EDITORIAL: COVID-19 in Sooke

Thursday March 26, 2020 ~ BC

COVID LIFESTYLE INSIGHTS: by Chelsea Kirkpatrick ~ West Shore Voice News

Living on the island, specifically in Sooke, comes with a vague and delayed response that we’re all still able to live regularly normal (for now). We’re set apart from the density of larger urban centers.

I speculate that comes with unforeseen downsides (such as higher infection among the unknowing) but we shall see based on who does and doesn’t get sick in our small town.

Grocery stores are open, albeit some with line-ups outside, all with quantity limits and all employees using gloves. BC has asked us to not let our kids go onto playgrounds. Sooke has discouraged open burning as most people are stuck in their houses and the smoke can be obnoxiously irritating.

We must be more considerate of our neighbours and local community. We are all in this together. This week, I spoke with a friend in their 20’s who confided in me they are immuno-compromised due to an illness and are having to take time off work because of their own safety. It is not just people over the age of 60 that we need to be concerned about but all of us — as the sole population of Humans — being carriers of something no human on Earth naturally has immunity against. 

Watching Sooke Major Maja Tait in her COVID message on YouTube on Monday about the pandemic sweeping our shared planet gives me a melancholic view of what a dystopia we may live in when “The Big One” comes. As we all have heard it’s only a matter of time until that emergency of a 9.0+ Magnitude earthwauke tests us. I consider this a draft for what is on the horizon, whether in my lifetime or not. In the very least during times like these, we can be thankful those at the top are working together, putting aside partisanship toward working as a communal team to keep our most vulnerable safe.

With this novel coronavirus (no treatment, no cure, no vaccine) impacting the entire world and not just our neighbourhoods, some locals in Sooke wonder why there hasn’t been a State of Local Emergency. But it’s not local. A wildfire or a flood, that may only impact only the Sooke region would be a local emergency. In COVID-19, we are all impacted together.

It is important now that we work together, and be in lock-step with the province so we can enact the orders and respond and be prepared in a joined, coordinated way, said Mayor Tait this week.

What’s really hard for me to swallow (and even worse, to digest) about this pandemic is how many of my Millennial friends don’t take it seriously. People seem to be very self-centred, from hoarding supplies to going out even when it’s advised not too.

We’re all prone to be a bit self-centrist, that’s how we got to the top of the food chain after all. But deriding the fact that this is a historic moment that no one alive now has been a part of before isn’t going to make it go away.

Learning from our past advancements and failures is what makes our lives easier as humans. Viruses are one of the smallest organisms on the planet, and they have mutated to live in one of the best possible hosts on planet Earth: humans.

This is a scientifically profound time because you have the opportunity to be part of a world changing event. Ever wonder what you would have done if civil war broke out, or the Big Earthquake happened? Well, now is your chance. Staying clean, calm, not panic hoarding and staying at home away from those at risk (remember, we can’t tell who is sick just by looking) are the best weapons we have.

Even 100 years after the Spanish Flu and other plagues, the one thing that will keeps us, the human race, alive is vaccines and listening to our healthcare professionals when they warn us the first time. We can’t risk having our hospitals becoming overloaded beyond capacity because we didn’t heed their warnings soon enough.

We only have so many tools in our shed, social distancing being the best weapon against this spread, we’re told. The goal for all of us who aren’t on the front-lines fighting this slippery virus should be to assist our medical professionals in slowing the infection speed to at least match the rate of vaccine creation. Do your part and stay home or away from groups of people as much as possible.

~ CK

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==================== NOTES:

Chelsea Kirkpatrick is a freelance contributor to West Shore Voice News. She’s a Millennial who lives in Sooke.

COVID-19 news edited by Mary Brooke, West Shore Voice News

==================== OTHER LINKS:

Financial management during COVID-19: the challenge with deferred payments (by Mary Brooke, March 28)