{"id":61224,"date":"2020-10-30T03:00:23","date_gmt":"2020-10-30T07:00:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=61224"},"modified":"2020-10-29T10:51:53","modified_gmt":"2020-10-29T14:51:53","slug":"cancelling-halloween-i-thought-the-grinch-only-worked-christmas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2020\/10\/30\/cancelling-halloween-i-thought-the-grinch-only-worked-christmas\/","title":{"rendered":"Cancelling Halloween? I thought the Grinch only worked Christmas…"},"content":{"rendered":"

At The Line<\/em>, Jen Gerson<\/a> argues against cancelling the Halloween trick-or-treat candy hoarding:<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>

“SHA Halloween \u2018trick or treat\u2019” by U.S. Army Garrison Japan<\/a><\/span> is licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0<\/a><\/a><\/p><\/div>\n

Look, I can empathize with the impulse to do something, DO ANYTHING, to stem the concerning growth of COVID-19 cases. But if you were to craft a low-risk family holiday that offered a psychologically necessary reprieve from the joyless grind of the last year, you couldn’t do much better than trick-or-treating.<\/p>\n

It’s children (low risk), outdoors (low risk), in masks (low risk), engaging in the briefest possible social interactions (medium risk). Yet Canadians have received mixed advice about the tradition; some jurisdictions have cautioned parents to skip it. Gatineau has, reasonably, restricted Halloween parties, but permitted trick-or-treating with restrictions.<\/p>\n

I’ve asked several doctors \u2014 The Line<\/em>‘s personal panel of COVID-19 experts \u2014 to weigh in on Halloween. Their responses on trick-or-treating prohibitions ranged from: “(this is) extraordinarily dumb” and “I would write something about it but I wouldn’t be able to express myself without extreme profanity.” To “pretty safe” and “shouldn’t be cancelled” as long as reasonable precautions are enacted \u2014 like masking, distancing, and perhaps re-thinking trick-or-treating in apartment buildings. Leaving a bowl filled with candy on the porch, rather than opening the door for every little germy ghoul, is also a reasonable precaution.<\/p>\n

One person expressed concern that trick-or-treating would inevitably lead to adult schmoozing \u2014 but this does not bear a resemblance to any version of this tradition that I have ever experienced. The purpose of trick-or-treating is to maximize the efficient collection of candy; any adult who dawdled or took a drink at a neighbour’s house would find himself deeply at odds with his screaming and fitful progeny. But then, I was somebody’s particularly terrible progeny.<\/p>\n

Then there’s this piece of advice from Oregon, noted in the video above<\/a>, in which a beclowned public health official advised against “trick or treat events because of the high risk of people crowding and people congregating in areas close together.”<\/p>\n

If your memory has not yet blanked this absurdity out, it’s vaguely similar to the logic of Ottawa public health officials who last April advised against chatting over the fence with a neighbour because: “It kind of starts with that and then a couple more people add on and before you know it you have a parking lot party or a backyard party.”<\/p>\n

(Ottawa walked that recommendation back shortly afterward.) <\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

At The Line, Jen Gerson argues against cancelling the Halloween trick-or-treat candy hoarding: Look, I can empathize with the impulse to do something, DO ANYTHING, to stem the concerning growth of COVID-19 cases. But if you were to craft a low-risk family holiday that offered a psychologically necessary reprieve from the joyless grind of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":35193,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,84,66],"tags":[374,1202,1043,244,1363],"class_list":["post-61224","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cancon","category-government","category-health-science","tag-children","tag-epidemic","tag-halloween","tag-publichealth","tag-wuhancoronavirus"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2016\/06\/favicon.png","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-fVu","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61224","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=61224"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61224\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61226,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/61224\/revisions\/61226"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/35193"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=61224"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=61224"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=61224"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}