It’s more than ironic that on the day Canada passed 500,000 Covid 19 infections, B.C. passed 45,000 infections and the world total was over 77,000,000 infections, that you would choose to gather and demonstrate (unmasked), your belief that wearing a mask somehow impacts your rights and the liberty to disregard the expert’s guidance in working towards reducing the transmission of the disease. Demonstrating against racial discrimination and sexual abuse makes sense as it could hopefully positively impact on political and social culture, perhaps even effect real change to better our world. My question is, what was your objective? Did you think that encouraging everyone to not wear a mask would lead to a better outcome in the battle against the spread of the disease or that our medical experts would think that they were wrong to impose such a draconian measure? Do you have that much disrespect for our front-line workers who risk their lives to save yours, show up everyday to serve you and risk their own health to protect yours? It’s a mask, not a civil rights issue.
Certainly, the vaccines will help but at this stage they are more like a garden hose fighting a forest fire. If we could get the forest fire down to a brush fire, it’s clear to me that the vaccines could more quickly and more effectively move towards eradicating the disease. That translates to reducing the spread of the disease and one proven effective way to do that is to encourage mask wearing. The newly discovered variant of the virus in the U.K. has been shown to be 70 % more contagious and you think not wearing a mask is still more important than protecting your Kimberley neighbours? Really?
Let’s all hope that your thoughtless actions don’t create a “super spreader” event and that others don’t follow your selfish and irresponsible pointless crusade. It’s a mask, not a civil rights issue.
Edwin Alm
KIMBERLEY