Is it over yet?

Pause for breath as we near the end of a manic year.

 

As I looked out at grey drizzle this afternoon, the neighborhood feels like it’s been damp and chilly for ages. It’s hard to believe it was only a couple of weeks ago that Ali and I took the dogs out for a drive and a walk to a beach where this photo was taken. Thankfully we have a good stock of firewood ready for the winter.

If anyone thought that November would finally bring an end to four years of relentless US election campaigning they were in for a sad awakening. The election has come and gone with a clear winner but no resolution. And don’t expect the shenanigans to end next month with the Electoral College, or even in January. Trump has been laying the groundwork all year to undermine the foundations of American democracy and will continue to do so long after he’s left the White House. Anything to avoid conceding a loss. It’s been saddening to see how deep the misinformation has taken root.

Closer to home, up to now BC has been touched only lightly by COVID. Most of the outbreaks have been in care homes with relatively little in the community, and we’ve got away with fewer restrictions than many parts of the world. The picture has evolved through the course of the year, but for the most part life has continued. That picture has changed this month, with cases spiking alarmingly and new measures in place in the last few days. Limits on social gatherings, and for the first time a mask mandate in indoor spaces. At work, a directive last month to start bringing people back into the office instead of working from home has been reversed, for now. Whether it will be enough to bring things back under control remains to be seen.

Progress on the writing front, The Long Dark text and cover art is in the hands of the book designer, and I’ve been busy proof-reading the interior layout. Getting very close to publication before Christmas.

Last gasp of summer

So, we're now into September. Since moving to BC, I've always reckoned on Labour Day marking the end of summer. Yes, we may still get warm spells for a few weeks yet, but as soon as the sun disappears it feels autumnal. Darker mornings and evenings, cooler air.

In the last week, Ali and I took another trip up-Island. We enjoyed our week in a cabin back in July, and decided to do it again to round off the summer. It was just the two of us this time (plus dogs) which made a nice change. The week started off a bit crappy, with a two-hour hold-up on the highway due to a serious accident earlier on in the day, followed by a day of rain, but things improved throughout the week. Overall, we had a good time doing nothing much in particular.

Now it's a long weekend before we all get back to the grindstone.

There is a lot of confusion and anxiety about the upcoming school year.

At Ali's school there is supposed to be distancing and other health measures in place, including some remote learning. But from the information available, it looks like all students will be on site for a large chunk of the time which seems to make a mockery of the need for remote learning. If on-site is good enough for half the day, why not the whole day? And the class sizes are too large to allow effective separation.

Matthew will resume college studies, and it looks like most of the learning will be remote other than essential lab work. Again, questions of practicality rear their heads if an on-campus block is followed by remote work where the students are supposed to be off site.

Maybe things will become clear in the coming week, or maybe it will be a gong show. Who knows?

COVID stress

The pandemic is still with us, obviously. March seems like a long time ago, let alone the blissful ignorance of January when it all sounded like a distant problem being faced by people half-way around the world.

Back then, it felt like the world was being turned on its head by the evolving spread of the disease, and the ever-changing advice as new facts emerged. Precautions appeared at first unthinkable, then laughable, then became incorporated into everyday life.

Now we are settled in for the long haul. Who knows when a vaccine will be available, or how effective it will be? Meanwhile, the world has to keep turning and we continue living our lives as best we can. Masks, distancing, and other changes in how we live and work have become an accepted part of life.

But, underlying all the more obvious disruptions and anxieties, I've noticed a more subtle source of stress. It's not something I've heard people talk about, because most people I know work from home most of the time, and this stress is most noticeable in the office.

Social distancing means deliberately and consciously keeping your distance from other people. That requires constant awareness, and active avoidance behaviors. That is not normal behavior for a social animal. In fact, it goes fundamentally against our very nature.

Intellectually, I understand the reasoning. Heck, I'm doing exactly the same to my co-workers – keeping distance, backing off if I see someone coming the other way in a narrow hallway. But on the receiving end, it feels like being shunned, rejected, cast out from society.

Casting people out is a harsh and cruel punishment practiced by societies since time immemorial. It hurts.

Of course, this isn't punishment, it's precaution. But knowing that there's a good reason, that it's not about you, doesn't lessen the hurt. When intellect conflicts with gut feeling, intellect loses. I don't know what the answer is here, but it doesn't feel like something I can just “deal with” or get used to.

Support our workers

All around our neighborhood, hearts have been appearing over the last month. Someone has been making plywood cut-out hearts on posts to stick in your lawn. Some have appeared on hydro poles and in windows. Someone down the road shaped a string of lights into a heart on their fence.

All this is to show support for our armies of essential workers, from healthcare professionals to delivery drivers, to the grocery store workers and many others who are in close proximity to the public all day long.

We combined this heart theme with another suggestion to brighten up Victoria with Christmas lights, and clipped a string of lights to our hedge facing the road.

To give a sense of scale, the hedge is taller than our camping trailer (parked behind, out of sight) and twice as tall as me. The heart is about 9’ tall. Standing on tip-toe I can barely reach the red light at the bottom of the “V” across the top.

Of course with the light evenings this heart isn’t visible until some time after 8pm, but I like to think it brings some cheer to people driving past of an evening.

Grim statistics

Over the last month I’ve developed a grim fascination with figures. Trying not to let it become a compulsion - but what the heck! - Ali watches news briefings, I watch graphs. In these trying times I think a little short term madness is essential for long term sanity.

I discovered the Worldometers site which captures a whole raft of world statistics, including tracking the daily progress of the pandemic.

At the start of April, experts were suggesting the US might see between 100,000 and 200,000 deaths. At that time, when the tally was still only a few thousand, such figures were laughed at and quickly downplayed by politicians. A week or so later, the expected toll was revised down to between 60,000 and 80,000.

Now, the US is heading for a million cases by Monday and should exceed 60,000 deaths by Tuesday. On current trends I fully expect that original estimate to be realistic - if not optimistic.

I know it’s not really scientific to compare one country with another, when each has different demographics, different healthcare systems, and different approaches to handling the pandemic. But those are the only pointers we have to go on. So looking at countries that are further ahead in the outbreak, places like Italy and Spain reached a plateau in the graphs of daily new cases and daily deaths, followed by a slow decline. The US and Canada are still on the early part of that plateau. In fact, they haven’t really leveled off in a significant way. This tells me that today’s figures will likely at least double or triple over the next month.

While I’m making dire predictions, looking elsewhere in the world I am keeping a worried eye on both Brazil and Russia. With all the attention on China, then Europe and Iran, followed by the USA, they haven’t really been prominent yet. But just looking at the recent rates I can see them both joining the “100,000 club” by the end of the month and mingling with the hard-hit European nations soon after.

Finally, it sickens me to see the protests flaring up in some countries. These figures are bad enough, and they’ve only been kept at this level (I was about to say “this low” but there is nothing low about them) by the measures being taken. Healthcare systems have been stretched, but not completely broken. That will all change drastically if we let down our guards too soon.

The new normal

How are your self-isolation measures going? In the last week there’s been growing unrest down in the US, and increasing demands to open up for business again. Up here in BC we seem to have escaped relatively lightly, with strong public awareness of and support for the need for caution, but without the more stringent measures many countries have adopted.

Of course, schools, pubs, restaurants and many business are closed. But much of life continues, albeit in considerably altered form. Ali is home, but helping her students through remote one-on-one tuition. Grocery stores are essential businesses, so Megan is still working in the bakery. Matthew, of course, is in his element. He spends his days gaming online with friends and this is just an extended summer for him.

My office is still open. Although most of our services are online, we take in mail and couriered documents, and for some things there is no online alternative. So although we have a full complement working remotely there is a skeleton staff still physically present, and it’s important for at least one or two of the leadership team to be present for moral support. But the office is a ghost town these days. On a typical day there might be half a dozen of us there, in an office that is normally buzzing with seventy or more people.

I can mostly work from home, but I find I work better in the office. The mental switch that comes with the change in scenery is important for me, as is access to printer, scanner, and a handful of physical files. So I’m commuting in most days, and enjoying the silver lining of little traffic on the roads.

Many people in the branch are enjoying working from home, and even report better concentration and productivity. The government IT infrastructure has had a real workout these past weeks. Still some network capacity challenges, but they are still making improvements.

Grocery shopping is getting more organized. There are subtle changes each week. They’ve improved the one-way system around the aisles, especially through the produce section, and put up more screens at the tills to separate lines of customers so now they can open all the checkouts again instead of every second lane. The line-ups are manageable and the store has been fairly quiet the last couple of weeks, even on a Saturday morning.

And I noticed they even had toilet paper on the shelves this week. Things must be looking up!

Finally, I also managed to buy art supplies this week. I’m completing a major round of edits on The Long Dark and am looking ahead to cover art. The art store is closed to foot traffic, of course, but they are taking orders by phone. The store is just a couple of blocks away from my office, so I was able to pop out and collect my order that same day.

It’s not COVID, honest!

Standing in line this morning, waiting to get into the grocery store, I coughed.

I glanced around, self-conscious, to see if anyone was giving me that judgmental “you should be self-isolating” look. But the lady ahead of me just smiled. “Allergies?” she asked.

This is my car after standing idle in the driveway for a day and a half.

Why, I wonder, would she think anyone would be suffering from allergies right now?

An introvert’s paradox

Social distancing is a phrase nobody had heard of a few weeks ago, but it’s the order of the day now.

You would think that these times would be ideal for a profound introvert like me. How wrong you’d be!

I use the Myers-Briggs definition of introversion, which means that social interactions take energy from me, rather than me being energized by them as an extrovert would. In other words, dealing with other people is tiring. I need quiet time to recharge before I become too drained to function.

But that does not mean dealing with other people is unpleasant. In fact, paradoxically, I find that being around others is essential to my mental health. I just need to manage the balance.

I liken it to exercise. A lot of people enjoy exercise, and it’s necessary for physical health. But you need to expend energy along the way and you can’t keep it up indefinitely. Other people’s company is my mental exercise.

And without it, without a certain level of ad-hoc in-person interaction and simply being around other people, I am starting to feel the effects.

How are you all doing out there? How is social distancing affecting your lives?

A world-changing month

It seems utterly unreal that only three weeks ago, the COVID-19 outbreak felt similar to SARS a few years ago. There was concern, even fear, and precautions especially around foreign travel. There was heightened awareness of risk and reasonable containment measures, but the expectation was that life would go on more-or-less as normal.

Three weeks ago, most of the cases (about 80%) were still in China, with what seemed to be fairly isolated pockets elsewhere. The curve in China had already flattened out, and the unfolding tragedy in Italy and elsewhere hadn’t yet impinged on global awareness.

Three weeks ago, there were no general restrictions in place. National governments were following up positive cases to trace contacts, test for infection, and contain the spread. It felt like we’d have a few rough months ahead, but providing the healthcare system held up and people were sensible, the situation felt manageable.

Three weeks ago, Ali and I were still making travel plans for my 60th birthday in July.

Three weeks ago you could still buy toilet paper.

Now, we are hunkering down for a protracted battle. Borders closed to international travel, shortages of some items, and social distancing has become the norm in all walks of life. New measures are popping up almost daily. Pubs, restaurants, beaches and parks closed. Grocery stores are limiting the number of people allowed in at any one time, with lineups outside the doors to gain access, and hired security controlling the flow and disinfecting shopping carts ready for use. Duct tape on the floor shows where to stand in line at a safe distance.

Just by way of comparison, think back to the public attention SARS gained in 2002. And yet, by the end of the SARS outbreak there were in total just over 8,000 cases worldwide, and 800 deaths. Compare that to today’s figures to get an idea how serious COVID-19 is. And the curve worldwide is so far showing no signs of flattening out.

I am a generation removed from WW2, but was brought up on stories of wartime rationing and deprivation from my parents and grandparents. We are still a long way from those kinds of stories, but we are also a long way from the “normal” we’ve grown used to.