Did I, as a [physician], miss some internal joke that our venerated leaders [Public Health Officer] Dr. [Bonnie] Henry and [Health Minister Adrian] Dix played on us when proclaiming skiing is an outdoor sport thus no risk exists to riding in gondolas? No need for a vaccine passport?
Whaaaaa??? Some crazed notion of what constitutes no risk to ski our beloved Whistler Blackcomb and keep our season from fear of early closure yet again?
Who determined that skiing and snowboarding falls into this nebulous category of an outdoor sport, harbouring zero risk, as if we are always, just like in the brochure, merrily schussing open fields of powder with no others in sight ... when the reality is far, far different?
We all want a full blissed out, powder- stoked, complete season, for both our mental and physical well-being, and to line provincial, [federal] and municipal coffers with tourism dollars.
Twice in a row our fun, our playground, [has been] locked and barricaded for the season, leaving us like little children, noses pressed to the glass looking at the candy, but not able to touch it?
Has our community not [fulfilled] its full social responsibility to end this pandemic? Please give us assurance that we will not be shut once again.
This season we will return to being packed like sardines on a gondola—no lift restrictions, the only way up Whistler Blackcomb’s mountains (save for one lonely lift that often doesn’t run to the top and is often closed...).
So, skiing is an outdoor sport? Hmm— me thinks our fearless leaders Henry and Dix have not had the pleasure of riding a packed gondola with shoulder-to-shoulder strangers, speaking “moistly,” breathing heavily, having schlepped skis/snowboards through a line up, for a 20- to 45-minute ride up the mountain.
Add to that the fallacy of mask-wearing— let’s get realistic here—shifting goggles, ski buffs, shaking off snow; that face mask, that thin piece of wet cloth, [is] a pretense of a barricade to spreading disease [as it] get[s] peeled down while said rider readjusts. Yep and yep...
Does anyone police the ride, ensuring masks are worn correctly for the entire duration? Nope.
Meanwhile, non-vaccinated strangers, some harbouring new variants from lands afar, breathe potentially COVID-19-laden breath directly onto those little tikes not yet able to be vaccinated, the legendary, aged gent over 80 years of age, the person at high risk of COVID-19 fall out.
Do you not get it?
Those healthy, glowing people may have life-threatening diseases kept at bay by immune suppressive drugs, or their loved ones do. No, contrary to your misguided concept... people that are battling diseases do not look necessarily look ill.
Nope, the magic of modern medicine is they may look buffed, ripped and healthy—just like you!
That ski instructor has cancer, yep? That guy’s taking a drug for inflammatory bowel, yep, that woman has severe liver disease and may need an organ transplant, that man’s child has been in hospital for a month: yep. That tanned guy ripping turns you craned your head to watch going up the lift has MS he keeps at bay by a drug that makes his immune system crap?
Do they need the risk? Do they get assurance at least risk is mitigated by the fact everyone on the ride is vaccinated?
No, some cruel joke is being established that despite medical knowledge the virus is airborne, we are going to pretend we only all gather in vast pillows of powder far, far away from one another and have zero risk skiing.
I call this BS full and loudly.
As a card-carrying MD supporting every effort to get out of this medical nightmare, we need clear action, a public health order, Dr. Henry and Mr. Dix, and urgently.
Some say who cares, what’s the big deal? This is.
People do not have a big C on their forehead identifying they or a loved one has the dreaded cancer in treatment ... or the big D on their forehead stating they have a disease, which makes them more vulnerable.
Give your head a shake! Have you not attended a wake for a beloved friend who died of cancer, fundraised for someone who just became spinal cord injured? What happened to your care and compassion about being vaccinated, that you shrug your shoulder and proclaim it isn’t necessary to ski or snowboard—these are your people, ask them what they want, not insist it isn’t necessary.
As a doctor, we know what others don’t tell you, the secrets of your friends, your colleagues: I and the other local doctors do, even if you are oblivious to those right in your midst. For those, taking a risk to share a crowded gondola with the unvaxxed could be a death sentence.
Next time you shoot your mouth off: stop. Think, and think with love and compassion. Your friend or coworker just had a baby. The mom needs a mental-health break badly but worries [about riding] with those six guys, as they removed their “masks” on the ride up [and started] to cough. Is she taking it home to baby, are [the riders] vaccinated? Has she put her baby at risk when tomorrow she starts to cough ... should she have insisted they put up their masks when they pulled them off on the ride up, laughing, proclaiming it isn’t necessary and they just ain’t wearing them? She sat there miserable, stressed because what was her alternative? A fistfight?
Instead, imagine a blissful, stoke-positive, complete season of fun to make up for the last two seasons that were cut short, rendering locals dismal and economically devastated. What does that take? Yes, what?
This is not an outdoor sport, folks, when it comes to COVID-19. Sharing air, unfortunately skiing with snow, rain, hail and gondola riding requires perfect strangers to be shoulder-to-shoulder, breath-to-breath on gondolas, not just in bathrooms and restaurants that are “policed.”
Bring the vaccine passport before we ruin another season.
