A couple of you have addressed pandemic time in your Local Observations. I've included these responses below. They're anonymous for now.
The Waiting Period
It is 8:29 in the morning as I begin this file. My attention immediately goes to the date: March 1st, 2021. Years ago, the month of March had no significance to me. It was just like any other month. After last year, March is no longer just a month. For a lot of people, March 2020 is now known to be the month where the world changed. Fear in Canadian society rose as cases began to spread through community transmission. Travel was no longer the culprit; we as a community were. I will never forget the day schools were closed and non-essential businesses were required to shut their doors. Although I was not a student during the time, I was a full-time employee in a pharmacy and before we knew it, our shelves were being raided and were soon to be left empty for months. Face masks, gloves, disinfectant wipes, sanitizer, thermometers, toilet paper, and many preservable foods were hoarded in the homes of panicked families, and the region I lived in soon resembled a ghost town. Everyone was so unbelievably fearful of the unknown, we did not have any idea how the world would turn out. We still do not.
March 2021 marks the one year anniversary of the COVID-19 pandemic. For one year, the world has been paused, waiting and cheering for the littlest bits of good news that the health officials would give us. A year later, disposable and reusable face masks are now available at every store and you are expected to wear one at all times. Sanitizer is now being distributed by the truckloads. A year later, many employers have transitioned to a permanent, remote online workspace where working from home is considered to be the norm. Schools have familiarized themselves with online programs that students now use as their primary, and safest, source of learning. Restaurants that are open are only offering dine-in services to ten people at a time. This weekend, it was announced that Canada has accepted yet another vaccine to be distributed in communities, making it the third that will be offered to the Canadian public. As of right now, only 500,000 Canadians have received both required doses of the vaccine, making them immune to the virus. The government is determined in providing safe and orderly vaccine distribution. They are hopeful that in the next coming months, vaccines will be available to the general public. For now, those of us who are not government officials, working in hospitals, or assisting in the homes of the elderly, wait patiently. We watch the news with anxious eyes, stay a six-foot distance apart, wear a mask, and wait.
Hopefully, the time waiting will be worth it.
Hopefully, March 2022 will be different.
Untitled
Pandemic time has been on my mind quite a bit lately. With the weather warming, and the sun setting later into the evening, I am reminded of this time last year. The uncertainty, the anxiety--it's all coming back. I fear time is now flying by too quickly, as I am nearly 24, and still in first year, for the third time in my life. I worry I won’t get to travel like I always wanted to do in my early twenties. It seems that the tighter I grasp at time, the faster it passes me.
I enjoyed reading these pieces. The piece "The Waiting Period" was very well written and made me reflect on my memories of both pre-covid times and the beginning of the pandemic. After reading I paused and reflected on how much has changed in so little time, and at the same time I thought about how long ago March 2020 feels like. One year ago I can still remember being at work talking to my coworkers about this "New Plague" and joking about how it would cancel the remainder of the ski season. Fast forward ten days and the world began to shut down. Stores began to close down, I was laid off from my job at the ski hill and…
I really enjoyed reading these. The writer of "The Waiting Period" did a fantastic job at making you feel as though you were in their head. I must say, I related in many ways to their observations on time and how much can change in a year. It feels wild to think about the beginning of the pandemic. During those first few months, every moment mattered. We had been given the opportunity so many of us had been dying for; excess time to accomplish the to-dos that never got done. Every day felt closer to the end of the pandemic, and the end of being stuck inside. Naive hope fuelled the energy we all felt. As that hope ran out…
It is fascinating how quickly time travels and how it impacts each person differently. These authors do an exquisite job of portraying their personal feelings and experiences of COVID-19 in these local observations and how its anniversary, as said in "The Waiting Period," makes March "no longer just a month" but a reminder of fear, destruction and panic for them. Despite living in reasonably similar circumstances as the authors in the early pandemic, (as I too worked in customer service and witnessed the shelves quickly empty due to societal panic), I also remember feeling a sense of joy and relief when schools first announced they were to close. At this time, a year ago, we thought COVID-19 simply extended our…
I think the authors of these commentaries did an excellent job of capturing the overall feeling of being stuck that a lot of people are experiencing. We’re in that final stretch of winter when the cabin fever starts kicking in, except we’re all still trying to shake the remnants of last year’s cabin fever. We all want to travel, or go party, or hug our homies, but we're stuck. A good chunk of the population is in mourning for 2020 while simultaneously preparing to mourn 2021. However, with the warm weather approaching, I’m hopeful that we’ll be able to pull ourselves up from the floor, out of our caves, and back into something resembling the norm we all want back.…
In the first piece entitled 'The Waiting Period', one line stands out to me and rings true both in relation to the pandemic and the issue of climate change as a whole.
' Travel was no longer the culprit; we as a community were.'
This line is not only jarring and beautifully put, but it also indicates a larger issue at stake that we are all guilty of at one time or another. It seems to me that human nature is to fault others, and to fault society for our shortcomings. At the beginning of the pandemic I found myself blaming travelers for the Covid outbreak in Canada, but it quickly became apparent that this was not entirely the case…