Maybe we can manage to have safe schools and a safe place to unwind with adult beverages if we respect basic rules.
You know them. Wash your hands, don’t touch your face, and wear a mask. Also stay home if you’re unwell or suspect you caught the virus. Got it.
The problem is the concept of a social circle, or “bubble.” That’s where things are breaking down, and fast, because people don’t understand what “10 people” actually means.
The social bubble needs to be explained — again, and again, and again, until it finally sinks in.
Under the social bubble proposal, people would be allowed to combine their household with one or two others, up to a maximum of 10 people.
You start with your household. Say you live with your sweetie and have not been in contact with anyone else for months. Your bubble is at two. Now say you add your mom. That makes it three, unless your mom lives with or comes in close contact with someone else, like a caregiver. You have to include that person too. So now you’re four.
Your sweetie wants to add his golfing buddies, two of them. One lives with his partner and their kid, while the other has no partner but three kids at home, and one of those kids has a girlfriend who lives with her mom. How many people in your bubble now?
You need to count everyone who’s in the bubble of anyone you add to yours – and now these people can’t join other bubbles because they’re stuck in yours.
Say, to take a completely fictitious example, that you have one sweetie, a couple of kids and an ex with whom you share those kids. Now say the ex decides, without asking you, to include seven people in his bubble because — well, it doesn’t matter, does it? Now you find yourself with too big a bubble even though you didn’t touch another human being except for your sweetie and your kids since the beginning of March. You are breaking the rules and contributing to making that potential second wave a lot more severe than it has any right to be.
It’s unfair, especially for people who have larger families, who can’t socialize with anyone without masks or strict physical distancing. Which is a pain to enforce when you have little kids. But it’s necessary because (to repeat), strict physical distancing and small bubbles are what’s going to allow us to keep schools, and bars, open. Neglecting either or both will lead to shutdowns.
We have to observe the rules not just to save lives but also because that’s the ticket to a more or less normal life, with kids going to school and parents not losing their marbles trying to hold everything together.
We cannot make exceptions. Not even for you.
An excerpt from — Brigitte Pellerin an Ottawa writer, trying to stay within her bubble.
