Humans are social animals.
We get that.
The COVID-19 lockdown has gone on for a long time — and, honestly, the younger you are, the longer the past few months have felt.
We get that, too.
So, you can understand that, when bars opened in this province, George Street was a sudden attraction.
In some ways, with no active cases, we might have the opportunity in this province to make the occasional mistake or two. But not for long — every misstep has the potential to undo weeks and weeks of careful lockdown.
Unfortunately, the moths that flocked to that particular flame this past weekend were about as COVID-19 responsible as, well, moths anywhere.
Pictures from social media show bar lineups with patrons in extremely close contact and packed dance floors — not the way bars were supposed to operate, and not the way patrons were supposed to behave. (Grocery stores, hardware stores and department stores have all managed to put functional controls in place to address physical distancing and the number of patrons allowed on their premises. If bars can’t, and if alcohol consumption is going to mean — as it often does — more bad decisions, that says something about whether we should allow drinking establishments to stay open.)
In some ways, with no active cases, we might have the opportunity in this province to make the occasional mistake or two. But not for long — every misstep has the potential to undo weeks and weeks of careful lockdown.
In Quebec, young people that attended a pair of house parties and a bar in Brossard have been connected to a spike of 20 new cases of COVID-19 — Quebec bars opened on June 25, with strict rules about remaining seated.
“If you stay at your table, there is no risk. But what we learned from our inquiries is that this was not the case,” Montérégie region health director Dr. Julie Loslier said about the latest outbreak. “The people that we interviewed for our epidemiological inquiries said that they were standing and they were as a group outside the bar and inside.”
If you wonder how seriously Quebec’s public health officials are taking the issue, here’s the province’s health minister Christian Dubé speaking directly to bar owners at a news conference Monday. “Your responsibility is to ensure public health directives are complied with,” Dubé said. “If the rules are not respected, we will close your venue.”
The stakes are high: “All we need to do is look at the United States. A minority of delinquents can put at risk the health and recovery of Quebecers,” Dubé told reporters.
Those stakes, by the way, are not any lower here: we may not have Quebec’s active cases, but that could change literally at any time.
And once this particular genie is out of the bottle, it isn’t going back in.
It shouldn’t be hard to understand: if you can’t play responsibly right now, responsibility will have to be imposed on you.
