‘Nuff said…!
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“Pain: An uninvited guest that comes into our lives that demands our fullest attention before it can even think about leaving us.”
Unknown
Bah!!!
Well – I guess it was inevitable…
When The Girl and I returned the other day from our travels abroad we brought with us an uninvited guest.
That’s right – we got COVID!… and that after all the worrying earlier in the year as to whether or not we should be traveling at all.
To be fair – the world is a very different place to that which it was a year ago. Back then we went to great lengths to keep ourselves healthy. Now, in many countries, the assumption is that – vaccinated or not – one will eventually succumb to the virus. Here in Canada we may still be wearing masks to go grocery shopping – and certainly if we go to the theatre or to a concert. For goodness sake – even our national carrier still insists on masks being worn at all times – which is certainly not the case with all airlines.
In the UK and in France the great majority of folk do not wear masks at all and many other precautions seem to be exercised in a desultory fashion if at all. I read a piece the other day by a Brit who had recently been infected, the which meant that he was no longer one of the 15% of the population that had not had the virus – and thus joining the 85% that have! The gist of his piece was that the majority of those recently infected belong to the group that had never had COVID, rather than being re-infections of those that have.
Now, The Girl and I are both inoculated to the eyeballs – four shots apiece (the which clearly did not stop us catching the wretched thing!) – and we are now isolating and relying on dearest friends to do our shopping for us. My symptoms are mercifully mild – little more than a scratchy throat and a predilection for sneezing. The Girl – as is sadly the way with such things – is having a tougher time, as a sinus infection seems to have taken advantage of her weakened state to set up shop alongside the spiky thing. Not fair! Not fair at all!!
The only bright side (and certainly not one that I will bring to The Girl’s attention just yet awhile) is that our four shots will shortly be joined by the additional immunity that comes with a having a dose of the blasted thing…
Hey ho!
“Vancouver is the square root of negative one. Technically it shouldn’t exist, but it does. I can’t imagine living anywhere else.”
Douglas Coupland
It is but two weeks since The Girl and I left Vancouver Island for the first time in over a year for our rapid-fire visit to Kamloops – and yet here we are again already… away from our island home.
It is the pandemic – of course – that has kept us on the island until very recently, but we are both now fully vaccinated and the relaxation of the BC lockdown has enabled us to take some very careful steps back into the outside world.
The trip to Kamloops did not go quite as we had originally planned. We had intended to stay there for several nights, encompassing the event for which we had gone. As things turned out the fresh wild-fire at Sun Peaks overnight on the Saturday filled the valley in which Kamloops nestles with thick smoke on the Sunday morning, forcing us soft coastal dwellers to beat a hasty retreat back to the island. This meant two consecutive days of pretty heavy driving and our arriving back on the peninsula not until around 10:00pm.
The Kamloops trip came up fairly late on, but we had already planned a long-weekend away in the City of Glass – Vancouver – as a sort of ‘welcome back to the world’ – given that we knew that we would not be travelling further afield this year. The idea was to have a relaxing city break – to re-meet old friends and family with whom we have not been able to connect of late – to wine and dine ourselves and – mayhap – to take in a little culture.
I am writing this on the Saturday evening in the 23rd floor suite that The Girl (to whom I inevitably leave these important decisions) found for us in Coal Harbour in Vancouver, overlooking the West End and English Bay. I have the camera with me and have been making liberal use of it. I will regale you with the results and details of what we got up to once we are back home next week.
So – welcome (carefully) indeed back to the world…
This year and more in lockdown (or even semi-lockdown) has been a strange time in so many ways. We have become accustomed to a completely different rhythm of life and some of the things that we used to take for granted seem now to belong to such a distant past that we can scarce remember them.
It has been such a long time since we ventured outside a relatively small area at the southern tip of Vancouver Island that it feels almost as though the rest of the world has ceased to exist other than through the TV (or other electronic device) screen… which never quite feels real.
And yet…
Of late, something in Canada (and doubtless elsewhere) has shifted. A significant number of us are now fully vaccinated and here in BC things have started opening up again. Many stores no longer require masks to be worn (they merely recommend it) and the directional arrows on their floors have started to disappear. In our local store the dividers that we once used at the checkouts (to prevent our shopping fraternizing with anyone else’s) have made a re-appearance for the first time since March last year.
I am beginning to think about teaching in the lecture room again in the Fall and all of those entertainments and enticements that have been closed down throughout the pandemic are starting to re-emerge blinking into the daylight.
And now – here I am writing this post in Kamloops – an hour and a forty minutes on the ferry and a four and a half hour drive from our home on the island!
Wow! How (and why) did that happen?
Well – for that you will have to await our return on Monday. I will explain all once we are back home…
Back in the saddle? Well – certainly trying it out for size again…
Tags: British Columbia, COVID-19, Travel, vaccine
“When things are looking up, there’s no point in looking elsewhere”
Agatha Swanburne
Here in British Columbia there are now definite – if still quite fragile – signs that things are beginning to return to some sort of normality.
Progress in this direction is being pursued with a high degree of caution and restraint, though we are of course as vulnerable as are most nations to the antics of the usual idiots. We do, however, eschew the sort of hyperbole that some must endure. Not for us the “World beating” – or “Irreversible” – or “Sure and certain knowledge”… I’m ‘sure and certain’ that you catch my drift…
This very day The Girl trotted down to the Mary Winspear Centre in Sidney to get her second COVID vaccination – the which was booked about three weeks ago.
I was beginning to wonder (for no good reason other than my impatience!) if I had somehow dropped off the list when I finally received the email inviting me to book a date for my second jab. I jumped at the chance and have an appointment in only ten days time.
”Result!” – as the ‘yoof’ were wont to say some decades ago…
So much are our spirits raised by these developments that we are now seriously contemplating re-entering the outside world by booking ourselves a mini-break during the summer – though we will not be leaving the province anytime soon.
More information – you may be sure – as it becomes available.
The extremely good news – from my point of view – is that I now have an appointment for my first COVID vaccination.
Hoorah!
It is not until near the end of April but I have no complaints about that. The mechanism set up in BC for booking said inoculation – on t’other hand – as the title of this post suggests, needs work!
It seems somewhat unfair to cavil at such things when the splendid efforts of all those concerned are focused on helping us normal folk to be able to get on with our lives. If I do so it is because I believe that anything that potentially puts people off getting vaccinated needs to be fixed.
Herewith my experience:
Having discerned that I could now register online for the jab I followed the instructions and rapidly did the deed. Easy as pie and no complaints from me. The next step was to await a message inviting me to book an appointment.
This message duly arrived a couple of days later – at about 1 o’clock in the morning. No reason why it should not do so – and because I was still up and about I decided to book right away.
I followed the link and connected to the online service – supplying the requested details at the appropriate points. I selected my preferred location for the appointment and the service offered me a calendar from which to choose an appointment date. I took a punt and took the first date offered. A message popped up informing me that there were no available appointments on that date. I tried another with the same result. It rapidly became apparent that the calendar had not been equipped with a way of showing which dates had availability and which did not. All I could do was to work my way through them until I found a date that could accommodate me. Eventually I found and chose such a date and selected one of the offered time slots. The site then asked me to re-enter my email address – though I had already done so and the service must have know it anyway to have sent me the invitation in the first place.
I typed in the address and was told that the time slot was no longer available. Presumably someone else had booked it whilst I was typing. Doh! I had to go round this annoying loop all over again… becoming even more frustrated because the site had forgotten the information that I had entered on the first go through.
Eventually a slot was booked and a page appeared containing a QR code and a message telling me to print this code and to take it with me to my appointment.
Now, as I suggested, I was doing this really quite late at night and I was so doing from my iPad – which does not have a printer attached or configured for it. A confirmatory email arrived but did not contain the vital QR code.
OK – now I am a big boy and – as regular readers will be aware – have a long professional history in IT. I can sort such things out, but I am a lot less confident that everybody trying to book a vaccination appointment in BC will have the same good fortune.
Chaps – you are doing a difficult and critical job tirelessly and brilliantly – but do sort out these glitches so that everyone can get the protection that they deserve.
Ithankyew!…
“With COVID-19, we’ve made it to the life raft. Dry land is far away”
Marc Lipsitch
It has now been a year since the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic changed all of our lives utterly. Some – of course – have been far worse affected than others and our hearts go out to those who have lost loved ones or whose lives have been dramatically and negatively impacted in any way by the virus and the resultant disease.
I am sure that the gentle reader will have – as have I – been keeping abreast of the situation by following news stories, reading articles and watching documentaries… or perhaps you have had enough of it all and just want to keep your heads well down until things return to ‘normal’.
I watched an excellent Horizon documentary on the estimable BBC the other night which I thought summed up pretty well where we are, how we got here and how things are likely to unfold in the months ahead. I thought I would just take the opportunity to summarise the key points therein – as I saw them – the which you can choose to take or leave as you will.
The first thing to say is that there has clearly been a step change in the technology of creating and developing vaccines. We now have newer and more sophisticated means of developing and testing vaccines which have given us an advantage that we have not previously held. Not only should this give us renewed hope for an abatement of this pandemic but will arm us for other similar situations in the future. Given the huge amounts of work and brilliance that have gone into this work let us fervently hope that it is not undone by frankly ‘wacko’ conspiracy theorists persuading good folk not to welcome these developments.
The science has done well in many regards during the lock-down. We now understand many things about this virus that we did not before. It seems clear that the virus does not spread evenly, but that certain individuals infect a much greater number of others than might be expected. It would seem that this comes down to two criteria – the stage of the infection in the spreader (the which determines how virulent it is) and the particular circumstances in which that individual comes into contact with others.
The lesson to take from this is of course that the recommended precautions should be followed at all times. The chance of getting infected from any particular interaction may be lower than might be expected, but should the encounter be what has been described as a ‘super-spreading event’ then the odds will be much higher. No such chances should be taken.
Fears concerning mutations are valid, but it appears that more such occur when the virus remains in an infected individual for an extended period. Knowing this should enable – with the help of effective contact tracing – the rapid tracking down and eliminating of many new variants.
How will it all end? It seems to be the thinking that we could find ourselves in a position in which the Corona virus will need to be treated in the way that flu viruses are; that there will be a season in which routine jabs will protect us from infection. That – along with greatly improved treatments for those who do become infected – should at least enable us to evolve a ‘new normal’ that looks a fair bit more like the old one.
In short – continue to take care and stay safe!
You’ve got to accentuate the positive
Eliminate the negative
Latch on to the affirmative
Don’t mess with Mister In-Between
Bing Crosby and the Andrews Sisters
Songwriters: Johnny Mercer / Harold Arlen
The Girl was talking on the phone this morning to a dear friend (the same dear friend who lived with us for a while last year and now resides in Vancouver). As do many such conversations in these days much of the talk concerned the vicissitudes and restrictions of life under lock-down.
This is hardly surprising given the circumstances.
The Girl did – however – perhaps for the first time since this whole thing began (and I am referring here solely to the pandemic) venture the opinion that there was finally some light at the end of the tunnel (and that it was not an approaching… yada, yada, yada… hopefully the gentle reader will already have eagerly consumed this recent post!).
The point is that – to the ‘reasons to be cheerful’ outlined in that post can now be added another and perhaps even more important one – the Government of British Columbia has revealed its COVID-19 Immunization Plan.
Hoorah! Hoorah! and thrice… Hoorah!
If nothing else this finally gives a rough shape to how the pandemic will be rolled back and normal life given a chance to commence its revival. This is the broad sweep of things:
…and this is the phase into which we both fall:
Phase 3
Timeline: April to June 2021
- People aged 79 to 60, in five year increments:
- 79 to 75 (D1 April, D2 May)
- 74 to 70 (D1 April/May, D2 May/June)
- 69 to 65 (D1 May/June, D2 June/July)
- 64 to 60 (D1 June, D2 July)
Now – this means that if all goes well we will have been fully immunized by the end of July. Further it perhaps means that by the time the nights start drawing in and it becomes infeasible to socialise in the open air – we might actually be able to do so once again in the old-fashioned way – indoors and round the dining table…
…and that is bloomin’ good news and reason enough to celebrate (safely)!
Tags: Celebration, COVID-19, Health, vaccine
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