Shame on every politically elected individual who took get away vacations over Christmas and New Years, 2020, when the people they serve stayed home and sacrificed visits with loved ones and the dying.
My own mother was in the first wave of COVID-19 palliative care patients who was locked inside a palliative care ward with no visitation rights. The United Nations’ Declaration of Human Rights Article 5 stipulates that no person shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment. Yes, isolation is a form of torture and hundreds of seniors and palliative care patients suffered this form of torture in the first wave.
So strong was our message to the politicians that in the second wave, these patients are now entitled to one essential visitor.
Nevertheless, hundreds of Albertans felt the sting of loneliness and isolation while many of our politicians felt entitled to get on planes and fly to tropical places.
Shame!
The moral imagination of our political leaders is officially dead.
Sharon Ryan, St. Albert
