“At some point we have to go on living and get the economy back up to speed. The majority of people have been vaccinated,” someone told me.

I replied: “Yah, but I still don’t want to catch COVID-19.”

And therein lies the COVID complacency trap that could ultimately prove costly to individual businesses and individuals.

Vaccines may be giving a lot of people — including political leaders — a false sense of security.

“The pandemic will become endemic,” some are saying, as if that should make you feel safer.

Of course, if you are the one who catches it at work despite being double vaxxed and passes it on to your partner and her 99-year-old mother who is in a nursing home, well that’s your tough luck. And your partner’s. And her mother’s and all the other residents of the nursing home. And the office staff who are all forced to take COVID tests and stay home for two weeks — or more if they get really sick.

So, after 20 months of being terrorized by government officials, health authorities and the media with COVID warnings and safety instructions, now we are being encouraged to venture out of our safe houses.

Indeed, the Quebec government is telling some of its office workers to return to the workplace next week. They’re guinea pigs, essentially. Let’s see if they catch COVID in the workplace before more civil servants are told to go back to their offices.

Of course, the move to unnecessarily force office workers back to the workplace is more about the economy than good management. Downtown businesses dependent on office workers have been hurting badly since the start of the pandemic. They need the cash, and if some office workers come down with COVID, so be it. The economy is worth the sacrifice, eh? Mais oui, Québec!

It’s not just Quebec. It’s happening in cities all over the world. Get the office rats back into the race in the name of the economy.

Funny how, like in wartime, it always the leaders — i.e. CEOs and bureaucrats — who give the orders but take few chances themselves.

Oh, a working-class hero is something to be . . . (Yes, but you are all fucking peasants as far as John could see.)

And what about the increased carbon footprint on society as office workers drive to their workplaces or take buses that run on fossil fuels? Hey, what about climate change and COP26?

The Quebec government’s answer seems to be: go back to the office, but try not to leave a carbon footprint while doing so.

That’s the message in advertisements — paid by taxpayers — the government launched this week. Quebec had a strong contingent at COP26 in Glasgow. The politicians are sincere about climate change issues — mostly. They’re not sincere enough to tell their civil servants to keep working from home in order to reduce their carbon footprint, if not to protect themselves from COVID.

Because of the economy, you see.

Money, as always, is the root of all evils. It’s the reason why COP26 will be a failure. It’s the reason why a lot of people will unnecessarily catch COVID.

And it’s the reason why modern civilization will fall off the precipice. Humans are shortsighted. It’s always been “sha na na na na, let’s live for today.”

And it always will be. Sure, the idealists talk a big game. Then they hop into the private jets and fly home from Glasgow, and then hop into their SUVs at the airport . . . you get the picture.

It’s all blah–blah-blah, Greta, and show me the money.

— Jillian