December death toll grim and gutting

There will be at least 107 Covid-19-related deaths in Saskatchewan in December 2020 — 154 deaths in this province, so far.

The macabre triple digit death toll this month represents a failing in the yearlong COVID-19 fight. We could, and should have done better.

(It should be noted this death total number as of Wednesday could increase with another day to count in this calendar year and with coroner's pronouncements sometimes taking longer to record.)

We were hit with a barrage of daily statistics in 2020 that saw our stay-at-home workforce await with bated breath 1:30 p.m. each day when the Saskatchewan Party government released the daily COVID-19 count of new cases, recoveries and tests, and in what specific region of the province.

With all due respect to those who have lived by numbers like total cases (now totalling 15,160, as of Wednesday) the seven-day average of daily cases (now, 152 cases a day — the lowest daily average in a month), active cases (2,949 — down from a Dec. 7 high of 4,763) or hospitalizations (a red-hot, under-reported mess that simply needs to be fixed/ better articulated by the government), it all comes down to that morbid death toll.

Accepting that some will have severe long-term health repercussions of COVID-19, the measure of dealing with COVID-19 boils down to that number ... or, more specifically, if the number of deaths in the second wave might have been lower had government chosen another path.

In mere statistical terms, December has so far produced 69.5 per cent of all Saskatchewan COVID-19 deaths — a 228-per-cent increase from the 47-person death tally on Nov. 30 and 516-per-cent increase from the 25-person death toll on Oct. 31.

Only by comparison to other failed jurisdictions can these morbid numbers be spun as favourable.

No, we are not as bad off as in the U.S. where one in every 1,000 American citizens has now died of a COVID-19-RElated death. By comparison, only one in every 7,675 Saskatchewan citizens has died of COVID-19. Compare that further with Alberta, where (as of Tuesday) there were 1,028 deaths — one in every 4,308 Albertans. Or Manitoba that was down to a single identified COVID-19 case this summer, but has now seen 659 deaths — one in every 2,077 Manitobans.

But also consider a broader world view and compare Canada's one-in-every-2,552 death toll (as of late last week) with one in every 64,691 South Koreans who died of COVID-19 or one in every 3,340,000 Taiwanese. Yes, we could have done much better.

So, unless you subscribe to the ghoulish perspective of anti-masker/anti-lockdown extremists that see Saskatchewan's rising COVID-19 death toll is somehow statistically insignificant, or that the deaths really matter naught because they usually involve older people or those living in nursing homes, you are likely to find the Saskatchewan death toll this month gutting. (Again, this is not the flu that saw 2,547 cases and 15 influenza-related deaths last year — one-tenth this year's COVID-19 death toll, to date.)

This is not the view of the Sask. Party government that's started each of its December press conferences with daily condolences to the families of those who have lost love ones. Clearly, it has been not uncaring.

But it's clear that this government chose a path that did not do enough to ward off this grisly December death toll. It was slow to adopt mandatory mask orders and even less willing to impose anything that might have added to economic hardships. It didn't listen to warnings from Saskatchewan doctors.

Really, it wasn't even listening to what chief medical health officer Dr. Saqib Shahab was saying.

There is even ample evidence to suggest the

Sask. Party government was crassly taken by its own postelection popularity — no small irony, given that failing to do enough to ward off the December deaths toll has hammered the popularity of Premier Scott Moe's government, now ranked as third worst in the nation in its COVID-19 handling.

But no matter how anyone chooses to see it, Saskatchewan's grim December death toll loudly speaks for itself.