Head Tale

• A coworker observed that an occupational hazard of working in a place where we hand out rapid tests kits is the risk of people over sharing *why* they want the tests.  This gives you this wild anecdotal taste of how widespread Covid is right now – business owners, parents, students, neighbours on each side of you, people living in shared accommodations like apartment buildings/condo complexes, etc. etc.
• Relatively early in the pandemic, I did a post about how many words had suddenly entered our vocabulary that we rarely to never used before.  I feel like that list needs an update (Wordle!)
• On that note, is there a word for feeling like you must have Covid, even as rapid test after rapid test comes up negative repeatedly?  I had that feeling a couple weeks ago (everyone else in the family has been repeatedly negative throughout which is a good sign that we didn’t have Covid.)
• On the one year anniversary of the original Covid shutdown, I created a month-by-month guide to the “highlights” of the Covid experience which I have kept adding to each subsequent month (and which is therefore likely the longest blog post on this entire blog too.) In a fit of despair, I recently copied the template I used for adding each new month’s content forward by a full year to 2023 after feeling like this pandemic will never end (even though email forwards from elderly relatives assure me it will be over by spring!)
• When Omicron first came out and they said it spread fast, I didn’t really get it until I saw people getting it all around me – coworkers, relatives, friends and perhaps most shockingly, people who I would say have been on the “extremely cautious” side of the ledger for most of the pandemic.
• On that note, no one should feel shame or embarrassed about getting Covid.  I mean, it’s a highly contagious disease and we’re living in a province with some of the most lax restrictions in the country.
• It’s been wild to track the usage of masks through the pandemic too – early on, use was even discouraged (though I think that was intended to prevent shortages for those who needed them most) then it was mostly cloth/often homemade (I wonder if Government of Canada still has guidance on their site about how to make a mask from a t-shirt – yeah, that’ll be safe!).  Then it was surgical style.  Then it was medical grade surgical style.  And now, I’m seeing N95’s in *very* common usage in a way that I never did through any other phase of the pandemic.
• On the flip side, I get it but it’s sad how many people are moving into the “We’re all going to get it – might as well get it over with” camp and almost actively trying to catch it.  Text messages like “Hey, we’re at the [hip local restaurant] and it’s packed.  You should join us!”  Uhm, no thanks?
• I have a billion other thoughts about the pandemic – from government’s handling to thoughts on people traveling to the personal impacts but I think I’ll stop there or this post could end up being longer than that “Covid Timeline” post I linked to above!

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