Tag Archives: Covid-19

Not on all cylinders

Woke up with a pounding headache this morning and not feeling 100%. Isn’t it odd that any other time but covid, I’d take a couple pain relievers (which I just did), then head off to work. I’d muscle through the day and even stay late to get things done. Pre-covid I’d also go to school with a cold and runny nose, or other flu symptoms. I wonder how any times in the past I spread my sickness, somehow thinking I was doing something good by avoiding a sick day.

No flu symptoms today, but definitely best if I stay home today… and also best if I stop looking at this screen right now. Back to sleep if my thumping brain will let me.

Different worlds

We all live on the same planet, but we live in vastly different worlds.

Imagine living in India right now, and being in an over-crowded hospital, hoping to get help for a severe case of Covid-19. With cases peaking at over 350,000 cases in one day, just two days ago, India will surpass Canada’s total cases since the pandemic started in just 3 days. The scale is unimaginable to compare, and so is the life lived by many of the citizens in these two countries.

And then there is Bill Gates: “Bill Gates says no to sharing vaccine formulas with global poor to end pandemic“. He lives in a completely different world where he can make ‘$7.5 Billion During The Pandemic‘ and use quality control as an excuse to withhold lifesaving vaccines from the neediest people.

We share the same planet, we do not live in each other’s worlds. At some point these inequalities will need to change. If they don’t, this shared world of ours won’t be worth sharing much longer.

We are getting there

I’m surprised how many people are still choosing not to get vaccinated. Here’s a short video that says a lot:

I think the part that people miss is that at this point it’s a civic duty. Never in our lifetime have we been called to ban together for a common good in the same way, and yet so many people choose to cherry-pick data and find reasons to be fearful. They have their reasons, their justifications, their ‘freedom’.

But we are getting there. First we’ll get everyone who wants a vaccine their vaccine. Then we’ll get them their second dose. Then we’ll see how many millions of people are safe because if it, like the measles and chicken pox vaccines that came before. Then a few of the reluctant will realize that the shot will give them more liberty to travel and to see elderly people they care for, and to receive hugs without masks.

It won’t happen as fast as I would like, but we are moving in the right direction.

I got my shot!

Last night I was fortunate enough to get my first Covid-19 vaccine! (I’m actually writing this as I walk home, but it won’t be posted until the morning.)

It was given to me by a second year UBC med student. I hadn’t thought of using medical students to help, that’s a brilliant idea.

While sitting for the obligatory 15 minutes afterwards, I shared this photo on social media:

A good friend asked on Facebook: “Which one did you get Dave?”

My response, “The one I could get… I’m leaving it at that because I want to encourage others to do the same.

It feels great to be one step closer to normalcy,.. and although this won’t change my habits and diligence, it’s still a celebration that we are headed in the right direction. I’ve taken a huge safety precaution for myself, and I’ve also done my civic duty to help protect the more vulnerable members of society.

That’s the post. Now, it’s time to pump up the volume on my headphones, and enjoy the rest of the walk home.

Limbo

I was in our local drug store yesterday and they were taking walk-ins for the covid-19 vaccine. People just needed to be 55 years old or older to get it. I’m a year and a half too young and so I couldn’t get mine. It was wonderful to see, but also so frustrating that I still have to wait. I know it’s not a quick fix, I know I work in schools where students will not be vaccinated for quite some time. I know we will have strict protocols right through the end of June, and potentially when we start up in September again. I know all this, but I feel like I’m in perpetual limbo waiting for my turn to get the vaccine.

I also wonder about all the people choosing not to take the vaccine. Vaccines are not perfect, but neither are countless over the counter drugs that people use every day. For instance, ibuprofen is a drug many people take way too frequently and can be very bad for you.  Here is some information about ibuprofen:

“Regular use of ibuprofen may eventually cause:

  • kidney and liver damage
  • bleeding in the stomach and bowels
  • increased risk of heart attack.”

And, “NSAIDs such ibuprofen can increase the risk of heart attack or stroke in people with or without heart disease or the risk factors for heart disease.”

In a global pandemic, no vaccine is going to be perfect, but the fear mongering and paranoid opportunists have pushed the anti-vax stupidity to what would be comical levels if the consequences of their stupidity weren’t spreading so quickly. I’m frequently surprised by people sharing concerns about the vaccine who seem to have very limited understanding of what research has been done, people who confuse RNA with DNA, and people who cherry pick their information from biased news sources and spout their bias as ‘facts’.

All this leads me to think that when I finally get the vaccine, while I’ll sigh a little sigh of relief, and while I’ll do a little happy dance… I just might find myself in the same limbo a while longer. I’m not sure it’s going to bring me as much comfort as I would like it to.

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Meanwhile, as a PSA… Keep taking your Vitamin D!  (See ‘Vitamin D and Covid-19‘ and ‘Vitamin D could save your life‘.)

Work on the brain

Got an email from the district to send to parents about the new Covid-19 rules in effect when we return to school on Tuesday.

The big changes for our school bolded:

o All students Grades 4-12 are required to wear a mask inside schools both within and outside their learning group.

o All staff K-12 are required to wear a mask inside schools both within and outside their learning group.

Essentially, students and staff will be wearing masks all day, as opposed to having the option of removing them when at their own desks. This is important information, and as instructed, I’ll send it off to parents (and students and staff) tomorrow.

Since reading that email, my brain has been on work, and on the pandemic. Things to do, and things to be concerned about. Sometimes I can’t let things go. I can’t relax. Today feels like it was a work day, even though I didn’t go to work. It’s going to take a bit to get back into holiday mode. I want a few more days of holiday brain before work brain fully takes over.

Restrictions again

As of midnight last night, we can no longer eat in indoor restaurant seating (again). I get why: Coronavirus numbers in BC are high, and greater restrictions need to happen to stop the spread. But these restrictions came with very little notice. I can’t imagine being a waiter now, and finding out shifts will be dropped. I wouldn’t want to be a restaurant owner, knowing that profits are going to take a big hit, and wondering if I could sustain this if the restrictions are extended beyond the scheduled three weeks.

There are also stricter mask rules in schools, with older elementary students needing to wear them, rather than this being optional. And the most hard-hit school district is getting their staff vaccinated first (this is wonderful to see), I hope our district gets the opportunity in the very near future.

I wish we could do a lockdown like New Zealand. That we could just put a chokehold on the spread of this virus and get it under control. This won’t happen in BC. Instead we do this dance of quick ‘fix’ restrictions (with little or no notice), while also flirting with new opportunities to gather in small groups (outdoors). We play this ‘push me pull you’ game of experimentation to see how little we can affect everyone’s lives while trying to curb coronavirus spread.

I keep going back to my survival mantra: Things will start to normalize by January 2022. This keeps me going, keeps me vigilant. I see timelines suggesting that things will happen faster, but I can’t hold on to these false senses of comfort. Promises of normalcy make added restrictions like this feel crushing… small losses with a promise of small gains. I can’t handle the swings if I think things will start to get better sooner. So, while restrictions are being added, I see them as part of the agenda to normalize by the new year. Until then, bring in the restrictions! Maybe make them tougher now, maybe lay out a plan that people can prepare for.

I’d rather do what’s necessary now than reach December and see my timeline that wrote off all of 2021 be seen as unrealistic rather than pessimistic. I want to be pleasantly surprised to see things get better by then, not drastically disappointed because I need to push the date back further.

0.9 Percent

There are well over 5 million people in BC. Yesterday less than 50,000 people were vaccinated. Less than 1 percent. I know things are ramping up, and many good people are doing the best they can to support quick (and fair) distribution of the vaccine. And I know 50,000 vaccinations in a single day is good… But when I see the challenges the US has, and the fact that they have vaccinated as many as they have, it makes me wonder what else we could be doing? And what else should have already happened?

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I don’t want to jump the queue, but I want everyone who wants a vaccine to get it faster than the current rate. It should be possible to make this happen.

We are all in the same lifeboat

A few days ago I wrote about the state of limbo we are in, dealing with the coronavirus. I said,

My thoughts: If everything goes well, it could be September before we get close to vaccinating enough of the population to truly ease up on our personal restrictions. More likely, we are looking at January 2022. That’s another year away. I think things will get much better, but the path will be slower than everyone wants.

However I made an assumption that I’m starting to question. More and more I’m realizing that there are going to be too many ‘free riders‘, too many people not taking the vaccine. Too many people believing that the vaccine will cause more issues than the virus. Too many that think the virus isn’t serous enough in their age bracket. Too many people that misunderstand what a vaccine is and what it does.

Without enough of a herd immunity, the virus will continue to spread in a way that means our lifestyle pre-pandemic are not likely to return for years. Virus mutations can and will spread, and each mutation has the potential to spread more easily and/or mutate enough to make vaccines less effective.

It’s like we are all in the same lifeboat and it has tiny little holes in it. Vaccinated people plug the holes, non-vaccinated people don’t think the holes are a serious enough problem. These free riders aren’t doing their job plugging the holes in the boat. And because of that, the boat keeps getting wetter.

I’m shocked every time I hear someone say that they won’t get vaccinated. I know there are ‘anti-Vaxers’ who link vaccines to false claims and negative propaganda, but I can’t say I’ve met or know too many people I’d put in this category. What I am seeing is vaccine hesitant people who think that vaccines for Covid-19 are unreliable, or not significantly tested, or even dangerous. It is this group that scares me. The crackpot anti-vaxer community is a fringe group, too large for my liking but not larger enough to endanger heard immunity from happening… however the vaccine hesitant group is way bigger than I thought, and this group will undermine the ability to reach herd immunity; to keep our lifeboat dry enough not to be concerned.

Only a few days ago I was feeling like I was being pessimistic saying the earliest rerun to ‘normal’ was January 2022, but now I’m thinking that’s terribly optimistic. We could be stuck in this leaky lifeboat for a very long time.

Covid daily routine

Early on in the pandemic, I read that ventilation and fresh air circulation was very good in helping to reduce spread of the virus. At that time my morning custodian was not consistent and so I had different custodians coming to the school, so I decided that I would go to each of our 5 classrooms at Inquiry Hub and open windows to start the school day. We have early morning principal meetings on Thursdays, and on that day I didn’t get around to opening the windows until just before classes started.

On this day I was able to see and chat with a lot of students on my route. So, that time slot has become my daily routine. In a couple of the classes I will end up asking students to open the windows if they are already seated nearby and I can’t access them and be socially distanced, while the other 3 room windows are always easy to access. But more than that, it puts me in every room, each morning, to say greetings and chat with students.

I know that I’m lucky to only have 5 rooms to do this in, with my other school being the online school with no physical classrooms to visit, and for some principals this would be a massive undertaking. But for me this is a wonderful way to start my day. Sometimes I just say quick good mornings, other times I get into full conversations with students.

Yesterday I spent time hearing about the progress of one of our grade 12’s who has been working on a massive project since grade 10. Monday was just a catch-up on the winter break. This routine can take me about 5 minutes or it can take over 15. No matter how long I spend, it has become a wonderful routine that starts my day off right.

Students are so confined in their movements now compared to pre-covid. Even in our small school they use 3 different entrances and have no common hallways. With things being so isolated between groups of students, this little covid inspired daily routine has really helped me connect to students in a way that I would have otherwise missed.