COVID-19 pandemic is a window into how entrenched people have become over their views of the pandemic and resulting public health measures.“Early on, I think we saw that most people thought the government was doing about the right thing.
Some thought it was too fast, some thought it was too slow. But then in the depths of it, in the fall of 2021 in particular, we saw huge division,” University of Calgary professor of political science Lisa Young said.“One of the interesting things — and I don’t think you see this in other provinces when you look at this kind of opinion — is that there were lots of people who thought that the government should be doing more,” University of Calgary professor of political science Lisa Young said. “But there was also a substantial group who thought that the government should be doing less.“And so there was so little support for the government’s approach as it tried to find its way down the middle of that.” Read more: Alberta auditor says staff shortages led to major care home problems during pandemic That “substantial group” who thought the province was opening up too slowly and who thought the public health measures were too harsh ranged between 10 and 25 per cent in the three years of surveys done for the Common Ground political science research team at the University of Alberta, with whom Young works.“That’s really interesting, especially when you keep in mind that most of the time through the pandemic, Alberta’s measures were actually less restrictive than what you saw in the rest of Canada,” she said.In August 2020, Common Ground’s Viewpoint Alberta survey asked if Albertans thought the opening of activities and businesses was happening too quickly, too slowly, or just about right.A.