How do you
keep in place the very necessary and successful restrictions on public life
needed to combat the spread of CVD19 when the success of those measures reduces
the local daily number of active cases either to zero or to a handful and hence the threat appears to have passed?
In the 15
years I’ve been writing SRBP, the one enduring feature of public discussion
about my writing happened again this week, in spades.
People come
at me on social media about what is going on in their own heads and attribute
that to me.
They don’t deal
with the point I was actually making.
They deal with whatever they imagine I said. And no amount of explanation will dissuade
them from their crusade to shut me up or take me down or do whatever it is they
are hell-bent on doing besides understanding my point and then having a productive
conversation.
On Monday
and Tuesday, I wrote about the very real political dilemma facing the current government. It’s the one spelled out in the first
sentence of this post. I thought it
would come in a couple weeks. It appears
to have arrived Tuesday.
So much for
forecasts.
John Haggie
is already frustrated that people are not listening. On Tuesday, I told him the government need to
ditch the current daily briefing format and messaging for something else that
was less patronizing. In the Tuesday
briefing, Haggie delivered his stock message but did it for merely 53-odd seconds
before taking questions.
Not really
the point, but if the current trends continue, as they seem likely to do, then
we will likely also see the mounting public pressure to ease restrictions on
life in Newfoundland and Labrador.
The federal
government is already talking to the provinces about the return to something approaching
normal with the mention of re-opening the economy. The economy never shut so what they are using
is a code word for easing up the limitations on the public. Saskatchewan, Prince Edward Island and some
others will undoubtedly do so by the end of this month or early next month.
In
Newfoundland and Labrador, though we will have to think twice about that. Our two bordering provinces – Nova Scotia and
Quebec – are still fighting a hot war against the spread of the disease. The risk of infection across the border is
real. New Brunswick will face the same
challenge.
The
challenge for the - quite literally – two or three people effectively running
the government in Newfoundland and Labrador will be holding off that political
pressure and sustaining restrictions because the threat of disease will
remain. The situation of needing to do something unpopular will not be
unprecedented. We have lots of
experience recently with it. Every time, the politicians have failed.
Will the
trend continue?
Time will
tell.
-srbp-