The Province of British Columbia has started to ease up the heavy restrictions placed during the kick-off of the COVID-19 pandemic. This means that non-essential services and businesses such as elective surgeries, dental offices, hair salons, and restaurants are all starting to reopen. For me, it feels like it hasn’t been that long since these services shut down two months ago. In fact, it kind of passed by in a blur of panicking about online courses and final exams. But with that all out of the way, I’ve finally been able to sit down and reflect on the decision to re-open select services.
With everything considered, we are doing really well on Vancouver Island and are fortunate to be part of a province making informed choices. It’s logical to start opening things back up while infection rates are on the decline. I know lots of people are concerned with a relapse—and I admit that it’s definitely something to heavily consider. It’s not guaranteed that opening things up again won’t change our number of cases; it’s likely that the infection rate will increase. So is it worth the risk? Why bother to take the chance? Shouldn’t we just wait until there’s a vaccine or no more cases in the province?
No. Unfortunately, the reality of our situation is that these services need to reopen, whether there’s a vaccine or not. It seems weird to think that we should have non-essential services open right now, but there are a lot of factors to consider. Many people who were previously working part time at a restaurant or in retail have been left jobless as their work can’t be shifted online. There are lots of cases where people are just scraping by or being forced to take out loans or get other means of financial aid (and it’s worth mentioning that not everybody is eligible for this aid).
This entire situation has been hard on many Canadians, and it’s been hard on the Canadian economy. So, in order to try to help the largest number of people possible, a decision was made to open stores and send people back to work. Naturally, there’s a lot of debate around whether or not it’s the right decision. I agree that there is a risk in opening what isn’t necessary, but I also agree that it’s important to send people back to work if it’s reasonable.
So, what’s the right decision here? Have we made a terrible and irreversible mistake? I like to think that, no, we haven’t. We’re in a pretty good place right now, and the timing for getting things back to normal seems realistic enough to avoid a huge relapse. For the time being at least, I’m optimistic. So long as we can follow the proper procedures of distancing and hand washing, I think we’ll be okay. So go ahead and get excited—the world is slowly starting to come alive again. And, in a way, so are we.