Update - 13th May
The province's first set of projections on the number of infections, number of hospitalizations, and the number of patients requiring intensive care were so dramatically overstated that they had to release an entirely new set of projections three weeks later.
But even that second lowered set of projects have proven to be far too high.
Alberta has over 8,000 acute care beds, and had set aside about 2,000 of them specifically for COVID-19 patients.
The province's absolute best-case scenario projected there would be 300 people in hospital with COVID right now.
In reality, there are only 59.
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Tomorrow, the rest of the province will begin to slowly re-open Alberta's now devastated economy, but Calgary is being left out.
After being told they would likely be allowed to open tomorrow, bars, restaurants, hairdressers and such have been preparing their businesses to welcome customers in a safe manner.
Instead, this afternoon, at the last minute, after many (often very expensive) preparations have been made, they've had the rug pulled out from under them again.
For bars and restaurants, which must stock perishable goods, this is even worse than if they'd just been told they couldn't open in the first place.
In the words of one industry insider:
Do they any idea what they just did to hundreds of small businesses in Calgary who believed them when they were told that an opening was coming tomorrow?
I owned a pub for five years. You don’t simply turn on a light switch and open the doors after having been closed for months.
What few business owners remained, just took what few dollars they may have left in order to deep clean their places, put up new barriers, pay staff for meetings in order to bring in new policies, buy and prep thousands in perishable stock and likely advertise their partial reopenings.
Why believe this government and prep for any re-opening now? An owner will have no idea until the last damn second if the re-opening is actually allowed or not. They can’t prep for that! They have already learned the price they will pay for believing the government on this.
Many are saying to hell with it today and they didn’t need to.
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End The Lockdown
When the world entered Lockdown six weeks ago we didn't know much about the size of the threat posed by COVID-19.
Without that information, a short Lockdown may well have been justified while we got a handle on the situation.
In fact, that is precisely how the initial Lockdown was justified by health officials and politicians - as a way to buy time to prepare the government and the healthcare system to handle the sick.
It's vital to remember that the plan was to "flatten the curve".
Health officials knew then - and still know now - that flattening the curve does not reduce the total number of people who will get infected.
It *is* true that if our healthcare systems were going to be over capacity, then flattening the curve would reduce the total number of deaths by ensuring that everyone who needs treatment would be able to access it.
But, if healthcare systems are not exceeding capacity (and they aren't), then flattening the curve doesn't save lives either.
Some people have struggled with this concept as they see the low number of infections being reported each day and think that means we are "beating" the virus.
But we are not beating the virus.
Remember fewer infections now doesn't mean fewer infections in total, it means we are simply delaying infections out to future weeks and months.
In fact, a Lockdown would not reduce the total number of infections or the total number of deaths unless we totally quarantined the entire world for 18 months or more until we have a vaccine or a cure.
No credible expert is proposing that kind of extended Lockdown, because even they realize the incredible damage the Lockdown is doing to the world's economy.
Record high unemployment, businesses shut down permanently, livelihoods, savings, retirement funds gone, and - in recent days - signs that the food chain may even be starting to breakdown.
Many people have said that the economic impacts of the cure may well be worse than the disease.
But, even putting aside the economy, the long-run health effects of the Lockdown will almost certainly be worse than the health effects of the disease.
The Lockdown has discouraged many from accessing hospitals and primary healthcare, putting people at risk from conditions that could be easily treated if detected early, but are deadly if not.
This "leave it until after the pandemic" mentality will cost many lives that might otherwise have been saved.
In poorer countries, the stakes are even higher - an economic crash means greater poverty and less money for the basic necessities of life like food and clean drinking water.
As the former UN General Secretary Kofi Annan said, "the biggest enemy of health is poverty."
All around the world, governments are "updating" their models, retroactively trying to hide the fact that the spread of the disease has been far less dramatic, and far less damaging, than even their "best case" scenarios predicted.
At the same time, governments are now shifting the goalposts, trying to justify the policies they adopted by changing how they measure success, and changing the conditions under which a Lockdown will end.
No longer are they claiming that the Lockdown was designed to ensure the healthcare system didn't go over capacity, they're now claiming the Lockdown is a key part of tackling the spread of the disease in the longterm.
That is counter to everything they said to justify entering the Lockdown.
Do they really think we can't remember what they said just 6 weeks ago?
If anything, hospitals being under-capacity is actually a sign that the Lockdown is working *too well*, as it means we are pushing too many infections to the future, meaning our economy will be crippled for far longer than would otherwise be required.
The simple fact is that had we known 6 weeks ago what we know now, we would have never entered a Lockdown in the first place.
We would have dealt with this virus the same way we have dealt with viruses in the past - improved personal hygiene, enhanced cleaning, protection of the vulnerable, voluntary social distancing, limited travel, and general conscientiousness.
While their approach has been controversial in the media, that's the approach the experts in Sweden took and though they had more cases in the initial days of the outbreak, they didn't destroy their economy and are now on track to have roughly the same number of total infections as countries that implemented a full Lockdown.
Yes, of course, hindsight is 2020, which is why a short Lockdown was probably initially justified.
But now that we have more information, now that we have that hindsight, it's time to change course.
Let us be clear, we are not proposing a full and immediate return to "normal", especially for those who are vulnerable.
It will take time to get back to completely normal.
But, with the simple precautions mentioned above, we can now return to something relatively close to normal, without the crippling economic damage we have seen in the last 6 weeks.
It is now time to End The Lockdown.
If you agree, please sign this petition to End The Lockdown, and then share it with your friends.
