This year had been a strange one. With COVID-19 practically controlling all aspects of our lives, in many cases livelihoods, all of us went through a time that had to be most notable in our lives. Who had ever imagined that a pesky virus would shut down the modern world equipped with advanced technologies and immense knowledge of contagious diseases? While in the past plagues like Spanish Flue had caused mayhem with an estimated fatality of 40 to 50 million, I never thought that a virus could kill over a million people today.
Nevertheless, it is heartwarming to see how most of the world put hand in hand to fight this minuscule monster and are almost at the brink of defeating it. Of course, no matter how wild it may sound, there are still a whole lot of people, many of them in our neighboring country, who even today deny the existence of this deadly virus. When families are trying to recoup with financial disasters and in some cases loss of dear ones, the poisonous environment that these conspiracy theorists – overwhelmingly supporters of USA President Donal Trump – are creating is appalling and disgusting. Instead of leading the world in the fight against this deadly enemy, Donald Trump and his allies had made things worse by consistently spreading misinformation and often plain lies.
On the other hand, in Canada, the elected leadership showed due diligence in most parts and tried to grab this dangerous foe by the neck from a very early stage. But we still are seeing surging infection rates and deaths all around the country which appears to be due to the irresponsible behavior of a portion of the population who broke pandemic laws in place and contributed to the downward trend. The truth is, to beat an enemy of this nature we must all show due diligence and take personal responsibility.
Finally, we may be seeing light at the end of the tunnel. The high level of efficiency of the vaccines is both very encouraging and relieving though the vast majority of the general population may still be about six months to a year away from receiving the vaccine.
Holidays are coming. With all the travel restrictions and lockdowns, things will surely be quite limited but we should all continue to follow all pandemic rules and regulations in place in our combined effort to stay safe and healthy. Wishing you all very happy holidays.