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Dr. Brent Roussin hasn’t been making headlines like he once did.
But Manitoba’s face of the pandemic again landed on the front page this week when he surfaced in the midst of a perfect storm of flu, RSV and COVID. As the province announced the end of its colour-coded pandemic response system, its chief public health officer’s message was that daily updates were history and there won’t be any modelling in the future.
“The days of daily updates, of numbers and those type of updates, I think should be in the past. We’re at a much different time now,” Roussin told our Katie May in an interview Tuesday.
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I think Roussin was right in what he said. But also wrong.
Let me start by looking at where I believe Roussin is off base.
On the same day he was telling us that multiple viruses and no restrictions on public behaviour make it too complicated to predict future outcomes, his counterpart in Quebec was doing exactly that. In a remarkably detailed presentation full of easy-to-understand graphs and charts, Quebecers were able to see what impact COVID is projected to have on their province and hospital resources well into 2023.
So if public health officials can still manage to run models in Quebec, what’s the excuse here in Manitoba? Do we not have enough data to determine what’s in store for hospitals? Or is it a case that Roussin has never appeared to be a fan of forecasts based on how rarely he ever mentioned provincial projections?
Roussin, however, does deserve credit for his diagnosis that we shouldn’t be relying on numbers these days to keep ourselves safe. While COVID ain’t finished with us yet, we also aren’t at the start of the pandemic when case counts and body counts really mattered. At the time, Roussin was able to command the attention of a province with his televised briefings. We didn’t know what was happening. Everything was new and uncertain — and scary. To a large degree, we were dependent on that doctor and his public health expertise.
But December of 2022 is not the same as December of 2020. And if we are still counting on Roussin to keep us safe, then we really haven’t been paying attention.
We’ve all had plenty of time to get vaccinated and boosted. There’s no shortage of masks to further reduce risks, if need be. We know how to test ourselves at home. We should know the public good that comes from staying home if we test positive. For those in higher-risk groups, there’s also been time to assess and adapt as necessary.
Of course, none of the above come with any guarantees. But then again, neither did lockdowns.
A pandemic is never easy. Or fair. At this point, daily numbers or colour-coding warnings won’t make it any easier or fairer.
The path out of the pandemic should be obvious by now. Roussin helped point the way. Do we have what it takes to do the rest?
Programming note: If you are free on Dec. 20, please join us for a virtual holiday movie night.
Hanukkah on Rye, which includes scenes shot at our old Free Press News Cafe, will be our seasonal screening. For more information, click here.
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