Juno News - Everything is going to be okay during COVID-19

00:00:00.000 So I'm running errands, I'm out and about in society, and it got me thinking about the idea

00:00:10.100 of reassuring words and telling people things are going to be okay during COVID-19. You know,

00:00:17.100 I remember back in August of 2020, I was speaking to a parent, a fellow parent, about the issue of

00:00:22.800 schools coming back. And as we were discussing the issue, because schools in Ontario had been

00:00:26.520 closed up until that point. And a lot of people were wondering, well, will there actually be spread

00:00:30.700 in schools in Ontario when they when they get back when they go back into the classroom? And I

00:00:35.320 remember a parent said to me, she said, everything's going to be okay. And it was kind of the first time

00:00:41.800 that somebody had said something like that to me. And I thought, wow, we've had six months of people

00:00:47.140 being extremely concerned and, and basically encouraging others to be fearful. And I found

00:00:52.440 it incredibly refreshing to hear someone just say with confidence, things are going to be all

00:00:57.700 right. And actually, when it comes to Ontario schools, all the data yields that that mother was

00:01:01.220 was correct, that there's really been a negligible amount of COVID-19 spread in the schools and all

00:01:06.440 the hospitalization data and other serious data shows that no, things were not actually difficult

00:01:11.000 with COVID-19 for Ontario parents, for Ontario kids. And that after kids went back to school,

00:01:16.720 pediatricians, that's when they started stepping forward to say that, thankfully, we've learned

00:01:20.360 COVID-19 is less severe than the flu when it comes to kids. Now we're back in a situation where people

00:01:26.620 are feeling very anxious. And why I say, you know, me being out and about running errands,

00:01:30.960 you'll talk to people and what they'll say during these Omicron fears is, oh, hey, you know, how you

00:01:35.340 doing? Hope you have a nice day. Oh, yeah, I'm a little nervous. Are they going to close this? Are they

00:01:39.120 going to close that? What's going to happen to us? A lot of general anxiety in people's chit chat.

00:01:43.860 And instead of saying, oh, yeah, you know, I know what you mean. Cross your fingers. Let's hope things

00:01:48.300 don't shut down. I feel like we have an opportunity to just offer polite, reassuring words to people

00:01:53.100 in our everyday lives. You just say, yeah, you know, I don't know. I think things are going to

00:01:56.700 be okay. And, you know, the data looks good. Things are looking mild. Most people are vaccinated.

00:02:01.560 Hospitalization data looks good. I think things are going to be okay. Just little stuff like that.

00:02:05.560 So that kind of our daily chit chat isn't one that involves cascading fears, which we've seen

00:02:10.660 previously. But instead, we move from a position of general community anxiety, community fears,

00:02:16.420 to one of saying to each other, we got this. We're going to be okay. Things are going to be

00:02:21.260 all right. We have each other's back. In as polite of a way, a respectful exchange, the best that we

00:02:27.180 can do to just say to each other, no, we don't want to look for reasons to promote fears and concerns

00:02:32.860 in our community. We want to look for reasons to promote positivity and say, yeah, we're going to get

00:02:38.500 through this, guys. We don't need to have an attitude that brings about the cascading effects,

00:02:43.900 the sort of over-the-top restrictions, the lockdowns that we've seen in the past. Because I genuinely

00:02:48.460 believe that that attitude does matter and that we want to have a positive attitude through all of this.

Juno News - December 20, 2021