On a more serious note…

I started this blog to talk about the Toronto Maple Leafs and was looking forward to a season – and hopefully playoffs – to enjoy and to complain about. With the arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic, however, the season has been suspended along with all other professional sports, events and daily commutes. I’ve been silent for the past 3 weeks while adapting to working from home and building a new routine, but I’d like to write more about the crisis which is right now changing our world.

The cancellations and the isolation brought upon us by the pandemic and the push for social isolation have been a difficult adaptation. The restrictions represent a complete change to how we have learned to live our social lives. I’m not surprised that many Canadians and Americans have chafed under the restrictions and have found ways to bend the rules as far as possible, leading to further restrictions. Adapting to social distancing means learning an entirely new set of habits.

Learning these new habits and buying into social distancing is, however necessary. Over the past century, we have learned to not fear infection from cuts and abrasions, nor such terrible historical diseases as measles, mumps, rubella, polio, malaria and typhus. We have learned to treat each year’s flu season as little more than a nuisance. In short, we have come to rely on our doctors and our public health systems to achieve miracles and the system has delivered.

This reliance – the firm belief that our medical systems could save us – has shaped our habits and our modern society. We are emotionally, financially and practically unprepared for quarantine. We fight the restrictions, have no savings and no stores of supplies. We buy the wrong things – look at the run on toilet paper in our stores – when we go to supply ourselves. We have become used to habitually travelling, including long commutes across cities to get to work, flying regionally and globally for work and pleasure. As a matter of course, we assume that we will take a vacation during school breaks. We also assume that schools and public places will remain open with minor exceptions. We assume that we will be able to gather, party, exercise, participate in marathons and triathlons and attend Olympic Games. We assume that we will be able to build new businesses with minimal capital and no security in the hopes of achieving our dreams.

And this time, our medical system cannot perform a miracle. There is currently no treatment, no vaccine, nor any medicine to treat this virus. There will not likely be a reliable treatment for 12 to 18 months. Left unchecked, this virus will infect tens of millions within that time and kill hundreds of thousands or millions. Our medical professionals realize that the system will be overwhelmed if we don’t control its spread and thus they have asked us to social distance: effectively, they have asked us to voluntarily forego our freedoms – and the lives, businesses and society that we have come to know – for the sake of all of us.

Of course we feel the urge to defy the request. Giving up freedom, restricting ourselves to our homes, giving up all those things we’ve assumed for ourselves? And for what? Deep down, we’ve all come to believe that our doctors will save us and the thought that somehow they can’t seems preposterous.

But it’s true: doctors have warned us for the past couple of decades that we are vulnerable to this sort of outbreak and this pandemic demonstrates it.

For me, I think that’s the most sobering realization. That not only is this a terrible crisis this year, but we should realize this as part of the world we live in. The world we knew and enjoyed last autumn has now changed.

We WILL make it through this though. The scourge of plagues were a normal part of life for millennia until recently, and the human race survived and thrived. So, too, will we.

For my part, I’d like to follow this line of stories a bit further. In future posts, I’ll look at some historical pandemics and how people adapted. I’ll take look at how people are adapting to this pandemic, to share ideas for everyone.

In the mean time, I’ll stay in: I’ll keep active and train for my triathlons in my living room, I’ll cook plenty of long-lasting foods (stews, soups, etc) so I don’t need to go out.

Lets get through this together.