Mandryk: We need to better apply COVID-19 lessons

By Murray Mandryk

One might think that after nearly two years of this pandemic, we’d be a bit better at figuring out where we are at.

Perhaps we shouldn’t fault ourselves for that.

Maybe we shouldn’t even completely fault the politicians for this, although they often to little to help their own cause by establishing reasonable parameters for measure and appropriately acting upon them

But the problem with knowing where we are in this pandemic is that it is has always been changing.

Really, it’s now even about trying to figure out where we are at as much as it’s about figuring out where we are going to next.

Having wandered through five waves of this pandemic and as many variants, we have clearly all seen how difficult this is.

For example, in the initial months of this pandemic, we truly saw what Premier Scott Moe describe as a lockdown.

At that time, our children were being taught on line because schools were closed, restaurants were limited to takeout, all sporting events were cancelled and you couldn’t even go to the barber and get a haircut.

This deemed necessary at a time when we had no vaccines (so there was no controversy over vaccine passports or so-called vaccine mandates”).

However, it’s noteworthy that the daily cases were in the single- or low-double digits. We didn’t even hit two dozen COVID-19-related deaths in Saskatchewan until six months into pandemic.

By May 2020, the Saskatchewan Party government started to remove its most severe restrictions gathering restrictions, although it did institute a public masking order in the fall of 2020 to deal with what would be a second- and third-wave rise in cases. Chief Medical Health Officer Dr. Saqib told us in that time period that we should be worried if cases got into the 200-plus-per-day range.

Rather miraculously, we get several different varieties of vaccines, causing a very significant shift in how we viewed this pandemic.

By last summer, 70 per cent of the adult population had received a single jab, meeting the government’s goal for full re-opening.

Things changes overnight on July 11th. Bars, restaurants and sporting venues were open to full capacity. Masks were off and social distancing was a thing of the past.

Or at least, that was the case until cases began to increase in August, soaring to then-record numbers in September and still-record numbers of hospitalizations and ICU admissions.

Vaccine passports were put in place and public mask wearing was re-instituted because things changed again.

During year-end interviews, Moe assured us he had learned lessons from that fourth wave about an ever-changing pandemic — lessons he vowed to carry forward in his battle with Omicron during the fifth wave.

So here are not sit during an ever-changing pandemic.

By all considerations, there is reason believe Omircron is less severe COVID-19 variant than Delta.

That said, we are now instead seeing massive numbers of infections likely in the thousands each day in Saskatchewan — so many that the government is only counting the ones recorded through official PCR tests (about 1,000 to 1,500 a day) and telling everyone else with a positive rapid test to just assume they have COVID-19.

How we once viewed COVID-19 changed again.

But the sheer volume of Omicron means hospitalizations are again trending upward towards the peak the hit in October 2021. As Shabab has repeatedly said, leads to a certain percentage of ICU admissions and then a certain percentage of deaths.

The Sask. Party government maintains things are still manageable. However, the government did announce last week a contingency plan to deal with over-crowded city hospitals to hospitals in neighbouring towns and smaller cities.

All this begs the question of whether we have learned enough about COVID-19 and are keeping up the change.

We are about to find out.