Manitobans deserve dose of urgency from dithering premier By: Dan Lett Posted: 7:00 PM CST Tuesday, Jan. 26, 2021

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 25/01/2021 (1334 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

Epidemiologists studying the pandemic in Manitoba have made a troubling discovery.

On average, the Manitoba government requires a month-long incubation period for common sense to find its way into the province’s COVID-19 pandemic response.

Which is to say, for reasons that are not immediately evident, there is a bizarre and chronic delay necessary before Premier Brian Pallister and his government take obvious, necessary steps to combat the novel coronavirus.

This week provides another case in point. On Tuesday, Pallister held a news conference to announce that starting Jan. 29, a 14-day quarantine period would be imposed on all returning travellers regardless of where they were coming from. Currently, Manitobans are allowed to travel to and from Western Canada and avoid a quarantine.

Pallister said the change is required because of the growing threat posed by more virulent variant strains of COVID-19 which are sweeping across the globe.

There are a couple of interesting points to note about this announcement.

The first variant of COVID-19 was identified in mid-December, nearly six weeks ago, in the United Kingdom. Contact tracing suggests the origins of the variant go back even further, to September.

On Dec. 27, the first two cases of the U.K. variant were detected in Ontario; just this week, Alberta found its first U.K. variant case that was not connected to international travel, suggesting it has been spreading through community contact for at least one incubation period.

Requiring a quarantine period for travellers from the West is a good idea; it would have been a great idea six months ago.

If all that weren’t alarming enough, by mid-January, two other variants were identified in South Africa and Brazil.

Manitoba’s response? More than six weeks after the U.K. identified the variant, a month after it arrived in Canada, and the same week that Alberta confirmed a variant is spreading through community transmission, Manitoba instituted a quarantine period for anyone returning home from the western provinces.

Requiring a quarantine period for travellers from the West is a good idea; it would have been a great idea six months ago.

Pallister and public health officials have been asked repeatedly over those months why an exception was being made for Western Canada when travellers returning from the East were required to isolate for two weeks. Never, not once, did the premier provide a rational explanation.

Given what we know about the variants — way easier to transmit, potentially deadlier — there is every reason to believe that at least one of the new strains of COVID-19 has already arrived in Manitoba while Pallister carefully cultivated his common sense.

This isn’t the only instance of chronic, tragic delay.

Manitoba moved quickly to contain the virus in the spring. But since then, obvious and sensible pandemic response ideas have required extra-long incubation periods.

There was at least a month of badgering by the media and medical professionals prior to the Pallister government’s late September decision to introduce a mandatory indoor mask order. And almost the same amount of time and effort to get the premier to initiate a second lockdown in November.

In both instances, public opinion polls showed overwhelming support for masks and a second lockdown. And in both instances, Pallister eventually did the right thing. But only after weeks and weeks of torturous deliberation that seemed to serve almost no purpose.

If you want to see the folly in the Pallister government’s delay, ask yourself what the downside would have been to imposing the quarantine requirement on travellers from the West much sooner? Non-essential travel is highly discouraged, very few people are getting on planes and exemptions are available to anyone who really needs it.

What possible benefit did we derive from delaying the quarantine requirement for western travellers? The answer is, of course, none.

It is this lack of logic, combined with a tendency to move at a glacial pace, that makes Pallister’s frequent demands for urgent action from others, particularly the federal government, so bloody maddening.

On Tuesday, the premier admonished Ottawa for not acting sooner to introduce new rules and restrictions on travellers passing through Canadian airports. The premiers have asked for more rigorous rapid testing and increased enforcement to identify people who are ignoring quarantine requirements.

These are reasonable requests, but they must surely appear meaningless when they come from a government that needs one-twelfth of a year to make a single important pandemic decision.

Pallister creates even more frustration with the ongoing “do as I say and not as I do” approach to managing his staff and elected caucus when they violate travel and quarantine restrictions.

As he has done in recent weeks, Pallister waxed eloquent about how “international or domestic travel … is strongly discouraged” and about how all Manitobans must do “everything they can” to help contain the spread of the virus by adhering to rules.

Pallister creates even more frustration with the ongoing “do as I say and not as I do” approach to managing his staff and elected caucus when they violate travel and quarantine restrictions.

Pallister may have forgotten how several members of his government, including Clerk of the Executive Council David McLaughlin and MLA James Teitsma, flouted this advice over the Christmas period. And from what we know now, both Teitsma and McLaughlin were travelling at the same time the variants were arriving in Canada.

This inability to act in a timely fashion is not, lamentably, a Manitoba phenomenon. And yet, few jurisdictions boast political leaders who invest equal amounts of time to dithering and dishing out criticism to others.

So, in the interest of fairness, here’s a single grain of advice for him.

When it comes to things like respecting the rules and acting urgently, premier heal thyself.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca