blogcutter

Over the past few days, more new openings have been announced. Beaches. Art galleries. Restaurant patios. Drive-in and drive-on movie venues. Pandemic-style day camps. It's a start. But at what point do the health benefits of a bolder approach outweigh the risks of a second wave or a setback to progress already made? Are we perhaps already at or past that point?

Now that school is out - the class-zoom as well as the class-room - kids and families are going to want to take full advantage of our all-too-short summer. Summer camp is mostly not an option. Ditto for a lot of family vacations, certainly the ones that involve flying to far-flung destinations. Families will be stay-cationing in limited-sized, distanced or masked droves. Even if they stay in their own neighbourhoods, playgrounds and play structures remain off limits. A couple of months is a long time in the life of a child, particularly one who has already been cooped up at home for four months, due to circumstances beyond her control and in some cases beyond her level of understanding too!

It does seem to me that we could open a few more things. What about the Agricultural Museum, for example? A lot of that is outdoors or semi-outdoors. Maybe selected library branches (for browsing, I mean), at least the children's sections? Family-friendly restaurants usually have easily-cleaned surfaces too - couldn't their eat-in sections be re-opened soon, even if some tables had to be closed off to ensure reasonable distancing?

Politicians and large organizations are pretty eager to tout our progress when it suits them - for example, when they're ending the pandemic pay for front-line grocery workers or limiting pay raises for nurses - yet far less inclined to help those who could benefit the most.

Children, after all, do not vote. But their parents do. And so will they, in a few more years!