If we can’t pull together during a pandemic, we’re in trouble
By Letter to the Editor on December 23, 2020.
As I sit and watch the news about all the protests that are going on by people screaming that their rights are being trampled on by the new rules about wearing face masks, I become very afraid.
All I see are ignorant, selfish people who have absolutely no regard for anyone else’s rights and are basically saying that it is more important to not wear a mask than save someone’s life. That scares the heck out of me – that people are willing to risk everyone’s lives over whether wearing a mask is a legal requirement or not.
Let’s pretend that wearing a mask doesn’t help (we know it really does). So what? If you do wear one and it doesn’t help, really very little is lost. If you don’t wear one you are likely risking a lot of lives all because of your incredible selfishness, ignorance and complete lack of compassion for the rest of the world.
The sad fact of life is the friends and neighbours who have shown themselves to be these people. They won’t be friends anymore and will be bad neighbours. In a world full of problems that will require all of us to pull together to fix them, this pandemic has shown that the chances of significant change are impossible. We can’t even get people to care about their friends and neighbours much less believe in all the other issues facing the planet. I must say we are most likely doomed.
Curtis Allred
Lethbridge
-1
Perhaps, the following could explain how the now neoliberalism politics of the day begets these negative, unchristian human behaviors:
“Neoliberalism and Psychological Ethics”
http://www.apa.org/pubs/journals/features/teo-a0038960.pdf
This is yet another reason why I do not vote for the neoliberal politics of the provincial Kenney UCP, the federal Conservatives and the federal Liberals.
There is also the matter of how neoliberalism is preventing us from dealing effectively with this COVID pandemic. This has been explained very well in recent blog(s) at albertapolitics.ca
I think the entire marketing of COVID has been wrong headed. Not just at the provincial level but also Feds.
Had we been more clear as to ICU beds and the implications to others if they are full, we would have been far better off.
For instance, I have yet to see a chart or graph indicating how many ICU beds are used up based on car accidents per month, cancer patients post op, normal flu sufferers, etc etc.
If they had built this “graph” showing normal ICU usage and then compound the implications of COVID on that, perhaps some anti-COVID, anti-maskers would understand.
Marketing at the Prov, Fed level gives the impression that if the Hospitals are full, then creating a tent like ICU is doable, which misses the point entirely.
Another graph showing available ICU staff and how far they are stretched without a “Tent” would show that in some cases, if you are in an ICU tent structure plugged into Oxygen for ANY reason, the statistics may show that you have no one tending to you because we have met saturation , not in ICU beds, but in ICU caregivers.
So when I run into an anti-masker I always pose the question, from that point of view! I really do not care if people believe in COVID, Masks or anything else, what they have to believe is ensuring an overflow in ICU beds could kill their 15 year old sister, brother etc etc if the beds are all filled from fellow “anti-maskers, anti COVID” peeps.
The people that are anti, do not dwell on the fact that their child may be unable to get the care they need from a car accident, cancer, etc etc because too many people decided COVID is a Gov Con even though every “attendable ICU Bed is full”
I wear a mask, I social distance and I stay within my small cluster. I am assuming I will not contract COVID because of these cautionary measures, but I do it because I do not want to burden hospitals more then they are.
Wear a mask to ensure your brother, sister, mom, dad, have an ICU bed if they need it for ANY reason, which does not have to include COVID. We may be able to create 2000 ICU beds but if there are only 50 people that can run ICU equipment and keep you alive, who cares how many “beds” are empty? Its a false marketing strategy that is doing more damage then good.
so here we are, about 10 months worth of covid in canada…and the feds still allow int’l travel. no real screening at airports; nothing to ensure quarantines…just let the idiots fly in and out. our fed health minister has fed us a lie that “only 1.3%” of covid cases in canada are due to int’l travel”…for real?! how do you measure that, other than to call it complete and utter bs. the only way covid gets here is via int’l travel; it did not originate here. 2020 nears its ugly end, and still a complete lack of 20/20 vision. everyone being asked to sacrifice, except smarmy, selfish int’l travelers, given the thumbs from the feds. still no mask standards; too little enforcement of mask wearing; hardly near enough build out of health care to cover this or other impending pandemics – and lack of preparedness dates back decades, not to the onset of covid; and tons of freebie public money being given to big corp, especially big pharm….covid is real, but so is stupidity and graft.
btw: how is santa allowed to fly into eveyone’s home around the world, given the severity of covid and its spread?