WHAT WENT SO TERRIBLY WRONG IN MANITOBA?
This is a candid assessment of the abysmal handling of Manitoba’s Covid-19 response on the part of our elected and appointed officials who were tasked with guiding the province through a ‘pandemic’. Frankly, everyone of them should resign in disgrace and several should be arrested and charged with criminal negligence causing death.
The Manitoba government releases numerous News Bulletins and since Jan 30, nearly 300 specifically on Covid-19. All of the following information has been gleaned from the government’s own media releases.
Here is a list and some of my commentary on the key Manitoba Covid-19 milestones:
- Mar 10: Province looking for more PPE & masks for patients and caregivers
- Mar 13: Started ramping up testing & opening clinics, schools to close Mar 23 to Apr 10, events with more than 250 to be cancelled
- Mar 17: Closure of daycares, casinos, Personal Care Home (PCH) lockdowns, gatherings down to 50, Province had 266 ventilators & Health Sciences Center created a 30 bed Isolation Ward
- Mar 20: State of Emergency declared (continues to this day), all gatherings limited to 50, Manitobans asked to ‘Flatten the Curve’
The Provincial government copied most of the rest of the World with their response to a virus which was heralded as apocalyptic. In essence, we all maxed out the credit cards, took out a second mortgage, quit our jobs, slammed the door shut, and hid cowering in our basements covering our ears so we couldn’t hear the wolf howling outside.
- Mar 26: termed a ‘Historic Pandemic’, $4.5M to be spent combating Covid-19 anxiety
“The most important way of reducing the spread of this virus is to stay at home as much as you can,” Roussin said. “We know that this virus is spread, almost exclusively, by symptomatic people and through close, prolonged contact with those individuals.”
- Mar 27: gatherings dropped to 10, Provincial highway checkpoints set on borders
- Mar 30: restaurants closed to diners, non-essential businesses to close
- Mar 31: School cancelled to ‘flatten the curve’, Manitobans told to ‘Stay Home’
For the Apr & May, MB closed. There was zero traffic on the roads, no school, no non-essential businesses open, everyone applied social distancing, all borders were closed, all events started to be cancelled, there was little mask use, in person government related services closed, there was a touch phobia and a run on toilet paper, disinfectant products, and hand sanitizer.
- Apr 5: Province to borrow $10B, told to stay home for Easter to flatten the curve.
- Apr 9: OP Safe Apart announced with enhanced fines of $486/person & $2542/business, they have since increased to $1296/person & $5000/business plus $298/person for not wearing a mask in a public place (2nd highest in the country). Snitch line & extra officers set up to enforce, more messaging to ‘Flatten the Curve’
- Apr 15: Emergency Act to be strengthened & $1B to be spent on Covid-19 efforts
- Apr 16: Travel to Northern MB cutoff
- Apr 29: Announced plans for slow reopening starting May 4
Manitoba did quite well at keeping the wolf out. Our numbers were very low and we did not see the type of carnage in our Personal Care Homes (PCHs) that was experienced in Ontario and Quebec. You would think provincial officials would have been taking notes.
- Manitoba’s current hospital capacity: 2432 Acute Care beds plus 86 ICU with expansion plans for extra 300 AC and 100 ICU emergency spaces
Ok, looks like the Province is ready in case of a Fall resurgence. Maybe all the sacrifice and unprecedented spending to ‘flatten the curve’ bought us some time.
- Apr 30: PCHs to restrict staff to one home only, all 127 homes have adequate staffing in place
Good idea? Government is great at making up new rules and laws but is infamous for not understanding the practicalities for implementation. There are reasons homecare workers bounce from residence to residence. A good manager would have looked at this and known immediately that this plan would not be sustainable.
- May 4: 2020/21 deficit could possibly hit $5B, MB had the highest direct debt/capita of all provinces
- May 22: Gatherings allowed to increase from 25 to 50
- Jun 4: MB dropped 64,200 jobs in Apr and had a 13,800 rebound in May, unemployment rate was 11.2%
- Jun 23: started planning for PCH visitations
- Jun 26: Northern MB opened back up
- Jun 29: $280M for PCHs for fire suppression capital projects
- Jun 30: Fiscal update, $2.1B spent on Covid-19 measures and touted as 2nd highest as % of GDP, $5B deficit projected if there’s a 2nd wave. 7000 Surgical procedures delayed and still not caught up
- Jul 17: cases up-ticked and blamed on Hutterites. (There was a large funeral in AB with thousands of Hutterites attending. Individual Hutterites started to be discriminated against.)
This was the beginning of the government’s ‘Name & Shame’ campaign. Premier Pallister has personally gaslighted numerous individuals and businesses for not being on ‘Team Manitoba’. His melodramatic tirades berate anyone who questions his dictates. He was ‘forced’ to cancel Christmas because we just did not listen!
This has only served to divide the population and has encouraged an army of Karens eager to snitch on their neighbors because they’re not following this or that inane new pandemic rule.
- Jul 21: “Thanks to the efforts of all Manitobans, we continue to lead in recovery and have among the lowest COVID-19 test positivity rates in the country,” said Pallister. “That means we can continue our careful, balanced plan to restart our economy, give people back their lives and get Manitobans back to work. Manitoba is one of the safest places in the world to go back to work and get back up on your feet,” said Pallister. “We must maintain our vigilance while growing our way out of this pandemic. I encourage all Manitobans to have their say in our next steps of restarting our economy.”
This did not age well as our rates in the fall were some of the worst in North America.
- Jul 29: Front line workers to receive $1377
By this point, Manitobans were starting to move around again and businesses were open. People still kept their distance and being outdoors and camping were popular. Even on the beaches, people ‘social distanced’.
- Aug 11: In the Prairie Mountain Health (PMH) region there was a slight uptick in cases related to Hutterite colonies and some Brandon clusters connected to close contacts. Vehicles for the Brandon testing site stretched for miles.
- Aug 17: Advice from government was to wash hands, social distance, and the first instance to consider masks if social distancing was not possible. SuperStore and other major retailers were making mask use mandatory as of Aug 24
- Aug 19: Premier Pallister, after complaints from parents, mandated masks for Grades 4-12 upon return to Sep classes
This was another knee-jerk reaction from the government. They were fine with sending the kids back to school without masks. Then immediately after an outcry from concerned parents, out came the first of the mask dictates.
You know what, I do not care if you want to wear a mask or not, fill your boots. There is some wishy washy evidence about their effectiveness that only surprisingly came out with this virus and none others, ever! But if you believe in them, fine, that’s how placebos work. I do notice that people are not avoiding each other as much anymore.
Masks also gave the government a convenient focus point to show they were serious about dealing with this thing. They could also gaslight the ‘anti-mask’ malcontents and point fingers and the spotlight away from failed government policies.
- Aug 24: PMH region moved to Condition Orange for minimum 2 weeks (it lasted a month). Mandatory masks and gatherings in & out limited to 10. Cases in PMH starting Aug 6 – Sep 16 were: 18, 10, 2, 20, 11, 3, 4, 12, 25, 3, 9, 20, 2, 13, 17, 5, 24, 45, 35 (this was the day PMH moved to Orange), 10, 8, 9, 18, 31, 12, 13, 7, 8, 6, 1, 4, 3, 6, 0, 1, 2, 4, 2, 0, 1, 0, 1, 4. Hospitalizations, ICU visits, and deaths in the region barely moved.
My suspicion for the ‘high’ case days is there was mass testing at the Hutterite colonies and no surprise, they found extra infections. Obviously, because the colonies could be closed down easily, there was no wider community spread.
But the panic over case numbers gave the government the excuse to put the entire Southwest corner of the Province into a partial lockdown. Manitoba had been successful at keeping the wolf away but a little yip sent us running back to the basement.
- Sep 3: travel to Northern MB was closed again and there were more mask recommendations from the Province
Schools reopened around Sep 8, and immediately cases were identified at various schools. They were mostly described as coming from outside of the school with no general outbreaks. But Sep 22, 20 cases were connected with a Winnipeg school. Mask use in Winnipeg was already increasing both in and out.
There are good reasons to get the children back into school. One big one is that there is not enough child care if they were all sent home again. But drive by a school at recess. The kids are swapping germs like they always have and the hundreds of ‘School Exposures’ list backs that up.
The Government lies that children do not spread the virus. Otherwise, why were the 20 schools of the Hanover School Division shut down? Why are the higher grades staying home an extra two weeks after Christmas vacation? But if you apply a risk analysis, society needs to take these extra cases on the chin and live with it.
- Sep 18: PMH was brought back to yellow but there was a ‘concern’ about the rising case numbers in Winnipeg. PMH was touted as a success story because they ‘followed’ the rules.
- Sep 28: Winnipeg went to Orange with mandatory masks and gathering sizes of only 10 in or out.
It is glaringly obvious that despite mass mask wearing, social distancing, and hiding in our basements, the wolf had not gone away. The virus was endemic to the Province and all we had accomplished was to have it roar back as viruses typically do after the summer lull.
Starting in Oct, there were warnings that Manitobans should not gather for Thanksgiving (Oct 10). There were numerous case outbreaks all Oct in schools, prisons, and PCHs. Outbreaks in PCHs started to explode starting around Oct 20. Healthcare workers were identified as the carriers into some PCHs. Outbreaks are still continuing in numerous PCHs, schools, and prisons.
This was the point of breakdown in the PCHs and should have been sending wake-up calls to those in charge. PCH staff were burning out and bringing the infection into the residences with devastating results reminiscent of the spring carnage experienced in Ontario and Quebec. Funny how the PPE protocols did not protect the elderly in the scores of homes that have experienced outbreaks.
- Oct 7: During the Speech from the Throne: “This year has been like no other, yet we have weathered it better than most,” said Pallister. “The resilience of Manitoba’s economy, finances, public services, and most of all, our people, have stood out strong. I am confident that if we keep working together, guided by Manitoba values, we will come out of this pandemic stronger and more prosperous.”
It didn’t take long for Pallister to be caught out in this lie.
- Oct 9: An emergency $500M infusion of cash sought by government to add to $1.577B already spent on Covid-19
- Oct 19: Province mandated more business closures, reduced gathering sizes, and liquor establishment curfews in Winnipeg
- Oct 26: travel to Northern MB shut down again
- Nov 2: Premier Pallister announced MB was ready for a 2nd wave, there was a focus on more testing. In Winnipeg, if one household resident was symptomatic all residents had to isolate pending a negative test result. Exemptions were made for healthcare & First Responders if they were asymptomatic. Winnipeg went to a hard lockdown.
- Nov 5: The Premier emphasized that he was bringing the non-compliance hammer down and encouraged Manitobans to snitch on their neighbors. A contract with a private security company, G4S, was being written up so a total of 3300 government personnel could issue Covid-19 tickets. Meanwhile, PCH orders were changed to exempt workers from only working in one home.
- Nov 12: The entire Province went to condition Red and hard lockdowns
- Nov 13: A team was being sent to Maples PCH to determine what went wrong. Over 50 of the 200 residents have passed away so far.
The staff at Maples conducted a fo’c’sle sitdown mutiny when they en-mass called in sick and contacted 911 numerous times on the evening of Nov 6. People can only work in impossible conditions for so long before they give up in despair.
Where were the Health inspectors who should have been keeping tabs on a system that was starting to fall apart? PCHs had gone to hard lockdown mid-Oct. When things came to a head at Maples, well over 30 PCHs had declared outbreaks.
In the Navy, you are taught to stay ahead of the Ship instead of surfing behind her in the wake. The Navy also has a Board of Inquiry after every major incident in order to assign blame and to roll heads.
People need to go to jail for what happened in these homes.
- Dec 8: Premier Pallister cancels Christmas and New Year’s. He continues to ‘Name & Shame’ non-compliant offenders. He did let up on drive-in religious services after some high profile church incidents.
Frankly, my belief is if Pallister had enough troops, he would place all of MB under house arrest. Thankfully, he only has 3300 ticketing goons and a volunteer army of snitching Karens.
- Dec 9: $7.7M announced for PCHs to help with staffing and operating expenses
This latest funding announcement, is too little too late. It was identified from day one who the virus was going to be worst towards. But instead of being proactive, the Province has allowed the system to self-monitor itself and they are always playing catch-up.
Ken Waddell has been writing some scathing editorials at the Neepawa Banner over the Government’s handling of Covid-19. In many of them, he has mentioned some proactive steps the health officials could have been touting. One in particular is the steps taken by the local hog plant which has kept the virus out. So here’s a question, how can the meat plants be so successful when healthcare ‘professionals’ are failing so badly?
Here is the answer. Healthcare in Canada sucks and has been that way for decades. PCH service is even worse. Our much vaunted systems are run by incompetent administrators who know how to ‘play the game’ instead of actually knowing how to run things. Our elected officials care more about looking like they are doing something rather than actually doing something.
Increasingly, western governments and their populations have become risk adverse. Government has sought to control more and more of our lives. Then a moderate crisis came along and their go-to response was to SHUT EVERYTHING DOWN! They went all in with a philosophy of making the goal zero cases yielding zero deaths. The population is going along with it, so why change course or admit you were wrong?
To be perfectly blunt, old, sick people die. Also, to be direct, the West is so divorced from reality they cannot handle this simple fact of life. The wolf eventually gets us all. Sadly, most people are so narcissistic they only feign concern for the elderly. The most strident of Karens are concerned only for their own well-being.
The numbers for Manitoba show we are dying from Covid-19 at the SAME EXACT RATE AS NORMAL LIFE EXPECTANCY! We literally have no abnormal death spikes, our hospitals and ICUs are not being overrun or in danger of being overrun. Unless the media told you, you wouldn’t even know we were in a pandemic.
Of course, the virus is dangerous mainly to the old and sick but instead of targeted solutions with acceptable risk/benefit outcomes, we have gone with an untenable zero risk model. This will only result in an endless game of whack-a-mole which we will never win and ruin the Province and thousands of lives. The cure is fast becoming worse than the disease. Maybe a fast roll-out of an effective vaccine will get us off this ride of horrors.
Heaven help us if we ever have to face an actual wolf at the door.
Blair is a personification of a ‘Jack of All Trades and Master of None’. He has held several careers and has all the T-shirts. Time to add the title Blogger to the list.