CLANG goes the door!

Like the resounding CLANG of a prison door, Ontario is locked down again in its ever-present battle to stem the proliferation of Covid-19 with hopes of preventing the anticipated impact to the provincial Health Care system's efforts to prevent unnecessary deaths. After unchecked growth of the Novel Coronavirus this fall, with cases recently exceeding 2000 a day on a consistent basis, combined with modelling that forecasts unbridled growth following the holiday break, #fordnation has taken the very unpopular steps to re-institute lockdown measures. This will affect the entire province, regardless of regional conditions, with the only variations hinging on geography as northern areas will be only 14 days.

All of this is not new to anyone who has paid attention.

The only question I have surrounds the mechanism that has allowed for such ridiculous growth? 

With the each day, the media faithfully reports the day's newest infections for each region across the province, and invariably points to the GTA as the main culprits - Toronto, Peel, York, Durham, and Hamilton. Essex is the only outlier. These areas constitute roughly 75% of the reported cases, but infections have unfortunately begun to swell in other regions as well ... like Simcoe Muskoka. I'd like to consider myself intelligent enough to understand that larger populations = greater chance of spread, but I go back to my query of HOW is it spreading?

The obvious guess, since I couldn't possibly know for sure, is that the people in those "hot spots" are not cooperating with the guidelines as dictated by Health Care and the province. It's easy to point fingers at "Joe Public" when I am confronted with the nightly news broadcast's video footage showing large groups of socially huddled, unmasked hoards doing whatever strikes their fancy as they rush around like so many mice hankering for a morsel. Acknowledging the risk of spreading misinformation, what I can't know is whether the video footage I watch is recent or file footage from a time prior to the pandemic. 

I'm a rule follower ... 

a glass is half full guy ... 

I trust first until proven unwise ... 

so I naturally incline toward giving the news broadcast the nod for using pertinent footage.

Answering my own question, I would venture a guess that it's a healthy dose of negligence combined with the virus' ridiculous infectiousness, spiced up with a helping heap of pandemic-infused exhaustion. With news of a new strain of the coronavirus in Britain ... Covid-21 ... that scientists are reporting is more infectious, we Canadians need to give their collective heads a big shake and come together in a common mindset to do whatever is required to reduce the spread. I acknowledge that the mortality rate is not as high as first thought, but I'll go to my own grave with the opinion that even one preventable death is too many.

I grant you that there are no easy solutions or answers, and some parts of Canada are far more successful than others, but my fear is there will be a breaking point in the capacity of the Health Care system, and one of my loved ones is caught on the bad side of it.

Consider this a personal request from me to you. I am imploring all who may read this to join me, my loved ones, and good friends in our united acceptance of the conditions being imposed over the next few weeks to lessen the spread with a figurative "shot to the gut" of the virus. Vaccinations will make a difference, if they are available and voluntarily taken, but the timing of national inoculation plan leads me to believe that the Health Care crisis will crest before the various vaccines have a chance to make an impact. 

For my view, the simplest and easiest way to quickly make an impact is to follow the now oft repeated guidelines of WASH, WEAR and WATCH. It's a simple to understand as baking a cake ... you need all of the ingredients to work together to make something good. Using only the WEAR, or the WEAR with WASH, will not make it work, regardless of the time of year or any other such excuses. 

Again, please consider this post an impassioned request to join me in sacrificing a relatively short span of time for the greater good. Only working together can we truly have an impact on eradicating this scourge of humanity. Besides, with the way it's been going, you can bet your bottom dollar that this will not be the last pandemic that you face before the Reaper makes his visit. We need to get good at this.

Think about that as you enjoy your amazing Canadian quality of life. 

Oh, and Merry Christmas!