The COVID-19 pandemic

[danbrotherston]

Outdoors is not zero risk. And the risk increases without social distancing, or masks, and with other social interactions, which is the whole point of this group, they are intentionally spreading the virus.

Leaving that aside, this group is also with 100% certainty also breaking the rules in other, more dangerous ways, e.g., by visiting people. I have no doubt--hell, most of them were doing church services inside until recently--and that is likely the main problem they are causing.

We should of course do everything we can to push vaccinations as well.

It was estimated that of the Covid-19 cases, only 0.1% were caused by outdoor transmission. We need to follow science, not malarkey that is made up (or, Made in Canada).

While technically you’re correct in stating that outdoor isn’t ‘zero’ risk, it’s better for people to be outdoors rather than indoors where 99.9% of transmission occurs. That’s more science.

As for those rule breakers, I have no idea what they do in their spare time. But it doesn’t appear that THEY were getting sick. It seems that most of it is coming from our homeless shelter and…WRPS of all places (though not surprising, as they don’t follow the rules either). But there is zero evidence that those rule breakers at Waterloo Public Square are spreading the virus. And that is probably the reason why WRPS doesn’t give a shit what those folks do. It would never hold up in court as the science doesn’t back that philosophy coming out of our PHU.

A real problem with our Region is the we have Redman who is heading this task force. The same person that was caught Oktoberfesting without social distancing or masks, and got sick shortly after New Years Day. That shouldn’t be the face of our task force, but it is.

What we have to admit is that we failed as a region. Not the people living here, but those in charge of the rollout. We didn’t target properly. The fact that the homeless outbreak is so large — why weren’t these people inoculated? Have we become such a shitty region that we don’t care at all about the homeless? We couldn’t spare a few hundred doses? We couldn’t find the time, the manpower to treat these people? Were our rules of having proper ID too much? Could we have not taken their word of who they were? Or that of a social worker that recognizes the homeless? Where is our outrage? I get it that people from the “City” of Waterloo don’t give a rats ass, but I always thought that Kitchener and Cambridge were better. In an odd way, if we get held back from Stage 2, and it was a homeless person that pushed us over into that danger zone, we got what we deserve.

Our PHU and the task force failed. They want to blame people social behaviour for where we are at. Even going as far as blaming those participating in Waterloo protests. It’s not us. We neglected immigrants. We neglected marginalized people. We neglected low-income earners. We neglected to get “the word” out. Hell, I have done so much work trying to get my own mother vaccinated, and I had no idea we had a clinic 2 minutes from out house. WHAT? No Canada Post flyers. A website that is complicating, poorly written, and discouraging. WRPS personal being part of the outbreaks, like, what the hell? Our regional chairman partying than ‘sorry, not sorry’ when caught. And the good citizens of the region did all they could. But this was bound to happen. How many people got sick from interacting with WRPS personal? Do we know? Or is that hidden? What about folks taking care of those in homeless shelters? Again, no funds for a nurse to visit these places, but we have money for other BS reasons.

Yeah, I am ranting. We have become a national embarrassment to this province and to this country. Just about every American city is doing better than us. And you know what’s so odd? Texas, about as “Red” as they come, has a Covid-19 rate a fraction of what Waterloo Region has (and, unlike here, they fill their baseball stadium every day — and NO linked cases…outside…safe). How did we come to this?

Those outdoor transmission numbers largely come from places which don't have large groups of people intentionally trying to spread the virus, we don't have local numbers largely because, as you correctly point out, our contact tracing has been an utter failure.

There is zero evidence of this (bolded passage). None of them are going to volunteer that information, and they are basically invisible within our population. We have no way to know who they are or what they do, and if they are getting sick. All we do know is that they are intentionally breaking the rules and acting dangerously. Hell, we don't even know that people in that crowd WEREN'T WRPS Officers...frankly, it would explain their excessively reluctance to deal with the protest.

As for my outrage, you'll find that I have MORE than enough outrage for everyone on your list.

But there is no universe where I am going to exonerate largely wealthy white people (and in many cases aggressively so) who are intentionally acting recklessly, just because we have ALSO failed in systemic ways. In fact, it is these very people who have the most agency and the most personal responsibility in our society, I want to hold them personally accountable for their behaviour more than others. In fact, it is very likely those people's behaviour that has caused some of our systemic failures.