Let’s have a moment of serious talk here. Sometimes something happens in the world or in my world that just needs acknowledging. Since the start of the pandemic we here on the Atlantic Coast of Canada have been very privileged. Some of that comes from our more isolated geography and economy but a decent amount of that comes from a shared sense of community mindedness and rule following, which is great. But some of that is also from a small town name and shame mentality, which isn’t always great, but has worked well for us in this case. Our government also has taken public health’s advice to heart and acted swiftly and early time and time again.
So we have largely been over here in our bubble meeting relatives in small groups in the neighboring provinces and eating in restaurants. We’ve also been able to open at 100% capacity which means no standing in lines. Those things are all nice but we’ve had childcare, ALL been able to go to work and school has been in person all year. Our public health is able to release a COMPLETE list of public exposures and effectively track every single case we have. Even with the variants our strict 14 day quarantine measures kept that all in line. But that all changed in the last week because of someone’s $hitty actions. A couple of visitors from a hotspot province came and hosted a BBQ (selfish people attended) and infected everyone there with a variant. People are pissed that they hosted the event and that about 20 people went, and I get it.
Those cases did what you would expect them to do, they spread like wildfire! Now about half a million people are in full shut down, people are worried and all of the schools are closed in a the whole province. For a million people province wide they can’t leave their towns and for the most part see family or friends. This will cost people millions if not many millions of dollars collectively. Those selfish, irresponsible and criminal (in this jurisdiction) travelers have since returned home.
I get why people are out for blood. These people weren’t here dealing with an emergency, someone’s end of life and clearly if they missed work for a time nothing bad at all was going to happen in their lives at all. Hell, they just needed a COVID break and what better place to come? These sorts of outbreaks have happened in other Atlantic provinces and they managed to get it under control, hopefully we will too. Because of this people have gotten sick, someone will likely die and lots of people living on the edge for any reason already won’t make it to the other side. It’s been four days and my relatively simple life has been complicated every single day since. I would imagine compared to others I’m getting off really easy! I do think a reasonable amount of resources should be put to investigating this but it’s more important that people come forward right now. There was no need what so ever for this to have happened but it has.
I think that we are collectively mad that some outsider has removed our collective privilege because at this point, in this world, at this point that’s what we all had. This and a lot more is what most people everywhere else has been dealing with for over a year straight now with no breaks. This still could spiral out of control and our vaccinations aren’t where they should be but they have been getting there fast lately. Is it unfair? Yes! Does it make all of our lives harder and more dangerous? Absolutely but there are plenty of most people in this boat with us. I’ve found dwelling on why this happened hasn’t been helpful and neither is getting angry. Regardless of how this happened it has and viewing it as a hopefully temporary loss of privileges could be helpful. Do your best for the next few weeks to take care of yourself because that’s the best way to take care of other’s too! Let’s do our best to just focus on that for now.
Sweat Sweetly 