PETERS: The road is calling this long weekend. Please don’t answer

It’s true that COVID-19 can find us where we are when we are staying where we are, but it’s far more probable that we will go and find COVID-19 somewhere else.

For most of us, being away from our families is painful — or at the very least, like an itch you need to scratch on a regular basis.

And so some are feeling itchy this weekend and may try to clandestinely get away.

High risk activities like partying at an apres ski joint in Big White are appalling, but the people who do things like that won’t listen to me or Dr. Bonnie Henry or reason or anyone but their own selfishness.

There will be a lot of people, however, travelling this weekend not to party with dozens of others but to see family.

They will tell themselves it’s okay; they’ll be careful.

They will convince themselves that some combination of people who will be at the gatherings will have received vaccine doses and that makes it better, even though that is far from a failsafe.

They will bemoan the fact that they haven’t seen family members in a long time, thinking that makes their suffering particularly acute and unique and worthy of relief this weekend, not realizing the same is true for almost all of us.

No one can stop them but their own individual consciences.

As history looks back on this pandemic, one of the most vexing questions it will raise will be why more restrictions on non-essential travel weren’t put in place.

Why didn’t people just stay where they were? It would have prevented so much more virus spread, so much needless suffering.

There is nothing preventing us from placing those restrictions on ourselves, even without anyone telling us to.

Stay home this weekend.

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Editor’s Note: This opinion piece reflects the views of its author, and does not necessarily represent the views of CFJC Today or the Jim Pattison Broadcast Group.

by James Peters

PETERS: The road is calling this long weekend. Please don’t answer

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