Twice-dosed in Canada: vaccination and the middle way

Things are changing, even here in slow-poke Canada. Vaccines are everywhere. Pop-ups, pop-ins, walk ups, walk ins. As long as we all come out jabbed, it's okay with me. I watched the shenanigans in the US as people jumped through loopholes to get vaccinated sooner, and saw the orderly queuing in the UK, and I wondered in which camp Canada would fall when we finally got our act together and scored some vaccines. It turns out, as perhaps I ought to have guessed, to be in-between. There was order--sign up, get called or texted or emailed for your appointment--and there were loopholes: an app called VaccineHuntersCanada tweeted prolifically about which mosque or racetrack or school had a clinic with extra doses today, now, hurry! Do not pass Go, do not collect $200. Just jump in the car (if you have one), roll up your sleeve and get jabbed.

Our family served as a fair representation of the country as a whole, I feel. Some of us signed up and awaited the call while for others, it became a more active process of hide and seek. "Why is trying to get vaccinated in Ontario like playing a game of whack-a-mole?' someone tweeted bitterly. "Vaccination program is being run as a scavenger hunt!"said another critic. "If you elect a scavenger, expect a hunt," came one tart reply from a non-supporter of Ontario's under-educated, over-blustery, conservative, confused leader, Doug Ford. 

Eventually, all five of us--four in Toronto, one in Vancouver--got first doses, and we breathed a little easier. Then, ahead of schedule, I was offered my second dose of AstraZeneca. It came ten days too early for an ideal immune response, but a batch of the stuff was expiring and we who might were abjured to turn up. So I took one for the team, baring my arm womanfully even after the pharmacist acknowledged that doing so would, according to the current research, reduce my protection against covid-19 by 10%. I asked the pharmacist whether she herself would, in my place, accept a dose of AZ 10 days early and she said, ominously, that yes she would because who knew what next week would bring in terms of supply or availability. So I went ahead, on the philosophy of a bird in the hand (or a needle in an arm) etc. I can only hope that next week brings new findings that say that I am in fact as well protected as the next twice-dosed human being. 

So, big changes: fourteen days after my jab, I will be considered fully vaccinated. A positive vista of possibilities opens up. I am thinking like Wendy in Peter Pan and wondering whether I too might be able to fly.

Blame Game

Staying 6 feet apart inside does little to prevent covid transmission, according to a recent tweet from Business Insider (ironically)--unless masks are worn. Masks help with prevention of spread. I am in favor of masks, especially here in mainly unvaccinated Toronto. I wear them, sometimes two, on the rare occasions when I am indoors outside my home, and these days even outdoors while walking, running, or riding. It just seems polite. 

Masks offer their own dangers though. I learned one of them the hard way. Recently I rode my bike to Canadian Tire--a mega-store that does indeed sell tires but mostly sells everything else--to pick up a single item at their lockdown-mandated curbside pick-up. When I made my online purchase of this item and five others, I had requested delivery, but an email arrived telling me otherwise. I was disgruntled. 

Canadian Tire's online shopping system (ie their only shopping system currently) requires customers to select 'delivery' or 'curbside pickup' individually for each item rather than at the end for the whole lot during checkout. Imagine doing an online grocery shop and choosing 'eggs', then having to click through the options and pick 'deliver.' Then 'milk'. Then 'deliver.' Etc. It's a stupid plan. I was sure I had chosen 'deliver' for all six items in my cart. 

"I paid for delivery," I said to the nice but gormless young man on the end of the help line. 

"Yeah, sorry, we get a lot of phones calls like this. I know already there's nothing I can do about it," he replied. "Except cancel the order."  I sighed.  I wanted this thing--a big silvery stainless steel bowl. It was going to be part of my low-tech, low-cost water feature for our tiny little back garden.

"You get a lot of phone calls like mine?" I asked. 

"Yeah, like, so many." 

"Maybe there's something wrong with the system," I suggest. "If it happens so much. Maybe Canadian Tire should do what other stores do and let customers choose delivery or pick up at the end for the whole order." I know my effort is pointless but I can't help making it. (Husband rolls his eyes.)

"Well, yeah, maybe, but you see, we sell things like bleach, which Amazon doesn't do, so we have to get people to pick that up themselves because you can't deliver it."

That makes zero sense. My supermarket delivers bleach. His words sounds like a misquote from a training session half-attended to, but never mind. I give up. (Husband applauds.) The weather is sunny and the bowl will fit in my bike basket, so I ride off to Canadian Tire. 

Halfway there I crash my bike. At an intersection of two small streets (Huron and Cecil, if anyone is interested) I stop at a stop sign. The car on the cross-street to my left is already stopped and it is his turn to go. I balance on my two wheels, wobbling, waiting, but the driver is insisting on being polite and letting me go ahead. (I hate when drivers do this.) So, unsteadily, I push forward and give the driver a thank-you smile. Then I remember the mask: he can't see my grateful expression! Instead I lift a hand to wave and simultaneously slide over a bit of grit in the center of the intersection. I lose altitude rapidly. Down go I, the bike and I hitting the ground and the things in my basket flying into the air. Two nice university students, a girl in a Kappa Kappa Gamma sweatshirt and her boy acolyte, are walking on the sidewalk and they run to my aid. Neither is wearing a mask. "Can we help you up?" she asks.

"No, thanks, I can manage," I say through clenched teeth and searing pain as I lever my way upright.

She clocks my covid concern. "Right, right. We'll get the bike." The boy hovers uncertainly until the girl directs him: "You take her bike to the sidewalk. I'll pick up these things." They do, and I limp toward a wrought-iron fence on which I lean, panting. "You have this," she shows me a little packet of alcohol wipe that had flown out of my bike basket. "Is there any blood?"

Not much. I dab at my scraped knee. Fortunately my favourite running tights have not torn; my skin will heal, but clothing won't. The driver, recipient of my ill-fated thank-you wave, has waited until the intersection is clear of bodies and then slowly leaves. I take stock. I've got bruises and scrapes but everything seems to work. I tend to crash my bike or fall hard about once a year and have come to regard these incidents as DIY BMD scans. If nothing is broken, my bone density must be more or less okay, I figure. (Don't try this at home, kids.)

I mount the bike and pedal onward, passing the Good Samaritan students at the end of the block. I shout my thanks but do not wave. I've learned. They, unmasked, smile back. 

Eventually I am in the queue at Canadian Tire. While waiting I text husband. "I crashed bike. Canadian Tire's fault." 

As I type the words I feel myself echoing what I dislike reading in the newspaper about Covid-related failures: the long-term care disaster. Whose fault? The childcare debacle. Whom do we blame? Ongoing school closure. Where to point the finger? Shambolic vaccine rollout. It's the province, or the feds. Subsidized sick pay. A no-brainer. You know who you are, conservative party. We all do. 

Taking it to the skies: paid sick days now.

Accountability is important, absolutely--but can we have action too? Maybe have it first? If it's broke--and it is--fix it. For my fall I can blame Canadian Tire, or the mask, or fate, or my own stupidity (yes that one), but it is me who bears the bruises. The same for us in Ontario and the rest of Canada. We are suffering.

They say get right back on the horse so the next day I join my family on a bike ride to celebrate husband's birthday. A text arrives: Canadian Tire is about to drop off the delivery. We are all in a park admiring cherry blossoms. Daughter is performing acrobatic maneuvers. It will be some time before we get home.

I message my wonderful next-door neighbor and ask her to check that the packages are in a safe spot, which she does. "Only one item," she tells me. And so it is. Although my e-receipt tells me everything has arrived, it has not. It takes a phone call, two emails, and two more days before the remaining items appear, heralded by no warning text and no message this time, just a big box blocking the front door when I open it to take the dog for a walk. While the dog crosses his legs, I check the contents and find all remaining purchases are present...plus another serving bowl, identical to the one I collected the previous week. 

I contact the Canadian Tire online support team to let them know. "You are welcome to pick up this duplicate item," I write. I do not offer them the option of delivery. 

So far, no reply. 

The first bowl is working well as as a water fountain in our tiny handkerchief of a garden, which is becoming a place where we can hunker down and wait out the slow resolution of the pandemic here in the True North. 

The fountain itself is solar-powered and only works when the sun shines. There's a metaphor there, probably.

Cleaning as we go: husband, dog, and I participate in the annual neighborhood trash pick-up