Protesters must be held to account often

DEAR EDITOR:

Thank you for taking a stand for public health by calling out the irresponsible behaviour and messaging of the antimaskers (“Find another way to protest,” Dec. 15).

Were it not for the potential this disease has to overwhelm our medical-care system, their right to free speech and assembly would be acceptable and even welcomed. Alas, we face a public health emergency and the collapse of hospitals under the sheer weight of the numbers of seriously ill people.

At the same time, medical professionals who staff those hospitals are falling ill from COVID-19, overwork, depression and burn-out.

It is time for everybody to pull together: to mask-up, keep distance, disinfect, help others, feed the poor, help house the homeless and support public health.

Canadians have only to look south to see the results of mixed messages: selfishness, libertarian focus, adherence to conspiracy theory. The richest nation in the world has the world’s worst record in dealing with the pandemic. It is not that they lack resources, scientists, technology, intelligence or common sense. They have all those and still the world’s worst record.

Now, Canada’s anti-mask freedom fighters want Canada to be like our American neighbors and rush madly off in all directions. Nonsense!

Keep getting the word out. We need another hundred days of self-discipline, of public-health restrictions and concern for each other to get through to the point where vaccines begin to blunt the force of this pandemic.

It is time to push or pull, or get out of the way.