Terrifying

“It absolutely terrifies me to think of the prospect of any sort of easing of restrictions that could allow greater travel between Canada and the United States.” — Dr. Abdu Sharkawy, Internal Medicine and Infectious Diseases consultant and Assistant Professor of Medicine at the University of Toronto.

This map shows why it would be ‘terrifying’ to open Canada-U.S. border:

The caption underneath the chart:

This photo shows COVID-19 cases in Canada and the United States. The data on the map above is on a more localized level in the United States, which makes it appear more red, but there are an overwhelming number of cases south of the border compared to Canada. (Source: Johns Hopkins University).

Dr. Abdu Sharkawy went viral on social media a few months back and ultimately found himself on a Snopes fact check: Did an Infectious Disease Specialist Write ‘I Am Not Scared of COVID-19’?

And yes, he did.

This was part of his plea:

Covid-19 is nowhere near over. It will be coming to a city, a hospital, a friend, even a family member near you at some point. Expect it. Stop waiting to be surprised further. The fact is the virus itself will not likely do much harm when it arrives. But our own behaviors and “fight for yourself above all else” attitude could prove disastrous.

I implore you all. Temper fear with reason, panic with patience and uncertainty with education. We have an opportunity to learn a great deal about health hygiene and limiting the spread of innumerable transmissible diseases in our society. Let’s meet this challenge together in the best spirit of compassion for others, patience, and above all, an unfailing effort to seek truth, facts and knowledge as opposed to conjecture, speculation and catastrophizing.

Now? He is absolutely terrified at the thought of easing border restrictions with the United States.

He seems to have embraced the fear along with many Canadians.

Canadians’ COVID-19 fears are rising again — and the U.S. might be to blame according to the CBC.

It’s clear that Canadians are watching the cautionary tale south of the border. Searches on Google Trends for “COVID” and “U.S.A.” peaked at the end of March in Canada, but had dropped off to less than half of that by the first week of June. Since then, however, web searches related to the pandemic in America have nearly doubled, while searches related to the pandemic in Canada have held steady.

Polls suggest Canadians are worried about the situation in the U.S. A Nanos Research survey for the Globe and Mail found that 81 per cent of Canadians polled want the border with the United States to stay closed for the “foreseeable future.”

Léger finds that 86 per cent of Canadians reject the idea of re-opening the border at the end of July, as is currently planned (although the border closures have been renewed and extended repeatedly in the past). Remarkably, 71 per cent of Canadians “strongly disagreed” with a re-opening of the border, suggesting a firmly held opinion.

In mid-May, Léger reported that 21 per cent of Canadians wanted the border to open by the end of June or earlier. Now, just 11 per cent agree with opening the border by the end of July.

With all of the fear of in Canada, I would be very surprised to see the border to the United States re-opening this year. It looks more and more likely that we will be grounded in Ontario for the winter.

On a happier note, the bed lift in our coach stopped working last night. The bed was stuck in the upright position. I worked on resolving the issue until close to 3 am and utterly failed to fix it. Lorraine was able to sleep sideways on what remained of the usable portion of the bed.

I slept on the floor.

Back to work on resolving that problem this morning.

I hate sleeping on floors.