Covid on the Rocks

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Yes there’s a pandemic, but work goes on. The Harbour was busy yesterday – think relatively mild temperatures after an early hard frost and little wind. Today, well, we have lots of wind/rain and snow coming.

The global health crisis has once again touched down on this Island – I think there are 3 positive cases (unless more were discovered yesterday). The Province has decided to treat each case immediately as if it’s known to be caused by a variant. As a result, immediate contacts are required to quarantine but, in addition, their contacts must do the same. So for 3 cases there are over 50 people in isolation and dozens are being tested. I think this is smart and hope it helps to prevent a declared outbreak.

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I’m taking a friend of mine for his vaccination today. The period leading up to this appointment has included a number of conversations I know people are having everywhere.

• Him: But they’re not even that effective!
• Me: We got rid of polio with vaccines less effective – just get the shot.

• Him: But there’s a risk of blood clots!
• Me: True – 1 in a million. Women have lived with a 1 in 2000 risk of getting blood clots from birth control pills for decades. You men will be fine. Just get the damn shot.

Is it any wonder they love me?

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I got my first shot last week and everything went swimmingly for the first 36 hours. It’s been mentioned in these posts before that my system is really weird and wussy. I did not anticipate any problems with the vaccine because previous shots for the flu, shingles, and pneumonia had little impact. This one was different.

I started to develop symptoms of Covid (which means it’s working) and just kept adding to them. By the time they tested me 4 days later I had everything on the list except the loss of taste and smell. They all disappeared overnight and my test was (duh) negative. They say it’s the second shot which might hit you hard. I plan on just sleeping for a week. 🙂

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I had to go to Lubec yesterday for gas – I’m one of those who not only uses hand sanitizer on me and the car, I also clean the gas pumps. grin When I came back through the Border they asked me if I’d been to Brazil in the past two weeks. That was a new one.

They also gave me an information sheet on ArriveCAN – this is apparently an app that you fill in before you get to Customs which gives them all your Covid information. It’s not mandatory at the moment.

Honestly, there are people here who won’t spend 2 minutes online getting a number from the Province which is good for 3 months travel in and out of New Brunswick. I dread to imagine the scenes if they think anybody is going to fill this sucker out every time we go for gas. I appreciate that it’s been developed with other parts of the Country in mind – but that isn’t going to help the poor people working at the Border crossing. 🙂

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