In this lockdown, we have a full communication breakdown

Separate pandemic rules for different classes of people is exactly the wrong message

This clearly isn’t like the lockdown Ontarians endured last spring during the first wave of COVID-19, and Premier Doug Ford made it clear he’s not imposing a curfew with the new stay-at-home order.

So exactly what has changed? Nothing really, other than there’s even more confusion following the latest provincial pronouncements and extended state of emergency, despite Ford’s insistence there is no confusion about staying home unless it’s essential while he lets non-essential businesses stay open.

Streets and highways are nowhere near as empty as they were in the spring, when the daily number of new cases of the coronavirus were a fraction of what they are now, and when hospitals were nowhere near as close to being overwhelmed as they are today, but we get half-measures instead of a real lockdown.

The government won’t determine which jobs are essential, saying only if you can work from home you must, but if you can’t, if you work in retail for example, you can go to the store, which at best would be open only for curbside pickup.

Big box stores get to extend their monopolistic advantage from the lucrative pre-Christmas period, helping drive more local, independent businesses shuttered by the province to the brink of bankruptcy, if not out of business. Costco and Walmart aren’t even required to rope off the aisles of nonessential items to level the playing field with other retailers.

Professional athletes can fly around the country to play hockey, but don’t let your kids play a game of shinny on an outdoor rink, masked or not.

Separate pandemic rules for different classes of people is exactly the wrong message, and allows anyone to justify decisions to interpret the rules to best suit their own circumstances.

Video of a city of Vaughan worker salting an outdoor rink to make sure people can’t use it only adds to the outrage, and to the confusion about what they can and can’t do without violating the stay at home order.

Government leaders, public health officials and hospital executives lost any moral authority they might have had to tell us to do what we’re told when so many of them were caught ignoring the advice against unnecessary travel to take out-of-country vacations while the rest of us struggled through the holidays without our usual family gatherings.

Many couples have postponed wedding plans and families have delayed funerals for parents or grandparents who died alone in an understaffed longterm-care home, just to try to prevent the spread of the virus, while the elites and entitled show us the rules don’t apply to them.

We’re told exercise may mean a walk around the block or a game of hoops with family members at a neighbourhood basketball court. Do the kids have to carry their birth certificates, or are group photos enough evidence that all players are from the same family?

Ontarians are at sea trying to figure out just what the new stay-at-home order really means because of incredibly poor government communications, compounded by a vaccine rollout that has gone from bad to worse, deadly outbreaks in LTC homes that have surpassed the first wave, and a premier who still insists there’s no confusion.

Ignoring the confusion will only encourage more people to ignore the rules, helping spread the virus instead of containing it.