e-KNOW Editorial

By Ian Cobb

What a year it’s been. Hugely memorable yet wildly unfulfilling, the past 12 months – March 11, 2020 to March 11, 2021 have established a range of forced changes on human behaviour for the good of the masses. And as there is always a yin to yang, we’ve witnessed some of the sorriest and most selfish of human behaviours.

At the start of the pandemic, many people railed about it being a hoax. Every single one of those people I spoke with or learned about who barked “hoax” were not doctors, nor nurses or people with any simple clue about what was happening around the world.

In the real world, we watched with despair as countless lives were lost, as businesses, big and small spiralled into closures and bankruptcies. We lamented the loss of favourite distractions, such as professional sports and music and film and accepted major changes in the delivery of said distractions after the panic of the first wave passed.

Remember that craziness? Who would have thought that when the World Health Organization (WHO) declared a pandemic around COVID-19 that toilet paper would disappear from store shelves?

Visits to grocery stores in the first six weeks or so of this pandemic gave you a clear idea what people believed they needed if things shut down – which they did.

We stocked up. I made sure our freezer and shelves were well stocked. I made sure we had other survival supplies such as ammunition and fuels. Then we hunkered down on the mountain and watched and waited.

Every morning it was coffee and morning news with the daily false sincerity spewing by Prime Minister (Boy am I glad this pandemic came long to distract people from my numerous brain farts and bad decisions) Justin Trudeau, as he laid out plans to spend our grandchildren’s futures into lesser realms.

Yes, much of it was necessary and it helped keep Canada from turning into the hyper-excited children’s circus of chaos that America descended into – led by a rampaging buffoon who admitted to knowing the situation was much worse than he led on in public.

As the pandemic/year pushed into the spring and summer, the fear of COVID-19 declined and people pushed envelopes the world-over in terms of gatherings, except for New Zealand, which showed remarkable poise and patience under pressure.

“Super-spreader” events – from small parties to huge gatherings like the Sturgis bike rally in South Dakota – began to inflict more suffering and created the second wave, which might be receding as I write this – as vaccines begin to roll out and winter melts to spring.

There is hope now, whereas back in the first half of this pandemic, there was nothing but uncertainty and more and more severe changes to how we navigate socially.

We’ve been lucky in B.C. to have an amazing leader in Dr. Bonnie Henry, whose poise, calm, grace, natty shoes and down-to-earth demeanour, along with astute professional skill and a quality team of professionals working with her have kept B.C.’s case counts relatively small. B.C. hospital staffs and frontline workers of all form became heroes at the start of the pandemic and still are heroes – more so for the daily stresses added to their work loads, which were already severe before March 11, 2020. Just think of the parallel pandemic – toxic drug overdoses – which was already in full rage before this pandemic began, with 1,716 deaths in B.C. in the last year.

Out of B.C.’s population of 5.1 million, there have been 85,650 cases, with 73,309 recovered (as of March 11, 2021) and 1,394 deaths.

For comparison, South Carolina is the state with the closest population to B.C. in the US, with 5,218,040. The state has thus far had 528,000 cases and 8,781 deaths.

So that’s a good old fashioned “nice work everyone” – from essential workers to the overall population for doing its part to “flatten the curve” – another term and concept we’re all now familiar with.

I’d be remiss for not tipping my chapeau to local leaders who have stood tall in their communities during this difficult year, as tourist dollars disappeared and desperation intensified.

District of Elkford Mayor Dean McKerracher used humour and straightforwardness in a series of videos as the pandemic progressed, keeping residents informed.

District of Sparwood Mayor David Wilks has done an excellent job with social media messaging to residents, as has City of Kimberley Don McCormick, District of Invermere Mayor Al Miller and Village of Radium Hot Springs Mayor Clara Reinhardt.

Many local service clubs, non-profit organizations and businesses stepped up to lead the way in a dark time. Not long from now, we will be able to once again gather without concern of a rapid spread of a potentially deadly virus and then we shall pay thanks to all who have kept our local area safer than most other areas.

There has been great damage and suffering, health-wise, economically and individually.

I cannot for the life of me imagine what it would have been like to go through this pandemic alone or single.

The generation of children who are going through this will be forever changed; some will be terrified of germs, others impacted by gaps in education or valuable social interactions.

The pandemic has blown open the doors on Canada’s long-term care home ‘industry,’ with much-needed improvements coming (damn well better be).

Downtowns in cities the world over will likely suffer when “things go back to normal” as the art of working from home, virtually/digitally becomes mastered by more. Think of all those high-rise office towers that will grow emptier and emptier and contemplate the impact on real estate values as a result in those bigger cities.

It is also quite possible that smaller cities such as those in the East Kootenay will see more population growth as people gravitate from the ‘daily grind’ of commutes, parking battles, urban insanity, high rents/mortgages for small offices etc. to lifestyle improvements in smaller, safer, nicer communities where you can work from home in your PJs if you prefer.

One year after the WHO declared the pandemic, we are all a little different and changed. Every single person currently alive today, globally, will remember 2020 and 2021. History will remember it, too.

A year ago, some folks were grousing about their “freedoms” and “rights” being stripped away by an Illuminati-type consortium, which apparently included every politician, bureaucrat, journalist etc. in the world and they declared with grave assuredness based on the most Dunning-Krugery of notions that the pandemic hoax was all about ‘controlling’ the masses for nefarious ends.

They declared COVID-19 was no big deal and thought ‘herd immunity’ would solve all woes. I found those folks quite cold. “As long as I am all right jack, bugger the rest,” my dead departed Dad would have said. Convenience of opinion trumps fact nowadays (see what I did there?).

For those folks who barked back in March 2020 that COVID-19 was no big deal…  here’s a look at the worst pandemics in recorded human history.

The first pandemic recorded is believed to be the Antonine Plague, which killed about five million in Asia Minor, North Africa, Greece and Italy. It is thought this plague, brought back to Europe by Roman soldiers, was either smallpox or measles.

The Black Death, or Bubonic Plague, is first believed to have appeared in 541 a.d., killing about 25 million, or roughly half the population of Europe at the time.

In about a seven-year period between 1346 and 1353, between 75 and 200 million souls in Europe, Asia and Africa dropped dead from the Bubonic Plague. It was at first carried from port to port by rats and fleas.

Between 1852 and 1860, the Third (of seven) Cholera Pandemic spread from India around the world, killing one million.

The Asiatic/Russian Flu knocked off one million plus in 1889/90.

The sixth cholera pandemic in 1910/11, killed more than 800,000 world-wide.

The 1918 Flu Pandemic, usually called the Spanish Flu (even though it originated in the USA), claimed about 50 million souls – about 10 to 20% of the estimated half a billion people who contracted it.

The Asian Flu (1956-58) claimed two million people.

An influenza pandemic in 1968 killed over a million people. Often called the Hong Kong Flu, over half that number were killed in Hong Kong.

HIV/AIDS is estimated to have killed about 36 million people since the mid 1970s, with the peak years between 2005-2012.

According to the World Health Organization Influenza (the flu) kills roughly 650,000 people worldwide every year.

As of August 23, 2020, the novel coronavirus COVID-19 killed 806,000, in seven months.

As of today, March 11, 2021 – one full year into the pandemic, 2.62 million people have died from COVID-19 world-wide. In Canada, 22,360 souls have been taken, including almost 1,400 in B.C.

Our American cousins have had a tough go this past year, fighting a rising plague of willful ignorance as well as COVID-19, with 529,000 dying in the past year. More Americans have died from COVID-19 than from the first and second World Wars, Korean War and Vietnam War combined.

Considering the advancements in medicine, COVID-19’s still climbing death toll makes it one of the worst in recorded human history.

It will also serve as a teaching point moving forward for future pandemic planning, because this won’t be the last global health crisis.

Today is a sullen and grave day as we remember those we’ve lost to this pandemic, as we acknowledge the sacrifices made by many of our fellow citizens as they manned the front lines while privileged shrews bemoaned not being able to get a haircut, hang out at the mall or share bro science while building their boulders sans a mask.

I miss being able to gather with friends; I miss my family in Winnipeg; I miss being able to nip down to Montana, northern Idaho, Washington or Oregon for quick and easy “unpluggings”; I miss not having to wear a mask when I go into a store; I miss being able to do my job, such as cover councils in person or attend community events but I do see the light at the end of that tunnel, which on March 11, 2020, stretched into a seemingly infinite inky distance.

Normally one to fling pooh at humankind for its endless foibles and tomfoolery, I must do the right thing and declare vast admiration and appreciation for the scientists and doctors who so quickly developed a vaccine to combat COVID-19. I didn’t think I would ever wax all flattery on big pharma!

So hang in there folks; don’t let go of the oars before we hit shore. We’ve done a smoking good job of not killing off our friends and family by being selfish and reckless. Let’s keep it up for a few more months.

I cannot wait to get my jab!

– Ian Cobb is owner/editor of e-KNOW. In more than 30 years he has never written a kind word about big pharma and feels iffy about having just done so.

---

Article Share

---