Wednesday, January 6, 2021

Put COVID Cops on the Case

A curfew? Seriously? That’s the best you can do? 

 

That’s the key step you’ve decided will move us forward? Are you so dense as decision-makers?

 

The problem is the widespread louts who could care less about protocols. You think keeping them in their homes at night will fix the problem? Fat chance. You’d have to keep protocol flaunters in their homes night and day to fix the problem. 

 

They’re not hard to find. Stand at the arrivals gate for the next few weeks as flights from vacation destinations return.

 

It’s not the shopkeepers and restaurant owners who should suffer because our inept governments can’t keep people safe. Admittedly, there were shopkeepers and restaurant owners who were not enforcing protocols, but then, really, that should not be their job.

 

Many shops and restaurants bent over backward to continue operating while respecting pandemic protocols. For all their sincere, survival-motivated efforts and creativity, they get shut down because of covidiots?

 

That’s not right.

 

I know exactly what I’m supposed to do in the grocery store to be as safe as possible, except that oblivious, or grossly ignorant people - clerks, cashiers and customers - are constantly walking, or standing right beside me. 

 

Things at the grocery store were much safer during the first wave, with people forced to wait outside and clearly indicated lines and signs inside the stores that were closely monitored by employees. Ah, the good ol’ days.



Keep stores open, but put stringent limits on the number of people in those stores along with individuals who have the power to enforce protocols and fine the covidiots who ignore rules. Set up longer store hours and provide more money for grocery store employees!

 

Hire people who are out of work, train them and pay them well, as COVID cops,

to monitor customer numbers and behavior in stores, restaurants and shops.

 

That means jobs for people trained to enforce protocols and it means business for store owners. Once covidiots are identified and fined, it’s fine by me if you fit them with ankle bracelets and curfews.

 

Please hurry and get COVID cops on the case because I am willing to bet big bucks the selfish people coming back from sunny Cancun will not quarantine in their homes when they realize they’re low on coffee and pancakes. They will be out there with the rest of we, untanned, going the wrong way down one-way grocery aisles.

 

Don’t fret over late night flights coming back from vacation destinations. I’m sure they will be given exceptions to the curfew that the rest of we, untanned, are obeying.

 

Bitter much? You bet. 

 

What government in its right mind allows people to fly off to sunny vacations in foreign countries in the middle of an uncontrolled pandemic? 

 

The answer? Governments whose ministers do it themselves.

 

I am about as disconnected from our clueless governments as I am from the Tampa Raptors.

 

Quebec had some so-called “educational success expert” by the name of Dr. Egide Royer on a television commercial saying the most important thing for our children is to go to school. I disagree. The most important thing for our children is to be physically healthy. Children in elementary and high schools, whether they get two masks a day or not, will touch surfaces touched by everyone else and touch their faces and bring whatever they touch, home, to spread to siblings, parents and grandparents who may, or may not, be in their bubble.

 

Quebec should provide parents with the option to keep their children home for remote learning instead of forcing them to put their children and families at risk of COVID.

 

In pandemic proportions, the stupidity continues.