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LETTER: Province playing 'Russian roulette' with reopening plan

'There are countries facing a third COVID wave and we don't have to join them with additional misery,' says Barrie resident
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Premier Doug Ford is shown in a recent media briefing.

BarrieToday welcomes letters to the editor at [email protected]. Please include your daytime phone number and address (for verification of authorship, not publication). The following letter is in response to a story titled 'Gardner warns relaxed stay-at-home orders may lead to surge in COVID cases' published on Feb. 9. 
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Why are our provincial leaders playing Russian roulette in the face of solid medical counsel?

We don't need to reopen the schools nor do we need to reopen businesses so soon lest we create a third COVID wave. There are countries facing a third COVID wave and we don't have to join them with additional misery.

I feel in many ways that our federal and provincial governments failed to act responsibly in the face of surging first wave cases. They didn't close our borders quickly enough and they didn't act with alacrity to secure needed vaccines.

The foolish reopening of schools triggered rebounding gains for the virus and an already poor situation in our seniors' homes resulted in disasters like Roberta Place. 

A particularly frightening graph created by Al Jazeera news agency suggests the world has entered an even deadlier stage of the virus than any previous wave.

Perhaps the thing to do now is to wait the virus out until it is properly stifled. But that's a hard thing to do when we've tempted the public with promises of a fully reopened economy for our burgeoning exclusivity club of vaccinated people.

Christopher Mansour
Barrie

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