Not to open 2022 on a discouraging note, but the first couple of days have left something to be desired.
Much like its older sibling 2021, the new year starts off under the hazy cloud of COVID-19. The only mild difference is this time around it’s a slightly mutated strain known as Omicron that has thrown a wrench into everybody’s plans. This time last year it was the B.1.1.7 strain of the virus that was dominating headlines.
The final verses of Auld Lang Syne had barely wrapped this weekend before Ontarians were hit with the news that more Public Health measures were coming our way and the return of school was to be delayed, first by two days, now at least two weeks. Suddenly the lyrics ‘mom and dad can hardly wait for school to start again’ resonate just a little bit more. With so many people (still) working remotely, things can be a little challenging when the home doubles as both the office and school/daycare. Meanwhile cases of COVID-19 across the province have climbed so high that simply getting tested is now somewhat of a luxury.
Getting excited about the fresh slate that January brings can be difficult when it feels like we’ve gone backwards in the War on COVID-19. Looking back to last summer/early fall, it appeared we had the virus on the run, particularly in KFLA when the region would go several days in a row of posting no new cases while the number of active cases dwindled to single digits. Here we are at the start of 2022 and those numbers have ballooned to hundreds of daily cases while the active case count skyrockets to over 2,000. Those figures can make it tough to leave the problems of last year in last year. At the same time, simply ignoring the virus isn’t going to make it disappear either.
Gloomy as it may look now, there are still reasons to be optimistic about the next 12 months. At least that’s the opinion of this humble scribe.
One of those reasons is that as long as we’ve had to deal with COVID-19, we now know a lot more about it than we did back in January 2021. There’s also plenty of access to vaccines for all ages, something we didn’t have until late April last year. There is also hope to be had in the data that shows while Omicron may be extremely transmissible, it does seem to be much less severe than that of the Delta variant. We also have the memories from last year of when the virus-all strains-was much less active in the warmer months when people spent more time outdoors and less time in cramped spaces.
Ideally the pages of this year’s editions of the Beaver will be filled with less talk of a pandemic and more about the fascinating stories of our residents and less talk of a global pandemic that was first discovered in 2019. Let’s hope COVID-19 plays as small a role as possible in the coming months and is reduced to nothing but a minor footnote when we look back at the top stories of 2022 next December.
-Adam Prudhomme