Life in the Time of COVID, Part 1

It all began so quietly, as to be missed. Somewhere in December, 2019 and somewhere in China, there were reports of a new type of virus showing up. It was related to, but distinct from, the SARS virus we had in 2003. And we didn’t know much about it. But it grew, to take over Wuhan City (a city of several million Chinese). Didn’t seem to be anywhere else outside this city. The Chinese eventually closed the city down, and then closed the province down, then closed the country down. They tested like crazy, built a brand-new hospital in just over a week, and suffered thousands of deaths. But it was still just in China, so why worry in Canada?

Then (surprise!) it went over the borders; travellers brought it to other countries starting in about early February, and the world began to notice. Public Health Units woke up (if they had been sleeping before). Trump denied there was a problem; Trudeau agreed with the experts, not Trump. People in general ignored it as well - after all, it was no worse than the flu, right? Turns out it is worse than the flu: this virus is smart, being less deadly but more contagious than SARS. It goes further and faster.

It has been interesting to watch, with horrified fascination, the march of the virus across the world out from China to Europe and North America, and then to the Middle East, South America, and finally Africa. It seems the countries with the most travellers got it first. In fact, Canada’s first major exposure was on a cruise ship (the Diamond Princess) in Japan. Several Canadians were on board, and they had to isolate in place for two weeks. Before being let off the boat and flown home to isolate another two weeks. Not a great vacation, but a memorable one.

We are, by habit, constantly comparing ourselves to the US. They were slow to get going, with the Washington administration at first denying it, then acting reluctantly and slowly—behind the rest of the world. They stopped travel from China, then from Europe (but oddly not the mini-Trump Boris Johnson’s Britain).

That now seems like an eternity in the past. We have seen this go from a distant threat to a present danger. We watch in horrible fascination as the numbers climb to over one million known cases, with overall deaths in the many thousands. And it’s just getting going. Canada is still on the upswing, probably. Perhaps BC has reached the peak (As of Easter), but the other provinces are still working to slow it down. Restrictions are getting more and more draconian (with good reason). The parks are being closed, playgrounds are closed, businesses are closed, the streets are quiet (there are some positives).

We can still walk, six feet apart or more. We can bike, solo preferably. We can shop for groceries (but there are now line-ups at the stores since they are restricting the numbers of people in the store at any time) and go to the pharmacy (which is locked, but they will get your things for you). I discovered yesterday that the local nursery is sort of open, so you can go and see their products and buy things if they have them.

And of course the hospitals are open, working in the dread that the “wave” of sick is on its way. When the wave comes, it will be hard: people are very sick, and will be sick for some time. Some will require ICU and intubation, and for some time as well. And the death rate with intubation is about half. Speaking of half, about half the cases in Canada are in LTC homes. I believe this outlines the fault lines in our health care system. We have underfunded Long Term Care for decades, allowed private enterprise to run it for profit; sat by while they sucked out the money by cutting staff and reducing food, not renovating, not offering anything but part-time jobs, and other ways to boost their bottom line (but of course hurting the frail residents).

In fact, this is, as was pointed out on CBC the other day, the way in which pandemics work: they exploit the weaknesses in society. In this case, they expose our population densities, globalization, neo-liberalism, even capitalism itself for the money-hungry anti-human system it has always been. Because of neo-liberal, global-capitalist ideology that has been prevalent for the last forty years, we are now in a deep recession and will be for some time. Governments are in serious debt; unemployment is hitting new highs; even low interest rates are not stimulating the buying that the economy has grown to need.

Are there good things coming out of this? Yes, some. The streets, as I said, are quiet, and that’s wonderful. It is spring, and the daffodils are about to come out (forsythia, scilla, crocuses hav already bloomed). The birds are back, and you can hear them because there are not so many cars and trucks. The air is cleaner than it has been in decades (it was calculated that the number of lives saved in Wuhan from the decreased pollution may have surpassed the number lost to COVID). We have re-discovered the telephone, and have phoned our old friends in Halifax and Montreal and Huntingdon. And we have the internet still, so we can FaceTime, Skype, or whatever, our friends and family.