Killer job, Houston. Literally.

Nova Scotia Premier Tim Houston
Photo credit: Government of Nova Scotia

On Wednesday, Premier Tim Houston and Chief Medical Officer Robert Strang held what Houston proposed may be the last COVID-19 press conference. 

Houston tone was upbeat as he announced the upcoming removal of all public health measures. The positive delivery was helped in no small measure by the failure of Houston or Strang to acknowledge the 25 Nova Scotians who have died of covid since the last press conference two weeks ago. 

Houston said there comes a point where the impact of restrictions outweigh the benefits. Presumably, by benefits he means the continued support of the people who voted for his government in with the expectation of lifted restrictions. It seems of little public health benefit to promise to eliminate the very simple protective measure of masking when we we still have a positivity rate above 10 per cent, and especially to do so before seeing what happens after we increase capacity limits on March 7th.

Houston says the pace at which we are moving is right for our situation and our province. Coincidentally, it's also exactly what conservative premiers in other provinces are doing to placate their voter bases, even though hospitals across the country are still full of covid-infected patients and death counts rise daily. 

It begs the parental question, if Kenney, Moe, Higgs, and Ford jumped off a bridge, would Houston cannonball after them?  

Yesterday, still angry with public health measures being replaced with that ol' conservative blame shifter "personal responsibility," I downloaded the covid data from the Health Canada website. I wanted to compare covid outcomes under the previous Liberal governments to this Conservative one. 

The results are a cautionary tale.

As a start date, I used the date of the first confirmed covid case, March 18, 2020. As and end date, the last day of available, February 23, 2022. For implementation of vaccines, I used December 15, 2020, the day the first shipment arrived in Nova Scotia. For the change in governments, I used the date the Houston cabinet was installed, August 31, 2021. 

Days in office
Liberals: 531
Conservatives: 176

Days without vaccines
Liberals: 271
Conservatives: 0

Total covid deaths
Liberals: 94
Conservatives: 97

Total covid cases
Liberals: 6,030
Conservatives: 38,521*

Cases per day
Liberals: 11.3
Conservatives: 218.9

Deaths per day
Liberals: 0.18
Conservatives: 0.55

Highest deaths day
Liberals: 6
Conservatives: 9

Highest cases day
Liberals: 227
Conservatives: 1184

Tests performed on highest cases day
Liberals:  7744
Conservatives: 5803

Positivity rate of highest day
Liberals: 2.9%
Conservatives: 20.4%

The Liberal governments began the pandemic with the same ignorance of SARS-CoV-2 as the rest of the planet and were without vaccines for the majority of their time in office. Despite this, their Covid response was one of the best in the western world. The Conservatives, who had access to an extensive body of knowledge of the virus and were handed a highly vaccinated population, has had 19 times as many infections* and three times as many deaths.

The poor pandemic management of the Houston government is no outlier. It is reflective of conservative provincial governments across the country. Notably, the more populist the conservative government, the greater the number of infections and deaths. Demonstrated provincially by highest rate of infection per capita by Kenney #1, Moe #2, and Pallister/Stefanson #3.

The cautionary tale is this: vote for a government that cares whether you live or die. The life you save may be your own.

*The number of Covid infections during the fifth wave is significantly underreported as only positive PCR tests were counted—positive rapid test were not—and PCR testing was limited compared to previous waves. While not counted, rapid test availability was also limited during the fifth wave.