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What lessons did we learn from the first wave of COVID-19 and how well are we applying them to battling the second wave, now (from most accounts) upon us?

First, it certainly looks as if the authorities did not respond quickly enough when the first wave hit. Let's leave aside for now the historical arguments about letting our health care systems and services deteriorate in the years and decades leading up to 2019 and consider the weeks leading to the lockdown in mid-March 2020.

We were told that the risks from the virus were low unless you were already frail, ill or elderly. We were told that it was more benign than H1N1 or H1N5. We were told that it would do more harm than good to wear a face mask unless you happened to be a health care worker involved in direct hands-on, face-to-face patient care.

The advice on masks persisted for several months after the March lockdown and it was not until some time in July that non-medical masks became mandatory in most indoor public spaces. Of course, some people were smart enough not to take the official advice at face value, with the result that even those little dust masks sold at hardware stores were sold out for weeks!

We were also instructed to stay home as much as possible and stay out of public parks (except for quick walk-throughs), never mind that outdoor spaces are felt to be much safer than indoor ones and nature was beginning to wake up for the spring and the weather was getting a little nicer too. While we did manage to pick up a maple syrup order at Fulton's, we had to remain in the car and were forbidden any access to their trails, even though social distancing would have been very easy out there. As for Gatineau Park? Forget it! Police policed the bridges between Ottawa and Gatineau, allowing only such interprovincial travel as the police deemed essential. This lasted from just after Sophie Gregoire-Trudeau finished her self isolation and managed to spirit her kids across to Quebec until the Monday of the Victoria Day weekend when barricades and checkpoints were reluctantly removed. And don't get me started on all those bylaw officers handing out exorbitant fines and punching out innocent members of the public for bringing their kid to the park while black.

There was of course some advice that was good and reasonable - like washing our hands and keeping our distance from others - which most of us followed and it paid off, at the time at least.

Throughout July and August, re-opening proceeded in cautious stages of phased re-openings. We even managed to re-open schools in September, although there have definitely been some mis-steps and growing pains.

And now? Well, the increases in infection rates are disturbing, to be sure. New infections are mostly occurring in people in their thirties, maybe because most of them are just getting launched and do not feel they can afford to spend too long in lockdown. Some of them do become seriously ill with the virus and some pass the virus on to others even if their own symptoms are mild.

But I'll end on a hopeful note. I do see that the authorities are backing off quite a bit on the heavy-handed measures, looking at them as a last resort (or at least not a first resort) and stressing education, information and individual responsibility and using one's judgement and common sense.

For now, we are limiting interpersonal mingling as far as is reasonable, because it's the right thing to do. It's not always fun, particularly for those who live alone or who have a naturally expressive, outgoing sort of personality.

We'll be doing things a little differently this year - Thanksgiving, Halloween, probably Christmas too. But we'll still mark the occasions somehow.

Anyone for a new autumn or winter hobby?

https://www.ottawamatters.com/local-news/new-holiday-traditions-winter-activities-dr-etches-on-turning-the-covid-19-tide-2768461?utm_source=Email&utm_medium=Email&utm_campaign=Email

We're edging into that season when a lot of people, under normal circumstances, would be celebrating landmark events with their friends and extended family. Birthdays. Weddings. Anniversaries. Graduations. Festivals and national holidays. People want to go camping, cottaging, picnicking, boating, swimming, hiking or travelling. Now they can't. Not really, anyway.

People are finding ways to adapt, using drive-bys and window visits and relying on whatever technology they may have access to in order to get together-at-a-distance with those they don't live with. But the power of human touch is totally absent - it's sort of like an out-of-body experience!

I do have some thoughts about graduations, though. Back in the day, our high school graduation ceremonies were not held in June - they occurred in November and were called "commencement". Not everyone actually made it back to their high school for commencement, of course. Some were working or attending university in some far-flung location, or perhaps they were estranged from their family and wanted to permanently sever ties with their home town, or perhaps for whatever reason, returning for the actual ceremony was not practical or desirable.

When I was about six, my sister came home for commencement and I had just had my tonsils out. But since commencement was kind of a big deal back then, the whole family attended, with me wrapped up in a blanket and held on someone's lap or maybe bedded down on a seat between two family members. I was pretty groggy through most of it - I could hear the proceedings but not see them.

When my high school graduation rolled around, it was actually my mother who was ill. My dad still attended, but the rest of the family had long since flown the coop and were living elsewhere.

After completing my undergrad work at Carleton, it turned out to be me who opted out of attending graduation (and this one WAS in the spring) even though I was still living in Ottawa. To be honest, I would have been tempted if we had gotten to have our ceremonies on the lawn of the National Arts Centre, as the previous year's graduates had done. Or, for that matter, on the Carleton campus itself, where it's typically done now. But for whatever reason, the ceremonies were held that year at the Nepean Sportsplex, which didn't strike me as a very exciting location, if I even knew where it was back then!

Nor did I go back to Western after earning my library degree. I finished all my academic stuff in mid-December and mid-snowstorm. In those days, and maybe still today, students on the trimester system did not have their own ceremony in December or January (and of course travel can be pretty miserable then too). So my official graduation date (and the one indicated on my degree too) was not until the following May. The question of going back then to officially receive it was, let's say, purely academic.

In any case, maybe we'll see a return to marking graduations in the fall again, at least with this year's group? Meanwhile, most of the summer celebrations we look forward to will not happen this year. As a famous anchorman used to say, "That's not news, but that too is reality."

Or if we're lucky, virtual reality.