The Sask government is a disgrace: COVID edition

It is one month until Christmas. It is the time for family, friends and co-workers to get together and celebrate over food and drink. Ugly sweater parties, turkey, eggnog, desserts and gifts. Except this won’t fully be possible this year, because the Saskatchewan government led by Scott Moe and the Sask Party, completely fucked up their handling of a second wave of COVID that could be seen from miles away.

Instead of being proactive, in typical conservative fashion, the Sask Party showed up to the game late and is being reactionary with a virus that we know can take two weeks to fully understand what it’s doing in the community. So things are likely to get much, much worse, before they get better. I have previously written-off this failed exercise of public service as incompetence but I now believe that it’s even worse than that. It is purposeful negligence that is causing people to die that didn’t have to.

Premier Scott Moe keeps talking about how a lockdown had to be avoided in order to prevent mental illness and ruined lives from a depressed economy causing businesses to permanently close. Forgetting the fact that the provincial government has the power and capacity to provide financial support to these businesses, did they actually prepare for the alternate scenario of keeping the economy open during an expected second wave in the fall?

It is clear that the Saskatchewan Health Authority was not made to be prepared for the second wave that would obvisouly be much worse than the first due to our open economy. You cannot simply add beds without also hiring nurses and doctors to staff those beds. This is like fighting a war without making the preparation for casualties. People are dying on the battlefield. Except the war is worldwide and every health professional is already busy tending to their own. This lack of care and responsibility to the Saskatchewan people is a complete and utter disgrace.

Our government could have saved Christmas with a short, circuit-breaker lockdown but its too late for that now. We as individuals must now do our part to protect further lives from being taken from us. Lives we are losing that don't only include seniors. Because we won't be able to count on our flaccid government to lead us through this battle, we all must do our part to do the right thing: which basically means staying home.

If you want to support our local businesses, please consider take-out at restaurants and grocery stores, and always wear a mask when in the presence of other people outside your two-household bubble. We are not safe sitting in a restaurant, a bar, or someone's home drinking and eating with others. This unfortunately includes family, so please consider taking advantage of technology to visit with them in a safe manner.

Remember: just because you aren't showing symptoms and are "young and healthy", it doesn't mean you can't pass this virus on to someone who isn't. The more people who practice social responsibility now, the less stress we will put on our already-stretched-thin healthcare system, perhaps allowing our burnt-out healthcare workers a chance to enjoy Christmas. Doing the difficult but right thing might just be able to get us through this winter in time for vaccines to roll out. There is hope in the distance but we still have a lot of work to do, even if our government doesn't want to make the effort themselves.