Nearly 90 per cent of Sarnia-Lambton residents surveyed about the effects of COVID-19 are taking preventative safety measures such as physical distancing seriously, but a large segment – about 40 per cent – also believe the media is exaggerating the extent of the outbreak.
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Four in 10 Sarnia-Lambton residents believe media exaggerating COVID-19: survey – Sarnia Observer
Lambton Public Health’s main office in Point Edward is shown in this file photo.
Nearly 90 per cent of Sarnia-Lambton residents surveyed about the effects of COVID-19 are taking preventative safety measures such as physical distancing seriously, but a large segment – about 44 per cent – also believe the media is exaggerating the extent of the outbreak.
An official from Lambton public health, the agency overseeing one of the regions that’s been hardest hit by the pandemic on a per-capita basis, said this attitude could be concerning.
“While we have seen good adherence to public-health measures overall and this has helped to limit community spread in the past couple months, the sustainability of this is a concern if people don’t take it seriously,” Crystal Palleschi, a health protection supervisor, wrote Friday in an email.
When asked during the survey if the media had exaggerated the extent of the coronavirus outbreak, 17 per cent of respondents said they “strongly agree” while another 27 per cent indicated they “somewhat agree.” Men, at 49 per cent, and younger adults aged 18 to 35, at 52 per cent, were more inclined to agree, the survey suggested.
The results of the survey, commissioned by Lambton public health and conducted by market research firm Ipsos between May and June, were released Thursday. Officials said it suggested the majority of residents have followed public-health guidelines, but many have also experienced negative emotional, social and financial impacts because of the pandemic.
A total of 800 residents of Lambton County were surveyed between May 21 and June 10 using landlines and cellphones. The margin of error associated with sample size of 800 is plus or minus 3.5 per cent, 19 times out of 20.
Dr. Sudit Ranade, Lambton’s medical officer of health, wasn’t available Friday but in a statement said, “the results provide greater insight into the key challenges being faced and the strengths our community has demonstrated in response to COVID-19.”
Some key findings health officials pointed to include certain people, such as the unemployed, workers making lower wages or those with poor mental health, are more vulnerable to the pandemic’s negative impacts. One in four participants stated their mental health has changed or worsened since the virus arrived locally.
“Certainly mental health was a concern before the pandemic, so the added pressures it places on many individuals continues to be a concern,” Palleschi said.
While 90 per cent of people were adhering to physical distancing and avoiding large social gatherings at the time of the survey, it also suggested about 40 per cent were eager to return to their pre-pandemic lifestyle.
“So the sustainability of that high level of adherence is the question,” Palleschi said. “As we reopen, it’s still important to physically distance, to limit your social circle and to wear a mask where required or you are unable to physically distance.”
Sarnia has mandated masks for indoor public settings through a bylaw and Petrolia is considering the same, but it’s only encouraged and not compulsory throughout the rest of Lambton County.
As of Friday afternoon, the local caseload remained steady at 319, with 17 of them active. Following a surge of 15 new cases one week earlier and a couple more over the long weekend, there hasn’t been a positive test in several days.
A total of 277 cases were resolved and 25 people have died, but none since June. About 1.7 per cent of the 18,485 tests have come back positive.
Bluewater Health, with hospitals in Sarnia and Petrolia, hasn’t had a COVID-19 patient in about two months.
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Sometimes, you just have to return to the classics.
That’s especially true as Halloween approaches. While you queue up your spooky movie marathon, here are 10 iconic horror movies from the past 70 years for inspiration, and what AP writers had to say about them when they were first released.
We resurrected excerpts from these reviews, edited for clarity, from the dead — did they stand the test of time?
“Rear Window” (1954)
“Rear Window” is a wonderful trick pulled off by Alfred Hitchcock. He breaks his hero’s leg, sets him up at an apartment window where he can observe, among other things, a murder across the court. The panorama of other people’s lives is laid out before you, as seen through the eyes of a Peeping Tom.
James Stewart, Grace Kelly, Thelma Ritter and others make it good fun.
— Bob Thomas
“Halloween” (1978)
At 19, Jamie Lee Curtis is starring in a creepy little thriller film called “Halloween.”
Until now, Jamie’s main achievement has been as a regular on the “Operation Petticoat” TV series. Jamie is much prouder of “Halloween,” though it is obviously an exploitation picture aimed at the thrill market.
The idea for “Halloween” sprang from independent producer-distributor Irwin Yablans, who wanted a terror-tale involving a babysitter. John Carpenter and Debra Hill fashioned a script about a madman who kills his sister, escapes from an asylum and returns to his hometown intending to murder his sister’s friends.
— Bob Thomas
“The Silence of the Lambs” (1991)
“The Silence of the Lambs” moves from one nail-biting sequence to another. Jonathan Demme spares the audience nothing, including closeups of skinned corpses. The squeamish had best stay home and watch “The Cosby Show.”
Ted Tally adapted the Thomas Harris novel with great skill, and Demme twists the suspense almost to the breaking point. The climactic confrontation between Clarice Starling and Buffalo Bill (Ted Levine) is carried a tad too far, though it is undeniably exciting with well-edited sequences.
Such a tale as “The Silence of the Lambs” requires accomplished actors to pull it off. Jodie Foster and Anthony Hopkins are highly qualified. She provides steely intelligence, with enough vulnerability to sustain the suspense. He delivers a classic portrayal of pure, brilliant evil.
— Bob Thomas
“Scream” (1996)
In this smart, witty homage to the genre, students at a suburban California high school are being killed in the same gruesome fashion as the victims in the slasher films they know by heart.
If it sounds like the script of every other horror movie to come and go at the local movie theater, it’s not.
By turns terrifying and funny, “Scream” — written by newcomer David Williamson — is as taut as a thriller, intelligent without being self-congratulatory, and generous in its references to Wes Craven’s competitors in gore.
— Ned Kilkelly
“The Blair Witch Project” (1999)
Imaginative, intense and stunning are a few words that come to mind with “The Blair Witch Project.”
“Blair Witch” is the supposed footage found after three student filmmakers disappear in the woods of western Maryland while shooting a documentary about a legendary witch.
The filmmakers want us to believe the footage is real, the story is real, that three young people died and we are witnessing the final days of their lives. It isn’t. It’s all fiction.
But Eduardo Sanchez and Dan Myrick, who co-wrote and co-directed the film, take us to the edge of belief, squirming in our seats the whole way. It’s an ambitious and well-executed concept.
— Christy Lemire
“Saw” (2004)
The fright flick “Saw” is consistent, if nothing else.
This serial-killer tale is inanely plotted, badly written, poorly acted, coarsely directed, hideously photographed and clumsily edited, all these ingredients leading to a yawner of a surprise ending. To top it off, the music’s bad, too.
You could forgive all (well, not all, or even, fractionally, much) of the movie’s flaws if there were any chills or scares to this sordid little horror affair.
But “Saw” director James Wan and screenwriter Leigh Whannell, who developed the story together, have come up with nothing more than an exercise in unpleasantry and ugliness.
— David Germain
Germain gave “Saw” one star out of four.
“Paranormal Activity” (2009)
The no-budget ghost story “Paranormal Activity” arrives 10 years after “The Blair Witch Project,” and the two horror movies share more than a clever construct and shaky, handheld camerawork.
The entire film takes place at the couple’s cookie-cutter dwelling, its layout and furnishings indistinguishable from just about any other readymade home constructed in the past 20 years. Its ordinariness makes the eerie, nocturnal activities all the more terrifying, as does the anonymity of the actors adequately playing the leads.
The thinness of the premise is laid bare toward the end, but not enough to erase the horror of those silent, nighttime images seen through Micah’s bedroom camera. “Paranormal Activity” owns a raw, primal potency, proving again that, to the mind, suggestion has as much power as a sledgehammer to the skull.
— Glenn Whipp
Whipp gave “Paranormal Activity” three stars out of four.
“The Conjuring” (2013)
As sympathetic, methodical ghostbusters Lorraine and Ed Warren, Vera Farmiga and Patrick Wilson make the old-fashioned haunted-house horror film “The Conjuring” something more than your average fright fest.
“The Conjuring,” which boasts incredulously of being their most fearsome, previously unknown case, is built very in the ’70s-style mold of “Amityville” and, if one is kind, “The Exorcist.” The film opens with a majestic, foreboding title card that announces its aspirations to such a lineage.
But as effectively crafted as “The Conjuring” is, it’s lacking the raw, haunting power of the models it falls shy of. “The Exorcist” is a high standard, though; “The Conjuring” is an unusually sturdy piece of haunted-house genre filmmaking.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “The Conjuring” two and half stars out of four.
“Get Out” (2017)
Fifty years after Sidney Poitier upended the latent racial prejudices of his white date’s liberal family in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner,” writer-director Jordan Peele has crafted a similar confrontation with altogether more combustible results in “Get Out.”
In Peele’s directorial debut, the former “Key and Peele” star has — as he often did on that satirical sketch series — turned inside out even supposedly progressive assumptions about race. But Peele has largely left comedy behind in a more chilling portrait of the racism that lurks beneath smiling white faces and defensive, paper-thin protestations like, “But I voted for Obama!” and “Isn’t Tiger Woods amazing?”
It’s long been a lamentable joke that in horror films — never the most inclusive of genres — the Black dude is always the first to go. In this way, “Get Out” is radical and refreshing in its perspective.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Get Out” three stars out of four.
“Hereditary” (2018)
In Ari Aster’s intensely nightmarish feature-film debut “Hereditary,” when Annie (Toni Collette), an artist and mother of two teenagers, sneaks out to a grief-support group following the death of her mother, she lies to her husband Steve (Gabriel Byrne) that she’s “going to the movies.”
A night out with “Hereditary” is many things, but you won’t confuse it for an evening of healing and therapy. It’s more like the opposite.
Aster’s film, relentlessly unsettling and pitilessly gripping, has carried with it an ominous air of danger and dread: a movie so horrifying and good that you have to see it, even if you shouldn’t want to, even if you might never sleep peacefully again.
The hype is mostly justified.
— Jake Coyle
Coyle gave “Hereditary” three stars out of four.
Read the full review here. ___
Researcher Rhonda Shafner contributed from New York.
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