Diary: Living with a pandemic 5 (Tuesday 17 March 2020)

Our country has now closed its borders to non-citizens and non-permanent residents, with a few exceptions. As well, international flights will only be permitted to land at four airports across the country where disembarking passengers will be subject to screening.

We are truly into new restrictions and regulations aimed at halting or slowing the spared of the Covid-19 virus. Every day we see new developments and, unfortunately new cases.

Today 147 countries (up 4 in 24 hours) have reported 188,297 cases (up 16,336); 7,499 people have died (up 845); and 80,848 have recovered (up 3,075). Canada has 441 reported cases (up 99).

More retailers are closing their doors. At least for the foreseeable future. They want to limit exposure of their customers but, I am sure, also their staff. It’s not surprising but it will be devastating to people who work in those establishments. There is no reasonable option, though. Before long, it could happen that only grocery stores and pharmacies may be in operation.

This is St. Patrick’s Day. But all parades have been cancelled. Many people may not know that the first parade was not in Ireland, but in a Spanish colony at St. Augustine, now part of Florida. The first such celebration was in 1601, so that is a long-standing tradition to be broken now.

Likely there will be fewer bars open to offer green beer either. I wonder if liquor stores will stay open along with those necessary grocery stores.

Children will be home from school in most areas now. My daughter-in-law offers this handy guide for non-screen activities to keep them busy if the schools do not send home lessons to pursue. Our grandchildren are now “e-learning” which means taking classes or at least having lessons sent to them via the Internet. No doubt these kinds of programs will continue to be developed after the current pandemic is over, opening many new avenues for education.

Politicians everywhere are taking it in the ear. The pundits (mostly press) are demanding answers to questions like: What are you going to do about this, or that? Why did you not do these things sooner? How do you know this plan or that plan is going to work? How come these people get to still come across our border but those can not?

These may be valid questions. As I indicated in an earlier post, though, there is no roadmap for this kind of event. But could we be in trouble by trusting those in charge who mostly have not shown themselves capable of many other aspects of governing and spending tax dollars?

Good thing we have many quality people in our health services agencies. We are going to need these professionals in Canada as we are just seeing the beginning of the major part of the outbreak here as this graph shows.

La de da de de, la de da de da. . .