Hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving!

by SHERALYN ROMAN

I'm pretty certain by the title alone you know where I'm going with this. This might be news to some of you but Covid isn't over yet. In fact, as is becoming rapidly clear, Covid isn't going anywhere at all. Now thanks to Thanksgiving celebrations, our chances of gathering at Christmas appear to be decreasing daily. So I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving and made the most of it with your many family and friends and second-cousins and step grandparents and long-lost uncles twice-removed because based on recent Covid case counts either some of your extended family won't be alive to celebrate Christmas or if they are, you won't be able to celebrate with them as we'll all be in a full Stage One lockdown by then. 

To say that I am just a “tad” fed up with all the people congregating with no masks when there are so many of us trying to do the right thing is an understatement. To say that I'm “this” close to losing my cool the next time I drive past a group of 12+ individuals standing around a cluster of cars, sans masks AND drinking out of the trunk (Yes, I've seen this) is similar to stating I like to drink coffee. If you know me, you know I REALLY LIKE TO DRINK COFFEE. If I see one more comment from someone who professes it's their “right” to refuse to wear a mask, I'll have to be physically restrained from pointing out that if they do so - it should also then be their right to NOT receive OHIP covered medical care; particularly expensive, intensive, intubated medical care. The only problem with that last argument is this: like drunk-drivers never to seem to hurt themselves, only ever killing others in accidents they've caused, so too is it true that super-spreaders only seem to spread Covid, rather than suffer from it personally. 

As of time of writing, case counts stood at the highest ever daily averages, while hospitalizations (including those on ventilators) were also rising rapidly. Of even more concern, our positivity rate is climbing, now standing at 3.8%. Restaurants in Caledon, the local restaurants that we know and love and who sponsor our teams; the bookstore where they know your name and reading preferences, the coffee shop that knows your order by heart and even the local library branch struggling to stay open to serve us – all of these things that we've come to appreciate about living in Caledon, are at risk. How long can a restaurant, in our cold climate, continue to serve the community and stay afloat when we can't eat inside? How long can a small business sustain itself on fewer hours and competing with the likes of Amazon? We've been lumped into the category of “Peel Region” to our detriment while Halton Hills and Burlington have been spared a similar fate. This isn't just Covid that's frustrating, it the continued poor behaviour of people and the frustrating, seemingly random “scattershot” approach to restaurant, gym and business closures. Caledon might be part of Peel Region but we should be exempt from some of the challenges facing our neighbours to the south.

Finally, to top it all off, we have the appallingly ignorant behaviour of one MPP, Sam Oosterhoff (remember him?) and about 40 of his “closest friends” who recently attended an event in Niagara Region. Gathering for a nice, cosy, close-up picture, every single one of them was not wearing a mask! Being the smart, savvy MPP that he is - he then has the audacity to post the picture on social media! Are you kidding me? Is he just plain stupid or is there one rule for MPP's and another rule for the rest of us? Perhaps he simply doesn't care – after all what will the consequences be? Who knows what was going through his mind or the minds of the 40+ other folks in attendance? All I do know is that us “Average People” are doing everything we're told to do, like a bunch of sheep, while Covid continues to spread. If I'm not careful, I'm going to start believing the conspiracy theorists and that mask wearing and shut downs are all part of some master plan to control us. Certainly when you see an MPP doing what he wants and not what his party, his provincial health minister, or what the top doctors are advising us to do, conspiracy theories start to resonate just a tiny bit more……..

Winter is upon us and the temperature is falling. This might help only in as much as we'll all be stuck indoors so maybe we can't gather in large groups. Somehow I doubt it. With kids still in school or better yet, as in the case of the DPCDSB, kids coming and going as they please in a combination of virtual and in-person learning, the spread of Covid is likely to continue unabated. Factor in folks like Oosterhoff and his friends flagrantly ignoring the rules and I fear Covid is here to stay for quite some time. So yeah, I hope you enjoyed Thanksgiving because gathering at Christmas sure doesn't look promising.