The provincial government has laid out its guidelines, including a mandatory mask rule, mandatory social distancing, as well as not being allowed to socialize inside other than with your immediate family.
These rules should, in theory, severely hamper the ability of COVID to spread between individuals. But, as we all know, they don’t seem to be doing all that much.
There are two main reasons for this: a lack of punishment for those who do not obey these rules, and an inconsistency within the guidelines themselves, depending on the location.
For instance, as a student myself, I find it extremely disconcerting to be in a traditional classroom environment.
The BC Ministry of Education has ruled that the minimum distance between individuals has shrunk to one metre inside a school, and two metres everywhere else.
This isn’t even taking into consideration the lack of any meaningful distance between the students in the classroom itself.
It’s very strange that, outside of school, students are restricted to interacting only with their immediate family, but, in school, they are allowed close interaction with hundreds of other people.
It seems quite obvious that the provincial government only implemented these guidelines inside the school system to please their voters, who were angry with the sudden shutdown of schools from March to June 2020.
However, the irony of shutting the schools down when we were getting 30 new cases a day, to then having them open while getting about 500 new cases per day is quite rich.
This is perhaps the most glaring of the aforementioned inconsistencies, and it makes you wonder why guidelines like these are even in place if the guidelines themselves do not even stick to the guidelines.
The other main issue regarding the COVID-19 guidelines is the lack of repercussions for breaking them.
If everyone followed the guidelines, there would be no COVID inside of a month. But, many people choose to selfishly ignore them, and the provincial government does nothing to dissuade them.
We have all heard of the fines that are supposed to be levelled against those who do not follow the COVID protocols, but I guarantee that most people in Squamish do not know anyone personally who has been fined.
The government assumes that the threat of a potential fine is enough to dissuade people from gathering, but that is obviously not the case, as our case numbers can testify to.
They either need to create harsher punishments for disobeying the protocols or, at least, start fining more people who break them.
I know multiple people who consistently break the protocols at everyone else’s expense.
This is even more frustrating when most of us do not break protocols; even if that means barely socializing or indeed doing anything at all.
The government needs to step in to break this self-reinforcing cycle. If harsher punishments were levied from the beginning of October, or, indeed, even last March, it seems incredibly likely that we could be almost back to normal by now.
Remember last May, June, and July, when people as a whole had followed the regulations put in place by the Ministry of Health? Most places were open, we were all allowed to see our friends and family, and the case numbers were staying low. That is what happens when people actually obey the protocols.
If people cannot be motivated to do this on their own, then it is the government’s job to motivate them sufficiently.
Indeed, much of the problems that occur in B.C. today in regards to COVID-19 are the fault of the government for their inconsistent regulations in the first place.
So why, I ask, are they not correcting themselves?
Aiden Kliesch
Squamish
