To The Editor,
At the beginning of the government response to the challenges of the COVID 19 pandemic I was continually impressed by the analysis and recommendations presented by Dr. Tam. Recently I find that she has fallen into the trap that I call bureaucratic laziness. To continue to repeat ad nauseum that if we just stay the course only encourages those of us who have been following the rules and staying the course from the beginning to lose faith in that advice.
I live in Eastern Ontario with a secondary property in the Argenteuil county of Quebec. The most recent reports of active cases in these two large geographic areas indicate numbers at or below 200 . These are not new cases but active cases. These numbers have been consistently declining for many weeks and appear to be on trajectory to continue further.
Our governments, federal and provincial have chosen to approach the recovery from this pandemic in macro fashion, a one size fits all. Unless you live in an area that is doing well you hear nothing of our successes. By and large we mask, distance, vaccinate and stay home. Our reward for doing our part to contain this disease is to stay home and stay shut down. For some reason, with all of the highly capable data management tools available governments are incapable of identifying areas that have achieved control of the spread and bent the curve and all the other euphemisms being spewed.
Toronto, Brampton, Hamilton, Montreal and Laval, mostly through no fault of their own, have not yet succeeded in achieving this success. As a result everybody gets to stay in after class because of the behaviour of a few. The often reported argument against opening indoor dining in Eastern Ontario is that people from Toronto will drive to Vankleek Hill to have dinner in a restaurant. Really? Have you done that trip?
But it is easier to lock everybody down I guess than to put some real thought into a sensible solution. Doesn’t anybody think that possibly opening up areas with positive results could provide an incentive for less fortunate areas to test more, vaccinate more, mask more, distance more? We did not achieve our success against COVID-19 by breathing the fresh country air. We did it by doing the right thing and we should be rewarded for that.
Ken Duff
Vankleek Hill
