Here’s what’s so absurd about it: The protest over Covid restrictions is now disrupting peoples’ everyday lives – which is what the protest was supposedly aimed at stopping. Now, they’re impeding the Ambassador Bridge between Detroit and Windsor, Ontario, one of the most active arteries for transnational commerce. Their protests have spread to cities across Canada and beyond, effectively grinding to a standstill daily life in communities across the country. The frustration with having to wear masks in public spaces set off adult temper tantrums directed at retail employees and flight attendants.Īnd that’s where the Canadian truckers come in. Around the country, the fight to keep schools open during later waves of Covid-19 exploded into massive protests against the very things that could keep kids in school safely – masks and vaccines. Frustration with lockdowns inspired armed militiamen to storm the Michigan state Capitol and allegedly plot to harm elected officials. It’s just that the cost of viral transmission – which led to disease and death – was profoundly and obviously greater.īut what began as fair disagreements started to mutate like the virus itself.
They resented the imposition on their lives.Īnd, to be sure, they weren’t wrong about any of these things: Each of these was a real cost of Covid-19 restrictions. They argued that masks were just annoying.
#Australia lockdown truckers free#
They pointed to the ways that lockdowns were hurting small businesses and school closures were robbing young children of the ability to go to learn at school, socialize with their classmates or receive the free school meals on which too many of our children rely. Yet, from the jump, echoing the then-President who hid early evidence of how bad the public health crisis was becoming seemingly to protect stock prices, some began to argue that “the cure,” meaning precautionary health measures, was “ worse than the disease.” And, let’s be clear, that’s exactly what a majority of people did. But for the most part, we’d develop a collective approach to defeating the virus and do what needed to be done to get through the pandemic. Sure, there’d be differences of opinion on a few key issues and the odd iconoclast or two who’d just never come along. We’d demand public policy driven by their rational, evidence-based reasoning. Many of us would have expected that if a deadly virus began to spread among us, we, as a society, would look to doctors and scientists for answers. To appreciate just how strange this moment is, let’s go way back to before Covid-19 was a word. (Photo by Lars Hagberg / AFP) (Photo by LARS HAGBERG/AFP via Getty Images) Lars Hagberg/AFP/Getty ImagesĬanada's trucker protesters aren't who Americans might think
Hundreds of truckers drove their giant rigs into the Canadian capital Ottawa on Saturday as part of a self-titled "Freedom Convoy" to protest vaccine mandates required to cross the US border. Supporters arrive at Parliament Hill for the Freedom Truck Convoy to protest against Covid-19 vaccine mandates and restrictions in Ottawa, Canada, on January 29, 2022. Some are calling this specific mandate “ unconstitutional,” while others have expanded to calling on Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to end all Covid restrictions. A couple of weeks in to the protest, the demands of the loosely organized truckers still remain unclear. The demonstration quickly grew, with thousands of people clogging traffic and obstructing the US-Canada border. In late January, a convoy of truckers in Canada headed cross-country, from British Columbia to the nation’s capital in Ottawa, to protest a mandate, which requires truckers entering Canada to be vaccinated or else be subjected to testing and quarantine requirements. Nothing typifies that absurdity quite like the trucker protests now gripping Canada. Whether boarding an airplane with underwear on your face to protest mask requirements, injecting yourself with horse dewormer instead of a safe and effective vaccine or swallowing household disinfectants because the President of the United States unironically suggested that it might help, the pandemic has amplified the frequency and tenor of ridiculous and sometimes alarming behavior. Generations hence, they’ll talk about us like we talked about the generation who lived through the Depression.”They lived through the pandemic” will be a shorthand to explain why we reflexively wear a mask on airplanes or ask about a restaurant’s air filtration system before its menu.īut one aspect of the pandemic experience that can’t simply be explained by the existence of an exceedingly transmissible, deadly virus spreading between us is the sheer absurdity that it brought with it.
That’s because it’s been a singular, all-encompassing experience.
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