The COVID-19 pandemic continues to make day-to-day life for people in our city, province, country and around the world challenging on almost every facet.
In Saskatchewan, we should be proud that to-date we have heeded the advice of the experts, who based on the best-science currently accepted by most, have told us to self-isolate as best we can.
That approach, coupled with the natural isolation of just more than 1.1 million people spread across a province as large as ours has had its impact.
The daily reported cases have been well-under 10 for a week, or more.
Hospitalizations are limited.
Deaths have thankfully been even more limited.
They are results which are encouraging to the point we are able to start to consider relaxing the restrictions, allowing the first tentative steps back toward whatever will pass for normal as we emerge from this pandemic.
However, the easing of restrictions need to be done with extreme caution.
The potential for mass outbreaks, a surge in cases, is very real.
We need only look to the United States where certain states have become massive petri dishes where an experiment is taking place on a huge scale. The restrictions are coming off, in some, rallies by fanatics are erupting in others. In both scenarios we will learn in the coming days if the return to more person-to-person contact simply leads to an eruption in cases, or whether some open doors can happen without it being a disaster.
For Canadian provinces we need to pause long enough to let the President Donald Trump led experiment play out, before we risk the health of people here, in particular the aged, the most susceptible to succumb to COVID-19.
We are better to be cautious now, than to try to put the cork back in the bottle if it all goes horribly wrong.
Of course, waiting will continue the pressure we feel as we stay at home with schools closed, jobs on hold, businesses closed, recreation opportunities limited, and our lives in a sort of strange limbo in face of the pandemic threat.
But so far we have shown yeoman resolve in Saskatchewan. We have done what needed to be done without protests and crying, recognizing we are sacrificing for the greater good; our families, our neighbours, our communities.
We just need to hold the course and do what the experts say and collectively, as a community, we will persevere.
