For anyone hoping that their loved ones make it home for Christmas, this is surely a big week.
As you have probably heard, the list of potential COVID hotspots in the Halifax area spiked higher on the weekend and included gymnasiums, stores, restaurants, bars, and coffee shops.
If you are anything like me, you started hyperventilating a little at this news, then settled down upon realizing that, as of Monday, there were 25 active coronavirus cases in the province, which, at current rates, is about as many new cases as the province of Ontario registers in two minutes.
We still, furthermore, have no community spread — every one of those cases is connected to some previously reported case.
And yet here is the thing: with the uptick in new infections, the authorities fear that we are become complacent.
“I am growing more concerned that people are going about their lives as if we are not still in the midst of a pandemic,” the premier scolded on Sunday.
Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang, the same day warned that COVID-19 cases “can spike in the blink of an eye.”
Just last week, Strang, in a nudging fashion, said something else: “For families that have students that are studying outside of the bubble that might be thinking about coming home for the holidays; as tough as it is to say, the best choice would be for them to, actually, stay where they’re at.”
The hope is that families and kids studying elsewhere make the choice themselves. A spate of new cases — and, worse, community spread — might force his hand.
Our Atlantic bubble approach has been lauded everywhere for its effectiveness in stopping the plague at our borders. Now, my friends, begins the dangerous time. Living where we do, it is easy to forget that all around us the pandemic is surging: in the United States where, according to Reuters, the country is reporting more than 148,000 daily cases and 1,120 daily deaths, and where COVID-19 hospitalizations hit an all-time high on Sunday, but also in Canada where infections are climbing in every province west of New Brunswick.
The issue is that our people are spread far and wide. The Christmas holiday period is when they come home, like Atlantic salmon returning to spawn. Only this year, of course, it will be different.
It has been a hard eight months, the hardest most of us will endure in our lifetime. The need to connect with old friends and family — to raise a glass, sing a long-remembered song, return to some old haunt that reminds of us a time when the plague did not over hang us — has seldom been stronger than during these trying times.
In the summer, it seemed hard enough when we had to come together outside, safely distanced around a bonfire, or on some patio.
We will try to keep it going outdoors as long as we can. But I think I speak for many of us when I say that I am a 21st century man, who has already begun turning the car seat warmers on, so pretty soon the bulk of my socializing will take place indoors.
Already, there are reports of party-planners informing invitees that they may be — nudge-nudge, wink-wink — “skirting the rules a little” in this year’s festive gathering, which, according to the Department of Health, is supposed to be limited to 10 people without the rigor of social distancing, and, even then, is encouraged to be made up of members of a “consistent group.”
That doesn’t much sound like the gatherings we are used to around this time of year. No bro hugs or Quebec-style cheek kissing when you see that old friend who you only encounter at this one party this once a year.
It is hard, as well, to maintain a decent conversational ebb and flow when you are yelling at each other from two metres away.
There is the Zoom Christmas party, I suppose. And, let us be honest, if we need an out from some obligatory annual gathering, here it finally is.
All in all, though, this is the price we must pay, which is easy for someone to say whose family is all here, no quarantine required.