Stop being reckless and stay home, please
The opening of ice cream parlours in Montreal is usually a hopeful sign that spring is around the corner. And last weekend’s glorious sunshine brought families out of the woodwork to enjoy the fresh air.
Nevertheless, the lineup outside Wild Willie’s in Pointeclaire
last Saturday filled me with trepidation rather than joy. People were clustered on the sidewalk eagerly waiting for their cones. But no one was making any observable effort to stay the recommended one metre apart, the social distancing measure we all need to adopt to slow the spread of COVID -19.
I witnessed this from afar as I, too, was out with my kids — about the only thing you can do to keep sane in these unprecedented times. It’s just one of many worrying examples that suggest not everyone is getting the message about the urgency of staying the heck away from each other.
From seeing a presumably high-risk senior at the bakery picking individual coins from the ungloved hand of a cashier to running into a neighbour in my condo building, just back from the U.S. and apparently oblivious to the instructions to self-isolate, to people breathing down my neck in the supermarket checkout line, not everyone is respecting the protective bubble we all need to maintain around ourselves. Even outdoors — at parks or on street corners — this is a problem.
Montreal Mayor Valérie Plante implored passengers still taking public transit to stop invading the personal space of worried bus drivers.
It’s true that the coronavirus pandemic is evolving rapidly, as are the measures in response to it.
Within a week, Quebec went from ordering a few returnees from March break to stay home from school to shutting down all schools, universities, CEGEPS and daycares for two weeks. We’ve gone from cancelling big events like the World Figure Skating Championships at the Bell Centre to closing bars and gyms.
Things change day by day, hour to hour, and the dramatic shifts in behaviour we are being asked to undertake are a lot to absorb. But some people aren’t just slow to adapt to the new social etiquette rules, they’re actively flouting them.
Premier François Legault had a special message for young Quebecers at his daily briefing Tuesday.
“This isn’t time to have a party,” he said. “We’re trying to save lives here.”
Quebec’s director of public health, Horacio Arruda, said for the time being, the typical parental advice to get youth offline and go outside no longer applies. He urged young Quebecers to embrace taking their social lives online.
A poignant letter from a mother in Italy warned parents not to let their kids go out with their friends, no matter how much they beg or simply because other parents are allowing it.
From parties to playdates, we need to reverse engineer the social pressure to make it unacceptable to congregate, as painful as it surely is for our bewildered children.
But it’s not only young people who are defying the new rules. Baby boomers are increasingly being called out — often by their own adult kids — for ignoring the scale of the coronavirus crisis. One exasperated friend was pleading for advice on Facebook for how to convince her stubborn, septuagenarian father to stay put.
Health Minister Danielle Mccann said Tuesday no one should feel safe from the reach of COVID-19, no matter where in Quebec they are.
“Even if you live in a small village, there’s no get-togethers, no bingo,” she chided.
Getting individuals to wise up is one thing. But there are some truly mind-boggling organizational decisions that show what we’re up against.
A dental conference held in Vancouver between March 5 and 7 helped spread COVID-19 across the country, resulting in 15,000 attendees being told to self isolate. And a St-patrick’s Day event near Queen’s University proceeded against the objections of Kingston, Ont., authorities. So it seems the best and brightest aren’t always the smartest.
Cluelessness and recklessness quickly become selfishness if we fail to follow the new social distancing norms required to save lives and keep our health system from imploding under the strain of a surge in COVID-19 cases. And if we can’t trust each other to keep a healthy distance, even outdoors, we might soon have our precious freedoms even further curtailed.
It’s tough to cut ourselves off from friends and family. It hurts to disappoint our kids. Humans are, after all, social creatures and isolation goes against our natural instincts. But these extraordinary times call for extraordinary measures — from each and every one of us.