Josh Freed: Happy New Year as we continue to fight this old war on COVID

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That was the year it wasn’t, another 12 months where what we didn’t do outweighed what we did.

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In many ways, 2022 looks more hopeful than 2021. Last new year, COVID looked deadly and Canadian vaccines were lost in the mail.

Now most of us have double or triple vaccines with less risk of severe disease, especially from milder Omicron. Things are clearly better, but we feel worse, because our patience is wearing thin.

It’s natural. We have fought a 22-month war with a pandemic that seemed to end in the summer. Now he has come to life as a Frankenstein, multiplying himself. So what has changed since the last new year?

– A year ago we were all in emergency mode: terrified, isolated but determined to overcome 2021 by reinventing ourselves, with new habits and hobbies.

We made 100 New Year’s resolutions, and most of us kept it. We study languages ​​and musical instruments, reorganize or renovate our homes, and bake 35 million loaves a day.

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But how long can you stay in an emergency before it feels routine? How often can you alphabetically rearrange your medicine cabinet from Ativan to Xanax? Or rearrange your 100,000 photos?

If you haven’t learned Mandarin yet, you’ve probably given up trying, while most people go back to buying bread at the bakery. We fought hard against the enemy, but now we hide in the trenches.

– Last winter we stoically skated, walked or biked every day, determined to live outdoors, because inside was outside.

Now our outer zeal is fading. They freed us from solitary confinement for the summer and we got used to gyms, movies, restaurants, bars, friends, and fun. We don’t want to go back to our pandemic cells again.

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Let alone the 2.0 curfew announced by Legault on Thursday, the only one in the Western world.

– COVID has also changed. Last year’s variants were less infectious but more life-threatening, while Omicron appears ubiquitous and less lethal.

Our fear level has decreased and we are less concerned about our own health than we are about the health of our hospitals. But the number of full emergency beds now determines how many friends we can see.

– Unlike last year, crowds of people are ready to travel. But many are voluntarily quarantined, barricaded in their homes, fearful of spoiling their two-week vacation by testing positive just before leaving.

With Omicron, COVID has gotten less scary, but we’ve gotten more cautious.

– We know much more about COVID than last year, when we were terrified of touching anything someone else might have touched. We now know that the risk of contracting COVID from surfaces is only one in 10,000, according to US health authorities.

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We push the elevator buttons again with our fingers, not our elbows, and few still wash their canned goods. However, many people hold their breath again when the corridors pass.

They are called cough dodgers.

– The stores have relaxed. The changing rooms are open again and no one quarantines clothes for 24 hours after testing.

Those little arrows on the ground vanish when we realize that COVID is not obeying road signs. There’s still hand sanitizer on every door like a superstitious talisman, but the guards guarding it are gone and we’re less jealous.

At best, we give ourselves a momentary sanitizer slap, not a 20-second happy birthday. I bet even Legault does a “fakewash” at the third store he walks into.

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I recently had a COVID test at the Hôtel-Dieu hospital and things had really changed. Last year, I was ordered to wash my hands so often that I felt like Lady Macbeth. This time they didn’t ask me once.

Hand washing may not be very protective against COVID, but it should at least protect against colds. But now that everyone in the city is coughing or sneezing, the government could do better to require chicken soup dispensers outside every store.

– Masks are the new black. Last New Year we were reluctantly learning to use them; now they are as natural as putting on winter gloves.

Many wear them outdoors as face warmers or around their wrists as bracelets. But sometimes I find myself digging through my pockets frantically, muttering, “Where’s my mask? Where is my mask? I think I forgot! “- when it’s around my neck. Could someone come up with an app that allows me to say to Siri,” Call my mask, please! “

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Also, which mask would suit you best: an N95, KN95, or taking I-95 to Florida where masks are not required?

– Vaccines are the big game changer since last new year, when we waited impatiently for them. Now we are swimming in so much that we should share more with developing nations.

Instead, we’ll probably want our seventh booster first. We’ll be getting DIY injection kits soon, like those COVID self-tests we’re all trying to find.

At dawn in 2022, we are exhausted, fed up, tense, and locked in. But we are still in our battle positions, obeying the rules wearily, praying for Liberation Day.

So don’t be too hard on yourself with New Years resolutions. Just try this one: “I resolve to stop obsessing over COVID, when it stops bothering me.”

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Happy New Years everyone, boy, we deserve it.

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