An update from the land COVID forgot (up to a point).
The turn of phrase everyone's been using in the past few days is "arse' gone out of 'er" (use your imagination as to what that means, I find it to be perfectly cogent English). We just got confirmation that the UK variant of COVID 19 had been running rampant in metro St. John's for at least the last week and a half or so, and we're back in lockdown.
A few interesting notes for some perspective.
- We had 50 new cases today, and 260 active cases. 233 of those cases were added in the last 4 days.
- By comparison, the similarly sized state of Vermont currently has 2,895 active cases. It can't be overstated how different an experience Newfoundland has had with this virus compared with most of North America.
- 195 of the 260 active cases are under-20 years old, and it sounds like most of the spread they've identified happened in a high school in Mount Pearl, the next city over from St. John's. Of course, it won't end there, but I suppose it's good to know.
- The provincial government put in a system of alert levels as we reopened from the first lockdown, and they stopped making any goddamn sense months ago. Most of our stuff opened back up in the late spring/early summer after being in alert level 2 for a while, but for some reason they officially kept the province in level 2 semi-permanently even after a stretch where we had no active cases at all for something like 40 days in a row. Then the fall came, and there were second waves elsewhere in the world, so we started getting these little leaky cases where one person would bring it home from work abroad, and their family would get it, but the alert level stayed at 2 because apparently we're just leaving the thing where it is. Then 5 days ago, we get 11 new cases and rumblings that it got into the K-12 school system - and still at level 2. 4 more days where, as I said, arse' gone out of 'er, and we're still at level 2. School close, offices close, bars and gyms close, but the alert level stays the same. Then the Premiere, the Health minister and the Chief Medical Officer call an emergency press conference tonight to confirm that the recent cluster is in fact that UK variant, and they're raising the alert level all the way up to 5? Like, we know? Things are bad? What does alert level 5 change compared to what we were all doing 3 hours ago at level 2? I dunno, it's weird and not all that well thought out.
- Further to that, does the presence of the UK variant here actually change anything at all? Like, we knew the virus was out of control in Mount Pearl, and that we pretty much had to stay home for at least a couple of weeks to prevent it from getting any worse. But does the particular flavour of virus matter? Is anyone out there saying "well, at least it's the original strain", just prior to suddenly deep-kissing a stranger, WWII-sailor style? I don't think so.
- We're testing like crazy, and it's funny to think that the %positive has actually gone down in each of the last 3 days. My thinking is that this cluster is going to keep returning a few dozen cases a day for the next week, but will burn out pretty quickly shortly thereafter.
- Speaking of which, my god are we a cynical people. One comment I read on a CBC article said something to the effect of "...things Newfoundlanders are good at ... and spreading COVID". Like, what? We're terrible at spreading COVID. We completely eliminated it for over a month at one point!
- This is the closest I've been to being contact traced, though I haven't been and probably won't be. Jenny Engine's sister had a co-worker who ate at a restaurant where the virus showed up, and the dope kept showing up to work anyway. But he tested negative, her sister tested negative, and Jenny and are here working from home and watching hockey.
- I was supposed to do a recording session with a violin player, which would have been my first serious session as a cellist, but the violinist went to that restaurant and he did the responsible thing and cancelled. I'm not very good at cello but I try.
- Arse' gone out of 'er.
