Pandemic Lessons
I hope that we, as a society, have learned positive lessons from the Covid 19 pandemic - even if the narrative we see in the news can be divisive. I remember the early days of the pandemic, where people were trying to get used to living with new social rules. People were polite, kind, and respectful. At least, until you got to the toilet paper aisle in a grocery store. Then all bets were off.
2021 is the second year of the pandemic. Global supply constraints are something we are trying to live with - particularly if you want to purchase new furniture or vehicles. But life, generally, goes on. Until it doesn’t.
The Big Storm
The Vancouver area of BC was hit with an “atmospheric river” of a storm in mid-November. I hate that term, which is bandied about as much as the previous “Pineapple Express” and without a lot of understanding about what it really means. Label or not, the Southwest coastal area of British Columbia was hit with heavy rainfall in a short period. With a summer season of extreme heat and wildfires, an early snowpack, and rising temperatures, the heavy rain created floods, landslides, and catastrophic damage to infrastructure. The roads out of Vancouver, one of Canada’s main ports, are closed off. Bridges were washed away, mountains dumped mud onto the road, and areas of the main Highway 1 were still underwater a week after the event.
Here are some articles and pictures of the damage, in case you haven’t seen them - they are something to behold:
https://globalnews.ca/news/8380618/british-columbia-state-of-emergency-floods/
While we, in the interior of the province, were largely untouched by the massive damage that destroyed the travel infrastructure, it did leave our area cut off from main supply routes from Vancouver.
Panic Buying
This brings me back to the main point. Panic buying. I went to the local grocery store after work on the day after the rain event. The shelves were bare. No meat, milk, fresh produce, etc. All picked clean by panic buyers. People who likely felt the stress of a lack of toilet paper in 2020 reacted by buying everything they could in 2021. Out of need? Not likely. Out of fear, more likely. It’s not quite the positive behavioural change that I was hoping the human race would learn from a global pandemic.
Hope
However, on a positive note, a local community group online was arranging donations of any excess provisions to elderly, vulnerable, and young families that needed help. Quite a lot of positive responses, and I was touched by the gesture. Perhaps there is hope yet.
