After a weekend of beach mayhem and zero social distancing, how does the Ontario government respond? It's obvious! Relax the rules, and open things up!
The pictures of our local beach this weekend made it on to the news for all the wrong reasons (Cherry Beach, just down the road, was even worse). It was a zoo! And, anecdotally, as I've remarked before, 95% of these people are under 30 (and probably 50% under 20).
I feel like an old codger, but somebody does have to do something about these young people. The government and the city keeps saying how disappointed they are, but don't expect teens and 20-somethings to listen to or read mainstream news sources - they get their "news" from Facebook and Twitter (or even, increasingly, TikTok now). They show no signs of responding to exhortations by politicians; I'm sorry, but the time has come for some (non-violent) police action - or city by-law enforcement officers would be fine, I'm not wedded to the idea of police - and some serious by-law infraction fines. We have the by-laws, we just need to enforce them.
But what does the Ontario government do instead? It says that things are progressing swimmingly, and Toronto should relax its lockdown rules still further, and move to Stage 2, like much of the rest of Ontario, despite the disparity in regional coronavirus figures. This means that malls will open, along with hairdressers and barbers, splash pads and swimming pools, restaurant patios, etc. But we still need to practise physical distancing and wear masks they say...
Mixed messages? Inadvisable permission to drop our guard? The people who are taking this thing seriously will continue to take it seriously. It's all the others I worry about. And people are still dying - fewer, granted, but a death is still a death. So, don't come complaining to me when this thing goes awry. I'm only going to say, "I told you so".
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