By Pepper Parr
March 23rd, 2020
BURLINGTON, ON
It’s now a new reality for all of us.
Getting used to living differently is going to take some time – something we don’t have a lot of.
A snapshot at 5:45 am March 23, 2020
We used to look for the sports scores – now we look at reports that tell us just how bad things are around the world: COVID-19 is now amongst us – with the medical people scrambling to keep ahead of it.
Front line people are beginning to be personally infected; we can’t afford to lose access to these people.
Things like gowns for the front line workers; masks as well and ventilators we are going to need if (or is it when) this virus hits the seniors.
Burlington has more seniors on a per capita basis that any other community in Ontario – and they are at risk.
The deaths in the province are relatively low which doesn’t make it any easier to bear.
Spring Break is over (it did take place didn’t it?) The schools won’t open today; parents now know that for the next two weeks at least they are going to have to keep their children occupied.
The Province has put some tough rules in place.
As the Gazette toured the city on Sunday we could see changes in public behaviour. There were people out on the Pier, a number of retail operations were open.
The supermarkets weren’t crowded and, while there were shortages, there was no sense of panic at those we toured.
Sobeys was out of 1% milk; the aisle with flour was close to barren. Couldn’t buy a bag of flour anywhere. Toilet paper shelves were not empty.
Butcher counters were closed but packaged meats were plentiful.
Produce was fine in the stores we toured.
Physical distancing is now the phrase being used –social distancing appears to be going out of practice.
By the way – whatever happened to Climate Change?
For those who want to keep an eye on the global picture – here is the link.
If you want to see the real scary out of control future if we do not do everything in sight to suppress this virus right now, see this first link, which has more detail on the trends of cases going into a steepening exponential curve in the world.
This data is on the right side and can be clicked to enlarge.
The US is now third behind China and Italy, New York City alone is 2/3 of US cases and 5% of the global total. They are leading the exponential trend shown in the data link shown.
Something to watch.
Some of what we need to do, given our context, is outlined in the excellent New York Times story also linked below.
Doing what we need to do to get control of this can work for us in several weeks, but if missed we will lose it and it will drag out for many months or much longer of trying to deal with catastrophe.
We do not want to wait too long and wait too late. We all need to get in line. Make no mistake, this virus must be suppressed now by isolation and containment or it will destroy our way of life for a long time There is no immunity and no vaccine , and left to itself the virus will keep replication in its ever increasing inflation.
It is a war against an unseen enemy, and we all must pay our share of whatever it will cost to keep everyone in our economy afloat.
https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/health/coronavirus-restrictions-us.html?ct=t(RSS_EMAIL_CAMPAIGN)