I'm just numbed by these covid numbers. Today, I nodded along with a Lorne Gunter column. I biked past crowded outdoor picnics of dozens of people. I got an emergency alert (why?) for which there is little I can do to make myself or others safer. We're maybe 6 weeks from vaxxed.
The Premier's strategy of playing chicken with the variants, hoping that some Albertans will step up as they have for 14 months, while others ignore or undermine the rules, has been laid bare. It's easy to divide and mock, but when the time came to unite Albertans, he failed.
Every one of those 2000+ people is one of us. Most of them didn't make some bad choice. Most, I'm sure, weren't covidiots. They went to work. Or to the store. Or to school. Places they were encouraged or required to go to. Why?
Simply put, they were put in harm's way by us. We, Alberta, voted in a government that has barely lifted a finger to make it easier to take leave, safer to go to school or work, or just safer in general. This didn't need to happen. It was a choice. A choice by our government.
The MO in the third wave has been plausible deniability. Blame Trudeau for lack of vaccines (they are ahead of schedule). Force the school boards to beg to move school online. Now, we see it again with more stringent measures downloaded to municipalities. There is no backbone.
Don't beleive me? Believe the Premier. He knew this would happen. He predicted it. But he also did far less than enough to reverse it. And, his government has continued to divide, distract, and spin as though covid-19 is a detail on the margins of their legislative agenda.
I don't deny that these choices are hard. There are tradeoffs. There is no universally good option. But, the choice made by the Premier was one that he knew would lead to more illness, more death, more cyclical harm to new and existing businesses, but perhaps less harm to him.
Somehow, it all feels much worse... much more callous when we know that we're a couple of months from the end of the crisis. The Premier lined us all up and told us to make a run across the bridge hoping we'd get to the other side (the greatest summer ever!) before the train.
We didn't make it.
There's always a typo. *believe*
You can follow @andrew_leach.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: