Take a step back

For me I look around my community and I see people who are having to stop and go with their work and businesses on a monthly basis, if not weekly. This causes many costs that the average person does not see, as it costs to both stop and restart each time your job or business faces interruptions. I personally have not seen enough evidence to support the continuation of travel restrictions within Canada, much less making more of them. It seems to me our health authority keeps doubling down on bad bets and at this point they are so committed to their course that they dare not admit errors in their choices or change direction. This has become a political and social reaction to covid 19 and not one based on common sense and what we are seeing on the ground. We have tried a few approaches and that has done little to nothing empirically speaking to change the numbers as they have promised all these concessions would accomplish. We have imposed in my mind a patch work of travel restrictions that have the clarity of mud and the flexibility of a stone in my view. Once they are shown to not work or to be less than effective the response is to dig a deeper hole and keep going.

Exposures are something that we just have to get used too as part of life going forwards, preventing movement hurts areas and people far more than anything so far in my mind from the virus itself. We have kept imposing more and more rules and all I have seen it do the exact opposite of what they want it to accomplish by implementing them. Let people have the individual choice of how they want to handle this and focus practical resources on elderly, care homes, and those that come into hospitals. It really seems to me we are making this into if you don't agree with the restrictions, you are somehow against common sense. I think we forget that as individuals people are pretty bright and make choices that are best for them and that work for them. People as a group are usually pretty panicky and subject to a lot of knee jerk reactions, with very little positive benefit in situations like this. So if travel makes sense for someone whatever their reasons, that is their choice. I think health authorities need to take a step back and if measures are not working, to not continue to use and ratchet them up even further.

Shawn Hathaway