One New Yorker’s advice: Wear your masks, Canada
I recently travelled from New York City to Toronto to begin production as an actress on a new FX TV show called “Y The Last Man,” and on my first day of government-mandated 14-day quarantine I was awakened from a nap to the sounds of a large protest coming down John Street.
I looked out my window and saw a few hundred people walking down the street holding large signs, both protesting wearing masks and celebrating their right not to do so. On a large speaker blasting loudly, a voice warned of conspiracies that the COVID-19 virus had been greatly exaggerated and that wearing masks for long durations was unhealthy and proven not to work.
I quickly ran around my apartment looking for something big I could write on and hold out the window in counterprotest to such staggering falsehoods, but I found nothing. Instead, I just leaned over my balcony and screamed down into the moving crowd far below me: “I’m from America. I’m from New York. You have no idea what we’ve been through. You have no idea how good you have it here.”
In the spring of this year, I witnessed firsthand some of the worst devastation in my hometown of Brooklyn, N.Y., where COVID-19 cases spiked at a devastating speed until it had completely devoured us. The sounds of blaring ambulance sirens echoed through the city non-stop, 24 hours a day.
Brooklyn sidewalks, once populated with kids and families, became ghost towns. Entering into our version of a variety store was akin to playing Russian roulette with your own life. Neighbours watched as other neighbours were carried out on stretchers, or in body bags.
Central Park in Manhattan had been converted into a temporary morgue. The Javits Convention Center, which four years earlier had held some 4,000 supporters of Hillary Clinton and her presidential campaign on election night, had been turned into a massive emergency hospital to hold the huge influx of people struggling to live on ventilators.
In one day alone, the virus killed 799 people in New York City. That’s 33 people dying an hour
In one day alone, the virus killed 799 people in New York City. That’s 33 people dying an hour. New York alone — which has a comparable population to Ontario — watched as more than 30,000 people died from COVID-19 in just four months. And the United States as a whole has seen almost a quarter of a million people die from the virus since February, thanks to the complete absence of federal leadership and the abdication of responsibility on the part of our narcissist-in-chief, President Donald Trump.
As an American, I’ve seen the consequences of this disease and what the vacancy of strong, national leadership during a health crisis can do to its citizens, businesses and local governments.
When I came through the border into Canada, I felt a deep sense of relief, of unfamiliar safety — something I haven’t felt in years since Trump took office.
I was grateful to hear how seriously Canada was taking COVID-19, and I was grateful for the strict quarantine rules put in place to enter the country and work here. It felt like the difference between having parents who take good care of you, even if that means making you eat your vegetables when you don’t want to, and having parents who drink and drive, with you sitting in the back seat.
Even still, after finishing my 14-day quarantine, I came out onto the street and was surprised to find most Torontonians not wearing masks at all, and not socially distancing as much as they could. While I know sometimes it can be hard to see the forest for the trees when the infection rate is so low here, heed the warning: that forest can become a raging, uncontainable wildfire faster than you think.
As I walk around your beautiful city today, the virus rates are already on the rise. COVID-19 is here, hiding in plain sight, waiting for us to disregard it. I can promise you, you don’t want to go through what we’re going through in America, and you still have an opportunity not to. Wear your masks like your lives depend on it. Because they do.