CoVid - A Year of Memories

 

I have this picture on my phone, a screenshot I took March 3, 2020 which mentions a virus death toll reaches 9.  

I think I took the screenshot because I thought it odd this virus (out of China) would make international news, make it all the way to this little corner of the Okanagan. 

The same screen shot shows a headline about a tornado that killed at least 22. 

So yeah, that was a pretty big jump in two weeks. But still, why would there be that mention 2 weeks earlier when it was only 9?

Things took a pretty big dump soon after. I recall there was a weird/funny rush on toilet paper; videos of Costco TP going as fast as the workers could unload them. A lady at work had a husband that worked there and confirmed that was what was going on.  

Then my next screenshot is on March 18, 2020 stating the total, now called Coronavirus worldwide as 8,969. 

According to Wikipedia, BC's first CoVid related death happened March 5th (a man in his 80s)

I believe Canada effectively shut down on March 17th, meaning for us, that the kids would be on an extended Spring Break.

We pretty much went full stop. I drove into town and it the roads were quiet; it felt like Christmas Day or a summer morning at 5am. So little movement.

In the days to follow, Trudeau announced the CERB, malls, restaurants (barring drive-thru), airlines, travel all shut down. 

I recall thinking we were becoming really societally stupid when the District closed off all open spaces (like our local 10 acre dog park) with caution tape (due to CoVid). Then when it did open up, they had wrapped up the park benches with tape as well despite no evidence. NO SITTING! Because someone, without any scientific proof, hypthesized that this airborne virus lurked on every surface; you could catch it simply by sitting on a common bench or god forbid, reading a book from a public library. 

While everyone was worried about their jobs, their bills, many utility companies put up a deferred payment plans for 6 months. Mortgage holders, those Big Banks, gracefully allowed mortgage payments to be deferred for 6 months (interest still accumulating) but no ding on your credit history. Soon complaints began of the stupidly long wait times to try to arrange this with said banks because they were all closed, due to CoVid.  

Yet our town's Garden centers remained open (for mental health) which meant Rona/Home Depot/Walmart opened their doors to limited customers, making many wait in line-ups outside as they hurried to buy paint and materials for long-neglected home renovations. Smaller businesses complained to deaf ears about why they had to be closed, about how this all just helped big business, like usual. The rich got richer. McDonald's staff risked their lives so we could order our coffees and chicken nuggets, every time wondering if this would be our last meal, served to us by minimum wage people with no health insurance while we praised all the hospital staff in their overly-sanitized buildings and layers of PPE who were willing to put their lives on the line while waiting for the rush of virus victims who (must stress that this is in my small town) failed to materialize.  

Then George Floyd was gradually choked to death by a cop who must have known he was being  recorded and shit really started to get crazy again down south. Nobody cared about CoVid. Cops were not your friends. Riots happened, shit got real, many people were breaking the 6ft radius rule and the focus changed. Trump continued to do shitty Trump things, with only half of America caring, the other half cheering. 

I questioned not the number of deaths, but the age. Of nearly 11,000 fatal cases in Canada, around 300 were not in care homes. That didn't make the news as much as I believe it should have. 

I have consistently said the people dying were elderly and yes, it's bad and they deserve to die with dignity and being able to see their loved ones but they weren't. Last words were done by Zoom. It was shitty. Yet people still said no contact. 

The average age of Canadians who died of COVID-19 in 2020 is 83.8 years. By comparison, the average age at death in Canada in 2019 was 76.5 years. Life expectancy is 82.1

Region	Deaths, due to COVID-19	Average age at death, due to COVID-19	Crude death rate, due to COVID-19	Life expectancy in 2019
	number	in years	per thousand	in years
Canada	15,651	83.8	0.41	82.10

Even with CoVid, the average age at death has increased! 

Life expectancy at birth (LEB) in Canada in 2020 is still unknown, but it will likely be lower compared with previous years. Deaths caused by COVID-19 contributed to an estimated reduction in LEB of 0.41 years in 2020. Compared to the life expectancy of 82.10 years observed in 2019, this decrease of 0.41 years would reduce LEB to what it was six years earlier, in 2013 (81.68 years).

We are now expected to live FOUR less months than expected due to CoVid. 

For the record, I'm not against vaccines but it was sure convenient when Pfizer announced they had developed one Nov 12, 5 days after the too-close-to-call-but-probably-Biden American election (spoiler alert; Biden officially won Dec 14 according to the electoral college, which was also the date the first American vaccine was given).

Pfizer is an American pharmaceutical company. Moderna is as well. Coincidence.

We were warned of a second wave and everyone had to go through the motions again; but with much more mask wearing. Summer ended and schools/indoors/restaurants/cops all had to wear masks. A lot of fights were shared on social media of people not wearing masks vs people who said they had to. 

 Then we all had to have vaccines! Social lepers if you didn't. Talk of Vaccine passports, mandatory return to work vaccinations. 

Gas went down to 96 cents, as nobody was driving to and from work anymore. Some front line workers (such as nurses) were hailed as Gods, as they awaited the in rush of dying that for most smaller cities never came. Other front line workers (such as cashiers in grocery stores) received a temporary $2 'danger pay' raise. Other front line workers (such as at your local 7/11 or McDonald's drive-thru received nothing). 

At my firehall, we stopped weekly practices, were told to wear hazmat suits, including face shields and taped up gloves to prevent exposure on any calls we attended. I grew a small beard instead. 

In June 2020, school started again, attendance optional. Teachers learned Zoom while also working on a Day1/Day2 schedule for kids who attended. Most parents kept their kids at home. 

It was rumoured CoVid was carried by kids (who would show no symptoms) so anything they touched, could be infected by CoVid, which resulted in much wiping and hand-sanitizing; in my school our hand-washing schedule was; once before school, once entering, once leaving for recess, once returning, once when going to the gym, once when leaving the gym, wiping desks before and after lunch. God help you if you coughed. And yes, we were all supposed to stay six feet from each other. 

It was stupid time to be alive. But we did it. 

In April, 2020, somebody in the Maritimes dressed up as a cop and killed 22 people on a weekend murder spree; surprising everyone who thought those type of things happened only in the US. 

That's all I can think of for now. 

I'm still not vaccinated but likely will be in the coming year as my mom has paid for accomodations in Hawaii for us to celebrate her postponed 70th birthday. 

It is now July of 2021, the mask mandate is over, 70% of us have been vaccinated but that isn't stopping the Delta Variant which for all I can tell, still continues to kill older people that have lived past their average life span. 

And oh yeah, the Okanagan is once again completely covered by smoke, much like 2017. It just feels worse this year. 

Update July 28, 2023, : my last CoVid Count post; 

Summer 2021

 

Here we are, still alive, still trying to figure out what this last 16 months has meant. A lot of people have died, current update is 4, 167,500 deaths, 26,000 in Canada. 

A lot of questions; vaccinations, yay or nay, lot of media propaganda which after nearly a 20 year bad rap (harkening back to Bush/Cheney) of being puppets to government spins. Nobody trusts anyone anymore, forest fires burning like 2017, masks no longer mandatory, US states 'opening' and dying again, the Delta variant, the Jan 6th capital attack, Branson and Bezos going into space, with the argument of what actually defines 'space' last week, no rain in the last 4 months, with a 44 degree heat spell and the town of Lytton incinerating. 

And somewhere in the last 5 months I completed Flies, and if I say so myself, it's pretty damn good. My 3 beta readers have loved it with one yet to check in. I am working on one last re-edit before doing the real work of pushing it off into some publishing houses to attempt to get that elusive traditional deal done; I'm old-school all the way because I hate the work of self-promo. 

So that is my quick update for the summer. I've not done much outside and the family has gone off for the weekend but I have to keep my eyes on the goal(s) and it's easier said than done. Still so much to do, both inside, outside and 75 pages still to edit. 

It's starting to feel a lot like...something.

 

It's been awhile. 

I've been busy. Busy being a father, a dad, a renovator, a learn-as-you-goer, teacher's assistant, dog-walker, home-maker, etc etc. with little time for writing. I'm only here because I am on a sick day from work with it's own weird little backstory behind that which I won't get into. 

I did Nanowrimo, which is a writing challenge held in November in which you try to type 50,000 words. I cut out an hour a day and my family let me with little to no distractions. I used that to edit a 1st draft I have let simmer for many months. It's a murder mystery thing; someone's killing pedophiles and it's done in three different points of views; a step away from my preferred Karmageddon world building. 

It's a challenge in itself and I'm only like... 1/2 way done, even with Nanowrimo. And CoVid. 

According to Worldometer.info, here are the latest stats worldwide; . 1,665, 000 deaths (about 3% of those who officially contracted it). In Canada there were 13, 865 deaths. They don't give out an age breakdown but that can be found with a little digging; last I checked, 96% were people over 80. 

Yep, CoVid is still the thing. There are too many conspiracy theories to count and, depending on who you ask, faith in our leadership is plummeting. We have small owner-operated restaurants forced to close while McDonald's has their best sales ever. You can't have a wedding with more than 20 people (depending on where you are) yet Home Depot and Walmart are fine. You can't work out at a gym or have dinner with more than 4-6-10 family members but you can go into any store that is open as long as you wear a mask. 

Masks are mostly mandatory the world over yet nobody mentions the mask-makers as part of any conspiracy. That's left to Big Pharma, two of whom have announced vaccines immediately after the US election win of Joe Biden over Donald Trump. And socialists; that one is fun. While the stock markets show huge gains (keeping the rich richer), somehow this is all a conspiracty for a great economic reset where everyone will get a (gasp) basic universal income. 

As back when this first started, nobody really rich or famous has died. Tom Hanks was one of the first to get it and that would have been a game changer. But he was fine. As was Justin Trudeau's wife, Boris Johnson (UK premier), P!nk, Trump ('cured' over a weekend), a ton of other White House high-ups in his cabinet, Prince Charles. 

I had my own theory at one time (writer brain kicking in) that this was a War of The Worlds/Invasion of the Body Snatchers thing where those who die are pod people, advance forces for alien overlords. It's not sensitive to those who have lost someone but we all have to try and make sense of all this in our own ways. If that involves me coming up with a Killer Alien Virus theory to explain why I can't watch my daughter play ringette, so be it. 

Mostly, those who died have been old and with weakened immune systems. I went for a walk awhile ago and had this minor epipheny of how this is a Boomer reaction to the approaching of Death, as futile as it may be to fight it, they're going to try. It's backfired a little, such as so many have had to die alone, their families unable to hold their hands one last time, in fear of infection. When we, as a society, placed our elders in care homes, paid other people to care for them then get angry that they are dieing in these places we have put them, who really is to blame?   

So we have people shouting online to wear your masks and other people shouting it makes no difference. In my province, nearly all the deaths were in long-term care homes (which are like bus stations for funeral homes). We have a 50 person cap on a hockey arena that sits 3000 and a 2 person cap in public restrooms. 

We have this 'front-line workers are the real heroe' memes going around yet many of those are the cashiers who are keeping the economy running. There has been no mention of Big Banks or credit cards doing anything other than lip service to everyone falling deeper in debt. I don't know how that will play out but in the meantime, we try to keep as normal as possible. 

Yet on my end, things are actually quite stable. We both kept our jobs; I caught up on a lot of side-projects such as building a front walkway, building a fence, bartering my labour from that to a 14ft aluminum boat and a utility trailer (which I then rebuilt). We resided our house, finally losing the avocado green aluminum siding and replaced 8 windows. Then to top it off, we have a new(er) truck, one that can actually tow the utility trailer! So yeah, sorry society is in the crapper and our alien overlords are about to run the show but I'm doing pretty darn good.

 

Now if I can only get a book deal.