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Opinion: ‘Vince in Burnaby’ says shutdowns worse than COVID

My email inbox receives, on average, three to five messages a week from people – usually dudes – arguing with me about precautions and protocols connected with COVID-19.
COVID-19 closed sign
Data released August 5 reveals 7,477 businesses closed in Metro Vancouver in March compared with 3,636 businesses a year earlier. Photo: Getty Images

My email inbox receives, on average, three to five messages a week from people – usually dudes – arguing with me about precautions and protocols connected with COVID-19.

A recent one is from Vince in Burnaby, who lists some of the common arguments these dudes make against wearing masks, social distancing or anything having been shut down by the government in the past few months.

Vince says he’s “read some articles by epidemiologists” but doesn’t list them so they can’t be fact-checked or reviewed to see if they are credible sources.

Vince says these “articles” say “masks aren't really the panacea that they are currently being made to seem.” That, of course, is a straw man argument because Dr. Bonnie Henry, Dr. Theresa Tam and Canada’s other experts are not saying it’s a “panacea” – meaning a solution. What they are saying is masks are an extra layer of protection to prevent the spread of the virus. They aren’t saying masks will 100% work. But when you combine masks with social distancing, hand washing and other precautions, they add up to greatly reducing the spread of COVID-19.

To add to that, SFU released a study a few days ago backing this up with more science. The new study by SFU researchers says they “found clear evidence that wearing a mask can have a significant impact on the spread of COVID-19.” The researchers, from SFU’s Department of Economics, have also determined that “mask mandates are associated with a 25 per cent or larger weekly reduction in COVID-19 cases,” said a news release.

The anti-mask crowd like to say that since a mask isn’t 100% prevention then it’s somehow now worth using at all. It’s just a handy excuse to protect their fragile freedom.

The second common argument from Vince is that it’s mostly 85-year-olds who are dying. Meaning that these folks are old anyways, so it’s not worth worrying about. Well, that’s a terrible thing to think, let alone say out loud. Yes, the older you are, the more vulnerable you are, but these lives matters and we need to take every precaution to protect older people. Also, younger people die from COVID too, you callous bastard, and even if you do survive, you could have complications for years to come from its damaging effects.

The argument is part of false claims that COVID-19 is “just like the flu” (it’s not).

Vince then whiles about the “unprecedented shutdowns. At a certain point the cure becomes worse than the disease.”

Sure, it’s hurt the economy but drastic measures are needed to deal with the spread of COVID-19. It’s exactly because some people are ignoring precautions that we’re seeing a surge of cases. And no, I don't think wearing a mask in a grocery store is worse than the disease.

Some are trying to discount the surge as merely a byproduct of increased testing.

Infectious disease specialists say that would be a mistake."I think minimizing right now is a real mistake," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger of the University of Alberta.

"People are not wanting to believe that this is a thing, because I think they don't want to return to the state that we were living in earlier in the year. That's a dangerous path to take and we should be much more precautionary right now."

People like Vince don’t want to listen to these experts because they just want to return to life before COVID-19.

- With files from the Canadian Press

Follow Chris Campbell on Twitter @shinebox44.