Winnipeg Free Press

Winnipeg Free Press (Newspaper) - February 27, 2022, Winnipeg, Manitoba C M Y K PAGE A7 A7SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 27, 2022 NEWS I CANADA / WORLD ● WINNIPEGFREEPRESS.COM Mixed views on new mask message C HICAGO — Grace Thomas is fully vaccinated against COVID-19 but still not ready to take off her mask, especially around the kids at the home day care she runs in Chicago. But whether the children continue to wear masks remains to be seen after the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Pre- vention announced that healthy people in most areas of the country can safely stop wearing masks as cases continue to fall. Thomas, 62, plans to ask parents to have their children wear masks to pre- vent the day care from being a potential source of transmission, but “you can’t make them wear masks if they don’t want to,” she said. Many Americans, including parents of school children, have been clamor- ing for an end to masking while others remain wary that the pandemic could throw a new curveball. Now, states, cit- ies and school districts are assessing Friday’s guidance to determine wheth- er it’s safe to stop mask-wearing — long after others threw out such mandates and many Americans ignored them. Illinois Gov. J.B. Pritzker said that the statewide school mask mandate will be lifted Monday in response the the new guidance, although Chicago Public Schools officials said they will continue to require masks “to maintain health and safety measures.” Los Angeles on Friday began allowing people who are vaccinated to remove their masks indoors, and Washington, D.C., had already said it would end its mask mandate on Monday. Washing- ton state and Oregon plan to lift indoor mask mandates in late March. But the issue still remains politically fraught: Florida’s governor on Thurs- day announced new recommendations called “Buck the CDC” that discourage mask wearing — even though the CDC says the state still has wide areas at high levels of concern. Christine Bruhn, 79, a retired food science professor at the University of California at Davis, said she’ll only take off her mask if she thinks it’s safe, usu- ally around vaccinated friends. When she’s around a large group of strangers, “I’m wearing a mask,” Bruhn said. “I have been vaccinated and boosted but I don’t want to get sick,” said Bruhn, who also said she’ll continue crossing the street to keep her distance from people without masks if she sees any of them walking toward her. American Medical Association presi- dent Gerald E. Harmon said Friday that he would continue to wear a mask in indoor public settings and urged “all Americans to consider doing the same” because millions are susceptible to se- vere illness or too young to be vaccin- ated. Still, many people appear to be done with masking. Steve Kelly, a manager of Kilroy’s Bar & Grill in downtown Indianapolis, said it seems that neither employees nor customers think much about COVID since Indiana lifted a mask mandate for restaurants. “It doesn’t seem like anybody is wear- ing masks,” he said of his customers, though a few employees still do. And he said people rarely get upset anymore. “My daughter is 13 and she wears a mask. It’s her choice,” he said. “Nobody bothers her about it and she wouldn’t care if they did.” In central Illinois’ Effingham Coun- ty, mask-wearing — and the animosity between those who do and don’t — has plummeted, said David Campbell, vice- chairman of the county board. He said about the only places he sees people wearing masks are hospitals and doc- tors’ offices. “Eighty-five to ninety percent of the people you see on the street, in stores, restaurants, aren’t wearing them,” said Campbell, 61. “You used to hear people say, ‘Why aren’t you wearing masks?’ but you don’t anymore.” Under the new guidance, the CDC says people can stop wearing masks if they live in counties where the corona- virus poses a low or medium threat to hospitals — accounting for more than 70 per cent of the U.S. population. The agency still advises people, in- cluding schoolchildren, to wear masks where the risk of COVID-19 is high, in about 37 per cent of U.S. counties, where about 28 per cent of Americans live. And those with COVID-19 symp- toms or who test positive should wear masks, the agency said. The recommendations do not change the requirement to wear masks on pub- lic transportation and in airports, train stations and bus stations, but the guide- lines for other indoor spaces aren’t binding, meaning cities and institutions may set their own rules. Two of the nation’s largest teachers unions weighed in, with American Fed- eration of Teachers President Randi Weingarten calling the guidance “long- needed new metrics for a safe off-ramp from universal masking.” She said many students and teachers have strug- gled with COVID-19 restrictions. But National Education Association President Becky Pringle urged school districts to “act cautiously” and seek input from local educators before mak- ing any decisions to end mask-wearing. Chicago high school teacher Sharon Holmes said she’ll wear a mask while teaching and outside the classroom. “My partner and my daughter both have asthma,” said the 53-year-old Holmes. “I just don’t feel safe yet, per- sonally.” — The Associated Press DON BABWIN AND TAMMY WEBBER Alberta to end most COVID restrictions THE “vast majority” of public health restrictions in Alberta will lift as of Tuesday, including the provincial mask mandate, Premier Jason Kenney an- nounced Saturday. Kenney said metrics such as hospital- izations, test positivity and COVID-19 wastewater data are all trending in the right direction, even since the province relaxed some restrictions earlier this month. He said the provincial mask man- date will end March 1, along with all capacity limits for venues, mandatory work from home requirements and so- cial gathering limits. Masks will still be required in higher- risk settings such as public transit, hos- pitals and nursing homes, he said. “Increasingly we have to shift to mov- ing the responsibility from the entire so- ciety to a much more focused approach based on personal responsibility,” said Kenney, who made the announcement during the opening ceremony for a new hospital in Grande Prairie on Saturday. “We just cannot continue on like we have for the past two years indefinitely. We’re going to break society if we keep doing that,” he added. Health Minister Jason Copping said remaining school requirements such as cohorting and physical distancing will also be lifted, as will health screening before youth activities. He said isolation is still mandatory for people with COVID-19 symptoms or a positive test. Kenney ended the province’s vaccine passport earlier this month as well as mask requirements for schools, and mask requirements in all settings for children under 12. He said at that time that Alberta would enter Step 2 of the reopening plan March 1 if COVID-19 hospitaliza- tions were trending downward. “We’ve always said we will not al- low our hospitals to be overwhelmed, but I am confident that we can avoid ever having to return to damaging re- strictions as long as we continue to see people step up, especially with these third shots and we learn to live with COVID,” Kenney said Saturday. He noted people should still be mind- ful that COVID-19 is a reality and they will “have to figure out their own risk level.” For those who are immuno- compromised, he said that may mean taking extra care if they’re in large crowds. The City of Calgary immediately issued a statement that its own pandem- ic face-covering bylaw will end at the same time the province’s does. Until that time, it said face coverings are still required for everyone over 12 years old in indoor public spaces and public vehicles. “As the premier made the announce- ment, demonstrators against COVID-19 health restrictions gathered near the legislature again in Edmonton, as they have every Saturday for weeks, as po- lice warned another truck convoy was coming. — The Canadian Press MOSCOW — As Russian troops were closing in on the Ukrainian capital, more and more Russians spoke out Sat- urday against the invasion, even as the government’s official rhetoric grew in- creasingly harsher. Street protests, albeit small, resumed in the Russian capital of Moscow, the second-largest city of St. Petersburg and other Russian cities for the third straight day, with people taking to the streets despite mass detentions on Thursday and Friday. According to OVD-Info, rights group that tracks pol- itical arrests, at least 460 people in 34 cities were detained over anti-war pro- tests on Saturday, including over 200 in Moscow. Open letters condemning Russia’s invasion of Ukraine kept pouring, too. More than 6,000 medical workers put their names under one on Saturday; over 3,400 architects and engineers endorsed another while 500 teachers signed a third one. Similar letters by journalists, municipal council mem- bers, cultural figures and other profes- sional groups have been making the rounds since Thursday. A prominent contemporary art mu- seum in Moscow called Garage an- nounced Saturday it was halting its work on exhibitions and postponing them “until the human and political tra- gedy that is unfolding in Ukraine has ceased.” “We cannot support the illusion of normality when such events are taking place,” the statement by the museum read. “We see ourselves as part of a wider world that is not divided by war.” An online petition to stop the attack on Ukraine, launched shortly after it started on Thursday morning, garnered over 780,000 signatures by Saturday evening, making it one of the most sup- ported online petitions in Russia in re- cent years. Statements decrying the invasion even came from some parliament mem- bers, who earlier this week voted to rec- ognize the independence of two separa- tist regions in eastern Ukraine, a move that preceded the Russian assault. Two lawmakers from the Communist Party, which usually toes the Kremlin’s line, spoke out against the hostilities on so- cial media. Oleg Smolin said he “was shocked” when the attack started and “was con- vinced that military force should be used in politics only as a last resort.” His fellow lawmaker Mikhail Matveyev said “the war must be immediately stopped” and that he voted for “Russia becoming a shield against the bombing of Donbas, not for the bombing of Kyiv.” Russian authorities, meanwhile, took a harsher stance towards those denoun- cing the invasion, both at home and abroad. Dmitry Medvedev, the deputy head of Russia’s Security Council chaired by President Vladimir Putin, said Moscow may respond to Western sanctions by opting out of the last nuclear arms deal with the U.S., cutting diplomatic ties with Western nations and freezing their assets. He also warned that Moscow could restore the death penalty after Rus- sia was removed from Europe’s top rights group — a chilling statement that shocked human rights activists in a country that has had a moratorium on capital punishment since August 1996. Eva Merkacheva, a member of the Kremlin human rights council, de- plored it as a “catastrophe” and a “re- turn to the Middle Ages.” The Western sanctions imposed new tight restrictions on Russian financial operations, a draconian ban on tech- nology exports to Russia and froze the assets of Putin and his foreign minister. Russian membership in the Council of Europe was also suspended. Washington and its allies say even tougher sanctions are possible, includ- ing kicking Russia out of SWIFT, the dominant system for global financial transactions. Medvedev was a placeholder presi- dent in 2008-2012 when Putin had to shift into the prime minister’s seat be- cause of term limits. He then let Putin reclaim the presidency and served as his prime minister for eight years. During his tenure as president, Medvedev was widely seen as more liberal compared with Putin, but on Sat- urday he made a series of threats that even the most hawkish Kremlin figures haven’t mentioned to date. Medvedev noted that the sanctions of- fer the Kremlin a pretext to completely review its ties with the West, suggesting that Russia could opt out of the New START nuclear arms control treaty that limits the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals. The treaty, which Medvedev signed in 2010 with then-U.S. President Barack Obama, limits each country to no more than 1,550 deployed nuclear warheads and 700 deployed missiles and bombers, and envisages sweeping on-site inspec- tions to verify compliance. The pact, the last remaining U.S.-Russian nuclear arms control agreement, had been set to expire in February 2021 but Moscow and Washington extended it for another five years. If Russia opts out of the agreement now, it will remove any checks on U.S. and Russian nuclear forces and raise new threats to global security. Medvedev also raised the prospect of cutting diplomatic ties with Western countries, charging that “there is no particular need in maintaining diplo- matic relations.” Referring to Western threats to freeze the assets of Russian companies and individuals, Medvedev warned that Moscow wouldn’t hesitate to do the same. Cracking down on critics at home, Rus- sian authorities demanded that top in- dependent news outlets take down stories about the fighting in Ukraine that devi- ated from the official government line. Russia’s state communications watch- dog, Roskomnadzor, charged that re- ports about “Russian armed forces firing at Ukrainian cities and the death of civilians in Ukraine as a result of the actions of the Russian army, as well as materials in which the ongoing oper- ation is called ‘an attack,’ ‘an invasion,’ or ‘a declaration of war’” were untrue and demanded that the outlets take them down or face steep fines and re- strictions. On Friday, the watchdog also an- nounced “partial restrictions” on ac- cess to Facebook in response to the plat- form limiting the accounts of several Kremlin-backed media. On Saturday, Russian internet users reported problems with accessing Fa- cebook and Twitter, both of which have played a major role in amplifying dis- sent in Russia in recent years. — The Associated Press DAMIAN DOVARGANES / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Patrons eat indoors at Philippe the Original restaurant in Los Angeles, Friday. Los Angeles County began allowing people to remove their masks while indoors if they are vaccinated as the COVID-19 Omicron winter surge continues to ease. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced that healthy people in most areas of the U.S. can safely stop wearing masks. Some Americans welcome change in CDC guidance on face coverings, others wary Anti-war sentiment grows in Russia despite crackdown DASHA LITVINOVA AND VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV DMITRI LOVETSKY / THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Police detain a demonstrator during an action against Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in St. Petersburg, Russia, Saturday. A_07_Feb-27-22_FP_01.indd 7 2022-02-26 10:55 PM ;