Pandemic-monium

Welcome to the 5,326th day of the Covid-19 pandemic. At least that is how it feels. What better time to resume writing a blog?

And what better time to learn more about global powers? Nobody saw this coming. That is such a lie. Actually, there were playbooks and scenarios and dire warnings even. Nobody wanted to actually prepare for what was coming is more like it.

Now, three months in, everything has changed. There is no “going back”. We can only go forward into a new normal. And that is hard, because change is hard. People do not do change well and certainly not on a massive global scale. But here we are. Stay at home, work from home. Social distancing as the norm. Contactless society. Because right now there is no cure and no vaccine to protect us.

Three months in, and the world is moving ahead to reopen. For some places, a very few places, the time is right because they got it right early and they flattened the crap out of that curve. New Zealand, New Brunswick, Iceland you go for it!

China is where it started and spread from. We’ll never really know the actual count of infection and mortality there but you can bet they will repress and suppress that curve into submission because they have a massive economy to restore, and the dubious distinction of being the only place on earth making and supplying personal protective equipment. That’s been interesting as desperate countries have had to go hat in hand and ask for PPE. China won’t forget whom they “helped”. We’d better remember that.

Europe. Hard lessons learned at high costs. Small countries, big families, densely populated urban centres. The virus spread like wildfire and the world watched as hospitals and healthcare systems were tragically overwhelmed. This is a respiratory illness and there were no ventilators to be had. We know now what needs to be on hand for next time. And that next time is coming. We also watched the magnificent resiliency of the human spirit play out in nightly overtures from balconies of confinement. Italy and Spain are venturing out of lockdown mode and we’ll see how they manage the inevitable spike that will follow. Germany and Sweden are ahead of the pack and examples of what the new normal can look like.

Not Britain. Boris Johnston has mismanaged that crisis and the mortality rate is the highest anywhere as the curve is still climbing. Thankfully they do know what does work to contain spread and more PPE and ventilators are available. But they have a long road ahead to flatten their curve because trying for herd immunity at the outset was clearly not a good idea. Success has been measured by how fast lockdowns were implemented and how broadly testing and then tracing were done.

Which brings us to the US, and a terrible live experiment unfolding as Trump has placed the American economy above the lives of American citizens even though he needs them alive to vote him back in. The US, held captive in Trump’s megalomaniac whims, has the highest infection rate at over 1.6 million people and over 100,000 deaths. Needless deaths. The curve continues to climb in the US despite Trump’s insistence otherwise, across all the states, managed by separate governments and policies, receiving no federal support. And New York bore the heartbreaking brunt of reported infections and deaths. Images of bodies piled into trucks cannot be erased. While many state leaders want to ease forward cautiously they are being ordered by Trump to “open for business or else”, and there are mass protests of contagion demanding freedom over sensibility. Many places in the US are reopening now and actually going back to what was, heedless of the new rules to stay safe and manage spread. Be afraid. Be very afraid.

And then there are the countries who have neither the infrastructure nor the money to manage this outbreak. Densely populated and with high poverty they cannot keep people safe at home or shut down their economies for long if at all. Brazil, India, Africa, Central America – their ability to manage this will have global impact because of spread.

Canada has managed better than many, thanks to healthcare and a government that spends money on its people because it can. Our population is spread out, and we are inclined to be respectful and careful. And we closed the border. But that does not undo the harm we did to our seniors and the tragic, horrible death toll in our long term care facilities. We needed to respond sooner, identify and control better.

But like everyone else, Canada is slowly moving forward, because our economies cannot stay shutdown much longer. We all need to be preparing for the subsequent infections we know are coming. As I said before, there is no going back to what was. We have to do things differently for the next year at least, until there is a vaccine and testing is widely available. As we move forward into a new normal, transit, school, travel and work will all be different to help maintain distance and reduce spread. Because we have all just paid an enormous one-time only cost to try and flatten that curve.