Let's talk real, okay?

We pushed Canadians to their absolute limits and beyond for far too long.

Depriving us of the most basic elements of life, shaming us constantly with a wagged finger from all corners.

Bc our govts kept screwing it up, we've been living like this longer.

We may not have had as strict lock-downs, but we have been damaging people significantly for longer stretches of time overall, with insanely cruel and often unnecessary rules that are punitive for the sake of being punitive.

We now have a population that is mostly batshit crazy.

You probably noticed it the last week.

People are snapping.

It's getting pretty scary.

If we can see and feel it more visibly, imagine life inside homes out of view.

There are probably bad things happening we haven't even begun to identify or grasp yet.

We burned thru the public's patience and what they are able to withstand.

The entire time sending them confusing and conflicting messages.

With a bucket of shame. Fingerwagers jumping at them from every corner.

And moralizing.

"If you do not do A and B, you're a murderer!'

We made people terrified to get tested or tell anyone, bc we already told them it was their fault.

We inflicted on the public a horrific Three Wave pandemic of mass illness and death.

We forbid them from seeing loved ones or anyone at all even after we knew how to safely do it.

We even shamed people for attending their Dad's funeral with their aunts and uncles.

Even tho Covid was not a risk at all at open air funerals.

We actually shamed grieving families in the worst moment of their lives.

And we shamed people who left Canada to be w/ dying parents.

We shamed low risk activities that were never sources of major infection spread, yet we obsessed over it.

After we knew how it spread and where.

AND we shamed victims of infection spread - low wage workplaces - while doing nothing about the source.

We must end controls on people seeing each other.

With guidelines on how they can minimize risk.

Because we burned thru human limits with bad pandemic strategy we can't wait until zero cases like we could have and should have before.

We have no runway. It means a hard landing.

Our 100% focus has to shift sharply to harm reduction.

Public Health and the government have lost all public confidence. It is TOTAL. They don't trust you.

And WHY SHOULD THEY.

So, they're doing their own learning and research, and taking matters into their own hands.

All weekend, families acoss Ontario were quietly gathering in defiance of public health ordinances.

They are at the end of their ropes.

They are making decisions themselves based on what they know about how to prevent infection spread while seeing people they need to see.

Many people I suspect were doing it responsiby sticking to outdoor spaces while wearing masks.

Others were probably not responsible.

Bans are just paper now.

That's why we need to open up SAFE gathering opportunities.

ALL OUTDOOR SPACES NEED TO BE FULLY OPEN.

We don't have the luxury of outdoor bans.

If we had not beaten people into the ground with extreme issolation, emotional blackmail, blame messaging that distorted the truth to protect the powerful at the expense of innocent lives...

We could have tried a Zero Risk shutdown.

When public consent is gone, all we have left is harm reduction.

Assume people are gathering and mixing households.

Work from that baseline and tell them how they can do it in a safer way.

The moralizing abstinence shame message is way passed its expiry date.

Throw it out.

Let people gather socially under harm reduction guidelines in safe spaces.

Put out the fires in workplaces with lasting support for workers.

And cross your fingers.

(Fin)