Making bad decisions

Let’s just say they are high-profile examples of, well, many of the rest of us. It just happens that, because of their stature, their mistakes are more public.

Imagine being P.E.I.’s minister of health, James Aylward.

Aylward came back from a recruiting mission for health-care workers in Ireland, getting home in the early hours of March 13 before going in to work a few hours later.

The province’s chief public health officer told him to go home and self-isolate, and he did — but not before stopping off at a local butcher shop and at a Sobeys grocery store on the way home.

“Do I regret the decision I made? Yes,” he told The Guardian last Friday. “Did I have the information then that I do now? No, I didn’t.

“Think how this makes me feel. I could have made a negative impact on Prince Edward Island. It would have been devastating. I couldn’t have dealt with that.”

Can there be anything more embarrassing for a health minister than tripping up in his own department’s health and safety orders?

But he’s not the only cabinet minister making apologies for COVID-19 missteps.

Here’s Newfoundland and Labrador’s Transportation and Works minister, Steve Crocker on Facebook: “Even though there were no restrictions in place for this travel when we left home, it was clearly the wrong decision to leave the province. I sincerely apologize for my decision.”

With the pandemic threat well started, Crocker and his wife left for a March Florida holiday during a week set aside for elected members to travel to their districts and meet with constituents. (You could ask yourself, “How many constituents was Minister Crocker expecting to meet with in Florida, anyway?” but that’s probably a question for another day.) He and his wife immediately turned around and came back, and responsibly, began selfisolation.

What’s the lesson here?

The thing is, it’s something that many people do — not only high-profile people. It’s hard to selfisolate. It’s hard to maintain proper physical distancing. It’s hard to make the right decisions every single time.

It’s hard not to go back to the grocery store for those few things you forgot; it’s hard, as the Halifax police department will tell you, for people to stay out of that inviting-but-closed public park, and even the threat of a $697.50 ticket hasn’t served to get that point across completely.

It’s tempting to say, “but it’s just this once.” The fact is that the only way this whole effort will work is if we all recognize that we have a clear stake in not giving ourselves exemptions, and in understanding what we’re expected to do.

Think about how you’d feel if you discovered your small action had spread a deadly virus.