I think I have managed fairly well during COVID 19. I haven't really liked doing on line worship. We have improved somewhat since our first on-line worship service. However, it is strange to preach to just a few wonderful technical geniuses and our muscian each week. The rest of the church is filled with pie plates with people's faces. It is not the same. I miss people but I know that it is everyone's job to keep everyone safe. I miss the theatre, movies, and sporting events, but I am watching some of these things on television (except for sports- watching a sports event when you can google the answer who won this event seems very anti-climatic). I miss going to get my beard trimmed- although I have been saving some money by doing my own and have done an ok job with my style. I miss shopping, but I am at the point in my life where I don't really need to buy anything. Seriously though, despite some inconveniences in my life and major inconveniences in the life of others, I have managed to get up each day, like I always do, in a relatively pleasant mood and maintain that pleasant mood throughout the rest of the day. COVID has changed many, many things. COVID though has yet to change me.
Around mid-June things seemed to be getting better here in Canada. Numbers of new infections were down. Hospitalizations were down. The number of recovered cases was getting to be a larger and larger percentage in terms of total cases.
Then things started opening up. People started going out more. We were allowed to have social distancing in our bubble. Soon though these gatherings got too large. Crowds gathered at campsites in our provincial and national parks. Twenty thousand gathered one weekend at Sylvan Lake and the beach was packed. Suddenly our number of new COVID cases are spiking up in Alberta.
This tells me that we are not ready to open up yet. The virus has not gone away and it is still deadly. Watching the astronomical increase in the number of cases in the US shows that we are foolhardy to think that Coronavirus can be easily contained by a politician's swipe of his or her pen.
Second we are not ready because we, as human beings, are social beings (yes even I as an introvert believe this). I might have my social bubble with a small group, but maybe a member of that small group is also a part of another social bubble. Because of this, my small group has expanded whether I like it or not. We like living in a social world and right now that could be a dangerous thing. The late Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau said that controlling inflation in a hot economy was like sticking a pin into a balloon and letting the air escape slowly. The same could be said of social distancing in the time of COVID- we meet one friend so what would be the harm of meeting a second friend or a third friend. Voila, you have a burst social bubble.
Third, viruses mutate all the time. COVID might become less deadly. It might become more deadly. We still are seeing how survivors are battling new effects from the disease 6 months later. Will these people have relapses? Might new symptoms appear? There is just so much we don't know about the virus.
Numbers of cases are increasing. The number of people dying are increasing. The four months from March to July were very hard and I like many found the restrictions a tough pill to swallow. The rules have loosened up somewhat but now the numbers of cases are increasing. It shows that it really is too soon to open our borders, our schools, our churches, our businesses to back as usual. If we don't manage to get our number of cases down soon, we may again find ourselves in a very tight lockdown. Stay safe. Blessings.
