Covid19 - One Week

Saturday, March 21/20

So here we are one later from the start of some extraordinary measures being taken around the world.

Well around most of the world as our cousins to the south appear to be a tad bit slow trying to stem the tide of the virus, mostly thanks to the great pretender known as The Donald.

I'm not going to go into all the reasons that things are so bad down there or going to get a hell of a lot worse but I will say this when it's all said and done I'm expecting a second kick at the can of impeachment as there is no way a sitting president can be this incompetent and survive in office, least I hope not and people wake up.

I'm not a fan of politics and try my best to avoid the subject as it really is one of the most contentious topics two people can talk about.

I will say this that as a Canadian I'm more than a little proud at how the Federal and Provincial governments have worked together to fight the spread of Covid19 in Canada. It's not every day that a Conservative Premier, Doug Ford of Ontario, goes on the TV & Radio to thank a Liberal Prime Minister, Justin Trudeau, for doing everything he can to help minimize the damage and danger faced by all of us.  I'm not a huge face of Trudeau but will say he has certainly stepped up and tried to get us in a position to avoid some of the devastations we've seen elsewhere in the world.

Friday ended my first week working from home and while it wasn't the most thrilling week it also wasn't the worst week. I've tried to keep the same work schedule I was following before the work from home decision was made, I get up the same time and prepare as if I'm heading into the office and then make sure I break for lunch and ignore my work laptop. When I break for the day around 4:30 I head out for a walk so I get some fresh air. It's so strange to see how few people are out, the empty parking lots at the two schools near my place, and the vacant buses that go past my place, buses that up to two weeks ago were packed with people heading downtown to offices and students off to high school or university.

 My original work setup at home saw one monitor and my work laptop on the dining room table but that proved difficult as my line of work requires me to use two large monitors for analysis and testing with my laptop really only used for email and Google hangouts. I changed things up and moved to the breakfast nook that separates the kitchen from the living room as that was wide enough to let me set up two 24" monitors, yes I'm totally spoiled, and my laptop. This set up was better but I didn't like how it seemed to take up my space, block the view from the kitchen to the dining area and living room, nor did I like sitting on the chair for the breakfast nook all day long, the darn thing made my feet hurt when I put them on the footrest.  Additionally, I found it was too easy to be distracted seeing people walking outside or the ability to get something to eat or drink at a moment's notice.

I was able to get a lot done but knew a change had to be made this weekend to prepare for the coming week as I've got a tonne of stuff to get done on a couple of key projects sets to conclude before year-end on March 31st.

Now I use two monitors in my home office with my own laptop and figured I could swap out my smaller monitors for my work monitors and set things up so I could use my work laptop during the day and switch to my own laptop at night, the only problem being my laptop is a little older and uses video in and not HDMI input so that required me to get an adaptor this morning from Staples before getting some groceries.

This led me to the new guidelines being implemented by a lot of establishments around social distancing. Staples was only letting 10 people into the store at a time and those forced to wait outside were reminded of the 3-foot rule with well-placed markers along the storefront. The same thing was set up at Loblaws where they were directing all shoppers into the store so they could keep a running count and only accepting cash at one checkout with the others set to accept debit and credit card. Once again I noticed markings on the floor near each checkout identifying the proper distances people should keep between one another while waiting to pay for groceries, in addition to only having every other checkout open, a huge difference from when they used to have every single one open between 9 am and 2 pm on Saturday's.

Now, this isn't to say I wasn't out last weekend getting groceries but this was my first time out and about observing how life is changing for us. Restaurants closed except those with takeout facilities, minimal traffic on the roads, and gas prices under 0.80 per liter due to the fall in demand. I've limited my interactions to groceries, the pharmacy, and filling up the car.

Tonight marked the closing of the border between Canada and the United States to anything but the transportation of goods, there is no more movement of people between the two countries for purely recreational purposes for the foreseeable future.

There is continued talk of even more drastic requirements around social distancing as we see the count of those infected still rising, Doctors in British Columbia are calling for even stricter measures as they feel the province might be on track to see the same outcome with Italy, the hardest-hit country outside of China, with another 800 deaths recorded today for a total to date of almost 5,000 dead due to the virus.

I'm an introvert so social distancing is my norm but even I'm feeling the stress as I haven't been able to see my grandchildren face to face or hold them. I'm pretty confident I'm not carrying the virus but there is no way I'd even consider visiting them as it would potentially put my 7-week old granddaughter at risk, something I'll never do if it's in my powers.

We have no clue how long this is all going to last but from the sounds of things, we might be looking at mid-summer before we even begin to see a partial return to how things were before the outbreak.

It'll probably get worse before it gets better but I know if we all work together to follow the procedures being developed that we can overcome this threat. My grandparents faced the onslaught of World War II so I'm confident we can face this and win.

My name is Marcus and I hope everyone is staying safe in these trying times.

I'm here to chat if anyone needs to vent - ooasm2018@gmail.com

Today's musical suggestion is Glen Campbells "Gentle On My Mind" as performed by The Band Perry.