Rhino's Ramblings - COVID 19 The New Reality And Hockey Jersey
By Robert Thomas - Opinion/Commentary
For months it seemed people lived in fear. Staying at home in March and April became the new norm it was so “vogue, vogue, vogue…” if Madonna was writing a hit song about it.
It was cool to self isolate from something we could not see but was ravaging through foreign countries with a vengeance. We saw it nightly on our television screens.
It was an unseen killer that was set to pillage the land. And wipe out forests as we stockpiled mountains of toilet paper forcing our out of toilet paper neighbours to use the unmentionable.
A biological Genghis Kahn without mercy set to rape and pillage modern society leaving nothing but death and carnage in its wake.
Images upon images bombarding our minds more geared towards accepting visual cues over top of much tougher reading and analytical thought.
But what if I told you it was all bullshit?
One hundred percent crap complete with the ammonium smell Moose Jaw use to be inundated with each Spring from the stockyards.
It was all blown out of proportion and we were being lied to? Would you believe me?
Perhaps no and maybe perhaps yes.
The thing about the disease we all know as COVID – 19 is that for more than a few it has already done the damage without the massive and earlier predicted death rates.
Don’t believe me. Have a chat with most local small business owners.
COVID – 19 has already changed much in the way we live our lives.
We have been introduced into a world of fear.
A world where let’s face it the reaction runs the gambit from still being locked away at home behind some invisible wall of detergents and bleach to the 20 something year old woman behind me in a supermarket line who intentionally gets way too close to me.
You know the heavy breathing type getting in a boomer's face.
Maybe it’s an intimidation tactic or perhaps because I’m getting too old a sexual cue I’m missing. I just don’t know.
Perhaps next time I’m out grocery shopping I should ask her first – can I get some room here? Or is it do you want to get a room?
Maybe either way I will get lucky. Nothing to lose in this life and death proposition.
In this modern world we live in it is just so damn confusing.
It’s an attitude which has allowed – and let’s face it – for governments on every level to not only spend money recklessly in the fight against COVID – 19 but at the same time mask their own fiscal ineptitude on a coronavirus.
Although it’s not true I’m personally still waiting for someone at City Hall to state they never fixed the 4th Avenue Bridge a decade ago because of COVID – 19.
When a crisis is here you need to milk it for all it is worth.
Governments – federal, provincial and municipal – are getting a lot of convenient cover from COVID – 19.
It is for many politician the ultimate blame taker. The time and opportunity to pass the buck on a massive scale.
We are told by the Province's chief medical officer COVID – 19 is the greatest threat in a century to this province.
But at the same time everything he says are just recommendations.
Nothing more – they are recommendations that is until something goes sideways and then they become retroactive “laws”.
Something the local chief enforcement agency – the Moose Jaw Police Service (MJPS) – say they are not going to enforce but rather use as an “educational opportunity.”
It’s shorthand really for “meh not our problem” and “don’t waste our time” in this scribe's humble opinion.
Everywhere I look I see these recommendations in action.
I go out for a drink and there we have the fast food workers wearing a mask one day and then the next day the same staff member saying they were too hot to wear one. So really who cares?
We suddenly have the attitude COVID – 19 is not a threat unless you are from a certain communal living group and hey let’s just make them unwelcome and the problem is solved.
Or is it?
I look across the restaurant and there in a row of tables are no less than 16 seniors sitting around the one lone table. A table designed for four people. Spilling over into neighbouring tables labelled in red “Closed”.
The manager brings them their orders and nothing is done as they are all served with a smile.
But the strangest thing is as they talk the seniors say how bad COVID – 19 is because of a certain communal living group.
Oh the irony starts filling my head as a couple of polite seniors ask if I can sit elsewhere as this is their regular daily coffee group and four more are coming. A group of 20 in a restaurant space “recommended” for 10.
I have inadvertently sat down and entered The Twilight Zone or in today's terms The COVID Zone. Or the New Normal.
To make matters worse once I move I run into a group who are sitting with a nurse I recognize from the hospital. You sort of remember people you run into with heart surgery hopefully one month away.
As I sat down I thought I was in a COVID – 19 believers group. Man was I wrong.
All I heard as I sat there can be summed up to a few words from the ER nurse “COVID – 19 and everything happening is ‘total bullshit'.” The last two words quoted verbatim from the conversation I overheard.
And that for me sums up the total reality of really what’s happening when it comes to COVID – 19 prevention.
On the surface and officially there are great concerns but when it really boils down to it nothing is really being done. There is no enforcement. There are no penalties.
I suppose if I was quoting a certain female City councillor nobody “give(s) a rat's ass” to put it eloquently. That is unless you want to meet in-camera - again.
It’s time to get serious here.
From day one when the Province opened Phase One of re-opening the economy things in many instances were back to where they were pre-lockdown in what is farcically described as the “New Normal.”
More than a few people had and have had enough. They just don’t care.
Whether it be restaurants whose delivery service drivers mooch fries out of your order - necessitating massive stickers on food bags - or the specialty shop which re-opened surreptitiously weeks earlier than allowed its all the same. The “New Normal” has arrived.
In reality there isn’t much of a change. We are just saying it so often how things have changed we are actually believing it.
The rules oops sorry the recommendations are there but let’s get serious almost nobody in reality is regularly and religiously following them. And we have been doing so for the large part since Day One.
It’s a laissez faire attitude which in the end if COVID – 19 is truly surging its ugly head in some vast wave ready to come down on society with a Khan like brutality we are let’s face it doomed.
If not and I miraculously pull through it I’m replacing my Moose Jaw Warriors jersey with one that reads COVID 19. We need to remember this superstar.
Complacency, arrogance and fatigue may well be the end for far too many. That is if it’s not some great conspiracy to reign in the Sheeple…
Rhino's Ramblings is an opinion column and as such it presents a commentary on issues of concern in the community. We encourage our readers to read other news sources in order to form their own opinions on the issues.
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