About. . .

This website is meant for family historians. Readers will find information about how people and communities were impacted by natural phenomena – or Mother Nature. Blog posts will present examples of actual events and how families coped with them. Links will be added to websites and articles that may assist genealogists looking for specific data about certain areas.

Thursday, September 16, 2021

Living with a pandemic 52

Well, we thought we were coming out of the worst of the pandemic at the beginning of summer. Alberta went so far as relaxing testing and quarantining requirements. Everything was to open up by the end of August and we were to have the “best summer ever.”

I had hoped by now, after writing about the pandemic for over 16 months, that this post would be about celebrating the end of it. Funny how Mother Nature always takes a different course. Maybe not so funny now.

Alberta is in the middle of the 4th wave of Covid-19, and this one looks like a beast as it is fueled by the Delta variant, the most contagious and fastest spreading mutation the world has seen. Our provincial government yesterday declared the third public health emergency with sweeping restrictions on gatherings and insistence on having people providing proof of vaccination or recent negative tests if they want to attend events or even go to work.

The full range of restrictions can be found on the government website.


Yesterday there were over 1,600 new cases in the province. We had 877 people in hospital with the disease, 218 of them in intensive care. Total deaths to date have been 2,495 with 24 happening during the last day. The majority of deaths were in age groups from the 40s to the 60s, not the oldest in the population as it was in the beginning. Of course, it is the younger people who refuse to get vaccinated, so we should not be surprised.

Over 90% of those who are sick have not been vaccinated. Even though that is only about 20% of the population, the aggressive variant has made the latest wave almost as large as the first one, when vaccines wee just beginning.

With regard to our family, we had hoped (still do) that we could have our daughter and her sons visit us at Thanksgiving. We had gone so far as to book flights. Now those plans are in disarray. It may still happen, but the timing does not look good, and we may have to wait until Christmas. That would make it two years since we had been able to hug our children and grandchildren.

One hates to lay blame on the latest wave, but most cases are being seen in unvaccinated people and a great number of them have chosen not to get vaccinated. A few even stupidly think there is some kind of conspiracy to deprive them of their constitutional rights. Most of us know this is a health problem, not a rights problem.

All we can do now is weather this latest storm and hope that the last 20% of the population will come to their senses and get vaccinated. Restrictions on gatherings will only work so far. The end can only come when we reach a level where we are all immune through having had a shot or two of vaccine.

Wish us luck! And be sure to thank all those medical practitioners on the front lines.


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