Thinking of others remains important as restrictions lift

Some people are counting down the days until COVID-19 restrictions are lifted in Atlantic Canada. Bye-bye vax pass. So long, masks. Bon voyage to social distancing in certain spaces.

But for people who are immune-compromised or otherwise medically vulnerable, or for those with loved ones whose health is precarious, the news that public health protocols are being relaxed is like a nightmare come true.

For them, the new mantra that “COVID is just something we have to live with” sounds more like “Guess what? You’re on your own.”

It’s fine to say people can keep wearing masks if they want to, but masks are not an ironclad guarantee that you won’t contract COVID. They are a measure of protection, but less so if the members of the public you come in contact with decide to stop covering their noses and mouths, dispense with hand sanitizing and start to intrude on your personal space.

For people who rely on pandemic restrictions to safeguard their health, the stress of knowing they are about to be dropped is intense.

Disability activist Paul Vienneau tweeted this week: “I’m in a very high-risk group. Mom and Dad are 81 and in very high-risk groups. I understand they think the risk is lower now so let’s open the barn and let us out, free again. … I have this hung-out-to-dry feeling as if the sheriff left town and there a gunslinger out there looking to take away everything I love and my life, too.”

Parents Corey Slumkoski and Martha Walls, whose eight-year-old daughter nearly died from a respiratory illness at age two and has been medically vulnerable ever since, are hypervigilant about their child’s health.

They wrote a letter to SaltWire Network this week saying that the pandemic has been a frightening time for their family and they’ve had to balance trying to protect their daughter with giving her opportunities to socialize.

“We desperately want to be able to send her back to school, and she desperately wants to go,” they wrote. “It is incredibly unfortunate, though, that just as families like ours face this decision, school safety is being undermined by incremental erosions of ideological and physical safeguards against COVID-19.”

While new antiviral medications like Paxlovid offer hope of preventing hospitalization for people who contract the virus, it doesn’t work for everyone and is still in short supply.

Dalhousie University infectious disease expert Dr. Lisa Barrett tweeted this week that a virus that can cause sickness and death is still circulating in our communities, and it’s too soon to throw caution to the wind.

“With current viral uncertainty, known benefits of masking, as well as the relative lack of economic or societal harm, we ask our vulnerable to maybe assume too much risk to convenience the rest of us if (restrictions are) removed in the next months. Worth a solid reflection Canada.”

That’s worth remembering.