This was the year we were supposed to ring in mask-free, sipping bubbly from crystal and nibbling expensive delicacies with a few hundred of our closest friends.
Instead, we spent New Year’s Eve at home, grumpily bemoaning the cancellation of the World Junior Ice Hockey Championships and washing down take-out pizza with some version of the “Quarantini” cocktail.
Thank you, Omicron.
In some ways, it seems as if the past two years never happened. We are still worried about the impact of reduced social contact on our children, about keeping afloat financially and about whether we will ever be free of COVID-19.
At least one Canadian medical expert, British Columbia’s Bonnie Henry, has come out with a statement that Omicron could mark the end of the pandemic stage of the virus and the beginning of it being considered endemic, similar to seasonal flu.
As with the flu, the general population will be able to maintain a certain immunity through vaccination and/or having had the disease. Once the virus burns its way through this country, there will be periodic outbreaks, and substantial numbers of deaths from it, as there are with influenza, but society will function in a relatively normal manner.
In other words, COVID is here to stay but lockdowns are not. We spent the last two years learning to fight COVID. Now the focus will be on learning to live with it. Hold onto that stockpile of masks and hand sanitizer, update your life insurance, and go ahead and book the cruise.
One has to wonder what impact this new attitude will have on the Olympics.
One also has to wonder, not if, but how COVID will affect this year’s provincial and municipal elections.
As has been stated repeatedly, the pandemic did not come with an instruction manual. For the past two years, the COVID response has been the overwhelming focus in this province. Other issues – the opioid crisis, homelessness, shortage of health-care workers – have either been viewed through the lens of the pandemic, or been relegated to the back burner.
The coming provincial election shows signs of being more of an assessment of how well Doug Ford’s Conservative government handled the pandemic, than a decision on which of the parties has the best platform and plan for the future.
Although health care is a provincial matter, and much of the responsibility for dealing with the pandemic has fallen to provincial authorities, municipalities have been deeply affected by COVID – everything from housing and employment issues to supporting the local business community.
Most municipalities managed to conduct normal business in an admirable manner despite the anything-but-normal situation – repeated lockdowns, mass vaccination clinics, skyrocketing housing prices and constantly changing directives from senior levels of government.
Municipal leaders have put in a lot of extra hours, been called on to make difficult decisions with minimal information and done their best to keep their communities not just safe but thriving.
COVID’s impact on municipalities will probably make some would-be candidates reconsider their decision to run for office, and others to enter the fray when municipal politics would never have been on their radar pre-pandemic. Two years of municipal government during the proverbial “unprecedented times” of COVID will undoubtedly cause some leaders to consider stepping aside prematurely, but it will galvanize others to step up their game.
One can only hope it will galvanize voters to step up our game, too.
The pandemic has focused attention on municipal and provincial leadership, on issues that need work and changes that need to be made. The coming election campaigns provide ideal opportunities to keep asking difficult questions, keep insisting on proper answers, and most of all, to stay involved.
The next few years will be crucial for the future success of this community. Just as COVID is not going away, neither will the weaknesses in our social structure that it revealed.
If 2022 cannot be the year we put COVID behind us, let it be the year we put apathy behind us. Bring on the elections!
