Hot Takes – Feb 26, 2021
My take on some of today's hottest headlines.
1. Stating the obvious: “They just don’t care.”Small business owners, employees and the families that depend on them have had enough. With nothing left to lose, they’re increasingly standing up and demanding local governments end the job-killing lockdowns that have robbed so many of us of hope and too many of us our lives.
The Toronto business owner in this story says, “It’s getting to this feeling like they (governments) just don’t care.”
Well, that’s because they clearly don’t. Toronto Mayor John Tory and his Medical Officer of Hunch Dr. Eileen de Villa don’t care about hundreds of thousands of city residents who are suffering because of their decisions. They only have eyes for the COVID-19 virus and its “variants of concern” – dead set on eliminating every last vestige of its RNA from the city before allowing anyone to walk free. With some caveats, of course.
Chief among the provisos is the unacknowledged fact that the virus will never be eradicated. It will continue to circulate in the human population, in one form or another, forevermore. The not-so-good doctor may be enjoying the power trip just a tad too much, keeping millions under her thumb. The second “except for” clause is the knowledge that there are in fact hundreds of COVID-19 variants because that’s what viruses do – they mutate. None of the “variants of concern” are, in fact, cause for any particular concern at all. Just 79 confirmed cases have been identified among Toronto’s 2.8 million residents.
Neither Tory, nor de Villa care a whit about the hundreds and thousands of their constituents and patients who are suffering horribly – and dying – because they literally cannot live under the draconian and dictatorial regime that now governs this city. Dead from suicide or overdose? You don’t count. Lose 20 years off your life expectancy because you’ve been forced into poverty by their policies? They don’t care. Your life doesn’t matter.
2. Canada’s elite still don’t take COVID-19 seriously. Why should we? One of the senior executives of the CPP Investment Board – a Crown Corporation – is on a lengthy trip to the United Arab Emirates where he received a COVID-19 vaccination shot months before any will be offered to the poor slobs who pay his salary here at home. Frankly, I’m not concerned about him jumping the queue in the Middle East. If he was there and it was available, why not get the shot? It just means one more Canadian at home will get vaccinated sooner.
The disconcerting fact is that he was on a trip to the UAE. The government of Canada has been preaching the avoidance of international travel. But, he went anyway. Why? Because he’s rich, he’s entitled, and he’s selfish. And, so far in this pandemic no one of any importance has really taken this “virus thing” seriously. Doctors, cabinet ministers, political leaders, senior members of the establishment have ignored the very lockdowns, restrictions and guidelines they themselves have called for. Mandatory quarantine is essential for international arrivals in Canada – unless they’re foreign diplomats, government employees, essential workers, who are all magically immune. On return by air, you must immediately be sequestered in a government-designated quarantine facility because you’re too dangerous to be allowed into the herd – unless you arrived by car, in which case it’s OK – but you can take a taxi to the quarantine facility. Because, apparently, it’s just not that serious. I tend to believe this is just mixed up messaging. But, I could be wrong. It could just by lying.
3. Students are just … disappearing. I’ve spoken to a number of Canadian secondary school teachers who tell me one of the hardest things to deal with when remote teaching is the number of silent black squares, they must deliver lessons to. There’s no picture of the student. There’s no sound. It’s just a void. They have no idea if the students are even there. This Washington Post story goes even further, reporting on the disappearance of thousands of students who’ve just vanished during the pandemic. The last two years of education in many school districts have been a near complete loss of too many kids. Even if we’re back to normal this Fall, kids will be starting school, at best two grades behind the learning curve. What’s the plan for that?
4. This is just wrong. ‘Nuff said. I’m not sure how any government can justify this. It’s a cash-grab at the worst possible time. Democracy costs money. Citizens in a democracy can shape the outcome of elections by voting – and by donating to the party and candidate of their choice. The operative phrase in that sentence being, “their choice.” Taxing citizens and redistributing their cash to pay for unelected political operatives and their machinations is as undemocratic as it gets.
5. Alas, poor Mr. Potato Head. I knew him well. Mr. Potato Head is no more. He and his on-again, off-again wife Mrs. Potato Head have shuffled off this mortal coil, to be replaced by a new gender-nonbinary trans-tuber known simply as Potato Head. “They” can be whatever they want to be. But, careful, lest you assign them any traditional gender-specific features the potato doesn’t identify with. No luscious lashes or pursed pink lips. And, by God, no moustaches, please! Although, for many of my Mediterranean friends, those are quite gender neutral.