IS PHYSICAL DISTANCING OVER? IT SURE SEEMS TO BE
THOUSANDS CONGREGATE AT PROTESTS WITH BARELY A WHIMPER FROM AUTHORITIES
Fairly straightforward stuff today. Just basic logic. Or maybe an elementary riddle. Like — when is a pandemic not a pandemic? Is a gathering of more than six people dangerous and forbidden, but at over 1,000 does all risk disappear? Is the new law of viral spread the bigger the crowd the less chance of infection?
The bluntest question may be the most engaging, however. Is the pandemic over?
Not just in Toronto, where I notate these cheerful arias for the Post, but in Ontario, Canada, the United States and in Europe. It is surely great news if it is. Although the lineup for haircuts is going to be appalling.
( Side thought: if those fiendish barbers get together and strike a monopoly, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau will have to issue federal relief just for people who want a trim. I suggest the Shampoo Fund as a salable branding.)
I circulate these questions because public events of the last few days have exposed serious contradictions, what my good friends in the media are given to calling a “disconnect” ( an analogy drawn from plumbing, I believe.) Allow me to set a little background.
Ontario recently extended its emergency orders to June
19. Why? Because COVID-19 is not yet contained. The province reported 415 new COVID-19 cases on Sunday, though some of those cases were from previous weeks and are just being reported now. The emergency orders were set to expire on June
9. But the persistent number of new cases persuaded the premier to extend the emergency regimen to June
19. This was a good move. Premier Doug Ford is a good man. You can never be too careful when the health of a whole province is at stake.
Ford, of course, is not the only Canadian political leader keeping a watchful and scrupulous eye.
On Thursday, Trudeau, in one of his now familiar front-porch audiences (there is a papal air about them), while voicing some optimism about progress dealing with this horror, added a much-needed warning about getting complacent, thinking the threat over and relaxing vigilance too soon.
Very sternly, appropriately and responsibly he declared: “I want to be very clear, we’re not out of the woods. The pandemic is still threatening the health and safety of Canadians.” We all know by now that when Trudeau says he wants to be “very clear” he wants to be very clear. All the statement wanted for fierce emphasis was a really long pause.
I accept, and more I applaud, the diligence and caution of his observation.
After all, the pandemic has gruesomely foreshortened many lives, closed down most of the country, imperilled hundreds of thousands of businesses and jobs, and eviscerated Parliament: a pandemic is a very serious business indeed.
So it is that all the measures that governments have urged or mandated to manage the response have received the respect and acceptance of the Canadian people.
And by way of setting example, and earning that acceptance, Trudeau self- isolated for over 50 days, and avoided even a half- full House of Commons for equally long. Crowds, even of MPS (who are notoriously immune to most things, shame and consistency among them) are not immune to COVID.
Also, we have seen some circumstances where the state has seriously punished a few scatterbrains who selfishly went out, unmasked, or in proximity to others, did “chin- ups” in parks, or walked a dog too close to others. There was one notorious episode in Toronto where a crowd gathered, on a sunny Saturday, in Trinity Bellwoods Park. Mainly it was a family outing after a long stay indoors. However, all were rightly denounced as “selfish and dangerous,” earned a scourging from Mayor John Tory for their “thoughtlessness” and absolutely irresponsible behaviour.
In a beautiful twist, Mayor Tory even denounced himself for faulty “mask coverage” at the same event, a rare instance of Torquemada hauling himself to the stake.
So now comes the logic test. If a dozen young people can’t gather for a soccer game, or 15 can’t hook up for a backyard barbecue, because it is dangerous and a real threat to public health — how can thousands of people congregate in protest on a city’s streets without barely a whimper from the authorities, health or political, about the “threat to public health” such numbers ineluctably contain.
Photos and videos from the scenes show that some protesters are behaving very responsibly, with masks and gloves and physical distancing. Others, though, are not. Are the laws that govern contagions and viral spread, by some chemistry not yet disclosed, suspended or nullified when huge crowds of people wish to make a political point? If so, where are the studies backing up this revelation?
The paradox here is not without poignancy. Civil authorities have kept people from their closest loved ones in times of the greatest emotional stress. You cannot visit. There are limits placed on funeral visitations. Daughter has not been able to visit mother, and forced to lipspeak through a window — and even that pathetic gesture has been frowned upon (Ottawa briefly banned it altogether). All in the name, I note again, of a greater good. We must not spread the virus, and if that means real pain for individual people, we’re sorry for it, but it must be the case.
But protest marches fall outside these rigours?
This is certainly no condemnation of protests, but the logic behind the authorities who blithely and silently simply dumped or ignored their own rules. If they have a reason for doing so, let us hear it. Explain the different treatment. Justify the departure from the rules.
More particularly, let us go to the prime minister. He has been, to be most kind, ostentatious in his social distancing and self- isolation. He has virtually been running a one- man parliament under what I have taken to calling the “Tent of Commons.” But on Friday, the same prime minister, who has kept himself in close containment, and done morning briefings solo and alone, wandered down the streets of Ottawa to join and support and mingle with a protest gathering of thousands. Yet three days before Trudeau solemnly intoned: “The pandemic is still threatening the health and safety of Canadians.”
What changed? I’m back to my original questions. Is the pandemic over? Or, does its rage stop when people gather for a noble cause?
Distilled, a very serious question emerges: why should all the everyday Canadians accept or follow the strictures of the leaders, when the same leaders so brazenly ignore them when the politics of the pandemic puts them in a bind?
Last point: after the protests, have the civic authorities of Canada effectively declared the need for social distancing is dead? If the protests have nullified the imperative to stay away from crowds, the requirements of social distancing and self-isolation, please pass the news to everyone else.
PANDEMIC OVER? OR, DOES ITS RAGE STOP WHEN PEOPLE GATHER FOR A NOBLE CAUSE?