The owner of a Vancouver Bar which defied the latest suspension on indoor dining due to the COVID-19 third wave resurgence is pushing back harder in her battle with the city. She has announced a rally and street party for tomorrow night at her lounge in Kitsilano to protest the social and political ‘unfairness’ of the restrictions. But she clearly doesn’t understand the reason for them…
Bar patrons in Vancouver tell Public Health inspectors to ‘Get out!’
after ‘raid’ that resulted in bar’s business and liquor licenses
suspended for defying anti-COVID-19 rules and regs…
In an Instagram post Matthews says there will be, “music, dancing, and speeches,” at the ‘rally’, and boasts that she and her followers will be, “taking over the street.”
Mainly young people
A video taken at the event that started the whole thing – the original breaking of the restrictions – shows crowds of young people mingling shoulder to shoulder at the Cornwall Ave. bar. There’s even a short sequence showing Matthews talking to Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH) inspectors while restaurant patrons chant, “get out!”
It’s the same story as was told by news cameras on Georgia and Florida beaches and entertainment strips throughout last year as tens of thousands of manly-young people defied official orders not to congregate in large groups, to restrict trips away from their own homes to essential travel only, to observe social distancing rules and to wear masks. In a number of cases, the youthful crowds stretched slight easements in restrictions to a full-on abandonment of precautions against spreading the pandemic virus. It’s human nature, I guess: given an inch, they took a mile.
One thing is certain to me
Thousands upon thousands of young people in Canada, the U.S. and other so-called ‘developed’ countries around the world don’t understand the simplest principles of how communicable diseases ‘work’ and are spread. They seem to think – as strange as it may sound to the rest of us – that viruses like COVID-19 are connected to socio-political plots by older, ‘conservative’ types to restrict their ‘rights’ and ‘keep them down’.
I’m amazed that some folks, like Matthews, still seem to think that decisions to restrict personal and public liberties to fight a pandemic have anything to do with ‘fairness’. How nuts can you be? And where were their parents when these young people were even younger, and were supposed to be learning how the world works? How diseases aren’t bound by borders? How politicians and regulators have no control over them? How we each have to take responsibility for our own health and safety?
Does she really think that being able to keep her business open is more important than keeping herself, her customers and the community as a whole safe from COVID-19?
Matthews was given a little time to cool of and reconsider her crazy position on the regulations. Her business license and liquor license were temporarily suspended. But that suspension ran out a couple of days ago. And the suspensions appear to have had little effect except to make her angrier.
The people remain divided…
Commentors to the Daily Hive story on Matthews’ protest ‘movement’ remain divided – some violently so – about her stance. Witness some of their assertions…
“Shut her down and arrest her,” said Susan Giardin.
“Bring eggs. Egg the anti-maskers. Toilet-paper the restaurant and Krazy Glue their locks…” Chris Kelly suggested.
And then, there are folks like Jason Bryan:
“Daily Hive should interview people on Zoom and ask them what they think of lockdowns. I 100 percent guarantee the good looking, thin / muscular people will [say] all day [that] masks are horrible. The nerdy, overweight, socially awkward people are staunchly behind the masks + lockdown support because they like to see good looking people as miserable as their boring selves.”
Whoa! I hadn’t realized that the whole COVID-19 ‘plot’ was the next chapter in ‘Revenge of the Nerds’!
‘The Great Reset’
Matthews is calling her protest party tomorrow night ‘The Great Reset’ – a reference, I guess, to her insistence that folks must ‘reset’ their beliefs and attitudes about the lingering pandemic to make the world a safer place for her business and, by association, her personal economic health and safety. That ain’t going to happen. It must not happen!
My question to her: “Do you value your financial ‘safety’ over the chance that you and your customers, and everyone you all come into contact with, will suffer serious – perhaps permanently debilitating – health issues? Maybe even die?”
~ Maggie J.