My nephews birthday was yesterday, I still went by my sisters house (who works at Richmond hospital and are having an outbreak issue right now) and dropped off a present... sang him happy birthday from the driveway while he’s up on a balcony and she wiped down his gift and left out a piece of ice cream cake for me... can still obey the rules and have some semblance of normality.

I send a lot of mail to my parents too due to condo life and they just put it outside for me or talk to me from behind their glass screen door.

I’m as low risk as it gets, working at home and going out negligibly, but no way in fuck I want to be responsible for my parents getting sick, no matter how little risk... I’d never get over that if I thought it had anything to do with my actions / needs / wants / desires.

Well, it is what it is then.

Outside of the acquaintances I have which simply have very little regard for the rules etc. I also know quite a few people who I would consider responsible, safe, guideline following people who have had plans for months to “quarantine” prior to Xmas, and for a time after in order to see family during the holidays. Taking additional time off, and working around everyone’s schedules to be as safe as possible.

The risk in doing something like this is far lower than running into Somone who just simply does not care and goes to a restaurant, gym, grocery store, etc while feeling badly. Imo

Adults can make their own decisions on this. If it’s a disregard for strangers who, in a lot of cases, seem to have less regard for others than I do myself, then so be it.

I’m not 100% in I will get together or not yet, however I’d say that’s my decision and the people I’m with to make. I weigh the choice with the people involved and how important it is for me to see them. Not in that I see a group of people in a restaurant who obviously do not live together and think “well if they can do it why can’t I?!?!”

Edit* we also have zero school aged children in this group, etc. If anyone had school aged children within any reaches of this group it would obviously be a hard pass as that opens up exposure to hundreds if not thousands of people automatically.

10 months to flatten the curve and here we are, canceling Christmas. My entire family is 5 people. My mom lives alone, my grandma and grandpa havent left the house in weeks, I'm off work for the winter, and my wife is taking all precautions at her job. And we cant get together safely for a couple of hours on Christmas.

Meanwhile my "multi generation household" neighbours have like 17 people living in their house all going to different jobs and schools.

Imagine if Horgan called an election in January after canceling Christmas. Piece of shit knew where this was going and called a snap election (breaking his own rules) before people's opinions turned.

Did Horgan cancel christmas, or did Coronavirus?

Guess what. My mom lives alone, my grandma and grandpa haven't left the house in weeks (other than my grandpa going to his radiation treatment) and me and my wife can't go see them either. What am I supposed to do? Be mad at the government? Be mad at the family that has 17 people living in their house? Or just understand its a fucking shitty situation and it's not the fault of any of those people.
The only people who possibly deserve any blame are the people that flout the rules.

Doesn't matter. He passed election guidelines stating elections must be held on fixed dates, then broke those rules and called a snap election while times were good, knowing public sentiment would drop due to covid getting worse.

Well actually yes, you can be mad at someone. Everyone in this thread was begging for mask rules and restrictions to be in place months ago. For whatever reason (perhaps due to an election), those rules weren't put in place until within a couple of weeks after the election, after the province saw a ton of outbreaks which lead us us to where we are now. Perhaps some pro-action instead of reaction and we could spend a couple days at Christmas with our loved ones?

Blaming the government for how COVID has gotten out of hand is a bit far fetched. It's not like Horgan has completely fucked over their response like Kenney has in Alberta.

If anything, blame all the fucking morons going out partying on their IG stories and all these anti-mask protests taking place. Those are the people you should be directing your anger at. There's only so much that the government can do short of pulling martial law and having everyone stay indoors while police patrol their neighbourhoods with guns out.

Alberta ain’t cancelling Xmas..jus sayin..

To your point Ch28, we can direct our anger at the people flouting the rules and constantly breaking them etc. However, what’s the point when we have officials in our govt. that can’t even put teeth into their “legislation” ?

Yea sure everyone can be mad at the people who went to the 50 person house party in a condo, yet the govt. that is telling us we can’t see a small number of family can’t even fine these people who are fucking over everyone else? In most cases on a consistent basis? Hell, even cops aren’t wearing masks..

My “covid fatigue” might be lessened if I saw actual repercussions for actions which bring us to this point rather than continuing to let these fuck ups go to parties with little to no consequences all the while having the govt. tell me I can’t see my family for Christmas?

There’s blame enough to go around.

Yeah, and Albertas asking the fucking Red Cross for field hospitals.

I'm not asking for all restrictions to be lifted here. The goal should have been to get to a point to allow "small family circles" of 6 people again for Christmas. A little bit of forethought and clamping down harder thru November could have gone along way to getting us there.

Instead, like you said, 15% of the population breaking the rules has wrecked it for the rest of us who have followed all the precautions the entire time. And guess what, those people are going to enjoy the holidays and probably party and all that anyway, and not see and repercussions for it.

I agree with you on that. To be perfectly honest I think they should have input measures like this earlier, however, if they had, maybe I wouldn’t have a job anymore. As these new restrictions have shit on our business. Again, it’s a balancing act, and they are basically using an umbrella to protect us from the shit rain, but the umbrella is too small to cover everything, so they have to move it around so that people don’t get so covered in shit they drown in it. It just happens, the people who care about Christmas are the ones most uncovered from the shit umbrella right now. The shit rain got heavier, the umbrella got folded up in the wind and the amount of people that can for under it is smaller right now.
They can’t protect what absolutely everyone wants at every time, and this is where the chips landed. They had to balance the FREEDOM crowd, along with business survival, along with healthcare system being able to handle it. It’s really, really complicated.

I think everyone has valid points and concerns.

Let's be honest here, most families will still have family gatherings on Xmas. They should've gotten ahead of that and just said that they understand no matter how many restrictions they put in place there will still be families doing that and somehow educate families and individuals about it.

There are risks no matter what (groceries, getting gas, going to work etc) so you reiterate what needs to be done to mitigate that amount of risk. If you want to attend Xmas dinner with your immediate family then have everyone isolate in their bubbles for 14 days leading up to the dinner.

when i first heard about it they said "mutated" form of covid, now that the news is hitting regular media they just say covid outbreak...

so nothing's mutated and gone resident evil on us?

Think they were referring to the other Mink outbreak in Northern Europe that had a mutation and they were monitoring this cautiously because of that prior incident? Wasn't fully paying attention because todays restrictions threw work schedule for now until new years a nice new wrench and was pulling overgear patching things up.

This is fucked up

So what's the point, everyone is still classified as essential service and still has to go to work. I waited like 20 min to pay at superstore yesterday. "Cancelling" Christmas does nothing. Everyone one of still out and about shopping. When the chance of a Vi is higher than getting a covid fine.

huh the bulk of superstore is groceries, quite essential
there's been huge lines at costco for weeks, people need to use 'essential' trips to get out of the house and clear their heads

I’m not going to judge because every family has different family circumstances they need to deal with that nobody knows about.

All you can do is assess the risk to exposure and do everything you can to mitigate it. I think you’re doing what a lot of people will be doing regardless whether there is a ban or not.

You have understand there is a difference between going and getting food to cook, and sitting and eating said food and drinking with your family in a small room for a few hours in terms of transmission risk.

^^ so you mean being in an environment with co workers and random strangers for hours each day is some how safer.

Yeah, I do mean that, because in that environment, you wear a mask for literally 8 out of 8 hours, businesses have protocols that they follow, and they aren't the size of a living room.
I mean, there's fucking data that says so, so yeah, it's somehow safer.

since masks/gatherings banned, the numbers haven't exploded

like i said no way it was gonna be like the border shutout....3 months if we're lucky

maybe just maybe if we hold this until vaccines there's a sliver of hope

it's interesting how we can't empathize with hardships until it affects us personally

how many families have been apart on both sides of the can-us border for almost a year

now that we're almost a month into local restrictions and without christmas is finally when many vancouver folks truly realize the mental toll it can have