Today, 11 March is the first anniversary of the declaration of a pandemic by the WHO. How things have changed!
I flew back from Victoria in early March 2020. Finding myself sitting next to someone wearing a mask I felt uncomfortable. In early October I flew back again and would have felt uncomfortable if everyone had not been wearing a mask.
We've experienced massive behaviour change in the year forced by regulation and our response to it, facilitated by technology. Many people no longer commute to work, testified to by mostly empty rush hour busses and reduced traffic volumes. We commute online. We no longer travel to genealogy meetings, witness one million attendees at last month's virtual RootsTech, and locally, online Gene-O-Rama and BIFHSGO Conference 2021. Online socials go some way to replacing the in-person interaction aspect, but not the ability to hug.
Without a doubt, things won't go back to the way they were. Many of us can look back in our family history; our ancestors moved from a rural/agricultural economy to an urban/industrial one made possible by technology that increased agricultural productivity per worker, and the ability to transport those products to towns and cities. That happened over a longer period—the pace of change is more rapid today.
On this anniversary consider how things have changed for you, the pros and cons. I'm optimistic. This pandemic has taken millions of lives while the 1918 flu took tens of millions. That's thanks to health services, government regulation and messaging. I'm optimistic that with vaccines coming soon to all who want them we will be able to look back philosophically at having lived through a period of social revolution facilitated by technology.
We might be annoyed, even angry, at the inability of today’s health care system to protect us from Covid-19 and at our politicians for not being able to have addressed this better today. But, as you say John, we’ve come a long way in the last century, especially here in Canada. We should be thankful for how far we’ve come even if, regretfully, there are still flaws in the system. In 1922, my grand-mother’s younger sister, Rose, became ‘the’ caregiver and homemaker for the family next door (in the country in Nova Scotia) when the wife and a young child came down with the Spanish Flu and needed care at home. There was no other recourse in those days. The mother died and a week later, on the 26th of March 1922, Rose also died from the Spanish Flu aged 19. A front-line worker a century ago.
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