Today families were told they could not see a dying family member or aging parents as visitation restrictions were implemented in hospitals and long-term care centres.
It was an unthinkable sacrifice these people were asked to make for the good of the many.
The sacrificing should have been placed on the shoulders of Newfoundlanders who were away when COVID-19 cases started popping up across Canada and the U.S.
All entry points should have been closed immediately. Everyone outside should have been gathered up and lodged in one of the many now empty hotel outside our province, wined and dined like kings and queens for 14 days — all expenses paid. After 14 days, tested and, if negative, flown home to their loving families as heroes.
Instead the leadership to do this was absent. Now we face uncertainty and financial devastation far worse than we would have faced if someone had the guts to have done this. Our leaders aspire to mediocrity. We needed a hero.
Most people like to see the light in people, to be the eternal optimist — a necessary trait when you live on a rock.
I see the dark. No, I won’t go that far, I’m more of a realist.
Our government has rules for us because they see the dark. We don’t pay taxes — they take them. We are told how fast we can drive, when to stop and go, even where we can and can’t walk.
We have rules about what we can and can’t say, how late in the day we can buy alcohol, even where we can and can’t consume it.
They do this because they know we all cannot be trusted. They know human nature.
This is why I am so bewildered that our government had the temerity to think everyone would follow a self-regulated quarantine when results (of not following it) would be catastrophic. They don’t trust us enough to buy a beer after the second intermission of a hockey game yet they trust us to avoid all contact with another human being for 14 days?
How could our leaders be so obtuse when they knew the stakes where life and death?
Russell Chafe
Mount Pearl
