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One step, day, life at a time

April 8, 2021   ·   0 Comments

Could be history will talk about last year and this by using that silly expression: “there were two kinds of people.” This time: those who carried on with their jobs and those whose jobs or businesses evaporated and they had no work to with which to carry on.

We will recall this hideous but unavoidable preoccupation with trying to remember what day – what month! – it is, as our sense of time fogs in the monotony of fear and restrictions: can we go for a walk in the park or along the city streets? Can we keep our distance from each other, recognizing eyes only, the shades of danger dampening each encounter?

With the relatively punky internet in my house, the telephone is my friend and the conversations at that very safe distance reveal the state of minds in which so many people live. Did we ever have so much in common, on such a personal level as this?

The other day, a friend of very long standing, a person living in Toronto, was talking about the challenge of she and her husband simply going for a walk: to avoid others doing the same, takes thought and caution.

“We couldn’t walk together and still keep our distance from other people,” said she. “So, we started going out a bit earlier. And we’re a little bored with our own area. We don’t like travelling on the TTC. Soon, we’ll be able to walk the trails in the ravines but we have to think about when there will be fewer people.”

At the other end of the theoretical stick is a person I will call X, who lectured me recently about this next shut down, saying, “I want to see my friends, for a drink with them– I haven’t been with any of them in person for a year and I’m tired of Zoom. I want to work face to face with clients, so I’m sure they understand the paper work we’re doing.” X continued by saying, “Every vulnerable person in Ontario has had the vaccine; shutting down everything is not the answer. The real problem is people living in Guelph but working in factories in Oakville, working right next to each other and taking the train back and forth to work,” going on to declare: “Even so, the vaccine is only good for the original virus, not all the variants. We’re just going to have to live with this and get used to it.

“It is going to be survival of the fittest,” X stated.

Well. At the beginning of all this, Boris Johnson, Prime Minister of Britain, played with the “Herd Immunity” idea until scientists convinced him the death toll in such a balance is far too high. Too late, sadly, did he attempt to stem the ravage and Corona got a grip on the country that is keeping us all away.

Norway did not shut down. Their case numbers stayed low for several months but, this year, they have suffered a surge.

New Zealand, under its brilliant lady Prime Minister, Jacinda Arden exercised strict shut downs and border closing at the beginning of the danger, resulting in a current case number of 2,500 with a population of five million people. 

Australia, likewise, shut its borders; instituted strict curfews and shut down and has kept the numbers of infections to about 29,000 with a population just over 25.7 million.

The USA stands, now, in excess of 31 million cases, following Trump’s shambles and the states of mind throughout the country that Biden is having to deal with; the US still accounts for 25 per cent plus of Covid cases worldwide.

Here in Canada, where provinces have had jurisdiction over their policies, with a total population 37,994,490 – we have topped 1,020,839 cases because we just can’t get it right, with our opening and closing and not-knowing-what-on-earth-to-do-really.

Herd immunity? Survival of the fittest?

However, closing down the little shops, the family businesses, whether they took my advice and brought in cases of beans and condensed milk so they could have “grocery shelves” and stay open, nothing is achieved by closing them, except to possibly shut them forever.

Hear me: if Walmart is open, all the stores should be open. We are safer in a smaller, locally owned shop than in an overcrowded box store.

When policies are run by pressure from big business, for whom the safety of the population is less a concern than the business; by panic in the face of restlessness and true damage to the mental health of especially younger people; by an ever-changing viral invasion, as it were, it is difficult to recover.

In the long run, as usual, it is up to us to influence the outcome by how we behave: our wisdom, actions and caring for each other will be the final cure.

Wear your mask – it’s only a mask; wash your hands; keep you distance and if the job doesn’t allow that, make it happen.

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