“Across the country, governments failed to invest enough resources in test, trace and isolate systems. In most provinces, they did not make timely investments in school ventilation or hire more teachers, or prepare the restaurant industry for prolonged winter closing, or shut down workplaces that exposed minimum-wage workers to infection, or hire more long-term care home workers. They issued conflicting, byzantine communications to individual people that boiled down to ‘don’t do any activities unless you’re paying a private company to host them’.
Provincial governments did not come up with compassionate policies that addressed structural barriers to people staying safe. They came up with “personal responsibility,” telling citizens to knock it off or they’ll turn the car around right now. The only realm of life governments seemed willing to regulate was our social lives. It does no good being scolded to stay home if you live in a tiny, cold apartment and have to take public transit to your low-paid, unsafe workplace because you need the income.
As someone who lives in a city going into lockdown I cannot agree more strongly.
Excited Pixels 