So, this time next week I was supposed to be sitting on a beach enjoying my first holiday resort trip with my wife and kids.
That's all out the window now. We made the decision to cancel Wednesday night, hours after the World Health Organization declared a global pandemic due to the rapidly spreading coronavirus, which as of this writing has infected 133,000 people while causing nearly 5,000 deaths.
My wife and I briefly entertained the idea of carrying on with the bookend portions of our trip, visiting family in Ottawa and outside of Toronto, but decided to scuttle that too.
We have a nephew born with only one kidney and some of our relatives are elderly. Just too risky. Our kids are young and the prospect of spending two weeks cooped up with extended family in their homes, avoiding all the fun and excitement of the big city -- splash parks, movie theatres and shopping malls -- didn't seem at all fair or realistic.
We're not sure if we're going to get any money back for our cancelled resort trip. At this point, we don't really care. We just want to be safe and at home.
I'm going to take a wild guess that most Northerners are feeling this way this week, and no doubt a lot of, if not most, Spring Break plans have been ruined. Of course, because my wife and I had planned to leave, we didn't stock up on Purell and toilet paper, so if you have an extra roll, please let me know.
All joking aside, having no other engagements, being in Yellowknife and not out of country, means I will be focused on what's going on here and with the news going into our newspapers and website.
Understandably, people are pointing to the media and accusing it, including us, with every blaring headline, every alarming stat pushed to our social media, of fanning the fires of panic. Many are pointing out that relatively few of those infected will actually die. And this is true. The death rate is at around 3.4 per cent worldwide and only one patient has died in a Canada so far – an elderly B.C. man with underlying health conditions.
I appreciate the appeal for calm. But Canada almost certainly hasn't seen the worst of this and while healthy people infected will likely experience nothing much worse than a touch of cough and cold, the alarmingly rapid spread of the virus and vulnerability of the already sick and elderly to it, cannot be ignored.
Few of us have ever seen anything like it in our lifetimes. It's frightening but we're all in it together, and our job – NNSL Media, that is -- during the pandemic is to get you as much information as we can, as quickly as we can.
We're in contact with the NWT Health and Social Services Authority and will publish any information they provide us as soon as possible.
Right now, the most important thing is slowing the virus down so we don't overwhelm the health care system when people do get sick. Avoid travelling, avoid large groups, wash your hands and cover your mouth and nose while sneezing.
The economy and a lot of things we enjoy doing are going to take a major hit. We'll worry about that later. Right now, let's worry about each other and keeping each other safe.