Last weekend on the 12th was my brother's 30th birthday. Kind of a weird feeling to see your younger brother hit an age marker like that. Honestly, I think it felt weirder than reaching that life stage myself.
He's doing well though. He's in a relationship, he quit his grocery store job that he hated, and about a week before his birthday he came to Kitchener to do an exam for an IT program, which he passed. Of all fields, you'd think IT would be able to support that remotely, but apparently not. His recent successes made the age thing easier, I think.
He visited us afterward. It was less exciting than last visit, though. He came during the work day, and me and Lee-Anne are both working remotely, so we weren't able to entertain much. Lee-Anne was able to go meet him at the place he took the exam, and they went to a local bakery afterward and came back on the ION. Riding our light rail was one of the things he wanted to do, so that was at least a little exciting. I asked him what he thought of it and he was like, "It was great! It was exactly like a Toronto street car" which... Eh... I hate to admit it, but that's an extremely fair comparison. They were even made by the same company. The ION has better accessibility though.
I made broccoli cheddar soup for dinner.
Since I mentioned Lee-Anne working from home, I should say that she's working for the CNIB right now, which is the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. She has albinism, which in addition to pale skin and blue eyes (not red, like some media portrayals) also results in low vision. Therefor, she's used services from the CNIB in the past, and it makes sense for her to work there now.
Recently, me and Lee-Anne went to the Waterloo Region Art Gallery. On our way there, we saw a Freedom Rally move through downtown. There were a lot of people involved. I don't even know what they're protesting anymore. The vaccine passport mandate was removed early this month, and the mask mandate is coming down near the end of the month. They got everything they wanted, so why are they still protesting?
Here's a pic of the convoy that Lee-Anne snapped
This doesn't really give justice to the scale of what we saw, but you can see the double Canadian flags which have become associated with this movement, and you can see a truck. There were a lot of vehicles with pro-convoy messages written on them. Not going to lie, I like Canada's flag and I wish they wouldn't use it in this way.
I guess I should mention since the last update I made was about the Freedom Convoy while it was still active, that shortly after I made that post real effort was put into removing the trucks from Ottawa. People were escorted away, there were some arrests, some fighting back, some injuries. The main protest was dissolved, but now there are these smaller, shorter protests popping up in cities everywhere. So long as they do it during daytime hours and don't break the law it's fine for them to do so, but it just seems pointless now that restrictions are being removed.
I stand by what I said in my last post, the removal of restrictions is not a good thing. Right now cases are decreasing, which seems to happen around this time of year anyway, and it's normal for safety measures to be reduced, but we shouldn't get too comfortable. Now that we're looking at this disease as potentially a permanent aspect of our lives, I agree that we shouldn't focus on harsh lockdowns to "stop the spread" since a complete end to the virus no longer looks possible, but we should normalize safety precautions as we reopen society, the key strategies being vaccination, masks, distancing indoors and scheduling large social occasions during times of the year when cases aren't spiking. Total removal of safety precautions is going to put our medical system under strain which will make our society suffer in the long run.
An example of our safety precautions being insufficient is that I know someone with a kid who recently got COVID. Apparently it's common enough that schools don't have to alert families if someone contracts it, only if over a certain percentage does. So the family is required to isolate for five days. FIVE DAYS! That's the average incubation period, not the period when you're still infectious, and indeed, the daughter was still in poor condition after five days, but because the mother was testing negative, that means that she can legally go wherever she wants, even though she's living with someone who is currently symptomatic with COVID. Crazy stuff.
I don't think removing the vaccine passport will cause an immediate spike in cases, because I think most unvaccinated people were socializing on their own anyway, but in the long run it could disincentivize people to get vaccinated, which will cause a gradual increase in cases.
There's talks of my work moving to our modified in-person format, which makes sense for this time of year. The government has made clear that we are an "exception to the removal of restrictions" which is a very awkward sentence that means that we are required to continue using the typical safety measures, which I believe is wise.
One last thing before I close this post. Don't expect me to speak at length on the topic of Ukraine and Russia. For historical purposes, I guess I'll summarize the situation. Recently, Russia invaded Ukraine. In response, most of the world has issued economic sanctions on Russia and many corporations refuse to deal directly with them. Russia's president, Vladimir Putin has made cryptic threats about "consequences" the world will suffer for involving themselves in this conflict. Because of Russia's powerful nuclear forces and history of aggression, this is pretty intimidating. The term "World War 3" as a genuine possibility to this conflict is being thrown around. Apparently, Russia's current actions have resulted in the largest attack on a European nation since WW2.
The reason I don't want to talk much about it is because I know that during times of war, propaganda goes crazy, and there is very clearly a perspective I'm supposed to take as a patriotic Canadian. Our support goes to Ukraine. Given the knowledge I have in this moment, this is the reasonable conclusion. Obviously I'm anti-war.
I just don't really have any unique insight or anything to contribute to the discussion. All I can do is repeat the sentiments that pretty well every other Canadian has. At least with COVID there are a few different popular takes on the subject, but most of the Western world seems to agree on the Russia situation.
