It’s also Canada Day, though celebrations have been tempered (to put it mildly) by the ever-growing discovery of mass graves of children at former residential schools, which were Canada’s answer to “Yes, we as a nation can be as racist and horrible as any other!”
But that is quite another discussion. This one is still political, in a way, but not as straight-up horrible.
It is about masks.
Today, the BC government is lifting the provincial state of emergency that has been in place since March 2020, and is also moving to Step 3 of its re-opening plan. This lifts a lot of restrictions, though for a lot of people, it will come down to one big change:
Masks in indoor public spaces are going from mandatory to recommended.
Today when I was out and aboot, I still saw people in my condo complex and out in the park and on sidewalks wearing masks, so I suspect a lot of people will still wear them even if they don’t actually need to. My own plan is to wear a mask where it seems sensible (I think you don’t need them outdoors unless you’re in the middle of a mosh pit or something) until a couple of weeks after my second vaccine shot. I get the shot on July 4, so that would mean wearing a mask until about mid-July. I also suspect that once we enter flu season in the fall and assuming masks are still by choice, I will don one when riding the petri dish of germs and maladies known as public transit, because I am pretty sure that’s where most of my bouts of flu and colds have come from. I’ll also keep washing my hands a lot (washing when I come from outside is now as automatic as locking the door behind me).
All this is assuming our recovery stays on track. There are fears the very contagious delta variant will derail things. If I could, I’d squeeze another train metaphor in here. On the plus side, we are nearing 80% vaccinated in BC, so we should be close or possibly even ta herd immunity now.
Time will tell.
