Complaints from people who think Public Health regulations shouldn't apply to them lead me to question our commitment to the democratic system of government.
We all know there’s a pandemic out there, and we all know that it is killing people as fast as it can.
We know, moreover, that a virus will mutate to find a way around our most careful precautions.
But still there are those who think that in some mysterious way this virus will respect their freedom of movement, and let them go wherever they like.
Personal inconvenience is a minor matter, compared to the damage an uncontrolled viral pandemic can do.
I don’t recall hearing of a virus that called a truce out of respect for some individual's convenience.
Viral epidemics don't respect people, but are happy to attack any luckless citizen who by chance or design ventures outside the Public Health cordon.
I suppose it might be argued that we have the right to get ourselves infected.
But to spread that infection to others — no — that right is not to be found enshrined in the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms.
The people who designed our Charter were not trying to reduce our freedom, but were careful to avoid letting an individual's freedom become a danger to the health and welfare of our fellow citizens.
I may wish to drive my new car at 250 km/h through Conception Bay South, but the good people of CBS have the right to be protected from any such rash behaviour on my part.
Nor, for the same reason, do I have the right to hunt caribou within the town boundary. It makes perfectly good sense.
I don't know how long we are to be held hostage by the Coronavirus, nor do I know how many mutations it will undergo before it fades away or finds itself rendered harmless by a vaccine.
But for however long it continues to threaten our lives, we must continue to exercise extreme caution, as Health Minister Dr. John Haggie would say.
Personal inconvenience is a minor matter, compared to the damage an uncontrolled viral pandemic can do.
Ed Healy,
Marystown
