(LifeSiteNews) – The government of Alberta offered a definite no to the idea of locking down again over a new variant of the COVID virus now in the province, which rather dubiously has been nicknamed “Kraken” by scientists and others on Twitter.
Steve Buick, a spokesman for Alberta Health Services (AHS), said recently, as reported by the Western Standard, that yet another new variant of the COVID virus does not mean a hasty return to lockdowns and masks.
“We’re not returning to emergency measures,” Buick said.
Buick noted that there will be no change in “in policy or in the advice we’ve received from Alberta Health,” as well.
He said that the province cannot “live in a state of emergency permanently,” or whenever “we see an increase in respiratory viruses.”
Buick said that the so-called “Kraken” or XBB.1.5 version of the virus, is a subvariant of the Omicron mutation of COVID, which itself has been known for higher transmissibility but shown to not be as severe as the original strain.
According to Buick, the Omicron version of the COVID virus has caused less stress on the healthcare system than the original strains did in 2021.
The new XBB.1.5 subvariant has been around for months now, having first been detected sometime last fall.
However, even mainstream establishment scientists have said that the new strain is nothing to worry about.
According to Dr. Angela Rasmussen, a virologist at the University of Saskatchewan, XBB.1.5 will not really make any difference to those who get seriously sick from COVID.
She said to the DailyMail.com that people should not “see big changes in terms of disease severity, since infections will happen in a population that isn’t immunologically naïve.”
Rasmussen noted that XBB.1.5 is not “somehow magically turbocharged to usher in our extinction.”
“It’s another evolutionary advance — which is what viruses do — and it’s one that we can counter.”
Statistics from the CDC claim that the “Kraken” variant now accounts for 40 percent of all COVID cases in the United States.
Alberta, like the rest of Canada, put in place severe COVID lockdowns and vaccine passports for a time.
However, new Premier Danielle Smith, unlike predecessor Jason Kenney, promised that she would not lock the province down or mandate the use of masks. She also promised a bill to protect the rights of the unvaccinated.
She apologized to all the vaccine-free Albertans who were “discriminated” against during the COVID-19 so-called pandemic while later mentioning she is working to pardon those who were fined under Kenney’s COVID-era legislation, particularly pastors.
Smith has also made it a priority to overhaul AHS, which was responsible for much of the COVID dictates.
In November, Smith fired the entire AHS board of directors, all of whom oversaw the imposition of strict COVID mandates in the province.
In the same month, Smith made good on a promise by firing the province’s pro-lockdown and pro-mandate Chief Medical Officer, Dr. Deena Hinshaw.
During Smith’s first day on the job, she said the unvaccinated were the most “discriminated” against group she saw during the last two years.
Many in Alberta fought back against the imposition of workplace jab mandates, including a group of vaccine-free Calgary firefighters as well as a 176-strong group of WestJet airline workers.
Governments in Canada and around the world continue to push the experimental COVID vaccines despite the body of evidence that the novel shots were neither as safe nor as effective as they were touted continues to grow.
According to two recent medical studies from Europe, vaccine-induced blood damage may explain the many harmful impacts of the COVID shots, which now include myocarditis, pericarditis, and dangerous blood clots, among other adverse effects.