‘New normal’ really just ‘old recklessness’ Manitoba’s Tories rush to join precipitous parade of provinces out of pandemic By: Dan Lett Posted: 7:00 PM CDT Monday, Mar. 14, 2022 Last Modified: 7:58 AM CDT Tuesday, Mar. 15, 2022 Updates

Opinion

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This article was published 13/03/2022 (972 days ago), so information in it may no longer be current.

When the premiers talk about removing pandemic restrictions so that we may collectively achieve a “return to normal,” which normal are they talking about?

Reclaiming some sort of pre-pandemic normal appears to be Job 1 for Canada’s premiers at the moment. They want it so much, they’re all rushing towards a restriction-free state en masse, like a throng of twitchy bargain hunters crashing through the front doors of an electronics warehouse store on Black Friday.

They are fixated on that time before terms such as “COVID-19” and “social distancing” invaded our daily lexicon. A time when we moved freely and maskless about our cities, provinces and country without concern. A time when we could visit our elderly friends and family, and they could visit us, without a care in the world.

However, even though Manitoba is joining the ranks of jurisdictions trying to roll back the clock, we should all know that this mythical pre-pandemic normal no longer exists. Notwithstanding all of the additional freedoms we have been given this month, we’re never going back to the kind of life we enjoyed before the pandemic struck.

Not that the PC government isn’t trying to boot up the wayback machine.

As of Tuesday, you no longer need to wear masks indoors, save for working in or visiting a health-care facility. The province eliminated its vaccine mandate on March 1, meaning you no longer need to show proof of full immunization to enter indoor facilities, including personal-care homes. And those testing positive for COVID-19 no longer need to isolate for any period of time.

Does all that mean we no longer need to wear masks indoors, get our booster shots or isolate? In an ultimate act of intellectual dishonesty, the Manitoba government still wants you to do all of those things. It just won’t force you.

Consider isolation requirements. The province still strongly recommends wearing a mask and steering clear of any “higher-risk people or higher-risk settings” for 10 days after a positive test or onset of symptoms. But it won’t force you, leaving sensible people to ask the obvious and appropriate question: how can something be important enough to recommend but not important enough to enforce?

If recommendations were enough, we’d all be thinner, better drivers and uninterested in any form of video lottery terminal gambling.

In fairness, Health Minister Audrey Gordon has tried to acknowledge the new normal. “This path forward will be different for all of us, whether we choose to wear masks or not, or how and when we connect with family and friends,” she stated in a Monday news release. “Let’s be patient, thoughtful and kind to each other as we navigate this new normal together.”

However, when you look at what they are doing rather than what they are saying, Gordon and the Tory government are not offering us a new normal; they’re trying to recreate the old normal despite clear signs that it’s long gone.

The threat of COVID-19 — and the emergence of a new and possibly more virulent mutation — remains quite high. China is straining under new Omicron outbreaks. In the United Kingdom and parts of the United States where public-health restrictions have been lifted, infections, hospitalizations and deaths are starting to creep back up.

These metrics are all reminders that we’re still facing an existential threat from the novel coronavirus. A threat so clear and present that it will ensure certain groups in society have absolutely no chance at all to return to a pre-pandemic normal.

For the foreseeable future, it will continue be very risky to be an elderly person, or someone with underlying health conditions. There is simply no way that anyone over 70 years of age, or who is managing a chronic health condition or immune-system deficiency will be able to resume a pre-pandemic normal.

If Gordon were serious about a “new” normal, she’d be sustaining the indoor mask mandate. When you’re eliminating vaccine mandates and occupancy limits, an indoor mask mandate might be more important now than it was before. Now that we’ve learned to live with masks, why not keep them?

Vaccine mandates should also be part of any definition of the “new” normal. Mandates are the single best way to drive vaccination uptake and are, arguably, just as important now as they were before. Particularly in the health-care sector, where mandates were successful in nudging a lot of vaccine skeptics into getting their shots.

For the gross majority of people in this country, masks and vaccines are table stakes for the new normal. Nearly nine in 10 Canadians were navigating daily life with masks and jabs without complaint because they knew it was keeping people safe and protecting our health-care system. We carried masks wherever we went and flashed our vaccine cards without complaint.

Will those same people be willing to make the same sacrifices when the next pandemic hits? Maybe, but only if a majority of us reject the false security being offered by the Tory government, and accept that a “next” pandemic is also part of our “new” normal.

dan.lett@winnipegfreepress.com

Dan Lett
Columnist

Born and raised in and around Toronto, Dan Lett came to Winnipeg in 1986, less than a year out of journalism school with a lifelong dream to be a newspaper reporter.

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