In Newfoundland and Labrador, politicians and public health bureaucrats are dealing more with a pandemic of fear than of disease. It is one they helped create. It is one they sustain in the way they talk and act. Let us hope that Monday’s news conference is not another of their super-spreader events.
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Former
Premier Dwight Ball tweeted a message from the town council Saturday evening
(right).
There have
been five
new cases of COVID-19 in western Newfoundland, presumably Deer Lake. They are all in the same household as the
initial case, who brought the illness back from outside the province where he
works.
The people of Deer Lake are afraid. In that fear, they are like so many people across Newfoundland and Labrador. Their fear is not, as one might expect, the healthy respect of people who know a deadly disease when they see it. Rather, their fear – like all fear - is borne of ignorance and suckled by misinformation, the most pernicious form of which comes from the provincial government on a steady basis.