Last week sucked, January will be worse, and I'd like to wish you all a merry Christmas!
Hey, I don't suppose any of you guys are sitting on a vaccine supply?
Code 47 readers, I've missed you. There was no note from me last week, because last week sucked. Both of my kids ended up getting sick, at different times, and both required COVID-19 tests before they'd be allowed back to school. Both were negative, as I expected they would be. But that ate a lot of time. And then in the middle of all this, my puppy got into a trash can (even though it has a lid!) and ate cotton balls, cardboard and one (1) earring, thus requiring emergency surgery. He's fine, but I spent days nursing the idiot back to health. He seems to have learned no lessons from the experience, by the way. Check out the thread below.
I did keep working during that weird week, and I also managed to crush a toe against a radiator and scratch an eyeball. So I could recap everything. But honestly, guys, I'm just too tired. So no recap for the last two weeks, and Code 47 is now officially on holiday for 2020. I have been working on a few fun pieces here that I might get out over the next few weeks, but if not, I'll catch you all again in the new year.
A closing thought, though, before we go.
As I sat down to write this, news broke that the Ontario government is likely to order a province-wide lockdown to try and get a rapidly worsening COVID situation under control. As I noted this week at TVO.org, our hospitals are now as strained as they ever were during the first wave, and we know it's going to get worse before it gets better. I don't know yet what this new (or extended, for some of us) lockdown is going to look like, but it's probably too late. January is already going to be really tough. Everything we're doing now is to try and salvage February and on from there, holding things together while the vaccines slowly trickle in. (And boy howdy, is that ever going to be a story we talk about a lot next year.)
There's a lot of anger at politicians for where we find ourselves today. A lot of it is aimed at Doug Ford where I live. Others are the targets elsewhere (and Jason Kenney seemingly everywhere). I don't have any interest in excusing inaction, bad decisions or costly delays. But I do think that a lot of our anger is misplaced.
I hesitated before I wrote "misplaced" there. It's not the perfect word. The buck stops at the top, so misplaced isn't precisely right. But I can't think of another single word that precisely captures my sentiment, so let's see if I can do in a sentence what I can't do in a word: While it's true that the buck stops with them, I really don't think there's much these elected leaders could have done to stop this.
There are definitely things they could have done to be better prepared for this. And they deserve the (proverbial!) stones being thrown their way on that score. But my honest belief is that, sometime in the last few months, a significant portion of the population decided they'd had enough and that they'd just go back to life more like normal. Not everyone can totally isolate and stay home, of course, and we've known that from the beginning. It's a special kind of privilege to just cut yourself off from the world and we don't all have it. But beyond those folks, I think there are many who could have been more careful, but decided to stop bothering.
Why? I dunno. I have thoughts, but no firm answers. I think in some cases it's a selfish but probably rational enough calculation that they can live with the risk COVID poses to themselves, and screw everyone else. In other cases I think it's just plain old denial. People operated under emergency thinking as long as they could and then just had to tune it out for their own sanity. And then there is undoubtedly some COVID fatigue at play too. We aren't wired to be on guard all the time.
I don't make any excuses for this, and I've certainly tried to remain vigilant myself. I've been appalled at some of the behaviour I've heard about or witnessed. But I'm awfully gosh darned skeptical that Doug Ford and John Tory yelling at us more is going to actually change behaviour at this point, and I'm equally doubtful that there's a lot they could have done since the fall to meaningfully change the course we're on. They could have tried. Probably they should have tried. But I really don't think it mattered once summer wrapped up. A critical mass of the public just stopped playing ball, and a stern press conference and a colour-coded alert system wasn't going to change that. I'm not even convinced that heavy and comprehensive enforcement will, either.
Is this a human nature issue? Is this something that's part of the Canadian character, with our American-influenced individualism overriding our sense of collective duty? I honestly don't know. I just keep thinking of that old play on a famous military quote, which seems to apply so well to us as we head into a grim second wave of this pandemic. We've met the enemy. And it is us.
We're going to learn so much from this pandemic. (I'm not saying we'll apply those lessons, to be clear, but we'll learn 'em, if only to later forget.) And I think one of the things we've all learned is that this is a kind of thread that Canadians weren't ready for, in many, many ways. And I'm not sure we'll do better next time.
I'm sorry to end 2020 on a grim note here. Code 47 is, after all, something I started in part because I wanted to have more fun. But it's not looking like we'll have much fun at all these next few months, at least not collectively. So I'll wish you all as individuals, and wish your families, a healthy and happy holiday. It'll be a weird one, no doubt, but I hope all of you find a way to make it fun and happy where you can. Read some good books, drink some drinks, put on some good tunes, eat some delicious food, get some sleep and just relax as best you can. It's the best gift you can give yourself this year. Maybe the only one. Unless you're sitting on a shipment of vaccine. If so, pop me an email and we'll talk.
But barring that, just take care. Merry Christmas, Code 47 readers. Happy New Year. And let's all do better in 2021.
That, after all, should not prove hard.
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Twitter.com/MattGurney