The sun was shining, and we didn鈥檛 care enough to repair the roof.
Sorry, JFK. Sorry, Dr. Bonnie Henry. And, more importantly 鈥� sorry to ourselves. Looks like we didn鈥檛 listen, and now we鈥檙e paying the price.
B.C.鈥檚 alarming COVID-19 numbers are new evidence of just how badly we鈥檝e dropped the ball.
We didn鈥檛 wear masks. We partied it up on Halloween. We just didn鈥檛 care.
And now we find ourselves on the brink of yet another lockdown.
And out of control they seem to be.
That same day, provincial health officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced another 998 new cases and five deaths since Saturday.
Yes, there were a number of us who took care to wear our masks, stay distant and limit our bubbles.
But these efforts were stifled by disturbing and, quite frankly, stupid people who figured that they would better spend their time peddling anti-mask conspiracy theories that would make Donald Trump proud.
Dr. Henry and various media outlets who鈥檝e been getting the message across can only do so much. As researchers from MIT would know, misinformation spreads six times faster than the truth.
鈥淔alse 鈥榥ews鈥� stories are 70 percent more likely to be retweeted than true stories are,鈥� reads a report from MIT News. 鈥淚t also takes true stories about six times as long to reach 1,500 people as it does for false stories to reach the same number of people.鈥�
And it鈥檚 not some big-city problem. Here in Squamish, all you have to do is look at a comment section and realize that people have become so inundated by false information that basic principles such as the efficacy of vaccines are no longer a given.
It raises the very concerning spectre of the fact that this virus may still be around for a long, long time 鈥� even if a vaccine is found.
What good is a vaccine against COVID-19 then? What good is a cure if people refuse to take it?
Shall we start debating the colour of the sky? That gravity exists? That the world is flat?
This is wrong, and unless we are keen to turn our country into America, a country with close to 240,000 deaths so far, we鈥檇 do best to clamp down on misinformation.
