Letter: Barnes comments out of touch

By Letter to the Editor on September 16, 2021.

Dear editor,

On Sept. 10 it was reported in the News that MLA Barnes stated, “Albertans and Medicine Hatters are great at taking care of each other… and doing what needs to be done.” with regard to COVID prevention.

It seems that Mr. Barnes is out of touch with reality. If all Albertans and Hatters were actually doing what needs to be done, we shouldn’t be having the extremely high rates of COVID infections that have been experienced in the last couple of months. Consider the fact that in the past few weeks the Hat has had more cases than the entire province of Manitoba, including Winnipeg.

With the recent high number of admissions of COVID infected patients to our hospital, combined with very exhausted frontline health-care workers, our local health-care system appears to be on the verge of collapse. Yet apparently Mr. Barnes thinks that “rationalization is the way to go.”

In spite of information being provided in the media by countless infectious disease experts about how the virus spreads and measures to control it, some people haven’t been able to ‘reason’ the concepts. They object to the wearing of masks and vaccinations, with some apparently deciding instead that a livestock parasite medication is the way to go. The lack of sound rationalization by some citizens is wasting a lot of tax payer dollars and contributing to the continuation of the pandemic.

I do agree with Barnes that the province has been lacking visionary leadership. However, he should look close to home too because Medicine Hat has had grossly inadequate leadership by its elected ‘leaders’ during the pandemic. What has been Mr. Barnes’ ‘visionary’ leadership? The “head-in-the-sand” metaphor seems very appropriate.

It’s understandable that it must be a difficult job for MLA Barnes to voice the views of a vocal minority of irrational constituents, but then again it does seem to come naturally for him.

Dennis McIntosh

Medicine Hat

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