Last week, Provincial Health Officer Dr. Bonnie Henry announced the official end of the COVID-19 health emergency.
If people gave it much mind, it was probably to wonder, hadn鈥檛 that happened a while ago? The global COVID-19 pandemic was one of the defining features of our era, but it can鈥檛 be pinned down to a single narrative.
Most big public events, whether elections or sports contests, terror attacks or natural disasters, have more clearly defined beginnings and endings.
The pandemic was, and is, such a complicated 91原创enon that it ended years ago for some, it will never end for others, and for a significant number of conspiracy theorists, it never happened at all.
My personal COVID experience was that of spending almost three years not getting so much as a sniffle, dutifully masking and distancing and grinding my teeth with anxiety, only to get sick three times last year.
Were all of those COVID-19? I don鈥檛 actually know. (Home test kits are unreliable at best.) Maybe RSV snuck in there, too.
I can say that none of them were fun, and the first one in particular just knocked me right down. I had about as much energy as a dead battery in the back of a junk drawer.
So I don鈥檛 advise putting yourself in the way of COVID, not if you can avoid it. But at this point, can you avoid it?
Even if you鈥檙e still masking in public and enclosed places 鈥� and if I have to go on an airplane in the near future, I鈥檇 seriously consider that 鈥� almost no one else is. Everything is back to normal.
Almost normal.
For some people, the threat of COVID is still higher. Multiple vaccinations reduce the risk of both serious illness and of long COVID, according to a number of studies. But they don鈥檛 reduce it to nothing. We鈥檙e in a vastly better position now than we were four years ago 鈥� but some people have real fears, that can鈥檛 be assuaged.
On the other end of the spectrum, we have the people who are convinced that the virus was a hoax, or was manufactured in a lab and deliberately released, or it never killed anyone (or not anyone who mattered).
The fact that we did not get conquered by FEMA troops or that people who received vaccines are not, in fact magnetized or mind controlled by 5G radio waves, will not convince them that they are wrong.
As for myself, I鈥檓 glad I feel safer, for myself and my loved ones. I plan to keep getting booster shots every year, and encouraging everyone else to do so, too. I take comfort from the fact that even new variants aren鈥檛 overwhelming ERs or causing staggering spikes in local cases.
But it鈥檚 still not the same as before the pandemic, and it never will be.
