I suppose we better brace ourselves for the next wave, because it doesn't seem like it can be stopped. Maybe now is a good time to stock up on dry/canned goods, frozen foods and other necessities - minus a room full of toilet paper.
Yesterday, at the grocery store, the person cleaning the self-checkout station told me that no staff had been sick so she didn't think I should be concerned. It struck me as odd that she's only thinking about sick staff whereas I'm thinking about sick customers. We have to be careful about letting others decide our risk level.
"That variant, also known as
B117, is estimated to be at least
50 per cent more transmissible and potentially
more deadly and led to strict lockdowns in countries like Denmark, Ireland and the U.K., where it quickly became a dominant strain.
Alberta, which already has 149 cases of B117 and seven cases of the variant first identified in South Africa, also decided to reopen restaurants, bars and gyms this week despite the rapid rise in variant cases.
"It's kind of like we're
playing chicken with COVID, which never struck me as being a great idea," said Dr. Lynora Saxinger, an infectious diseases physician and an associate professor at the University of Alberta faculty of medicine in Edmonton.
...
"It's pretty obvious that
if we just went back to normal there would be a third wave and it would be absolutely brutal."
...
"We know that
if not controlled, it becomes a predominant strain within weeks of first appearance," said Dr. Janice Fitzgerald, the province's chief medical officer of health.
...
But at the federal level,
dire warnings about reopening amid the spread of variants seems to conflict with what's happening on the ground.
"
Resurgence will happen really fast, so this is the time to be vigilant against the variants," Canada's Chief Public Health officer Dr. Theresa Tam said during a press conference Friday. "
