There's life outside of COVID-19
Episode Stats
Words per minute
201.45985
Summary
Summer has finally arrived in Canada, which is a good thing, as it means there is less time to obsess over COID19 and more time to do other things. I think it's good for people's mental health to no longer be the busybodies who just can't let go of it, not only day to day, but minute to minute.
Transcript
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Months ago, I had a friend of mine living in the United States who told me that there,
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the state that he was in, people are hardly even talking about COVID-19 anymore. And I thought,
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what? Really? And this was when Ontario was still in severe lockdown. And I thought,
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is it ever possible that such a situation could come to this province, could come to provinces
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in Canada where people are just not really obsessing over COVID-19, all the nitty gritties,
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day in, day out, glued to the TV screen, glued to the Twitter, looking at the numbers every single
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hour? Could we get to that point? Well, it looks like we are getting to that point, finally, in
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Canada. We've got Dr. Dina Henshaw in Alberta urging people to say, look, we got to get on with things.
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Yes, COVID-19, got to take it seriously, want to minimize transmission of it, want to care for
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people if they get ill, but we got to move forward here. British Columbia, Saskatchewan, other places
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doing similar things. In Ontario, they're not quite there yet. Hopefully, they will get there soon.
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But it's also interesting to see that a lot of people, I think, are finding during this summer
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that, well, there's more to life than just obsessing over COVID. They're going on vacation,
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they're taking a walk in the woods, as I'm obviously doing right now, and they're just
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getting out, looking around, and doing more things. The world has opened up, no longer in lockdown. And
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as you're able to do those different things, you're watching the kids playing sports outdoors,
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you're getting out and about, you're going to the art gallery. I did that the other week. It was a good
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experience. Just reminding that, oh yeah, there's actually more to life than stressing out about
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where I'm standing, and where this person is headed, and so forth, and just kind of nitpicking
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everybody for different COVID protocols that have been in place in the past, and generally just being
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able to breathe again and experience life again. And as we move towards this being an endemic illness,
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and as we move towards managing COVID-19, and as it hopefully recedes to the background, too,
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as Dr. Dina Henshaw and others were saying, being one of many issues that the healthcare system does
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have to manage pretty much, you know, throughout the year, that's going to see the mindset of regular
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folks hopefully change. And we find ourselves sort of getting this mental vice grip that so many
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people have had for the past year and a half, where it's all things COVID, all the time, all the little
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minutiae of it. That's a thing that we're able to recede away from, and I think it's healthy for
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everybody. It's good for people's mental health to no longer be that phrase I like to use, the COVID
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busybodies who just can't let go of it, not only day to day, but really minute to minute. So I think
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this summer has actually been good for people. There's even been medical authorities who, let's be
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honest, they've been really busy the past year and a half. They're getting a week or two away. They're
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going out and hanging out in the cottage and resuming some of those activities they love, and
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everybody's just stepping back, and they're getting out of the nitty-gritty, and they're
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looking back at the big picture again, and at the whole breadth of life and human experience. And
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I think it's a good thing for Canadians, Ontarians, it's a good thing for humanity that we're really
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learning to remember, hey, there are other things out there that we just gotta do, other things that
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really make up the vibrancy of the human experience. So hopefully it's onwards and upwards.