March 27, 2022. It got cold and white overnight in Toronto. Some people are always surprised by this. We get a few warm days and such people think winter is over.
Some more sagacious people create an analogy of this with the big public health problem which continues to plague The World. In western countries, the consistent pattern is for the infection rate to drop, for misgovernment to assume from this that the pandemic is all over, to begin dropping precautions, and then be amazed when it all starts back up again.
I was outside earlier getting groceries and admiring the yet fresh and unspoiled snow. Most people are still wearing masks, a week after Bucket Brain Doug ended the mandate.
The clerk at the convenience store says she thinks it is still a good idea to be cautious. That store is still requiring masks to enter. Not many people are giving her a hard time about it, at least not yet.
But yesterday at a tiny corner store, the owner seemed very nervous and confused. He had no mask on. I so very tactfully mentioned how much I like the new headband type mask I was wearing; so comfortable. He sputtered that he could put a mask on if I wanted.
“Oh, no, don’t worry about it”, I told him. “The warm weather will be here soon. You’ll be able to keep your door open, which will help if you can’t afford an air filter system.”
People in the lobby and elevators are still following the same informal protocols. “Mind if I come on?”
“Oh, sure. We both got masks.”
Some persistent lobbying from our building committee has convinced the management to improve the ventilation system in our lobby and elevators.
We have some ignorant people in the building who refuse to wear masks and just walk onto the elevators. People often just walk off the elevator and wait for the next one. Often the ignoramuses sneer but generally keep their mouths shut.
The fears that people who still wear masks would begin to be subject to a harassment campaign have not materialized so far. No one I know has been interfered with in this way. There was a local news story about school kids being bullied for wearing masks until adults intervened.
To the contrary, some school children have made demonstrations demanding that masks remain compulsory in their schools. It seems there is a lot of passive resistance like this. Many parents are still keeping their kids home and they are not retaliated against by school officials.
However, there has yet to be any significant active resistance to the criminal negligence of the provincial government. That is, institutions being shut down until the correct protective measures are put into place. More importantly, parallel structures being set up to carry out such tasks as distribution of needed equipment, when governmental structures will not do it.
Right now people seem not to be buying into the line being sold, that the pandemic is over. They are not outright rejecting it, either. They are waiting to see.
There is now a great effort being made to suppress information about the pandemic. Testing is not being done, which creates a false impression that cases are declining. They are in fact higher than ever.
There is an obvious effort to suppress awareness of ‘long covid’ and its effects, and of multiple infections, and the implications of these. It is beginning to be apparent that the ‘labour shortage’ is due to increasing numbers of people too chronically ill to be able to work full time, but this is absent in the establishment media.
Two years into this, basic facts about the disease, which have been known from the start, are still not being communicated clearly to people. That is, how the disease is spread, the need to improve indoor ventilation, the ways of doing that. There is still no mass education about why and when masks are needed, what is a good mask, how to wear it right.
Most people no longer trust what is told them by government and by private media. They have usually found sounder information sources. Of course, many people have become trapped in ideological bubbles in which they are fed malignant misinformation.
Some people are uneducated or impoverished and cannot access good information. Some are not in a position do much to protect themselves even though they know how.
People are waiting to see. They are abandoned by government, left bewildered and confused. Maybe the pandemic really is ending, finally.
Maybe the next wave is about to hit. They usually start in Europe and reach Canada about six weeks later. The Omicron BA2 wave has been in Europe for six weeks. It is worse there than any previous wave, mostly because governments have dismantled most countermeasures.
How are people going to react when this next wave hits and government just throws up its hands about it? People in Europe, especially in the U.K., seem demoralized. They are also being hit with the consequences of other idiotic government policies, including the snit on with Russia.
People over there now also have war hysteria, and food and fuel shortages, to contend with. They are not in rebellion mode. They have gone into ‘hopeless’ mode for now, focused individually on trying to survive the breakdown.
Conditions are not as bad in Canada as in Europe or The States. Our governance systems do seem to work better here; not well, but better. There are no shortages or breakdowns, but there is obvious inflation. Access to some services is restricted, especially health care, but things keep moving along.
People are not being thugged around, as in some countries. People are not being threatened with arrest for not sending their kids to school as in the U.K. Police are not being used to try to force people back to work in unsafe conditions, as in some areas. Evictions for rent arrears are creeping back up but are still below prepandemic levels.
So, conditions in Canada during the great pandemic continue as I have often described them; better than most countries, but well below the best. There is more willingness to protect the public. But the forces of “let it rip” and “Herd immunity” are still in the background, pushing relentlessly, and at present slowly getting their way.
As I have often restated, the herd immunity mentality is slowly losing ground globally. In more and more countries, a strong public movement for public protection is pushing back. The countries where there is a tradition of local organizing have, naturally, done well at this.
Countries where the government is fully oriented toward toward serving the wellbeing of the population, the nation as a whole, rather than a privileged class, have thus been able to control the virus quite effectively. China is the shining example of this and leads the pandemic fight. But it is disturbing how few such countries there are.
In many countries there is at least a vague expectation that government will serve public interests, and those in office must at least make some pretence of doing so. In contrast, there are other countries where there is an idea that anything government does is interfering with people’s rights, and these generally have the worst outcomes.
Canada does have this expectation of public interest being served. This is the biggest reason we are ‘better than most’. We are not among the best, partly because we do not have the local and public initiative tradition of many countries, and of course partly because .
Canadian political culture tends more toward ‘clientelism’; we request things from power, we do not demand. While I believe this is starting to change, we have not had the tradition of going ahead and doing things for ourselves if government does not step up.
This does not bode well for Canada, because the key to overcoming the pandemic and to prospering in the post pandemic world is a willingness of the public to mobilize to reshape institutions from the bottom up. I have gone into this topic briefly in my previous article. This will take the form of “This is the publicly mandated committee to get done what government is not getting done.”
A lot of this is happening around the world anywhere there is some tradition of it and it is not being violently suppressed. One thing to Canada’s advantage, there is not much tradition of violently suppressing political actions and when it does occur, it usually does not go well for the suppressors.
Polls are saying that about three quarters of Canadians are ready for a substantial restructuring of society. The mechanism to do it is not there. It is not going to come through any electoral or legal process. The Canadian constitution is set up to block that kind of thing.
The “ground up” path to reform is the only one open but Canadians have no practice at it. Useful change always happens in Canada when there are some good examples from abroad. So far there are no examples of a ‘covid revolution’, especially one done with minimal violence.
Taiwan of all places went some way toward such a revolution. I have attended a presentation by one of the old ladies who stormed the halls of power of Taipei recently. The government was getting talked into the “we cannot be isolated from the world” trope and was going to open up air travel as a prelude to opening everything else.
She emphasized the need to not be deferential to authority; to “put your ugly face on.” The business lobby and media pushing the ‘open it up’ policies were told to shut up or face action against them. Taiwan, as are most of the ‘fight covid first’ countries, is doing very well economically.
Like everywhere else, Canadians must learn the art of the ugly face if we are going to overcome and eliminate the covid plague. We have to learn a lot of things and it will be a complicated process. The next wave will be a deflection point; people will fall into hopelessness or start to mobilize.
What people have to understand is that covid is unlikely to go away on its own. There will be no ‘live with it’; it will gradually destroy the economy and society. The present political and and economic system is totally inadequate to deal with this kind of crisis.
So we have some interesting times ahead. Yet while history is unfolding I and my neighbours and friends must get on with our lives. I will blog on. I have developed this blog into a nice little pulpit from which I can thunder against the forces of darkness. Unless they shut down the internet altogether, I should be able to continue in at least a limited way.
Postscript, March 28. A new box of ‘headstrap” type masks came in the mail today. I have become fond of them. They align better on my face and give a tighter seal. They are easier on my ears.
I have become more tactful about urging people to find higher quality masks. I deal with a lot of store clerks. A few days ago one snapped back at me when I lauded my style of masks; not everybody can afford the best masks.
That set me aback; in my older years I have come to be among the privileged. It was not so in my earlier days. However, to paraphrase a certain popular musician, we all have to fight to be free, so you do not have to live like a refugee.
We may as well find the best kind of masks to suit us that we can afford. They will be a fact of life from now on. They should be seen as a symbol, not of oppression, but of a secure, healthy, prosperous society.