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Back in time for Covid
Nov. 12th, 2020 01:00 pmAs quoted in an article by Sharon Kirkey in today's paper, University of Ottawa professor Amir Attaran is sharply critical of our prime minister for failing to implement a national COVID-19 strategy:
https://theworldnews.net/ca-news/as-covid-19-smoulders-in-multiple-regions-experts-question-why-canada-has-no-national-strategy
Maybe he has a point, but I'm not altogether convinced. He thinks the current Trudeau ought to be doing precisely what another Trudeau did fifty years ago - invoke the Emergencies Act (known back then as the War Measures Act) - and was widely criticized for. Well, fuddle-duddle to that, I say!
It all leads me to speculate what life would have been like in decades gone by, if the Covid-19 pandemic had hit us back then.
Covid-60: I was in a split grade 1-2 class here in Ottawa, at Vincent Massey school. They had split grades back then too, not because there were too few kids to have separate classes but because there were too MANY - and too few teachers available to teach them. As I recall, there were about 45 kids in the class. Some of us had to share desks. Can you imagine trying to do physical distancing under those conditions? Online schooling was definitely not an option. No one had home computers in those days! We did have telephones and radios and even TV - black and white, with only one or two channels that didn't begin their broadcasting day until around noon.
Okay, so let's talk about day-to-day life. Shopping could be done at what we now call "bricks and mortar" stores, or by leafing through the Simpsons-Sears or Eaton's catalogue, phoning in your order and getting it delivered. Well, delivery services are one thing that's definitely making a comeback these days, though I don't hold out much hope for the restoration of our six-day-a-week door-to-door mail deliveries! Online ordering? Nope, though mail-order catalogues were definitely a thing. They'd often do COD orders too!
What about health care? There were one or two positives. Doctors usually made house calls if the illness was serious enough. And there were plenty of serious illnesses you couldn't get vaccinated against in those days! Most schools also had a nurse on site full-time. As I recall, Medicare was in its infancy and not that many people had extended health care coverage through their employers. We worry now about "twindemics" and the co-existence of flu and Covid-19 but back then, there were several pandemic threats still lurking in the background: polio, tuberculosis and all the typical childhood diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox.
Okay, enough of that. Maybe I'll do another Throwback Thursday next week and tackle Covid-70.
https://theworldnews.net/ca-news/as-covid-19-smoulders-in-multiple-regions-experts-question-why-canada-has-no-national-strategy
Maybe he has a point, but I'm not altogether convinced. He thinks the current Trudeau ought to be doing precisely what another Trudeau did fifty years ago - invoke the Emergencies Act (known back then as the War Measures Act) - and was widely criticized for. Well, fuddle-duddle to that, I say!
It all leads me to speculate what life would have been like in decades gone by, if the Covid-19 pandemic had hit us back then.
Covid-60: I was in a split grade 1-2 class here in Ottawa, at Vincent Massey school. They had split grades back then too, not because there were too few kids to have separate classes but because there were too MANY - and too few teachers available to teach them. As I recall, there were about 45 kids in the class. Some of us had to share desks. Can you imagine trying to do physical distancing under those conditions? Online schooling was definitely not an option. No one had home computers in those days! We did have telephones and radios and even TV - black and white, with only one or two channels that didn't begin their broadcasting day until around noon.
Okay, so let's talk about day-to-day life. Shopping could be done at what we now call "bricks and mortar" stores, or by leafing through the Simpsons-Sears or Eaton's catalogue, phoning in your order and getting it delivered. Well, delivery services are one thing that's definitely making a comeback these days, though I don't hold out much hope for the restoration of our six-day-a-week door-to-door mail deliveries! Online ordering? Nope, though mail-order catalogues were definitely a thing. They'd often do COD orders too!
What about health care? There were one or two positives. Doctors usually made house calls if the illness was serious enough. And there were plenty of serious illnesses you couldn't get vaccinated against in those days! Most schools also had a nurse on site full-time. As I recall, Medicare was in its infancy and not that many people had extended health care coverage through their employers. We worry now about "twindemics" and the co-existence of flu and Covid-19 but back then, there were several pandemic threats still lurking in the background: polio, tuberculosis and all the typical childhood diseases like measles, mumps and chicken pox.
Okay, enough of that. Maybe I'll do another Throwback Thursday next week and tackle Covid-70.
