Discussions

Not school, but in early days for stores I’d say it’s well clear of 80% masked at Mall including biggest stores to start the day.  Most noticable trend is store staff, where I’d say 90-95%. A couple would have it hanging over the ears for what I'd wager is pulling up when a customer comes in.

Here’s a story on Austria having to bring back some measures:  
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2022-03-18/austria-reimposes-some-coronavirus-measures-to-curb-record-cases  
 
I know that at least some provinces on this side of the Atlantic are being a little cautious with their reopening messaging so as to have people prepared for the future possibility that restrictions could one day be necessary again. IMO important so that if we do have to flick the switch again we don’t have to go through the same old fights.  
 
Between the lack of transparency and the seemingly outsized weighting toward politics and business on the public health/politics/business balance that regions are having to strike, you can count me in the crowd that’s disenchanted with how we seem to be trending more towards AB/Sask over these last few months. If a future variant/wave trends toward being extremely dire I think they’ll do the right thing, but it’s the proactive decisions to prevent us from experiencing the worst of it if we get there that I'm not as confident in as I once was.  
 
It sounds weird but I kind of run decisions we see here through the lens of whats being done in provinces that are a little more inclined toward the public health side of that balance like BC, Maritimes and even Ontario.  
Our hospitalization rate relative to population is still in another stratosphere from BC, but what they’re doing represents to me a little closer to a balance that gives public health more weighting. For signs of future waves one of the things I’ll be doing is watching those regions, both in terms of any change in trend of cases and hospitalizations along with any changes in measures. At that point I start to ask questions about what the expectation is here… keeping in mind that through the pandemic we’ve more often than not had the benefit of seeing things dig in elsewhere before they do in Manitoba.  
 
All that said, there does seem to be a "learning to live with" path so long as severity of future variants and medical system capacity are in check. Here’s hoping that the worst is behind us… or at the very least that we get a good run this summer to responsibly enjoy what this potential new normal has in store for us while at the same time taking some serious pressure off of everyone that works in our medical system.