
© JONATHAN NACKSTRAND/AFP via Getty ImagesPeople sit in a restaurant in Stockholm on May 8, 2020
Every afternoon, I look up from my home office to watch a group of shrieking kids descend on our local playground. It is a daily reminder my pandemic is not like your pandemic. As a Canadian who relocated recently to Malmö, Sweden, I arrived just in time to witness Sweden's COVID-19 response firsthand. I live in one of the few places in the world where playgrounds, parks, restaurants and bars never closed.
It is a striking dissonance from Toronto, where I lived until recently, and B.C.'s Lower Mainland, where I grew up. The photographs of deserted streets I am intimately familiar with — Little Italy in Toronto, Gastown in Vancouver — feel as though they are pulled from a nightmare, one my friends and family are all trapped in. While they endure lockdowns, snitch lines and overzealous bylaw enforcement — remember the Ottawa teenager or the new mom in Aurora, Ont., fined hundreds of dollars for shooting hoops or lingering a few seconds too long in a park — my daily life has carried on unimpeded. In the past week, I got a bad haircut, went to the gym, and met friends for lunch, all without fear of censure.
Comment: Ms. Narwitz's assessment of FerociouslySteph's mental state is probably not that far off. Unfortunately, such a degree of disconnect from basic reality is becoming more pervasive in society, because to call it out is to be 'hateful'.The connection to the ADL is even more disturbing.