Covid Journal, January 15, 2021

Lockdown for You, Holiday for Me

I get uptight when I hear the word ‘lockdown’. This is a word that’s used by wardens who want to keep prisoners in their cells.

There is no other practical use of this word. Anyone that uses this word clearly sees the public as something to control, something under their thumb.

The hammer has come down, but it keeps missing the nail.

Of course, as ‘stay at home’ demands increase and Ontario enters a new state of ‘lockdown’ (per Doug Ford), politicians and officials all over Canada are taking holidays and traveling just as they tell Canadians not to. Example 1. Example 2. Example 3 (although records seem to show that his board approved the travel, any official should ultimately know better than to keep pushing for international travel). A simple search will expose many, many more.

Guess what will happen?

No one. NO. ONE. Will take them seriously as a result.

Take the growing flock of self-centred, oblivious and selfish snowbirds that are now sunning in the south.

Anyone that travels right now should have to relinquish their passport and submit to a test, waiting period and quarantine of a minimum two weeks before going about their way.

It sounds harsh, but about 10 million people in Ontario are IN LOCKDOWN.

Get it yet?

We continue to punish those who follow the rules and turn a blind eye to those who clearly don’t give a fuck.

Lockdown measures will only be seen as stupid and draconian responses to a disease they can’t control because they see us as prisoners and not a part of the solution.

The public will stop abiding by their rules if officials can’t follow them themselves.

It’s time we start demanding public officials look at the facts and act on the ‘hot spots’ that keep percolating across Ontario and the rest of the country:

• The elderly, especially in LTC locations, many of which are privately-held
• Processing facilities, where too many employees can’t take paid sick days when they start to show symptoms
• Student populations
• Crammed commercial retail areas like Costco and WalMart
• Areas of great income and racial inequality

Unfortunately, no public official seems to be willing to FOCUS on where the cases and why they’re continuing to grow in thoses SPECIFIC locations. They’d rather keep their campaign donors businesses up and running as opposed to taking realistic limitation measures that will exhaust the spread of Covid-19.

We MUST address the ageism that’s happening under our noses and take care of those who can’t take care of themselves. Failure to act amounts to gross neglect and may even be interpreted one day as a mild form of genocide.

We MUST start paying people when they have to take a day off because they shows symptoms.

We MUST understand whether or not testing for Covid-19 is yielding too many ‘false positives’, throwing our entire economy into a headspin.

Failure to act intelligently will only irritate the public further, adding more stress to any already failing system.

The hammer has come down but it’s not hitting the nail.

Welcome to the Donald Dump

Just a few days left before the inauguration of Joseph Biden.

What will the sycophantic Donald Trump do?

It looks like #45 will engage in a string of actions unlike the public has seen before:

1. A parade of pardons, probably numbering in the thousands (ie. thousands of criminals returning to the streets to be hunted down again by law enforcement everywhere);
2. A massive ‘Trump dump’ of classified documents, particularly those related to the Democrats and the Biden family in particular; and
3. Incredible shredding parties resulting in the destruction of millions of public documents that would probably implicate Donald Trump and his friends with hundreds of crimes against the American public.

To top it all off, Wachington, DC is experiencing the first influx of reservists and military unlike anything since the first Civil War.

Will something beyond a standard inauguration happen on January 20, 2021? Only Trump will tell. And he’s already hinted the shit is going to hit the fan.

A Taser Death

Many years ago, when I started this blog, the sad inspiration for the name came from an apparent physiological response to being tased by law enforcement. ‘Excited Delirium’ was actually put out there by the manufacturers of tasers to almost justify the deaths that were occuring as a result of the use of excessive force against the public, particularly young, black men.

I was hoping that the issue was really more of an idea, but then I read today about the horrifying story about a young black man that was tased to death in Mississauga and after a full year, we still don’t have any answers about what happened and why.

Over the last decade of writing on this blog, I’ve come to appreciate that the job of law enforcement is not an easy one. I truly respect what honourable men and women do to protect our livelihoods. Sadly, there are still a few out there that sully the good name and hard work of so many people.