Well, we just went through Thanksgiving weekend, facing requests from our premier and our local medical officer of health to not gather in large family groups.
Instead, they urged us to celebrate the holiday with just our own households.
That urging came at a time when we had just two active COVID-19 cases. And the request frustrated many a local citizen.
We’re not talking about the folks who have for months argued the pandemic is being overblown by governments, etc., etc. We are talking about people who have respected guidelines and regulations sent out by our provincial and municipal overseers to bubble, maintain social distancing, wash hands repeatedly, and wear face masks once that bylaw came into effect.
These are the people who are now becoming fed up.
And, yes, we expect that many of them threw the urging of Dr. David Colby and Premier Doug Ford out the window and gathered with family on the weekend.
If your family has followed similar COVID-19 precautions as you have during the pandemic – and we’re talking about following the outlined procedures – chances are you will have had an uneventful weekend.
Here in Chatham-Kent, we’ve all, for the most part, worked hard to remain socially distant as much as possible. We’ve managed to keep COVID out of our long-term care homes.
It is understandable for us to relax just a little bit and hang out with family on Thanksgiving. It’s a pretty safe gamble, but only if everyone had been following the protocols and all live in C-K.
That is certainly not the same as intermingling with people from the Greater Toronto Area, or Ottawa, or Peel Region, or even Windsor.
If you gathered in close proximity with people who have spent time recently in one of the provincial hot spots, that may very well lead to an uptick in our COVID numbers. Not this week, maybe not next week, but keep an eye on or about Oct. 25. If our numbers start to jump around that date, we’ll know what happened.
We understand the frustration, but we’ve all made sacrifices during this pandemic. We will need to make more before it is over.
Don’t be a COVIDiot. There are enough of them in the GTA.
