Hanging out with my carrots!

 Yep. I am hanging out with my carrots. The ones you helped save. Joy in the dirt. It's still out there. Joy I mean. Harder to find, clouded by anxiety and uncertainty but it's still there. Your brain needs you to look for it. Just so happens, I found mine in the dirt today.

I feel like I need to summarize. Lot's going on. I need some perspective. Carrots give me perspective.

Today:

The 7 day rolling average for new cases of COVID 19 is 80.29. At Ontario's peak on April 4th our 7 day rolling average was 569.

Since July 30th, there have been only 5 days when Ontario has seen over 100 new daily cases. On August 11th, there were only 33 new cases. I felt absolute joy when I read that!

That is fantastic progress. So, lets start the summary by saying that in the last five months, since the pandemic was announced, we have survived lock done, shuttered every place of work except essential businesses and then slowly opened them up again. We closed schools, started working from home, teaching our kids online and a lot of people spent the early spring baking! We built hundreds of COVID 19 testing centres and tested over 2.5 million people. We protected our hospitals from becoming overwhelmed. We watched while elderly folks died needlessly in nursing homes. We lived in social bubbles of five and then 10. We started wearing masks and physically distancing. Remember in March when a trip to the grocery store was terrifying? We watched our neighbours to the south suffer under non-existent leadership. We watched Canadian leaders step up to the plate to create a massive, collaborative plan that allowed us to avoid the ugly numbers given in those first projections on April 3rd.

In Wellington-Dufferin-Guelph, a Section 22 class order was put into place on June 12th, the first region in the country thanks to our forward thinking, smart and courageous public health office, Dr. Nicola Mercer. Almost every region followed suit by the middle of July. Our cases started to come down when we put masks on.

One of my brilliant followers but it this way:

"We're keeping the numbers under control here because the the municipalities have been taking the initiative with signage and mask bylaws to keep people in the right mindset, not get lax about it and let their guard down. The day the province started to enter Stage 2 of reopening, Guelph took the lead and enacted the first mandatory masking bylaw. Pretty well every other region followed suit, and I think it has made a huge difference, both because masks help curb the spread and because they serve as a daily reminder that these are not normal times." Matt Robertshaw

Thanks Matt. I agree. The masks remind us that life as we knew it is long gone. They also remind us that we are in this together and we have the capacity and tenacity to work as a united people with a great purpose; to turn the tide of COVID 19 and save lives.

I feel like we are now sitting on a cliff. Parents, teachers and students, their community standing with them, are perched on a cliff, one that none of us want to or should be forced to jump from. So much accomplished by such great leadership, will we bury all that or move forward with an effective plan for a return to school that follows the science as we know it today?

The anticipated fall surge of COVID 19 does not need to happen. But it might if we do not move forward cautiously and wisely. Researchers out of Cambridge, England ( yeah that really old university filled with impossibly intelligent people) have shown that a resurgence is not a given. Physical distancing and mask wearing combined are effective enough to lower the R value to less than 1. That R value again. The reproductive number which is the number of people a person infected with COVID 19 will transmit the virus to. Stand close together in a confined physical space indoors and don't wear a mask. That'll do the trick. One infected person in a scenario like that has ample opportunity to transmit to everyone in the room. Our one saving grace is that we have done so extremely well to reduce the number of infections in our community, that the risk of transmitting the virus in schools is very low but we are learning that for this virus, that reprieve will not last long. Oh, and one other thing, I think we can avoid a resurgence and reduce the number of colds and flus this fall. The mask will keep those viruses down too.

Man. In my idealistic mind, I see that vision. I can see us sailing smoothly to a vaccine.

Let's be smart about this. Even if the provincial government does not come up with a better plan, we can come up with a better plan. As individual communities, neighbours, families and friends, we can create a better plan. I am an optimist and an idealist but I truly believe that. Let's ask the right questions: How can we keep our kids safely distanced at schools? How can we encourage the majority of kids under 10 to wear a mask too? I don't have the answers but I have some ideas and I know that people who understand the education system much better than I do, have great ideas too.

Anne-Marie.

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