Alberta Premier Jason Kenney is being accused of using a new, dangerous tone when talking about COVID-19. During an emergency debate in the legislature on Wednesday, Kenney referred to the virus as “an influenza” on multiple occasions. “We cannot continue indefinitely to impair the social and economic — as well as the mental health and physiological health of the broader population — for potentially a year for an influenza that does not generally threaten life apart from the elderly and the immunocompromised,” the premier said in the legislature.
At another point in his speech, he talked about the relative threat of COVID-19 to the population. “The average age of death from COVID in Alberta is 83.