It’s not debatable

All of us who are connected somehow in the province got this message yesterday.

We all get these messages periodically.

Introduced originally as an amber alert, it was to inform the public of a missing person. I’m one of those who actually read it although the chances of me ever finding a missing person are slim to none. But, just in case…

In recent years, it has taken on a bigger use and now if there’s really wicked weather headed our way, then I get the warning. It still makes me sit up and pay attention just as much as the amber alert does.

This message is a different one.

Obviously, coming from the Ontario Government, they’ve got access to those connected citizens to send out this message. So, just as with an amber alert, I sat up and paid attention. For clarification, I was at home when the message came through.

I’ll admit to being a little angry when I first got it. This really expands the scope of an emergency message beyond what I thought was the original intent. It wasn’t new news to me; I watch the local news at 6:00 and read newspapers and other online sources every morning.

I’m guessing that not everyone does?

Or not everyone is paying attention to the stay at home order which is probably more like it. I wonder though, if you haven’t been paying attention to what’s going on to this point, are you more likely to do so because it came across one of your devices?

I hope that the decision to go this route was strongly debated. I would hate to think that this opens the door as a way to regularly reach all citizens. Any teacher will tell you that you can wear out your impact if you use the same technique over and over again.

With so many people connected, we shouldn’t now be asking “What’s the plan, Doug?”

We should all know what the Ontario plan is now. Will it work? We really don’t know. We do know that what we were doing hasn’t worked to date and things are getting worse. We all owe it to ourselves and our neighbours to pull together and see if we can’t slow the spread.

It makes me sad to see that not everyone is willing to give it their entire effort. We sometimes see the mindset that’s embedded with some south of the board about being robbed of freedom of choice when it comes to wearing a mask.

I desperately hope that this works to curb the increase and that people in the province will give it a shot for the next few weeks.

From our perspective, it should not be debatable. In fact, the bottom of my screen tells me that the “Sender doesn’t support replies”.

There will come a time to reply and that will be in the next election. In the meantime, we need to find a plan that works and this is the best game in town.