by Dr Klaus L E Kaiser - June 3, 2021

A National Emergency. COVID restrictions are rapidly falling by the way-side, except for, can you imagine, the operations of STRIP-JOINTS. I know it’s hard to believe – but true nonetheless.

Many folks have been waiting patiently, 15 months or so for such novel freedoms. You can soon get a (legal) haircut in a few days (by appointment only), or get your toe nails clipped before they approach some new Guinness Book-of-Records size — all welcome manifestations of “post-pandemic” normalcy of life.

What has this country vexed (not “vaxxed”) is the continued restriction of Strip-Joints operations. Really, what’s wrong with those STRIP-JOINTS?

My boss, in one of my former lives, thought it was the perfect kind of place to do some deep thinking about all the instructions coming down from the higher echelons to us hapless foot soldiers in the trenches.

In my perception, he was a good manager. Don’t know if “Dilbert” of the cartoon series (or his boss), ever had such deep insights—ought to inquire forthwith.

But let’s get serious.

It’s not getting any easier to find out what is and what is not allowed in this local area. By the time some well-meaning journalist makes up the list of DO’s and Do-NOT’s for next day’s newspaper, it may already be outdated. There are federal, provincial, and community/area based restrictions, any one of which can change overnight.

For example, every few weeks, we like to go shopping in a local deli shop for some items that aren’t available in major food outlets. That also helps elderly neighbors who are no longer sufficiently mobile to get there themselves.

On several such occasions, we had to wait outside until the number of actual customers (allowed inside per the regs of the day, e.g. 15% of normal customer occupancy) was low enough to let us enter. But when I looked around the place, there were more staff than actually allowed customers.

While food stores may have been thought of as places especially vulnerable to coronavirus transmission, hardware stores and similar strange places were just simply forbidden to be entered at all. The packaged batteries or nails and screws they are selling presumably are hotbeds of contagious viruses. I could go with many other examples of such wise government decisions . . .

[SNIP]