Tag: Brian Pallister

Pandemic Diary, May 17th, 2021: Living in the Epicentre

It’s official: as of yesterday evening, Manitoba has the highest per-capita incidence of COVID-19 in Canada, even beating out Alberta. We also have more infections per capita than any of the 50 states in the United States. Three-quarters of those cases are my home city of Winnipeg. I am now living right in the epicenter of the coronavirus pandemic.

Manitoba now has the highest COVID-19 case rate in the country, more than twice the national average. Manitoba just passed Alberta. Manitoba’s rate is double Ontario’s. This was entirely avoidable, had the government followed the science and implemented the right public health measures last month (image source: tweet by Tom Brodbeck, Winnipeg Free Press)

Manitoba’s healthcare system is stretched to the limit, despite promises from the provincial government that this would not happen again. CBC reports:

In the middle of April, when COVID-19 case counts were rising exponentially in Manitoba, the deputy public health officer promised this province wouldn’t allow the third wave of the pandemic to get out of control.

Dr. Jazz Atwal pledged Manitoba would not suffer the same fate as Ontario, which failed to enact measures early enough to prevent its own case counts from rising to the point where Toronto intensive care wards struggled to treat record numbers of COVID-19 patients.

Ontario, you know, when you look at how the case numbers went up, they likely waited much too long,” Atwal said at a news briefing on April 16. 

“We’re not going to go down that road, I could assure you that.”

One month later, Winnipeg intensive care wards are struggling to treat record numbers of COVID-19 patients. A record 71 COVID-19 patients are being treated in Manitoba ICUs. Hospitals are now doing everything they can to divert patients of all sorts from intensive care.

Some of the more stable COVID patients have been sent home, where they’re given oxygen and monitored remotely. Others have been sent to long-term care homes, most of which are no longer death traps, thanks to vaccinations.

Hospitals are placing acute-care beds anywhere they can, knowing the number of COVID-19 patients that require intensive care is expected to keep rising until sometime in June.

“Right now, it’s fair to say that from a physical capacity, we’ve expanded dramatically to all kinds of corners of the hospital and we’re almost working one bed at a time. Where’s the next patient going to go? Where can we move?” said Eric Jacobsohn, a Winnipeg ICU physician and anesthesiologist.

“We are sort of just running day by day, expanding where we can. And from what I’m told is … we’re going to make physical space, we have the equipment, but the issue is human resources. Where do you find the people, particularly nurses, other front-line staff, physicians, to look after these patients?”

All of this could have been avoided if Brian Pallister and his government had listened to the experts, who warned that this was coming. They ignored that advice, yet again. It could be that the third wave of COID-19 infections and deaths will be even bigger than the second wave in November and December last year. Hospitals will face an unprecedented crunch for space, resources, and staff over the next month.

This is NOT the time to get sick…any kind of sick. Don’t get into a car accident, don’t fall off a ladder, don’t have a heart attack. And above all, don’t get infected with COVID-19.

My anger at my incompetent government is percolating higher every day. I dearly hope that Manitobans remembers this absolute clusterfuck when the next provincial election rolls around in 2023. Pallister has to go, and the sooner he leaves, the better.

Pandemic Diary, April 25th, 2021: There’s Many a Slip ‘Twixt the Cup and the Lip

Twitter CFO Ned Segal’s chocolate chip cookie recipe makes delicious cookies, which are very, VERY bad for my blood sugar! 😉

I have had a fairly productive weekend ensconced in my apartment. I made tuna casserole, baked chocolate chip cookies from a recipe provided by Ned Segal, the CFO of Twitter (we got to chat in a Twitter Spaces room recently), worked my way through a mountain of dirty dishes, and finally cleaned my kitchen counters. I also worked on a presentation I will be giving at the iLRN 2020 virtual conference, tentatively titled Herding Cats: Developing a Taxonomy of Metaverse Platforms (Social VR and Virtual Worlds), which must be submitted to the conference organizers by May 10th. I’m also working on moderating a May 29th panel discussion for the Educators in VR UniVirtual Experience conference, which will be taking place on various social VR platforms during the month of May. I’m quite busy!

I’m glad that I am so busy, because otherwise I would be consumed with worry about the latest twists and turns in the coronavirus pandemic, both close to home and far away. I have been following the increasingly grim news out of India, which has been setting daily records in the number of new COVID-19 cases and deaths. The chart of the seven-day average for cases and deaths in India is starting to turn vertical! The following charts are from the Daily Mail:

I have seen interviews where some expert say that the official figures may be too low by a factor of ten. The healthcare system in many Indian cities such as Mumbai and New Delhi is already on the verge of collapse, and the peak of the current wave is not expected for another two to three weeks! I fear that we will witness the first country to be utterly overwhelmed by the coronavirus, to the point of a complete breakdown of Indian society. Things are not looking very rosy in Pakistan, either. Canada has already suspended flights from both India and Pakistan, but the coronavirus variant suspected to be behind this unprecedented surge, named B.1.617, has already been identified in the Canadian provinces of B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec.

Meanwhile, here in Manitoba, stubborn premier Brian Pallister has resisted a rising chorus of calls from scientists, doctors, and Manitobans to enact a full shutdown now, before things get out of hand here. CBC reports on an open letter sent to the premier by 37 current and former Manitobans:

Author and gynecologist Jen Gunter, former Olympian Clara Hughes and kids’ entertainer Fred Penner are among a group of 37 well-known Manitobans and expats urging Premier Brian Pallister to take more action to stem the third wave of COVID-19.

In an open letter, the signatories urged the premier to enact tougher restrictions now or risk prolonging the pandemic.

“We watch in alarm as our province is led directly towards the same fate as Ontario, where some of us are now living and watching an unfolding humanitarian disaster,” the letter states.

“The attempts to stall the inevitable broader scale provincial shutdown for as long as possible appears to amount to a calculated decision to allow an increased number of Manitobans to become sick or die in order to keep a number of non-essential services operational.

“This approach has been shown to prolong the ultimate period of closures and is actually more harmful to our community via virtually every meaningful metric.”

Ontario has already declared a provincial emergency, locking down the province until May 20th, and closing its borders with Manitoba to the west and Quebec to the east to non-essential travel (the international border with the U.S. remains shut since March of 2020). Hospitals in many provinces, including Ontario and British Columbia, are at the breaking point, reporting that the newer coronavirus variants are making younger people sicker. Ontario has gone so far as to transfer sick hospital patients out of the Greater Toronto Area to parts of the province which have been hit less severely, like Northwestern Ontario, in order to free up beds for an anticipated surge.

So it is surreal to hear many Americans talking as if the pandemic is almost over, about a return to “normal” by summer. There is an English saying: There’s many a slip ‘twixt the cup and the lip. Most countries outside of Israel, the U.K. and the U.S. still have not vaccinated most of their population, at a time when coronavirus variants of concern are spreading much more quickly. Although vaccination programs have made some good progress, there is still a lot that could go wrong.

Stay safe and stay healthy!

Pandemic Diary, April 23rd, 2021: Clubhouse Follies

Today is officially Day 373 since I began working in self-isolation from my home for my university library system on March 16th, 2020. All the summer courses at the University of Manitoba will be taught online and remotely, as in previous semesters, although the university is planning to conduct at least some of the smaller courses in-person come September (dependent upon the current pandemic situation, of course).

I have been on Clubhouse for (double checks) eight weeks now, and things are definitely getting a bit weird. Every second room seems to be about manifesting your first million dollars, or NFTs (Non-Fungible Tokens), or BitClout. And Clubhouse is starting to descend into endless petty tit-for-tat squabbles like the following:

*sigh* Could somebody please call these aggrieved people a WAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAH-mbulance? 😉

And yet, at the same time, I have started two clubs (one for Winnipeggers and Manitobans, and the other one is called Ask a Librarian), and become a moderator for a third club founded by somebody else, the Virtual Worlds club.

And, in addition to running my own weekly rooms in those clubs, I willingly put up my hand, come up on stage, and speak in many rooms (not in the NFT rooms or the petty squabbling rooms, though). In a weird way, Clubhouse is like a comforting blanket I can wrap around myself whenever I feel the need of company. There’s always a conversation happening somewhere!

I particularly enjoy the daily News News News room, where everybody contributes to (and discusses) the headlines. For example, someone will talk about a breaking COVID-19 story, and a doctor or scientist in the room will provide some expert commentary. It’s fast becoming my favourite way of consuming the day’s news stories, particularly since I no longer watch the broadcast TV news!

News News News is the crowdsourced morning news show I never knew I needed!

And it will be interesting to see how Clubhouse will change when they finally open up to Android users (the app is still for iOS devices like iPhones and iPads only). Speaking of iPads, I finally decided to order myself a shiny new iPad, going through the Apple website rather than make a potentially germy trip to my local Apple store in a shopping mall at the other end of town! It should arrive in about a month. In the meantime, I am enjoying my Netflix, Amazon Prime, and OUTtvGO streaming content on my desktop computer and my trusty iPhone.

My new iPad arrives in a month

As for COVID-19, well, our ever-arrogant, pompous, gaslighting Manitoba premier, Brian Pallister, is once again stumble-leading us into a third wave of COVID-19 infections (mostly driven by variants of concern), and into what I feel is an inevitable third lockdown, after the ones we endured last March and last November. I feel it is only a matter of time that the problems experienced in B.C., Alberta, Ontario, and Quebec land here in Manitoba, too.

I find sometimes I need to stay off the local news media because I get so angry at how the pandemic is being mismanaged by the provincial government. Our local newspaper, the Winnipeg Free Press, has been unstinting and unprecedented in its criticism and even condemnation of Brian Pallister and his government’s policies. People are not happy, and the government is unpopular, but unfortunately we still have a couple of years to go until we can vote these clowns out of office in the next provincial election. Good riddance!

I have resigned myself to the fact that I will be largely face-masking, hand-washing, and self-isolating for at least another four months, possibly longer. I received my first shot of the Oxford/AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine on March 18th, 2021, but I am not due to get my second shot until July (the government has decided to get first shots into as many arms as possible, to provide at least some protection against the coronavirus, then focus on people getting their second shots).

However, at least until that third lockdown is announced, I am now going into my library every Monday (which is still closed to faculty, staff, and students), in order to do some collection weeding work. I find that getting out of my apartment one day a week does wonders for my overall mood, and I enjoy the opportunity to have face-to-face conversations with my coworkers (wearing face masks and socially distanced, but still face to face!).

Other than going in to work on Mondays, I barely leave my apartment. The only regular trips I make are to go pick up the groceries I order online from Walmart, and to go across town to visit my mother and stepfather at their seniors life-lease condo.

Anyways, I hope you all are holding up well under the circumstances, and taking good care of yourselves. Stay safe and stay healthy!

Pandemic Diary, March 5th, 2021: Broken Together

One of my favourite songs is a duet by Amy Grant and James Taylor called Don’t Try So Hard (even though I consider myself an agnostic, I still love Amy Grant’s voice and I am still a big fan of her music, which I listened to endlessly as a teenager in my church youth group days).

So, I tossed it into YouTube Music to spin up a radio station of related songs, and up pops a song from Casting Crowns, Called Broken Together. It’s actually a good song:

How I wish we could go back to simpler times
Before all our scars and all our secrets were in the light…

Maybe you and I were never meant to be complete
Could we just be broken together?
If you can bring your shattered dreams and I’ll bring mine
Could healing still be spoken and save us?
The only way we’ll last forever is broken together

And “broken together” seems like an apt two-word description of what all of us, collectively as a society, are going through with this soul-crushing, dream-deferring coronavirus pandemic. I find myself wandering through my rarely-left-behind apartment like a zombie. I pause on my way to the kitchen to refill my coffee cup, and suddenly feel the weight of painful reality come crashing down upon me again, and I lean against the wall and close my eyes for a minute, and steel myself to continue. Keep going, keep moving, keep breathing. Keep living.

The next three to six months of the pandemic are going to be hardest stretch of the marathon yet, I fear. It doesn’t help that I have little to no faith in Brian Pallister’s incompetent, pompous, and adversarial Conservative provincial government here in Manitoba, which has largely mismanaged this crisis almost from day one.

For example, take a look at this map showing the locations of vaccination clinics in two neighbouring provinces, Saskatechewan to the west, and my Manitoba to the east:

God, when you wish you were living in Saskatchewan, you really know your life is going sideways. 😉

(OK, I was joking, people. It was a joke. Check the emoji! Please put your pitchforks and your tar and feathers away. I already got almost-cancelled last week, and I have zero wish to repeat that experience.)

Sometimes my anger, verging on pure volcanic outrage, is the only thing that gets me out of bed in the morning, the only thing that propels me through my day. But anger is exhausting, and I am already bone tired. So sometimes—often—it slips into depression. I took three sick days from my paying job last week, something I am not proud of. But it was necessary. I need to take care of myself. I am broken.

So many of us are now feeling broken, yearning for the simpler, pre-pandemic times, and that brokenness, and that need to connect, is expressing itself in society in unexpected and weird ways. We now gather and commiserate on Clubhouse and in Twitter Spaces instead of our local community bars and coffee houses.

Last night, as I was listlessly scrolling for some much-needed socialization on Clubhouse, I came across one room with Lindsay Lohan and her acolytes, and a second room where Paris Hilton was presiding over her minions (what, is this 2006 again?!??). All we need is for Britney Spears to pop up on Clubhouse (Free Britney!) and then we’d have the Unholy Trinity riding together again…I mean, if that isn’t a sign of the impending apocalypse, what is?? (Thank God, Margaret Cho was discussing female comedians and comedy with her usual acerbic wit in another room. Some sanity still prevails.)

Everything old is new again: two-thirds of these people were in Clubhouse rooms last night (surely this must be a sign of the impending apocalypse)

Use whatever technology you can muster—Clubhouse, Twitter, FaceTime and Zoom, and yes, even social VR and virtual worlds—to maintain our connections, our togetherness, in this time of brokenness. Reach out to each other. Comfort each other.

We can be broken, together.

Stay safe and stay healthy!