VICTORIA – B.C. Premier John Horgan and Provincial Health Officer Doctor Bonnie Henry admitted this week that what they believed to be a foolproof plan of assuming the pandemic was over on July 1st and acting accordingly has, shockingly, failed.
“Maybe the problem is not enough people believed the pandemic was over? We lifted the mask mandate to make it seem like everything was back to normal and yet so many people were still wearing masks,” Horgan lamented while announcing that B.C. was reinstating the mask mandate. “I don’t wanna point fingers, but this is probably their fault for not believing. Like how Tinkerbell will die if the audience doesn’t clap to show they believe in fairies.”
In addition to bringing back the mask mandate to deal with rising cases of the Delta variant, B.C. has also announced the creation of a provincial vaccine passport for non-essential activities like attending movies and concerts. But both Henry and Horgan are adamant that if it weren’t for all the new cases, their carefully crafted reopening plans predicated on the theory that there would be no new cases would have worked.
“Perhaps lifting the mask mandate and basically acting like the pandemic was over at the beginning of July despite the fact that less than half of the eligible population was fully vaccinated at that point was a mistake,” Henry admitted. “But in our defence, we just really wanted the pandemic to be over.”
“How could we have known that encouraging the population to stop taking measures designed to halt the spread of COVID-19 would lead to the spread of COVID-19? Ah well. That’s hindsight for you.”
While B.C.’s “ignore it and it will go away” approach to COVID is officially over for the time being, the provincial government’s longstanding policy of half-assed responses to the opioid epidemic, housing crisis, and global warming will continue as usual.
