Freedom

Watching the Olympics, athletes from all over the world competing against each other, puts me in mind of the pandemic, and how we were all in it together, some of us not making it, including a friend who got COVID in late 2022 and died in early 2024.

Did he die of COVID? No. Did he die when he did because he got COVID? I think so. He was immuno-compromised, and thanks to a propaganda campaign by anti liberal democracy operatives, latched onto by every opportunistic Conservative politician from coast to coast to coast, he was against vaccine mandates.

Freedom.

We don't talk about it nearly enough but thousands of Canadians are still experiencing the effects of having had COVID. A lot of them don't have doctors either because the pandemic decimated a healthcare system that was already under strain.

Under strain. More like under attack. I would lose my mind.

My friend who died told me about the many nurses he interacted with believing the vaccine was causing COVID. I told him nurses had been heavily targeted with misinformation, but he was more inclined to believe them than me.

One of the most attention whoring of the Freedom Convoy assholes is in custody in Ottawa for violating his bail conditions, which they all do regularly. One of our housing association residents, a retired nurse with whom I maintain friendly relations, is all in with their anti-vax nonsense. I don't know why I can tolerate it but I can and she seems to know better than to bring it up.

Freedom.

Another housing association friend is moving away because she's afraid to live here now. She and another friend, women living alone, experienced attempted home invasions this summer. A couple of thugs hammering on their doors at 2:00 a.m. One friend has them on camera saying, "When she opens the door just push your way inside." They were wearing gloves. She called the police, turned over camera footage, so we'll see.

The apartment building down the street just managed to get rid of a drug operation keeping other tenants up at all hours, anybody who could having moved already, but the single mother of three I see all the time still lives there. We were in a similar situation several years ago when I lived downtown, the kids coming every weekend. They called me the Mayor of Crackhoville.

A friend at the pond just got back from a planned two week vacation in Jasper that only lasted one day before she was evacuated. We were talking about climate change happening whether we acknowledge it or not. Instead of refunds for some activities she was told to come back in October. It sucks, but I get it.

Another friend told me about an elderly resident of her building with dementia probably ending up in a nursing home in Timmins, where he knows nobody, because that's how it is now. People don't matter.

Army reservists have PTSD now thanks to being deployed to our nursing homes during the pandemic.

Freedom.

Barbara Ehrenreich, one of my favourite authors, wrote about toxic positivity and sometimes I feel like I'm surrounded by it, the pressure to get over it, on with it, back to it. I'm not depressed or negative or even down. I'm just not going to pretend everybody and everything everywhere isn't fucked up.

The pretence there's even a normal to return to is crazy.