As COVID hits the 1-year mark, a weird week doesn't dent my overall optimism
My kids couldn't go to school this week ... but my parents will probably have their vaccine soon. On balance, I'll take that trade.
Well, welcome to Friday, Code 47 readers. Another week, another dollar, as it were. It was an interesting week for us here on the homefront. Due to a close contact with a COVID-19 case, my wife and kids had to isolate, despite negative tests. (Everyone's fine, but yeah.) So my wife, a teacher, had to teach remotely. And my kids couldn't go to school, and there is no ability for them to shift temporarily into an online stream while waiting to return to class. We found a way to make it work — their teachers were as helpful and understanding as they could be — but it ended up being something of another lost week for their educations.
I'm generally the opposite of whatever a tiger dad would be — education matters, but there's a lot more to being a kid, and growing up to be a decent human, than school. But there is obviously going to be a point beyond which the disruption to their education, especially during their early years, is going to start doing some real damage. I choose to remain hopeful. They are young, and they have many years of school left. I trust that there is time enough for them to catch up on what they've missed. Plus, let's be real. This pandemic is a global event, and there will be a drag on educations and economies everywhere. Not equal, of course. But this isn't something happening to just them, so their competitive advantage shouldn't be too badly eroded in adulthood. If that strikes you as a crass way of putting it, well, what else is education beyond preparation for life in the adult world?
So yeah. It was a weird week. We relaxed as much as possible, so I'm sure my barbarians would tell you it was an amazing week, but I did wince a bit at the thought of yet another blow to their learning. But it was still, on balance, a good week. Because there is hope that we won't have to deal with this too much longer.
The vaccination program is gathering steam in Canada. Slowly, and not much steam yet. But we've seen photos and videos this week of adult Canadians lining up for their first shots. Elder Canadians are being vaccinated in all provinces, and younger Canadians will be up soon. I can't help but break this down into what it'll mean for my family, and I'm optimistic — I'd almost forgotten what that felt like! — that my in-laws will be safely vaccinated by next month and my parents, God willing, by the summer. They might have to wait a while to get that second shot, but with the first shots conferring a high degree of protection, things should start to look and feel more normal soon.
There's downside risk here. Mutations and variants will be a concern for a long time. We have just enough time to squeeze in a third wave. And I haven't been blown away by our competency at any part of this pandemic, so there's definitely a good chance we find some way to screw up in what ought to be the homestretch.
But I'm a great believer in firepower. "Le feu tue," as French general Phillipe Pétain said during the First World War — firepower kills. (Pétain, ahem, later became known for ... uhh ... other stuff.) Even if we continue to generally bungle the pandemic response, once vaccines are arriving by the tens of millions, by sheer weight of numbers, we'll get vaccinated. It'll be sloppy and inelegant and wasteful, but it'll work. Eventually.
It's been a weird year. The months ahead will also be weird. But that light down the tunnel is getting awfully bright ... and it's not as far down as it used to be.
Let's recap the week.
There were my usual videos for the National Post.
The first was about Erin O'Toole's electoral prospects. Are they great? No. But are they as bad as the coverage would suggest? I don't think so. He still has a path to at least a partial victory, if his party lets him take it.
The second was also on federal politics. Jody Wilson-Raybould is writing a book. I don't think this will be as exciting as that might sound.
Also at the Post, I finally finished a column I'd actually been working on for some time. This one went through a few different versions before it finally saw daylight, but I think it was worth the wait. I wrote about the unrealistic expectations Canadians have of their country. We chronically underfund and neglect essential emergency capacities, but still just expect they'll be there waiting for us when needed. This is a big, big problem. COVID-19 was a huge wakeup call. We ignore it at our peril.
There was some material I had to leave on the cutting room floor, as it were, to make that version of the column fit, so I took some of what I couldn't fit and took it to Twitter with a long, punchy thread. Please check it out.
Over at TVO, I was busy, as ever. Earlier in the week, I wrote about our plans to delay second doses of the vaccine, so that we can get first doses (with huge benefits) into the maximum number of people. It's a good plan, I said. I'm onboard with it. But we're going to need to give people clear and early guidance on what they can safely do (and what they should not do) in that interval between their first and second shots. In the absence of said guidance, people will start making up their own rules. That won't go well. Read that column here.
And on Thursday, I observed the one-year mark of the WHO's declaration that COVID-19 was indeed a global pandemic with a column where I recapped some other possible start dates for this bizarre year ... but also noted the end date is in sight, too. And both may end up involving Costco!
At The Line, I responded to some recent comments made by a prof at UCLA about how Substack — this very platform — is a threat to journalism. I think she actually made some fair points, but she was wildly off overall. She has this strange attitude that journalists somehow owe it to legacy media companies to put up with increasingly lousy pay and workplace conditions, and zero job security, and avoid taking any control over their own fates. To put it mildly, I don't think that's true ... and I further think it's kind of crazy to say so.
"If for some, your best bet is sticking with a legacy company, well, by all means, please do so," I wrote, "as long as they can afford to keep you. For others, if that means striking out on your own, with a Substack or a podcast or something else, well, good luck to you. Make the best call you can for yourself, and not for what someone else thinks society needs you to do. It’s strange that this need be said, but colleagues: you don’t owe me or anyone else a life of stress, low wages and precarious employment."
Read that here, and if you haven't already, subscribe today.
That's it for this week, team. Thanks for reading, and as always, please share widely. Take care of yourselves. We'll talk again soon.
mgurney.responses@gmail.com
Twitter.com/MattGurney