With the imposition of COVID restrictions by the provincial government life’s enchantment has once again narrowed. There is an exceedingly limited scope for diversion.  I hadn’t realized until this deprivation how much we counted upon casual outings for breakfast, lunch or dinner; or how regularly we took for granted the daily social conventions at coffee shops and retail stores. Nonetheless it’s not as though my agenda amounts to much in any event; and as further luck would have it, the primary things I like and normally do are attainable. Mine is a predominantly insular life. I am reminded of a former elderly local businessman who all his life had never been to the city a mere 30 kms distant. He was entirely unashamed of his claustral being; indeed I believe there was an underlying pride surrounding the small-town self-sufficiency.

Among the deeper insinuations of the current stringency is its effect upon the economy and the pithy alterations precipitated by the advent of working from home as a standard model. Though I haven’t any reason for saying so I am convinced the market will adjust to the change and find a better way of doing things.  Working remotely can have global implications and represents a new opportunity for many.  It may also indirectly terminate the existing practice of western entrepreneurs shifting jobs overseas if employers adopt the egalitarian practice of recognising standards universally.

This is all too heady for me. My purview is confined to what I know. It is another of the luxuries of aging that one needn’t feel embarrassed to escape the realm of conjecture. Yet if we bypass the unknowable and limit ourselves to the empirical world we may be in for a far greater disappointment than at first imagined. That constitutes my cool look at the modern world and impending doom. In short – we’re not out of the rough of this pandemic yet.  Its infection is mercurial; and apart from the threat of new viruses there is some concern the existing vaccines may not work against them.