March 2020 - a month of change

COVID-19 Pandemic

A little humour for these dark days

For those of us here in Vancouver, March has been the biggest month of change. Sometime in the future, I'm sure I'll be looking back on this time as THE month that shaped the future for us, so I thought I jot down some personal perspective, for posterity's sake.

4 weeks ago: I had a busy week working as an Extra - four days in a row, which is uncommon for me. On this day, 4 weeks ago, I was playing a doctor for an upcoming Marvel comics TV show, ironically. I remember being cognizant of touching things like door knobs and other common surfaces, but was not yet distancing myself from others much. Of course, we were glued to the news, watching the situation unfolding in China, wondering if/when it would turn bad here. Total BC COVID-19 confirmed cases: 12.

3 weeks ago: I'm up visiting my elderly parents in Kamloops, and we've taken steps to sanitize surfaces around their house, while we were watching how bad things were getting in Italy with how quickly their cases grew, and then moved to lockdown. I accepted a booking for Batwoman for March 16th, not thinking much of it at the time. I was washing my hands more frequently, and hyper-sensitive to touching anything in the hospital when I was visiting my mother. Back down to Vancouver on Thursday, when the WHO declares a pandemic; I started to get ourselves prepared at home for what I predict to be a coming lockdown. Friday, Riverdale shut down due to a potential positive case, so I told my agent that I wanted to back out of Batwoman, which got cancelled anyways, along with all of the rest of TV & film in BC. On the weekend, Whistler Blackcomb closed for the season. Total BC COVID-19 confirmed cases: 39.

2 weeks ago: Officials had started talking about "getting ready", and told people to not leave their homes. Having experienced the worst Costco shopping outing in my life, it was obvious that Vancouver had woken up to the reality of this pandemic, and what they might need to do for the coming weeks and months. I went back to Kamloops, and purchased groceries for my parents, and prepped them as best I could so that they don't have to venture out. Health officers and politicians talked about how we must social distance ourselves to slow down the spread. Later, back in Vancouver, friends and neighbours were out enjoying the warm weather, but staying safely apart. Total BC COVID-19 confirmed cases: 186.

Cocktails with friends via FaceTime

1 week ago: The official word came out - stay at home unless you are in an essential job or need to get groceries or drugs. After a particularly sunny weekend, officials chastised the "COVIDIOTS" for not following social distancing protocols. We heard that two of our good friends likely had contracted it, as had the next-door neighbour. With a downturn in the weather, sidewalks and front yards were almost devoid of life. Yet, when walking the dog, people would cross the street to avoid coming face-to-face with each other. Video calls with our friends became the new normal, and around a week or so ago, my wife started working from home, full-time. The house has never been so clean, and yet the "honey-do list" still grows. Total BC COVID-19 confirmed cases: 617.

Today: Had to go grocery shopping for the first time in almost two weeks; while the local Save-On Foods had put in social distancing protocols, it seemed very busy in the fresh produce section. Some people were wearing masks, and I instantly felt naked for not wearing one. No reusable shopping bags, as they can transmit the virus to store workers. Once I got the groceries home, we wiped down or washed our goods, but it still felt like a futile effort. We found out this week that another friend has it, as does her sister and brother-in-law. Aside from the schoolchildren, no one is enjoying this. Total BC COVID-19 confirmed cases: 1013.

While the total confirmed cases here is low relative to other countries and provinces, and supposedly the rate at which it is spreading is decreasing, I keep reminding people that these are just the confirmed cases - i.e. the ones that have been tested and come back positive. I've read studies that say that these confirmed cases are only the tip of the iceberg, and the ones that went untested, or where the individuals are asymptomatic, could be 10x, 20x or 100x the confirmed number. That puts today's potential number of infected in BC at between 20,000 and 100,000 people! Worse still, is the messaging that is going out from our officials that make no mention of this potential, unseen, "bottom of the iceberg", which is really what concerns me. I fear that the small relative number of confirmed cases will not make the general public wary enough, and that they will go back to their ways and start increasing the spread again. I hope that I look back at this post months, or years from now, and see that these predictions were way off the mark.

Surviving the pandemic

Organisation

How prepared have you been for this COVID-19 pandemic? Were you caught flat-footed, with bare pantry shelves? Or were you ready with your N95 masks, gallons of hand sanitizer, and a year's worth of MREs? In most respects, this global crisis is much less severe than other bad things like an ELE (Extinction Level Event) meteor strike, or nuclear war with the accompanying nuclear winter that would follow. As such, "preparedness" really has a different reality in this situation - you probably don't need to be able to mill your own flour, or start growing your own veggies to survive this. Getting through this is going to require minimizing contact with others and practicing extremely good hygiene - which is why we're in this Social Distancing mode. In retrospect, I did not have this on my list of things that I would need to be prepared for in a crisis situation - i.e. do we have enough supplies to quarantine for two weeks?

We're about two weeks into our own government-requested, self-imposed isolation. Neither of us are sick, nor have we been in contact with any confirmed cases, but we are doing our best to minimize the spread within our circle of family and friends, and in our community. I don't think we are "preppers", but we have some level of emergency preparedness that probably exceeds the average person. For example, we had created our own emergency kits for use in case of other disasters, such as earthquake, tsunami, etc. And because we have a separate, unused basement suite, we typically have a fair bit of non-perishables and frozen food stored down there, as well as supplies of paper towels, Kleenex, toilet paper, etc. Admittedly, some of these things are really required for disasters worse than this pandemic, where things like vacating our home, and/or leaving the area are required. e.g. "shelter in place" is certainly a lot different than the folks that had to vacate quickly due to flood, or worse, in a matter of minutes because of an approaching wildfire.

Costco lineup!

So when I saw this coming, I think we were somewhat prepared for the "stay home" order that I knew was imminent, but had yet to come. However, due to an unplanned trip to see my elderly parents, I was unable to take the last few steps to stock up on the few items that we had not recently replenished (no, not toilet paper). As such, when I got back and needed to get some dog food at Costco, I was faced with the horde of people frantically trying to get their hands on toilet paper and hand sanitizer. This was my first real experience with what happens when the media whips people into a frenzy, and rational thinking quickly gets pushed aside. Grocery stores too, were getting cleaned out, and in less than a week, they were imposing limits on most products, and enforcing social distancing measures.

Ketchup supply dwindling

We are doing well from a supply perspective; there are a few things that we are running low on now (milk, ketchup, fruit, etc.), but they'll get added to the grocery list, and we'll be able to get them next week. But while I was out cleaning the garage (what else does one do while staying home?), I noticed that one of my emergency bags was growing mould on the bottom! Upon closer inspection, it turns out that a can of peaches failed, causing the mess on one side of the bag - yuck! A quick Google informed me that while canned goods normally can last years, certain products can cause the cans to swell and fail before you end up using them. As such, I'm going to start eating up these canned items, and will eventually replace them with new ones once this pandemic passes.

Reasonable success at Walmart

How have we done so far then? If this were the zombie apocalypse, I'd say we'd have scored 6/10. We didn't have adequate supply of key items that would have augmented our 'grab-n-go' bags, one kit was a mess, and drinking water had not been refreshed recently. But with this stay at home order, it's much different - there's no issue with water, electricity, gas and the all-important internet. So rating our preparedness is a bit different, as the things that I feel are important revolve more around how many times you need to go out to get items that are running low/critical. We could have done better at keeping our non-perishables stocked, and when the infected cases started to rise, I should have gone out to re-supply earlier. We have N95 masks in our emergency kits, but we haven't used them (yet). We had disinfecting wipes on hand, but our bottles of sanitizer were almost empty, and required re-filling. You can't do much with respect to perishables like fruit and veggies, but we could have had some more canned or frozen ones on hand. My assessment? Based on our current supply situation, I'd say we're at a 9/10, but two weeks ago, we would have only been 7/10. I think 10/10 would have been a lofty goal, and really, not a practical one, as you'd have to have things like jugs of milk in your freezer, and a fully-stocked root cellar.