck in the occasional slough or snowbank. Surely, he's learned from the Grant Devine days that you can't just speed through without saying “whoa.” And surely Moe has learned from this global pandemic that you can't rock your way out.
He needs to learn from the mudholes he's already been stuck in. Right now, there's nothing more crucial for Moe than avoiding more of them.
After Monday's throne speech that paid lip-service to the biggest problem facing the province, nation and world before vowing to forge ahead with fulfilling election promises to lower your power bills and make it easier to renovate your home, Moe was confronted in scrums with the notion of what to do about Christmas. His answers were not very good.
As weekly COVID-19 totals for new cases, hospitalizations and now deaths continue to rise, Moe was holding out hope of easing restrictions before Christmas.
There may be legitimate political debate as to how much more Moe could and should have done, but there needs to be less political debate about what he needs to do, going forward.
In the assembly this week, New Democrat Leader Ryan Meili criticized Moe for dithering on a provincewide mask order (Meili also would not commit to a provincewide mask order when asked directly by moderator Molly Thomas during the Oct. 14 leaders' debate) and either hiding or ignoring modelling numbers during the campaign, pointing to today's dramatic rise in cases.
Clearly, the Saskatchewan Party government should have been more forthright and cautious. The fictitious “best-case” scenario in its Nov. 20 modelling presentation — out-of-date and/ or unrealistic even by the time it was presented — suggests that.
It has undoubtedly contributed to today's situation; we have a health system with 120 health care workers having tested positive for COVID-19 in the past two weeks and the Saskatchewan Health Authority (SHA) urging doctors to increase training to backfill massive holes created in the health system by the COVID-19 crisis.
This is a crisis at a time when we are surrounded by crises. In Manitoba, there is a lockdown as Covid-19-related deaths dramatically increase (even as daily new-case numbers slow down to frighteningly close to the level Saskatchewan is now experiencing).
In Alberta, Premier Jason Kenney is calling in the Red Cross and federal/military help to deal with COVID-19 issues his government has been unable to address.
Perhaps the question here is whether we need to quarantine out-of-province travellers for two weeks — something Shahab said he is not yet recommending. Instead, the province's CMO strongly suggested we would “pay the price” if we loosened restrictions on gatherings of more than five people at Christmas time.
“We'll pay the price in January,” Shahab said Wednesday, adding that it was his preference that the weekly new case load should average less than 120 new COVID-19 cases a day before any gathering rules were relaxed. We're double that.
After Thursday morning's question period, Moe repeated that Shahab's 120-cases-perday was certainly his government's goal, but it wouldn't necessarily dictate the government's easing of visitation restrictions for family gatherings or even Christmas visits to personal care homes where, by luck or good management, Saskatchewan has so far avoided the problems we have seen in other jurisdictions.
There may be ways like added personal protective equipment to allow such care home visits to happen, Moe said Thursday.
This seems horribly unwise. Even if Moe can't avoid every current mudhole he encounters like keeping bars, restaurants, businesses and churches open, he desperately needs to avoid the bigger, deeper ones.
The wrong choice could result in us being stuck a deadly pandemic well past Christmas.