The anger and divisions that have intensified the COVID-19 pandemic persist 3 years after the virus first hit Alberta, even as restrictions on public life were lifted long ago.
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While large-scale protests against the court order, such as the one that blocked access to the U. S. border, are not allowed to do so. In the U. S. in Coutts last year, significant social unrest persists that is morphing into other spaces of public life: in hospitals, outdoors, in the city’s small businesses and dragging events.
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The World Health Organization declared COVID-19 a pandemic on March 11, 2020, a designation that remains in effect. And while society largely returned to pre-pandemic norms for the next 3 years, emerging divisions have only grown stronger, said Alex Bierman, a sociologist at the University of Calgary.
“What happened with the pandemic was that other people felt a loss of control, and that created a sense of anxiety, which led to a sense of anger, especially in other people who were also experiencing greater financial problems,” said Bierman, a researcher and associate. Professor of the Department of Sociology of the U of C.
“When other people feel angry, they need to strike, essentially seek an explanation for why they are angry and, in all likelihood, develop a sense of control. I think that’s what’s driving some of what we’re seeing today.
“These divisions have not been erased. In fact, in any case, they have been strengthened.
While the early days of the pandemic saw widespread social acceptance of public fitness measures put in place to stop the spread of COVID-19, a vocal minority temporarily emerged to voice their opposition to restrictions on business and gatherings, and then mask mandates and vaccine passports.
In Alberta, this has led to primary protests with wonderful effects on citizens, and even the local economy and businesses. A court order to end the protests. Meanwhile, a 17-day lockdown near Coutts is not easy to end all COVID-19 measures crippled business, ending only after the RCMP executed search warrants and arrested several men for allegedly plotting to murder gfinisharmes.
While those riots may have been triggered through the pandemic, many of those who embraced this anti-mandate movement migrated to other reasons as the effects on daily life largely faded, said Timothy Caulfield, a professor at the University of Alberta.
“The other people who have complaints about COVID policy are the same other people with very similar complaints about things like 15-minute cities, about trans politics, about just about anything you can think of,” said Caulfield, Canada’s chair of research on health law. He added that the Russian invasion of Ukraine is another topic, that is, prone to conspiratorial thinking.
“Many of those concepts that are the basis of their protests have ideological flags. They have vital elements of the ideological timeline of those communities.
A paper published in the medical journal The Lancet last week also found that the pandemic has brought about shifts in anti-vaccine activism, shifting this movement from a fringe subculture to a more well-organized and interconnected network.
According to the study, before the pandemic, anti-vaccine activists more often catered to niche communities that were hesitant about vaccines for formative years. He said the broader movement helped by greater amplification of social media could raise long-term doubts, even for non-COVID vaccines.
There is no transparent answer on how to combat the continued spread of misinformation about COVID-19, said Dr. Noel Gibney, an Edmonton critical care physician.
“I hope that emotion and politics can come out of this and that we can deal with the facts,” Gibney said.
“Everyone has their own opinion and does their own research, and I don’t know how we do that. “
For some frontline workers, there has been no respite from pandemic-era abuses, even though nearly all public fitness measures have been lifted.
The president of the union representing nurses in Alberta estimated that cases of harassment and violence between patients have doubled since before the pandemic, from about 1,000 cases in 2019 to about 2,000 in 2022. And he said the scenario shows no signs of improving. .
“I don’t think the numbers are down. In fact, as I perceive it, the numbers are still rising, at least in physical care,” said Heather Smith, president of the United Nurses of Alberta.
“It’s very alarming that some other people seem to think this is a fitting habit towards others. . . People have no restrictions on their movements and comments.
Smith said he believes the intensified divisions predate the pandemic, helped through social media and a polarized political environment in the U. S. COVID “set it in motion. “
He expressed fear that, among some groups, intolerance would not only be permissible but also encouraged.
Businesses in the Inglewood community of central Calgary also continued to deal with divisions resulting from COVID in 2023.
In January, the organization representing those businesses called on anti-government protesters to withdraw their weekly protests from the neighborhood’s main street, saying it harms them and the community.
“We just need protesters to recognize that they’re having an effect on businesses versus protesters,” Dan Allard of the Inglewood Business Improvement Area said at the time.
Even protests at drag events in Calgary can be related to those divisions, Bierman said.
The last occasion was postponed after an “aggressive” protest on one occasion at the Seton library last week, where protesters allegedly entered the room and hurled homophobic and transphobic slurs at the youth and parents present. Police arrested and charged local street pastor Derek Reimer with what they said was a hate crime; Reimer has already been arrested for allegedly violating the court order against COVID-19 protests in the Beltline, according to a report by far-right news site Rebel News.
“We have teams that simply refuse to accept anyone other than themselves as human individuals,” Bierman said. “I think that’s where there are also protests against queer communities and drag shows. I think there is a genuine devaluation of some other people. “in society, and I think we want to act against that.
According to Bierman’s research, the component of the developing social gap at the root of those divisions comes down to anxiety and worries about the future, caused by increased monetary insecurity. The loss of jobs and the emerging burden of living during the pandemic provided fertile ground for this. with those already suffering most vulnerable to these negative effects.
Another key detail of the social department is the breakdown of people they accept as true among the components of the population, Bierman said. Their studies found that those who had many people who accepted as true in social establishments before the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic maintained that they accept as true with or saw it increase. But he observed the opposite in those who did not have a trust-forged benchmark.
“There was an organization of Canadians who joined Canadian society. But there was also an organization, and it is a minority, but we must not forget about them because they are a larger minority, which began little to accept as truth with and their probability of accepting as true within almost reduced to zero. We have Canadians who have just stopped accepting as true within,” he said.
“Lately there is an express and distinct subculture in Canada that necessarily takes a view contrary to much of society, which says that the intelligent public is not as intelligent as individual movements and individual beliefs. “
Pandemic divisions have also had primary political ramifications in Alberta over the past year, with a key factor in former Alberta Premier Jason Kenney’s tepid leadership review last May, which prompted his resignation.
Upon resigning, Kenney said the pandemic has been “deeply divisive” for the province and his party and the UCP caucus, and that he hopes society can overcome COVID in the coming months. He went a step further after the election of current Prime Minister Danielle Smith. as leader of the UCP, when he declared that “populism with a grunt,” a political ideology fueled by anger and conspiracy theories, took hold of conservatism in Canada.
In the past, Smith followed fringe perspectives on the pandemic and approved discredited remedies for COVID disease, adding hydroxychloroquine, though he later apologized for doing so. She has also been criticized for her conspiracy perspectives on Ukraine and cancer care.
Caulfield said the department’s most important role in COVID-era politics is a trend unique to Alberta.
“I think there’s a lot of political opportunism right now. We’re seeing it all over North America and I think we’re seeing it all over the world,” Caulfield said.
“It’s disappointing and, unfortunately, I think it’s working. “
— With files through Bill Kaufmann
jherring@postmedia. com
Twitter: @jasonfherring
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