KJIPUKTUK (Halifax) – “That’s outrageous, I have a serious question: what is wrong with you? How come you don’t take this as serious as you should,” asked Premier Rankin of the Covid rulebreakers at today’s press briefing.
I agree. We should absolutely do our best to follow the rules, we should even do better. And yes, the covidiots on Citadel Hill, the people who party, and the people who travel are all utterly deserving of our contempt.
Satisfying as it may be, yelling at those folks doesn’t do much good. And neither do fines.
Rather than scolding , the premier should take a hard look at the state of the province, and consider the damage done by decades of deadly penny pinching austerity and a paralyzing fear of offending employers.
In the last year Nova Scotians have died of Covid because of austerity. People face long covid because of it.
People died in Northwood during the first wave because they shared rooms. Northwood had asked for money to build an extension so people could have a room of their own, but the province turned the request down.
People could easily end up dead because we have no paid sick days in this province, only a weak surrogate provided by the feds.
It’s so obvious. People spread Covid at their workplaces, stats from Ontario show. Workplaces, like manufacturing plants, grocery stores, postal distribution, courier distribution, food processing plants.
We hear about people going to work sick all the time. These aren’t reckless people, these aren’t covidiots, these are people who must pay for food on the table. Scolding them won’t work. Telling them to stay home when they have symptoms and then look away isn’t solving anything.
And by the way, lots of these people will take the bus to get there, yet with an infection rate higher than ever before it’s still business as usual for Halifax Transit. Oh, correction, they are doing extra cleaning.
Another little tidbit from todays’ briefing. People sick with Covid were hesitant to call an ambulance because of the cost, Dr. Strang told reporters. “We’ve now waived fees for all Covid-related ambulance calls.”
Let that sink in. In this province people don’t call an ambulance because the province is into saving some money.
I have a serious question. What’s wrong with this province? What’s wrong with this premier?
See also: Authorities ignored early warnings from Northwood’s long-term care workers and unions
Check out our new community calendar!
With a special thanks to our generous donors who make publication of the Nova Scotia Advocate possible.
Subscribe to the Nova Scotia Advocate weekly digest and never miss an article again. It’s free!
True there are some issues with the Government, but there are a lot more with the you and me and how we are handling this problem.
Why do we expect the Government to solve everything and to basically pay for everything. What happened to doing your own part and doing what’s best for you and your community. I watch what all that is happening with this COVID and so many people are just ignoring what is taking place. You go on FB and there are deniers and then there are also people all chatting about the Birkenstocks at Costco and how they just have to get there before they are all gone. If we are counting on people to make this Virus go away…it ain’t gonna happen.
Reading that the Halifax Police assisted in organizing the Hill protest is another Darwin Moment and one that I did not expect from a Police Department.
If we don’t fix this mindset….best to say goodbye to summer for all of us and give your thanks to those that are so Stupid that keep it going. This will be with us for years if people don’t start getting a brain.
Kendall Worth here!
Yup I agree with everything in this article and I even agree with Robert Snow’s Comment.
I can be happy to say that people who are the part of the Community of whom my Journalism is about is taking this COVID Pandemic serouisially. They are scared not to.
It is difficult to know what to say and think about the Pandemic Situation about the situation from here-on-in.
This Premier barely has his feet wet yet in this position, but you want to blame alot of what happened before his position on him. Does that even make sense. Maybe he has plans to fix some of the problems you have brought up but do you expect it to happen over night. There is a pandemic and I’m sure like anyone in this position is trying to do their best in these trying times. Maybe give the guy a chance before saying “What’s wrong with this Premier” and just leave it as …
What’s wrong with this province!!!!!
But koodos for the heading because it will probably get his attention and hopefully raise light to issues our province faces.
It’s hard to take covid seriously here when I can point to a dozen things that seem to prove that Nova Scotia’s government holds our health in contempt. Dr Strang does a better job than most of our government of explaining his reasoning to us, but still, this province has some of the worst health in the country… world…
Why should we drop everything to rein in covid when so many branches of our government pursue policies that actively discourage the healthy lifestyle that improves lifespans and healthspans? And since government transparency here is a joke and corruption so rampant, it seems the anti-covid measures are less well-intentioned than sinister: they don’t care about our health, but they do care about covid… WHY? Still and always, covid might kill around 2% of us (admittedly, all this year), whereas the real killer is diseases of inactivity, which take far more than 50% of us. Let the people die of heart disease, as long as corporations and our politicians’ personal buddies thrive! Let the people die of cancer, as long as we can brag about our covid numbers. Curbing pollution—chemical, greenhouse, and especially noise—and ideally somehow incentivising the sale of food without heaps of added sugar and questionable preservatives—would make us more resilient against covid19. And flu. And obesity, cancer, metabolic syndrome, depression, learning disabilities, a dozen cognitive disorders, the next pandemic, and life in general. Strang’s covid measures have by and large been excellent—in a narrow sense. But the fact that the government seems committed to avoiding discussion of any meaningful public health policies is at best frustrating, at worst lethal, and in any case amusing to outsiders who think we’re a bunch of backward-looking gasoline-loving fat ignorant rednecks.