ROTHENBURGER – Are we leaving COVID behind, or just ignoring it?
(Image: Dr. Bonnie Henry. (Image: Govt of BC)
I’M NOT READY to leave home. Sure, I’m OK sitting in a coffee shop or walking down the street but I’d still feel uncomfortable squeezed cheek by jowl with a crowd at a movie, in the Sagebrush or at a sports event.
Dr. Bonnie Henry says it’s now OK to go maskless in most public places. “We are in a place where we can once again adjust our approach,” she says.
This week’s announcement, along with other recent comments, seems to be a declaration couched in nice words that the fight against COVID-19 has been lost and we’ll just have to live with it. Or die with it.
So, the mask mandate is basically gone. Restrictions on gatherings are gone. Vaccine passports will soon be gone.
Most of the population has lost its fear of COVID. They want to “get back to normal” and wildly cheer Dr. Henry’s relaxation of anti-pandemic measures. It’s like opening the gates of a prison and letting everyone go free, despite the fact, in her words, “we still have reasonably high transmission in our communities.”
Mel Rothenburger is a former mayor of Kamloops and a retired newspaper editor. He is a regular contributor to CFJC Today, publishes the ArmchairMayor.ca opinion website, and is a director on the Thompson-Nicola Regional District board. He can be reached at mrothenburger@armchairmayor.ca.
ArmchairMayor.ca 
It seems like a candid approach to the overall situation of continuing with declining mental health for the general population. “It is not good for man to be alone.”
Yes, too bad the stats didn’t show ALL the numbers; the numbers of seniors in care homes who suffered and died of isolation and also the numbers of people dying from cancer (as did my twin brother and oldest brother) who were denied having close family members attend their bedside in palliative care settings.
At Safeway (on Fortune Drive) this morning, I was one of a few customers who was still wearing a mask while all of the store employees were still masked. I feel that it is simply a good idea for me to wear a mask, even while being vaccinated twice plus a booster shot, being that the meds I take for managing Crohn’s means that I have a compromised immune system.
I’d love to see what my two brothers would say of all the pomp and ceremony. It would be great to hear from those elderly folks in care homes who died alone, having to see their family members through a pane of glass. Maybe the sound of air horns from transport trucks amassed in the parking lot would perk their ears. The freedom protesters were expressing their rights, you know.
Which Dr. Bonnie am I to believe? Which Dr. Bonnie am I to admire?