I could devolve into the usual talking points- are we overestimating this disease or underestimating it? Are our responses appropriate or could we have done it another way? Can we afford to "tough it out" or will the cure be worse than the disease?
All those things are fair questions, and I've got an opinion on all of them. However, so do many other people and they're just as "informed" about COVID-19 as I am, so I'm not going to waste your time talking about them since I doubt I'll get anywhere.
What I will say, having been subjected to hearing about and thinking about this virus nonstop for the past two months or so, is that there's a few things that I am certain of:
- A lot of people know how to use Google, but very few of them have any clue on how to think critically of what they're reading. Just like any other issue in the Web 2.0 days, people only use Google to reinforce what they already believe about COVID-19.
- Fear and panic have been all that's reigned during the pandemic, perpetuated by irresponsible media companies who should know better. I can't believe how quickly and easily the most negative news items surrounding COVID-19 spread, even though much of it is clearly extreme and is just pure speculation anyway.
- Worse, it's troubling how much policy is being dictated by fear and panic when you'd think politicians should know better.
- It's amazing- and saddening- at how easily we believe the words of someone who "appears" qualified to talk about COVID-19, even if what they say doesn't stand to scrutiny.
- It's also amazing- and saddening- at how easily we'll take whatever the government tells us about the pandemic and how easily we'll acquiesce our own power and rights to them without even a hint of scrutiny.
To illustrate, let's go back two months, when COVID-19 first hit the Canadian province of Ontario (where I live). Even though a virus knows no political affiliation and doesn't care about ethnicity, there wasn't widespread worry about COVID-19 because it had only ravaged China and Iran.
Nobody seemed to worry- or care- about what might happen if COVID-19 took hold in our territory because, apparently we were "not China or Iran".
The worry seemed to only ramp up after Italy got hit pretty hard with COVID-19 and had to impose lockdowns akin to what the Chinese and Iranians had done. Even though Italy has its own host of problems (since 1953, only one Italian Prime Minister- Silvio Berlusconi, who had a few of them- had a term of at least four years), Italy was a "first world country that shouldn't have been hit by the virus"...but it was.
That spooked a lot of people and spurred the cancellation of events that, right now, seem to be the only news items we get these days.
However, despite all that, the response was tepid. For weeks, our government officials kept stressing "the risk of getting COVID-19 is low" and kept beating that line as the case count kept rising.
Then there was a report out of Toronto of someone who had COVID-19 who rode a few city transit buses, and did so during the packed morning rush hour.
"Someone was with an infectious disease in tight quarters able to spread that disease to so many other people"...but, again, the response from the government was "your risk of getting it is low".
Ah, OK. It also didn't help that many reports of COVID-19 state that the disease was pretty mild in the vast majority of cases, which only prompted more questions about its seriousness.
I mean, if we had a disease that spread easily but also killed the majority of those that it infected, I doubt anyone would question its severity.
So that's where we were in mid-March, constantly told that despite the fact this disease spreads easily, it was mostly mild and, more importantly, "my risk of catching COVID-19 was low".
I remember thinking at the time that COVID-19 was just going to be like swine flu- lots of PSAs about "keeping clean" and "keeping things clean" but, otherwise it would be "life as usual".
Then, on March 16, 2020- the day Ontario imposed its version of the COVID-19 lockdown- everything changed.
First, in a blink of an eye, my entire life was turned upside down, with Ontario imposing restrictions on my day-to-day life and personal autonomy. Doing that is bad enough, but doing it without warning and without having to justify it?
That's even scarier.
Then the messaging became more sobering and more sombre, treating COVID-19 like it was the second coming of the Black Death. We had to "prepare for the new normal", we're told, and we had to look at every stranger as if the mere sight of them would infect us with the plague.
To say that this was all confusing was an understatement- I'm not sure I have a word to describe the state of shock I was in.
I had so many questions, the very least of which was, "just 24 hours ago you kept saying you had this thing under control and kept telling us not to worry and now we have to worry? What gives?"
If Ontario had come out and said, "be prepared for a lockdown, which we will impose when X happens", I would have been able to accept it. I would have been able to further accept it if Ontario had come out and also said "when conditions are X, we can lift the lockdown".
None of those things happened, which gives me the impression that Ontario can impose a "state of emergency" whenever it wants and doesn't have to justify it. That should scare anyone, because there's no guarantee a future Premier won't abuse that privilege.
(An odd thing that, considering Ontario Premier Doug Ford almost went on a powertrip himself when he threatened to override the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms in order to win his petty dispute with the City of Toronto, but I digress)
Then as the days progressed and the lockdown became more of a reality, the situation just got worse. Ezekiel Emmanuel, a bioethicist at the University of Pennsylvania, caused quite the stir when he said he thinks the lockdowns should last for 12-18 months, the timeframe the media keeps touting as a timeline for a therapeutic for COVID-19. He was particularly pointed about large gatherings, insisting that should be the last to reopnen.
Under normal conditions, I'm sure that news item would get the traction it got but under these conditions Emmanuel's claim didn't just gain traction- it influenced policy.
Which only really amps up my frustration and feelings of powerlessness because I know policymakers influenced by those items clearly weren't thinking.
First of all, Emmanuel- who was once an advisor to Barack Obama- does have the education background to have a bit more of an informed opinion than your usual Googler. However, he's not an epidemiologist, he doesn't work in COVID-19 research, he's not on the front lines in a hospital trying to treat patients infected with this thing...as my brother put it, he's like Wayne Gretzky giving his opinion on baseball. He might know a few things, but he shouldn't be your "go-to guy".
Besides, Emmanuel has a history of rabble rousing- in 1997, he opposed euthanasia before backtracking in 2016 and, in 2014, Emmanuel argued that living life after 75 was pointless (for the record, Emmanuel will be 63 in September 2020).
I really don't know why we would want to give this guy a huge platform. He sure doesn't sound like someone who I would trust to give me solutions in a time of a crisis.
I also wonder why Emmanuel gets a platform but Doctor Neil Rau, who vehemently opposed imposing a lockdown at all, gets no attention. I mean, not only is Rau a microbologist but, more importantly, he's a practicing doctor, meaning he's far more qualified to talk about COVID-19 considering he's at the front lines.
I guess he's "too positive". *shrugs*
Which is really the heart of the matter. Because of Emmanuel, you have Quebec insisting they can't have festivals until after August 31, and New Brunswick believing it needs to hold off on not just festivals but also bars and clubs until the rest of the year...even though New Brunswick hasn't had a COVID-19 case in a week.
So many different things about this virus changes from week to week, and just about everyone has gotten so many things horribly wrong about the virus every step of the way...frankly, it's reckless and irresponsible of policymakers to make such sweeping choices definitively so far into the future when the situation could be drastically different by that point.
Seriously, New Brunswick Premier Blaine Higgs...if, say, in July COVID-19 is gone from your province, is practically gone from Canada and it's contained in the United States...are you going to tell me it's still not "safe" for a bar to be open?
Speaking of deranged government policies- the lockdowns. Let me start by saying they're not even real lockdowns- they're these haphazard things with so many loopholes and vague generalities that, apart from anything "fun", there's nothing that's really "banned". How many people are truly locked down and, worse, who's really being protected?
I don't have any hard numbers, but I suspect most of the workers who are deemed "essential" are minimum wage earners who already had 50 reasons to hate their job and now have 50 more. I also wonder, how many of them really have to be open? Does getting a Tim Horton's coffee or a Big Mac really mean anything in a pandemic? Or any restaurant, for that matter? Why can't grocery stores be restricted to curbside pickup?
That's just the tip of the iceberg. What really bothers me is that policymakers in this crisis think more about crowds as opposed to crowding. The Scotiabank Arena, Rogers Centre, Downsview Park, etc. are more than large enough to host crowds of thousands and accommodate physical distancing, but gatherings there are "too risky" yet a grocery store, with its aisles barely big enough for one person, attended to by hundreds, if not thousands of people per day, all of whom touching and handling surfaces and products that- who knows who- has touched or sneezed on them...that's perfectly acceptable.
This is before getting to the fact that a lot of "essential business" declarations make a mockery of the lockdowns in general. A lot of attention has been paid to Florida in this regard, because Governor Ron DeSantis
If you're not as lost about those decisions as I am...I have no words.
Canada too, doesn't get a pass, as Ontario and Alberta deemed their manufacturing and oil sectors as "essential" businesses before backtracking.
With so much confusion over what is essential and what isn't and the fact that governors' buddies seem to influence their list, it's small wonder why there are people who aren't taking the lockdowns seriously.
Why should they when the governments themselves don't do it?
The real sore spot, even amidst all that goes way beyond any debate over what measures we should or shouldn't take, what should be open and what shouldn't and whom we should or shouldn't listen to.
Because let me say this as loud and clear as I can:
The lack of foresight is the real crisis.
Let's be honest with ourselves- there wouldn't be this much worry and anxiety over the effects of the lockdowns if the people affected by them learned they'd be mitigated in a meaningful way.
I mean, if the government was going to pay me to stay home and make sure my bills are all paid, I'd do it forever, if they need me to do that.
(Well, maybe not forever...but you know what I mean)
That's really what all this anger is about. That's really what most people who downplay the virus or protest the lockdown restrictions are really angry about- the fact that the government can take away their livelihoods in the blink of an eye and then turn around and tell us to "deal with it", without giving us any way to actually deal with it.
Maybe instead of spending millions on condescending ads telling us how "heroic" we are, we should spend it on things like wiping out our utility bills, paying our medical costs and canceling our rents and mortgages.
You know, the stuff we go to work for only when the government doesn't stop our ability to go to work.
Further, why it took so long to start buying beds, ventilators and other hospital equipment is beyond me. Yeah, we can- and I do- fault the World Health Organization for its erratic messaging at the beginning of the outbreak and Chinese officials downplaying the virus, but this goes beyond that.
Our healthcare systems- worldwide- have been chronically mismanaged and woefully underfunded, meaning they're barely operational at the best of times so we had no hope in dealing with a pandemic.
While I grant it's no sure thing that if we had a better prepared health care system that we could have avoided the lockdowns, it's sure a tough pill to swallow knowing that at least part of the reason why I'm suffering through it is because governments failed to do all they could to prevent it.
Ford likes to call our healthcare providers "heroes" for all the work they're putting in...and I grant, that work is heroic. Just don't tell any of them that the reason why they're being asked to be heroes is because Ford slashed healthcare funding so much that the Ontario government wasn't at all prepared for the pandemic.
Yet I don't believe I've ever heard Ford even once apologize or acknowledge that his government's actions or inaction may have some blame in this. Even though the reality of the situation- in all likelihood- was far beyond his control, a little humility might at least show that he at least has some understanding of how we're truly feeling.
Because if there's one thing that will never be acceptable- before or after this virus- it's knowing you're suffering because of someone else's hubris.
Don't ask me to keep my head up if you're the one that knocked me down in the first place.
-Daniel Arnold
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