Manitoba throws masks, caution to the wind

Opinion

Hey there, time traveller!
This article was published 08/08/2021 (1192 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

One day after Manitoba made the astounding decision to eliminate its indoor mask mandate, I struck up a conversation with a hostess at one of my all-time favourite local restaurants, just to find out how they were going to respond.

Many businesses big and small were stunned by the decision that masks and full vaccination were no longer going to be mandated as part of the public health order, or enforced by government. I was curious about how this restaurant was going to respond.

The hostess said staff would continue to wear masks, and they would strongly recommend patrons do the same when entering or leaving, or traversing the restaurant to get to the bathroom. However, she also offered that the restaurant was expecting trouble from some of its more militant anti-mask patrons.

Like the regular who was on the patio a few days earlier and taunted the hostess for wearing a mask. The hostess said she was not entirely surprised; this customer had bristled over the mask mandate on several previous occasions.

But it was what he did next that stunned me.

He leaned forward, grabbed this woman’s mask and snapped it against her face.

You can understand how, in the wake of the decision to abandon the indoor mask mandate, she would feel nervous. Customer-facing workers have always faced ugly moments like this. However, now that Manitobans have essentially been given the green light to do whatever they want, wherever they want, it’s not unreasonable to expect some mayhem.

Make no mistake about it, the anti-mask, anti-vaccine hounds have been released. Why they have been released remains a subject of great debate.

Premier Brian Pallister and Dr. Brent Roussin, the province’s chief provincial public health officer, have repeatedly said a fourth wave of COVID-19 is coming, and it’s critical to get vaccinated and wear masks. At the same time, they’ve replaced mandated orders with strong recommendations.

Both men maintained that any business or facility could continue on their own to set rules around masks and vaccine status. It’s just that now, government wouldn’t help enforce those rules. It’s a scenario that has caused some confusion.

The City of Winnipeg immediately let it be known masks would still be mandated for all municipal facilities and on Winnipeg Transit.

But what of businesses and other public entities?

It’s still early in our new public health reality to reach any conclusions, but a totally unscientific canvass of various retail locations over the weekend produced some interesting results.

While almost everyone was masked at two different grocery stores, the maskless were out in full force at Ikea, despite signs that said masks are “strongly recommended and appreciated” by the people who work there.

The worst outcome of the abandonment of the mask mandate, to date at least, has been the failure of schools to backfill the loss of provincial mandates.

Most of Manitoba’s colleges and universities are not requiring mandatory vaccines or mask use, although the University of Manitoba has left its mask mandate intact for now. School divisions within Winnipeg have also said they will not require vaccinations or masks when classes resume in the fall. It’s pure madness, but hardly surprising after the Pallister government chose to abandon us at what has to be the most inopportune time in the evolution of the pandemic.

Despite rising global vaccination rates, variants are driving surges in COVID-19, with new evidence showing fully vaccinated people can still acquire and transmit the virus. We are also learning some of those variants are particularly dangerous to children who, in Canada, are not eligible for a vaccine.

Eliminating the mask mandate is completely out of step with best practices in public health and safety. Choose your threat; you will not find another example where government issues “strong recommendations” in response to a clear and present threat to public health and safety.

When we get behind the wheel of an automobile, we must wear seatbelts, abstain from drinking and driving, and obtain a drivers licence. Failure to do any of those things can result in fines, suspension of driving privileges and even criminal charges.

Now, imagine government only “strongly recommended” you have a driver’s licence, respect speed limits and abstain from driving under the influence.

And what if the ban on smoking indoors was just a recommendation? Would that deter smokers from keeping non-smokers safe?

It makes you wonder how have the Manitobans who rage against masks and vaccines convinced government to abandon the best practices of public health and throw a measure of caution to the wind.

You would think that political leaders like Pallister, who is leaking popular and political support like a ravaged piñata, might want to maintain mask mandates and introduce more restrictions for the unvaccinated, if only to pander to the overwhelming majority of his citizens who support both measures.

Recent opinion polls show that 80 per cent of Canadians support indoor mask mandates and 75 per cent support mandatory vaccination. Manitobans, who have one of the best vaccination campaigns in the country, cannot be out of step with those views.

Instead, Pallister and Roussin are not only running against the best practices of public health, they’re swimming against the current of public opinion.

We may never know exactly why Pallister and advisers are deferring to the hostile and unco-operative. But one thing is abundantly, alarmingly clear.

Selfish individualists, shameless libertarians and emboldened mask snappers rejoice. Your time has finally come.

dan.lett@freepress.mb.ca