Remember last year when we were all on lockdown and faintly chattering to ourselves, wondering when the government would no longer be able cope with COVID? The time has come.
As much as the different branches of government like to say they’ll be there for British Columbians and Canadians no matter what, things aren’t as simple as they once were with regard to lockdowns and economic shutdowns. As critical as I sometimes am of the government, I do believe them when they say they are balancing the economy with rising case numbers. It’s easy for someone like me, who has worked steadily from the comfort of his home throughout the pandemic, to say that not imposing stricter lockdown measures is reckless (prime minister Justin Trudeau has even said that stricter measures are needed to curb the virus in several places in the country).
But it’s possible that waiting a week or so longer before fully locking down will allow workers to save $50 or $100 for groceries that they wouldn’t have saved otherwise, and that that money will help float them while the government gets aid in order. For many people, $50 a month is make or break.
(To be clear, waiting this long to lock down is indeed reckless. Lockdown exists to stop the spread of disease. And, like most treatments, how effective it is depends on many things, mainly how early it is treated. Take cancer, for example: if it has spread to your bloodstream and vital organs, you can do all the chemo you want, but the treatment isn’t going to have much impact if you don’t catch it early. So, when people say lockdown doesn’t work, they’re wrong, in my opinion. Late lockdown just doesn’t work very well.)
Ontario has shut down in-person learning for K-12. The anti-curfew riots in Montreal are troubling. Canada’s chief public health officer Theresa Tam said in her Tuesday, April 13 briefing that there had been a 33 percent rise in daily case counts in Canada over the previous week, and that there had been a 29 percent increase of people being treated in hospital each day from the previous week.
It’s easy to be troubled reading the headlines these days. It’s easy to feel frustrated when institutions like UVic aren’t as transparent as they could be when it comes to outbreaks. (Camosun has done really well with this, and this makes me feel much more confident about attending Camosun in person in the fall, although I want the record to show, officially, that I don’t think in-person classes are going to happen is September.)
Unfortunately, with COVID cases rising, and the Minneapolis protests after a Black man was “accidently” shot by police, it’s easy to feel as if time was frozen in May of 2020 and just never got going again.
So right now, I say what I’ve so often said during this pandemic: write your own headlines. “Dad teaches son to ride bike.” “Mother hugs daughter.” “Student editor listens to great heavy metal song.” Whatever it is, no matter how small, focus on some good, because it is out there, right in front of you.