Dear Mr. Trudeau

Thank you for reading my letter. 

Let me begin by saying that I had hoped to maintain a congratulatory tone throughout this missive. After all, you have done a very good job keeping us relatively safe during the extraordinary times we have undergone these past 17 months.

You delivered on the vaccine.

You delivered with CERB

You initiated badly-needed supports for businesses devastated by the pandemic.

You set a national example during our time of confinement.

You followed the Covid rules, isolating when required.

You showed your willingness to forsake tonsorial splendour.

You talked to us daily about the disease.

You wore a mask.

Essentially, you were a positive role model when the times demanded one.

You really had our backs.

But now, sadly, I must turn to the darker side of your soul, the political part demonstrating the grave dichotomy between your public persona and your deeper self. 

What will so many people infer from your calling an unnecessary election during a fourth wave? Surely many will see it as a reckless, even ruthless, willingness to place your political hopes (a majority government) over the health and safety of your fellow citizens.  

Consider this. A fourth wave of Covid is convulsing the nation. People, even the vaccinated, are contracting the Delta variant, said to be as contagious as chicken pox and deadlier than the original virus.

Your chief medical health officer, Teresa Tam, continues to advise extreme caution.

In Canada's most populous province, Ontario, growth of the virus is alarming, and has now reached a reproduction rate of 1.62, meaning, of course, that every 100 Covid cases causes an average of 162 infections.

Of course, you know all of this. And yet you are calling an election that will require millions of Canadians to congregate dangerously at polling stations, which brings me to another disturbing point about your recklessness. Presumably, the bulk of polling stations will be in their traditional locales, many of which are schools. Have you not considered the health risks you are inflicting on children trying to get back to a reasonable approximation of traditional learning?

There is more that I could say, but allow me to close by reiterating my disappointment in the path the media tell us you have chosen. It is a path that will serve only to deepen cynicism in an electorate that expects much better of you.

A Ball And Chain Forged By Fools

I hope to be back with something new tomorrow. In the meantime, this speaks volumes:

This Puts Things Into Perspective

 

Sometimes They Get It Right

People who read this blog more than occasionally will be aware that I am not a big fan of Americans. Their widespread ignorance, their collective solipsism, their endless bruiting about being "the greatest nation on earth" are off-putting, to put it mildly.

However, once in awhile, some of them make sane, logical and admirable decisions that would be churlish not to acknowledge.

One such decision has been made by Bill de Blasio, mayor of New York City.

New York City will become the first U.S. city to require proof of vaccination for a variety of activities for workers and customers — indoor dining, gyms and movie theaters — a move intended to put pressure on people to get vaccinated, Mayor Bill de Blasio announced on Tuesday.

The restrictions, similar to mandates issued in France and Italy last month, represent the most aggressive response to lagging vaccination rates in the United States, and they come as the number of virus cases surge across the country. Mr. de Blasio said he hoped that other cities would implement similar measures.

“This is a miraculous place literally full of wonders,” Mr. de Blasio said. “If you’re vaccinated, all that’s going to open up to you. But if you’re unvaccinated, unfortunately you will not be able to participate in many things.”

A contrast to the benighted 'leadership' on display in Florida, where even mask mandates are forbidden, de Blasio recognizes the power of both the carrot and the stick. The carrot, of course, is that the vaccinated can move about freely to patronize gyms, restaurants, bars, museums, Broadway plays, etc. and the stick is the exclusion of those obdurately opposed to vaccines from such venues.

There is evidence that de Blasio's strategy is spreading.

Vaccine mandates are accelerating across the country, as both municipalities and private businesses have adopted them. On Tuesday, Tyson Foods told its 120,000 workers in offices, slaughterhouses and poultry plants across the country that they would need to be vaccinated by Nov. 1 as a “condition of employment.” And Microsoft, which employs roughly 100,000 people in the United States, said it would require proof of vaccination for all employees, vendors and guests to gain access to its offices.

President Biden said on Tuesday that he believed other cities should follow New York City’s lead in requiring proof of vaccination for restaurants and gyms.

“You have to give proof that you’ve been vaccinated or you can’t come in,” Mr. Biden told reporters.

Sadly, such a sane approach to opening things up and instilling peace of mind in potential patrons is lacking in places like Ontario. Premier Ford has said he does not want to split society.

I guess he did not get the memo that we already are split, and the gulf is growing wider daily. Letting the tail wag the dog is never a good approach to public policy, especially when it comes to public health.

Barbarians At The Gate

My preoccupation of late has been with those who refuse to get vaccinated, people who blithely and recklessly pose a hazard to all of us. Not surprisingly, much of that ilk is also adamantly opposed to vaccine certificates/passports. And for some reason beyond my ability to fathom, their voices have been heard over those of sane people.

This, and a conversation I had yesterday, has led me to wonder about the documentation that will be required when Americans begin crossing into Canada on August 9.  It is a date we should look upon with some trepidation.

Yesterday I walked over to a local store to buy some milk. En route, I ran into the manager of the garage where I take my car for servicing. As we chatted about Covid and related matters, he told me something one of his customers had relayed to him. Said customer has a cousin from the U.S. planning a visit. The cousin, an avid and rabid anti-vaxxer, said he has bought fake vaccination certificates online (most likely on the Dark Web, where they are readily available) for $75 each. Said customer told his cousin that he wouldn't be letting him into his house.

So the question is, what precautions are the Canadian government and Canadian Border Services taking to detect counterfeit certificates? Sadly, the answer is not especially encouraging.

Relying on questioning and 'intelligence' to ferret out the fakes leaves too much to chance. In its zeal to welcome back Americans, the federal government seems willing to put some of the gains we have made in our Covid battle at risk. I doubt the electorate would cheer such recklessness.

A Much-Needed Solution

If you have been reading this blog lately, you will likely know the low opinion I hold of those who refuse to be vaccinated against Covid-19. Despite rising cases of the much more contagious and lethal Delta variant, the statistics regarding the vaccine-resistant barely change. 

What is a sane, reasonably intelligent person to do, given that these people seem to be dictating the agenda?

Matt Elliott thinks he has the answer.

Ontario’s public health units have done a bang-up job of getting us vaccinated. But there’s a stubborn percentage that won’t get the shots. With variants circulating and Ontario reopening, it seems plausible this unvaccinated part of the population could give us escalating case counts and — the real red flag to worry about — increasing hospitalization numbers.

If that does happen, a return to general lockdowns would be really hard to take. Those of us who dutifully followed the rules for more than a year and got our shots at the first opportunity will rightly raise hell if this government moves to restrict us again. The obvious thing to do instead would be restrict activities based on vaccination status.

Leave the province largely open for people who have received their vaccines. Limit activities for those who have made the choice to leave themselves more vulnerable to a virus that could overwhelm the hospital system again. And protect those, like young children and people with legitimate diagnosed health conditions, who remain vulnerable to COVID-19 and aren’t able to get vaccinated. 

Unfortunately, here in Ontario, Premier Doug Ford has ruled out that option. Whether for reasons ideological, political or cognitive, he has said that he doesn't want a divided society, but that is exactly what he already has, and the problem will only get worse. With his own limited abilities, he may even think that restricting access to restaurants, movie theatres, nightclubs, concert and sports venues, etc. will hurt the commercial bottom line, but if another lockdown becomes necessary, that is exactly what will happen.

We are told by various experts that we need to cajole, empathize with and show compassion toward the recalcitrant. In my mind, once the carrot fails, it is time to wield the stick.

Vaccine passports are the best solution for our troubled times.

UPDATED: Regarding Those Benighted Anti-Vaxxers

 

The Tyranny Of The Minority

A great deal has been recently written in various media about vaccine certificates, both for and against their use. The arguments are pretty basic: such certificates should be required to enter restaurants, bars, movie theatres, etc. so that people know they are patronizing relatively safe businesses. The other side insists they are intrusive and violate people's privacy, that such coercive measures have no place in a 'free' society.

I have no use for the later argument, as this is an issue of public health. While I oppose mandating vaccines, I see nothing wrong with making life harder for those who don't give a damn about the lives of others. This is one of those rare issues that, in my view, is black and white.

The minority should not be permitted to tyrannize the majority. End of discussions.

Following is an assortment of letters to the editor that succinctly and effectively address this issue.

The first two letters, from The National Post, are a response to the dismantling of a website, safetodo.ca, which was started to list businesses that offered safe environments to patrons, either by indicating that all staff have been fully vaccinated or requiring proof of vaccination before being permitted on the premises. It was taken down due to a backlash against the businesses from the perpetually aggrieved anti-vaxxers.

Re: Businesses Attacked Over Vaccinated Status, July 22. In a free society, anti-vaxxers are entitled to boycott Safetodo.ca. But when dissent actively censors a website by forcing it to shut down over people sending personal, directed and hateful messages, then society must address such vandalism because it is clearly against the public interest.

Consequently, on behalf of society, including businesses, government should respond by setting up a similar site where knowledge of proof of vaccination is communicated. The government has the resources to withstand such an affront to our rights.

To submit to such a denial of our rights by allowing a vociferous minority to deny or cancel the free speech rights of the majority to advocate for free association with other vaccinated people on Safetodo.ca is an assault on all our rights.

Society must confront these anti-social outliers with our political will, medical knowledge and legal authority to save as many lives as possible. Safeguarding Safetodo.ca should be our civic mission statement for today, and the days ahead.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto.

Just when you think that you have seen it all, this article about the attack on a website listing businesses that have fully vaccinated staff by a minority of hate-spewing, gutless anti-vaxxers, who remain anonymous on social media, proves that the world truly has gone mad. Kudos to Quebec for planning to issue vaccine passports in September. The majority of Ontarians will soon be fully vaccinated and I strongly urge Premier Doug Ford to do the same.

In a democracy the majority rules. The safety of all should never be trumped by a selfish minority.

Bob Erwin, Ottawa. 

The last letter is from The Toronto Star, responding to a column by Martin Regg Cohn in which he opined that all people working in health care should be vaccinated. 

 When it comes to COVID-19 vaccinations, health and safety should trump job security, July 14

I completely agree with Martin Regg Cohn regarding vaccinations of all medical workers. However, this principle should be extended to all persons age 12 and above.

To me, personal privacy is trumped by the general good. Without a vaccine passport, a person still can order goods to be delivered to their home — just not go out to the stores to pick them up.

People have the right not to be vaccinated, but to attend physically is a privilege they have not earned without being vaccinated. Why should those of us that have been vaccinated be at the health peril of those not willing to protect their community?

Furthermore, a business that fails to enforce that its customers are vaccinated, threatening my health in the process, does not deserve my business.

J. Psutka, Toronto

 

Oh, Those Poor Pharmaceuticals

There is little doubt today that the vast majority of us are feeling very kindly-disposed toward the big pharmaceuticals. After all, they brought us quite efficacious vaccines against Covidc-19 in record time, vaccines that will in the near-future allow Western nations to return to relative normalcy.

We wait with bated breath for that time to arrive in Canada.

While we wait, it might be good to remember a couple of things: the speed with which these miracles of medicine were developed was facilitated tremendously by the infusion of billions of tax dollars by an array of governments; the resulting profits have gone almost solely to the companies who hold the patents to these vaccines. In other words, governments assumed much of the risk while reaping none of the rewards.

But, we are told that the huge profits of big pharma wrought by its pricing regimes are necessary to fund research. After all, many promising therapies are pursued that ultimately don't pan out. To restrict drug prices would inhibit research, the story goes.

No doubt there is some truth to such assertions, but the following puts into sharp relief some other aspects of pharma's expenditures that are wholly unrelated to research costs. Katie Porter, a California Democrat who sits in the House of Representatives, had a run at AbbVie CEO Richard Gonzalez over the rising drug prices at his company. What she uncovered isn't pretty.

The Road To Infantilization

 

If one were to judge by the fervour with which Canadians are availing themselves of vaccines to stop the spread of Covid-19, one would classify ours as a very mature response. Certainly, there will always be pockets of resistance among the anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers and conspiracy buffs, but on the whole, we are eager for the protection offered by these modern-day miracles of medicine.

Alas, the same cannot be said for our neighbours to the south. While it is true they have a much larger proportion of both partially and fully-vaccinated citizens, the problem becomes apparent when looking at those who have not been vaccinated and apparently are not keen to get the jab.

And this is where the real story begins. How to convince the other 50% of eligible Americans to get the vaccine? Time for a couple of carrots.

The first carrot is the appeal to renewed freedom. As the new CDC guidelines state, if you are fully vaccinated, you can begin to live normally again. 

• You can resume activities that you did prior to the pandemic.
• You can resume activities without wearing a mask or staying 6 feet apart, except where required by federal, state, local, tribal, or territorial laws, rules, and regulations, including local business and workplace guidance.
• If you travel in the United States, you do not need to get tested before or after travel or self-quarantine after travel.

Oh, sweet liberty.

But what to do about those for whom such promises do not move the resistance dial?

How about a bigger carrot? Unfortunately, it is this larger-sized vegetable that, in my view, represents an infantilization of the population. And its message is a simple one: if you are good boys and girls and get the vaccine, you will be eligible for some nice treats.

For example, West Virginia will give $100 savings bonds to 16- to 35-year-olds who get a Covid-19 vaccine, Gov. Jim Justice said.

It would seem that money talks. Researchers found that

a third of the unvaccinated population said a cash payment would make them more likely to get a shot. The benefits were largest for those in the group getting $100, which increased willingness (34 percent said they would get vaccinated) by six points over the $25 group.

But there is much, much more on offer. Here is a sampling:

Illinois became the latest state to join the trend when it announced Thursday it will be doling out 50,000 free theme park tickets to anyone who has been vaccinated through a partnership with Six Flags Great America (the tickets are valued at a combined cost of $4 million).

 This comes after Ohio rolled out a similarly eye-popping incentive on Wednesday: A $1 million prize for five vaccinated residents chosen at random in a weekly lottery.

In New York, inoculated individuals can choose from a whole host of benefits, including free 7-day metro cards, tickets to sports games and some of the city’s key attractions (the Bronx Zoo, Brooklyn Botanical Garden and Lincoln Center) and, as of Thursday, free food from burger joint Shake Shack.

Indeed, even the mayor of New York is getting in on the act. If this is not childish, please tell me what it is:

Makes you want to go to New York for your second shot, eh? But wait, there's more!

While not ruling out cash prizes, New Jersey is currently offering a “shot and beer” program which rewards the newly inoculated with a free beer at participating breweries through the rest of this month, while Connecticut is also offering a free drink “on them” for residents who get vaccinated in May.

There are other states offering inducements as well, but I think you get the picture. Even the private sector is getting involved. Krispy Kreme, for example, is offering a free glazed doughnut, while Budweiser is offering debit cards for free beer. 

Are any of these measures ill-advised? Of course not, if they get more needles into arms. They are, however, a rather sobering reminder to all of us that human evolution clearly has a long, long way to go before we can truly call ourselves an advanced species.

 

        

Pensée Du Jour

Nothing profound, other than to say it is good to know that amongst the provinces, Ontario is not alone in its government's ineptitude.

H/t Theo Moudakis

Ineptitude Writ Large

 H/t Patrick Corrigan

Sometimes I feel embarrassed to be living in a province as benighted as Ontario. But then I realize that it is neither me nor my fellow citizens (for the most part) who are the clueless and the incompetent. That distinction is one the Doug Ford-led provincial government has the dubious honour of bearing.

I have chosen but three of a wealth of letters in today's Star attesting to that fact:

I cannot tell you how safe I felt waking up to know that all those essential workers would not be able to take the day off and go to a golf course. How brilliant to close the courses!

Great job, Doug! You sure know how to hold your ground in the face of the hordes of doctors and scientists and experts who implored you to do the one thing you could to save this province: institute paid sick days. You sure know how to take a position and stick to it (beyond any reasonable amount of time).

And how to sort out the meaningless measures and make them look as though you are doing something. I mean, moving, initially, to close down those swamps of infection, children’s playgrounds.

A brilliant move! Imagine, we thought you weren’t up to the job!

Yes, I certainly feel safe.

Elizabeth Young, Georgetown

If warehouses and factories are the primary sources of COVID-19 transmissions, why were they not targeted initially to be closed for the next few weeks?

Why are all vaccines not being immediately redeployed to their essential workers?

Why has the provincial government not yet introduced paid sick leave benefits?

If playgrounds have been proven to not be a source of COVID-19 transmission, then why were children facing increased restrictions that would further jeopardize their mental health and well-being?

If Doug Ford is continually unwilling to follow the advice of health-care experts, then why will he not resign and let someone take over who is willing to make the choices that will best protect the health and safety of Ontarians?

David Tepper, Thornhill 

Once again, Premier Doug Ford and his cabinet have failed us. They, together with Ontario’s chief medical officer, have proven themselves to be incompetent and morally bankrupt in their handling of the pandemic.

Once again, despite receiving consistent and persuasive advice from clinicians, epidemiologists and their own medical-scientific advisory panels, and, in the face of an unprecedented, unsustainable and extremely dangerous health care crisis, they have once again failed to take the actions required.

Ford resorts to bluff and bluster while playing fast and loose with the facts and tries to deflect the blame to others. He and the cabinet have caused and continue to cause so much avoidable sickness, suffering and death.

Our health-care system and the people who work in it have been perilously damaged, while at the same time the business community also has been seriously damaged.

The government has consistently failed to grasp that, in this pandemic, trying to balance the economy and public health ends up damaging both, whereas a strong focus on public health minimizes damage to the economy.

I am angry, outraged and deeply saddened.

Terry Donaghue, Toronto 

There are times when ineptitude causes irritation or minor annoyance. Clearly, this is not one of those times. 

On Magical Thinking And Misdirection

I don't feel particularly inspired to write these days, but I am always on the lookout for aptly expressed sentiments by others. In the print edition of today's Toronto Star, there are two letters of note pertaining to the Doug Ford government's mishandling of the Covid-19 pandemic. 

Ontario, or as I like to call it, Contagion Central, has never been in worse hands:

Beating the virus while staying open was magical thinking

• Toronto Star
• 20 Apr 2021

It is easier to reject the unfathomable and proceed with our lives as we know it. Politicians have been exploiting this human response. They have nurtured our belief in magical thinking. It is about to bring us to our knees.

We can pay low taxes and still get all the services. We can keep drilling for oil and drive cars and somehow climate change can still be averted.

We can enjoy endless growth in the face of finite resources on this planet.

During the acceleration of a pandemic, we can reopen everything to give business and customers what they want, and still somehow beat COVID-19 and maintain access to hospital care if we come down with appendicitis.

Experts warned us in February that April was going to be a pandemic disaster in Ontario without stringent new measures. Instead, we opened things up.

True leadership grasps the situation and takes ownership of the task of convincing people that choosing the responsible approach to overcome the crisis is key.

Ford is a master when it comes to deflecting blame

• Toronto Star
• 20 Apr 2021

Premier Doug Ford heard two months ago of a third wave disaster approaching, rolled the dice and lost.

We’re in a dire situation with hospital ICU beds filling up and potentially under-staffed.

With the introduction of a tougher set of rules, there was no acknowledgment that there were errors in judgment by the provincial government.

Instead, Ford is deflecting all blame from his own government by pointing the finger at the federal government for a lack of vaccines and implementing steps that give the appearance that he’s acting tough, but not taking the measures he should have to be effective.

Ford claims if more vaccines were available this third wave could have been avoided when the science always indicated that the virus would win the race against vaccines.

Ontario has only demonstrated the capacity to inject just over 100,000 vaccines per day while hundreds of thousands of vaccines are somewhere in Ontario not getting into the arms of Ontarians.

Ford gives us the appearance of taking control of the situation by implementing border controls; eliminating outdoor activities like golfing and other meaningless measures, instead of providing paid sick leave; improving the vaccine rollout plan to get more needles quicker into the arms of Ontarians in the hot spots, imposing a curfew that other jurisdictions and countries have used successfully and increasing the use of rapid testing in essential workplaces.

I can only hope that by some miracle we don’t see the frightful triage scenes we’ve seen in other countries in Ontario.

Donald Wong, Toronto

A Stinging Indictment

The Covid numbers in Ontario today are grim: 4,812 new cases and 25 more deaths.

The following report by the CBC's Ellen Mauro places the blame precisely where it belongs: the massive incompetence/ideological intransigence of the Ford government in dealing with our ongoing Covid disaster.

As If The World Weren't Suffering Enough

Prepare to be tutored about the relationship between Covid swabs and zombies, thanks to the good offices of the most Reverend Jim Bakker:

Right-wing conspiracy theorist Steve Quayle warns Jim Bakker's audience that nasal tests for COVID-19 are part of a plan to obtain DNA samples to be used in the creation of targeted biological weapons that will turn everyone into flesh-eating zombies. https://bit.ly/2PwdRC9

H/t Right Wing Watch

Clearly, there is no hope.

Poor, Poor Pitiful Me

 That seems to be the reaction of our hapless snowbirds, now that February 22 has been announced as the date international travellers arriving by air will have to quarantine for up to three days at designated hotels, costing them about $2000.

It just isn't fair, according to our older citizens, apparently too fragile to endure Canadian winters but hale enough to risk Covid-19 in southern hotspots.

Valorie Crooks, Canada research chair in health service geographies, says:

There are many reasons behind snowbirds’ decisions to travel to warmer climates each year, including during the pandemic ....

“You get a lot of people discussing things like improved arthritis symptoms, even changes to the amount of medication that is required.”

Others have planned their retirement finances around “snowbirding” and the pandemic has not changed that budgetary reality, she said.

It's not as if they weren't warned about travelling during a pandemic:

 Toronto-based insurance broker Martin Firestone said he’s advised against travelling during the pandemic, but more than a thousand of his snowbird clients are abroad and they’re all opposed to the hotel quarantine.

He said about a third of his clients headed south in November and hundreds more were spurred on in January by the accessibility of COVID-19 vaccine in Florida for people age 65 and older, though Firestone is careful not to count his clients among “vaccine tourists,” since most own property there.

Exceptions should be made, according to people like Denise Dumont, a Canadian living full time in Fort Lauderdale, asserting

 snowbirds “don’t act like regular visitors.”

“I don’t think it is fair to treat them like a simple visitor who will go for an all-inclusive two-week vacation in Mexico,” said Dumont, the editor in chief of Le Soleil de la Floride, an online source for francophone news in Florida.

As much as some might feel for the plight of these hapless oldsters, the only thing I can suggest is that on their return flight, they might want to give a listen to the following to reflect on the often cruel vagaries of life.

 

 

Snowbirds Must Pay The Price For Their Selfishness

 

Like the majority of Canadians, my wife and I have taken all the precautions we can during this long season of Covid-19. We have not seen our son and daughter-in-law, who live out West, for over a year. Our daughter and her husband we have only seen outside the house, observing physical distancing. We shop for groceries once every two weeks in a large store, double-masking the whole time. 

None of these measures are pleasant, but they are wholly necessary if we are ever to come to grips with this pernicious virus.

Others feel differently, gathering willy-nilly as the spirit moves them, be it through gatherings of extended families, parties, or the other myriad circumstances in which close contact inevitably occurs. 

As a senior, for me the most egregious violation of the spirit of the precautions come from the snowbirds who have willfully chosen to ignore safety and gone on their annual hegiras to Florida, Arizona, etc., their compelling reasons including how hard the Canadian winter can be, their joints need the respite warm weather offers, etc. ad nauseam. For them I feel no sympathy; indeed, contempt might be a better description of my sentiment.

And their plaints, when something goes wrong, ring hollow in my ears. There is, for example, the recent case of a Nova Scotia couple who sojourned to Florida, where things quickly turned horrible awry:

A Kings County couple are facing hefty medical bills after they both became ill with COVID-19 while in Florida. Debbie Mailman of Aylesford says she and her husband, Wayne, travel annually to Florida for six months of the year because their arthritis, muscular issues, fibromyalgia and other existing conditions would leave them in in pain if they stayed in the cold Canadian winter. “If we stayed home we'd be in agony all the time,” she said. “We just come here for the warm weather.”

Their quest for respite didn't go exactly as planned, They quickly fell ill from Covid, resulting in hospitalization that will cost more than $300,000 for her husband's treatment and an unknown amount for hers. 

Clearly, I am not the only one who feels ill-disposed toward selfish indulgences. The following letters from Star readers, reproduced from both the online and print edition, reflect this fact: (I had some formatting problems here, so please forgive the inconsistencies.)

I do not feel one ounce of pity for Canadians who left Canada and have returned, or will be returning, and face a substantial cost to quarantine.

We have been advised for months not to travel. These people are just self-centred and selfish to think only about what they want. The COVID-19 virus and its variants got to this country by travellers, no other way.

Susan Magill, Gravenhurst, Ont.

 

Snowbirds must face consequences of selfishness

• Toronto Star
• 8 Feb 2021

Re Peeved Canadian snowbirds devising plans to avoid hotel-quarantine ‘jail’, Feb. 4

 

Snowbirds and other Canadians who travelled abroad deserve no sympathy.

 

One traveller mentions being punished for wanting to see the sun. Well, there are many Canadians who would also like to see the sun and close family they haven’t seen for a year and thankfully most of them are respecting the travel advisory and staying home. So no sympathy for those who confuse wants with needs.

Another traveller mentions that New Zealand made an exception to their strict quarantine rules for those who travelled before the new rules came into effect. Well, Canada has had a travel advisory since last spring and those who travelled chose to ignore the rules so, again, no sympathy here.

          A snowbird mentions that the quarantine hotels will be a financial hardship. Well, I’m sure that              Canadians who are struggling financially will be very understanding of those “poor” Canadians              stuck in their second home in the sunny U.S. Snowbirds are rightly facing the consequence of                having ignored the travel advisory that has been around since last spring.

          Claude Gannon, Markham

Re Peeved Canadian snowbirds devising plans to avoid hotel-quarantine ‘jail’, Feb. 4

As snowbirds with a Florida home, we chose to stay in Canada this winter.

          I have no sympathy for those who decided to travel during this worldwide pandemic and now                  may have to pay for a hotel stay on their return to Canada. I know teenagers with more common            sense than some of the seniors interviewed for this article.

 Giving up a winter in the sun is not the worst thing that could happen to a person. We have seen a lot of changes in travel restrictions during the pandemic and should be aware, after having seen what happened in the early months with people on cruises who became ill and had difficulty returning home, that nothing is guaranteed. Also, even though seniors are able to get travel insurance, they are in a group that is often hospitalized with age-related illness. Again, with hospitals full of people suffering from COVID-19 in the U.S., getting the needed health care could be a major problem.

I would hope common sense could make a comeback in our senior population.

 

Edith Ross, Thornhill

          

 

No Mask? No Problem

What is wrong with people? That is really little more than a rhetorical question; nonetheless, let me offer but a small observation.

We all live within our own reality, reality that is framed by our upbringing, our education, our life experiences, our intellectual capabilities, etc. Those factors can make for healthy, dynamic debate. Yet they can also lead to the conclusion that some members of our species exist in a universe completely unrecognizable to the rational.

If you advance to the seven-minute mark in the following video, you will see what I mean.

Capturing A Certain Ethos

Be sure to click on the image so as to enlarge it:

 Unfortunately, the mentality depicted above is not confined to the United States.

Beware Mr. Covid

It has been several months since my last post. Originally I had anticipated but a short break,, but events conspired against me and I wound up in the hospital for several weeks. Although my hospitalization had nothing to do with Covid-19, the latter has been much on my mind, particularly owing to the fact that so many people, judging by the surging numbers, lack the maturity and character to do what is necessary to keep this dread disease at bay. 

 I was therefore not surprised at Alberta's effort to bring home the gravity of the situation by producing an ad that reveals what the government thinks of its child-like citizens: