With the first lockdown my 13-year-old son lost his piano teacher. Even after lockdown, she wouldn’t have any in-person lessons. We looked for a new teacher; but most said the same: Zoom only. With Jonah being blind, a video-based class was doubly lame.

One teacher offered to have lessons in her backyard with an electronic keyboard (weather permitting); but only if both him and her were wearing masks, and staying six feet apart. No thank you, I want to keep my son safe… from such bizarre germaphobic behaviour.

We finally found a teacher who was happy to meet in-person, no masks, no sanitizers, just Bach, Beethoven and a baby grand piano.

But with Ontario now in a 28-day lockdown, he emailed me: “Checking in with how you wish to move forward. I know that you will be aware of the government taking educational activities online. Let me know your thoughts.”

So I emailed him my thoughts:

We’re definitely only interested in continuing with in-person lessons.

This entire lockdown is a total farce. One only needs to look back at previous years to see the hospitals are often at 120% in the winter. For example, check out this CBC article from January 2020. Or, for some real fun, just type “hospitals overrun with flu” into Dr. Google.

And even if hospitals were surrounded by triage tents, a new study even shows that there is no correlation between regions that lockdown and a decrease in death from COVID-19. Instead, researchers are finding lockdowns simply make “poor people an awful lot poorer.”

I see no reason to cooperate with this unjust law that is only doing harm, and would deny Jonah needed human interaction and musical instruction, as well as you needed income.”

He agreed. And today, Jonah’s starting the New Year off with an in-person “underground” lesson in the new normal black market. What kind of government denies a blind boy private music lessons?

Oh, and if you’d like to see how those piano/vocal lessons are paying off, check Jonah’s latest music video.