Kathy Swan 🇨🇦

Timely post; I was just reordering masks, waiting to hear from my daughter to see if the kids need any. My brother was hospitalized recently and his unit had an outbreak which reinforced that I’m not as nuts as they likely think I am.

Let me be clear. As someone who has been professionally involved with the biodefense / biosecurity sector for nearly 20 years, and has worked on biological risk analysis for Covid-19 since early 2020, reducing one's risk of being infected is not health anxiety. It's just smart.

I rely on information from you and others to remind myself that I’m not losing my mind.

I know endemic doesn’t mean a good thing….

Honest question; what stage are we at now? Are we at the endemic stage as opined by a G&M contributor last weekend? I’m so done with the pandemic being in the past tense when I’m worried if I’ll be able to get the latest vaccine iteration in time for a family wedding in October.

I’ve been reading a lot of Kate Atkinson lately. I just finished ´Life after Life’ which is a little mind bendy, currently on the sequel, ´A God in Ruins.´ If you appreciate good writing and have an interest in WW1 and WW2 and the blitz, give it a try.

Almost like no one is really in charge of the universe, (she said cynically).

Oh oh, and I got one wrong today, one that I had gotten right twice before. I guess I’ll be more likely to remember the correct answer.

20/20 here and 20/20 on X but I have a locked account over there. For some reason my brain was too tired to post my results. I’ll try again tomorrow; thanks for the fun and distraction!

Oh, please no; we are still dealing with the fallout/renovations from last winter.

Any idea when in the Fall? Early, mid, or when this wave has worked its way through?

I didn’t start life as a swan, but I’m a Swan now.

To me, the saddest and most soul destroying time during the pandemic has been the eagerness with which health care and the public abandoned masks. It turned all I believed about public health on its head, in an instant.

I’m originally a girl from PEI but I swear to god I’ve only ever opened a bag of potatoes using the string, maybe twice. There’s gotta be a trick to it.

Smart kiddo but geez, the existential angst this current crop of kids live with. I see it my grandchildren.

I’m sorry that you and your family are dealing with a dementia diagnosis as well as the shortcomings of our healthcare system. Let’s hope the system works as it was intended for him.

We have Roberta upstairs and Rhonda downstairs. They are both highly unintelligent, wander aimlessly bumping into things and refuse to communicate by any mode.

Orillia sends it sympathy. At least we always have a workaround.

I loved The Quilters and some of the results were stunning. I loved the way they became immersed in the creativity and how it became a portal to a happier place for them.

At Issue….

The Ar Issue panel is on CBC.

CBC.

Covid has taught me to have zero expectations of good behaviour from other people. To think I used to be a pleasant, glass-half full person.

Holy; like chicken pox parties raised to an exponential level.

This image shows gauges with the Apr 12-25, 2025 COVID Forecast scores for Canada, the provinces, & territories. From left to right: Canada: 11.0 - VERY HIGH Alberta: 11.3 - VERY HIGH British Columbia: 10.2 - VERY HIGH Manitoba: 10.4 - VERY HIGH New Brunswick: 8.7 - HIGH Newfoundland and Labrador: 8.5 - HIGH North: 10.7 - VERY HIGH Nova Scotia: 8.9 - HIGH Ontario: 12.8 - VERY HIGH Prince Edward Island: 9.1 - HIGH Quebec: 10.9 - VERY HIGH Saskatchewan: 9.9 - HIGH A text box reads: "The COVID Forecast is calculated from 3 equally weighted categories: 1) Current infections and spread; 2) Healthcare system impact; 3) Mortality. Within each category there is one sub-category for trends over the most recent week (Trends) and one sub-category for current parameter values relative to a specified baseline (Current values). Trends and current values are weighted equally when determining the final score for a category. All Forecast input data and sources are available here (https://datastudio.google.com/embed/u/0/reporting/42b886cf-d661-488e-b7d8-5c5836b55ab6/page/p_2yqs028mwc). Past Forecast scores are available in the table below. Forecast scores are grouped into 4 ranges: MODERATE (1 to <5, white), HIGH (6 to <10, yellow), VERY HIGH (10 to <15, orange), SEVERE (>15 red)."

Canadian COVID Forecast: Apr 12-25, 2025

SEVERE: none
VERY HIGH: AB, BC, CAN, MB, North, ON, QC
HIGH: NB, NL, NS, PEI, SK
MODERATE: none

About 1 in 151 people in Canada are CURRENTLY infected.

Yeah, he’s smiling so much it looks like his teeth hurt.

We had our power restored Friday evening after six days. Our daughter and her family are staying with us because theirs is still out. Last night, while cooking dinner, the lights flickered and we all went into instant panic mode. Yeah, we really need a snowstorm now.

Power restored after six days and six cold nights. Internet was patchy when I could get my phone charged. Being out of touch was more calming than disquieting. There’s a lesson there, I’m pretty sure.
In those six days, the US seems to be waking up, finally.

I most often only read and can concur people are nicer than on FB and infinitely nicer than on the other hellscape.

The campaign is a Poilievre campaign, so being mean, mendacious, and arrogant was always going to be part of it. He’s only ever been an attack dog, so he’s fighting yesterday’s war the only way he knows how.