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Albertans have spoken out in unprecedented fashion, elected leaders have listened, and most COVID restrictions have now been axed.
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It’s a major victory for people power.
Such was the force of this popular movement that it pushed jittery politicians to cut restrictions much faster than many expected.
Premier Jason Kenney, for example, seemed in no hurry to drop COVID restrictions in January, with his government chastened by its COVID fiasco of the summer of 2021 and evidently content to not be any kind of leader in removing restrictions ahead of other big provinces like BC, Ontario and Quebec.
But after widespread protests in late January, along with polling showing slipping support for restrictions, Kenney moved fast to end them.
Other Alberta jurisdictions, including Calgary, followed his lead. Only Edmonton city council held tight to its mask by law. But when Edmonton city admin conducted an online survey on masking, something remarkable happened, an unprecedented eruption of public participation. More than 79,000 people answered the survey.
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“It’s important to remember this was a record-breaking survey for the city,” deputy city manager Catrin Owen told council this week, pointing out similar surveys on the budget had 8,000 responses and one on snow and ice removal had 19,000.
Preliminary results found that a landslide majority of 68 per cent were against masking in indoor spaces in Edmonton, with 30 per cent in favor of retention and two per cent unsure.
Some councilors came off as none too happy with this public input, questioning why such a survey was ever done and criticizing the result as unscientific, as there was no way to know if respondents were, in fact, city residents.
Owen coolly responded, noting this survey was done like every other city survey, and it wasn’t limited to Edmontonians as admin wanted to take into account all who visit, work and shop here from outside the city.
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City businesses and almost all city service providers also supported lifting the mask mandate.
When councillors questioned why we’d get rid of useful protection like masks, Edmonton’s medical officer of health Christopher Sikora noted that masks were indeed a very good tool but with all COVID indicators now dropping, from hospitalizations to test positivity rates, it was time to move from a mandatory to a voluntary approach. “I think that’s a reasonable thing to do at this point in time.”
In the end, eight of 13 councillors voted to ax the bylaw, though some did so only because the Kenney government was bringing in a bill that would essentially force Edmonton to comply with provincial COVID regulations.
I had predicted in mid-January — only one week after known COVID case counts peaked at more than 7000 on Jan. 11, three times higher than any previous peak — that an unprecedented public push against lockdown measures would force governments to ax restrictions by late February.
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I made the prediction because I knew many folks who had previously feared COVID no longer did so. They now only half-heartedly followed public health restrictions.
High levels of immunization had obviously made a difference.
It was also the case that old measures no longer seemed to work against highly infectious Omicron. Indeed, folks who strongly supported masks such as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, Queen Elizabeth and NDP Leader Rachel Notley have all caught COVID.
The Omicron variant appears to have acted just as Dr. Angelique Coetzee, one of the South African doctors who raised the alarm on Omicron and the chair of the SA Medical Association, hoped it would, as a kind of mass inoculation.
Coetzee told the world in late November 2021 that almost all Omicron cases in South Africa were “very, very mild,” and said the variant could be of great help to us all, with people catching a safer form of the disease, thus developing vital antibodies that would protect them against a possibly more severe variant down the road.
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Of course, even with various mandates now axed, many people will quite reasonably decide to still mask up in public, as well as take other precautions based on their own health status.
Almost certainly there will be an enduring trend to stay home if you’re sick. Folks who are hacking and sniffling at work will no longer be seen as brave soldiers but as public health threats.
But, just now, no level of government in Alberta will force anyone to do any of these things.
It’s a major victory for people power.
If we accept the reality that the Omicron wave has broken and that COVID restrictions must also enjoy wide acceptance to succeed, it’s also a win for sound public health policy.
