FREEDOM FRUSTRATION

COVID-19 has had an obvious impact on all of our lives and has helped to illustrate just how much we have changed as a society. It is almost scary to think that in our time of heightened self-preservation, past events such as a world war could be waged and not stopped due to our inability to preserve the whole as opposed to the individual. The recent pandemic is not a vehicle for politics, the pandemic is a virus, a virus that kills people and it has killed in the millions.

I whole-heartedly agree with freedom, it is not a human right, but a state that has been fought for and achieved through the sacrifices of many before us. As I have already alluded to, I find it difficult to believe that many in today’s society would do the same. Not to quote the Spiderman franchise, but with freedom comes responsibility. Freedom is not an absolute, as practicing freedom requires one to be lucid, and aware of how the individual freedoms impact others. Freedom does not exist when the wants and wishes, the actions of one, hinder another. When we exist in a world when our own personal freedoms trump those of another, we are denying the freedoms that our society and political structures have implemented and that is wrong.

The truckers convoy is something that I understand but cannot back. We spent the better part of two years backing first responders for their role in fighting COVID, but many largely ignored the plight of the retail workers, truckers and service workers that kept the groceries coming in and allowed us all to live our lives. Shopping through Amazon was not strictly online, as there were many who had to deliver those goods.

I find it almost insulting that in our third late winter since the rise of COVID, many are placing their own needs above the whole. It makes no sense that at university for instance, many of the necessary employees still work from home while students are expected to cram into the lecture halls, and while the employee ranks at supermarkets are full, many government workers hide at home.

Protests prove one thing, as Bill Maher has said, “get back to living, protect the vulnerable”, but you cannot take from others to suit yourself.

Stop protesting, get vaccinated, do your civic, humane duty as others have before us.

Michael Maslen, Prince George