Please, play it safe for the sake of others

A false sense of freedom has already cost many lives, Prativa Baral writes.

I know everyone is exhausted and frustrated, our sense of normalcy having been ripped away, and this, for months on end. I get it. So I'm not here to spout statistics about how much worse this second wave has been.

I'm here to plead.

Both of my parents are essential workers. Every day they go to work, my heart sinks, worried about their potential exposure to the virus.

Some of my friends are front line workers and have also not taken a break in months. One of my closest friends in Montreal, an occupational therapist, lived in a hotel for weeks to avoid accidentally transmitting the virus to her elderly patients or parents. When I first moved back home to Canada at the beginning of the pandemic, the cab driver who brought me to my quarantine spot told me that he was living away from his wife and baby, just in case.

If you know anyone working as an essential worker right now, you understand the precautions they've had to take and the sacrifices they've made.

And if you are an essential worker yourself, I am sorry we couldn't do better. Most important, I am sorry that the system we have in place was slow to be implemented, and couldn't contain the virus when it first started to spread, or even in the summer, when transmission was low. And I am sorry for the trauma of working through a pandemic.

I am also sorry that this same system has lost the trust of many people — in institutions, in science, in decency — something we'll have to grapple with for a long time. And I am sorry that for those of us who are doing all we can to protect one another, the action of a loud minority may nevertheless still inflict pain and heartache on many of our lives.

Some of the messages I've seen on social media have been disheartening. When did we lose our sense of self? When did we intertwine our identities with whether or not we have a simple piece of cloth over our nose and mouth?

The restrictions are like seat belts. You may think you don't need them, but they are there in case things go wrong.

This is temporary. You will eventually be able to hug your friends, see a stranger's smile, celebrate your birthday in a crowded pub.

Until then, we have two choices. When the pandemic ends, do we want to come out with a stronger sense of community, knowing that we did all we could to keep as many people as possible safe? Or do we want to come out patting ourselves on the back for having been seatbelt-free and maintained this false sense of freedom while having lost many?

Can we not try to look out for one another, knowing that we're all having a difficult time?

The pandemic will end eventually. I'd like to come out of it knowing my community is a community, not in name alone, but by its acts.

Please play it safe. Not for my sake, necessarily, but for my parents, and for all of the other essential workers out there keeping our society running.