Are we essential?

The easy and accurate answer is to say “it depends." I understand why people want gyms to close and I understand why people want gyms to stay open. Like anything controversial, there are layers to the issues here and each layer is connected by a complex web of risks and benefits, short and long term outcomes, and of course illness and wellness. I certainly don’t envy those that are working in deciding what stays open or closed as it is impossible to please everyone and there’s pressure from all sides to make a decision yesterday.

Below is an infographic from the Saskatchewan Fitness Council. Their purpose is for “Gym owners in Saskatchewan banding together as one voice to present why we should be considered an essential health service.”

Thank you to the SK Coalition of the Fitness Industry Council of Canada for collecting the data and creating the infographic.

Based on the data provided, gyms are very low risk for transmission. I think it’s safe to assume it’s because of the efforts of gym-goers in maintaining safe distances and from staff ensuring equipment is cleaned. While I’m confident in our own cleaning and distancing practices, I can’t say it’s impossible for transmission to happen. And I certainly don’t want to be part of a chain of transmission where a life was lost.

If you factor in the mental and physical benefits associated with regular exercise, keeping gyms open should be a no-brainer. So why isn’t it?

For the same reason that as an occasional consumer of alcohol, I wouldn’t find a liquor store essential. For the same reason that you won’t find someone that rarely orders takeout or seldom visits a drive thru will deem restaurants to be essential. That doesn’t mean that these businesses and the services they offer are not essential, it just means they are not essential to everyone (not everyone finds a gym to be essential because not everyone has that kind of relationship with their gym).

Businesses are essential to the people that need their services, to the staff that rely on employment, and to the owner and their families for income. Please keep that in mind the next time you consider a business or industry to be inessential, just because it’s not something you are into.

Rather than passing judgment, realize that you don’t know what a person has been through to get to where they are now. With what’s going on in the world we have to find a way to give people what they need to get through these times, even if we don’t understand where they’re coming from.