Predictable COVID Concerns Come to Pass.

 

Predictable Concerns Came to Pass following March 21^st.

By Kendall Worth!

 

You may remember my Recent BLOG, where I raised a few concerns identified by welfare recipients, about what would happen following March 21^st, and the elimination of Public Health protections (so called “restrictions”).

These questions included:

• How soon are the approx 20% of IA recipients, that have good community and family support, going to feel reconnecting with friends and family members? They will want to get together now that things are back to what “normal use to look like”?

• Is the fact that many people will not be wearing masks starting on the 21^st of March going to cause yet another wave?

Well it happened! We now have a wave of COVID cases, including the 8 people, personally known to me, who caught/tested positive for COVID since March 21^st. They tell me, that from their experience, COVID symptoms are no fun to deal with!

Lately we have also been hearing about rising case-count numbers. Premier Tim Houston and Dr. Robert Strang say that there is no plan to bring back COVID Public Health Measures (like masking, group limits or mandatory vaccinations) to Nova Scotia. For the community of people I advocate for, this lack of mandates is scary and frustrating. 

 

 

 

For the 20% or so of welfare recipients who have close family or friends, there is a huge mixture of emotions about connecting with them again in person. Not all welfare recipients are sure they are ready to re-connect at this point, with those rising case numbers. The roughly 70%-80% of welfare recipients who are not lucky (meaning having no friends or social contacts outside of drop-ins or soup kitchens they attend) but who are still housed, have been choosing to stay isolated following March 21^st because they are (quite letimately) wary of the rising case load. They see the increasing population of homeless people, and feel lucky be housed these days, in Halifax.

Some people – those with family and friends – are experiencing a lot of pressure to get together and are told “ they have to get back into socializing at some point.” For people lucky enough to have close friends and family this should be correct, but given the rising COVID case numbers, is now really the right time to be reconnecting?

I asked the 8 people who I personally know caught COVID, recently, if they could describe to me what the Symptoms were like, and how they coped with the symptoms.

Answer: Most described it as similar to having a cross between the common cold and having the seasonal flu. The cough was A-bit dryer then a normal common cold/flu cough. We were tired for at least 2 days out of the 7 day isolation, and nose was running just like a common cold/the flu. Sleep was all we wanted to do during most of the isolation. On the final 2 days of isolation we were feeling a lot better, but knew we still had to isolate for 2 more days. 5 out of these 7 days was when we felt the worse.

It is important to remember that the community of people I advocate for, do not have the same resources to keep up with the news as financially better off people. Some folks in poverty blame this whole new wave of COVID on the actions of the Convoys, and Freedom/Anti VAX Rallies. There may be something to that, but it seems to have happened all across the country all at once. Those of us who have actually been following the news know that governments are lifting restrictions because they feel like people are tired of mandates, the government lifted those restrictions “because they felt the time is right.”

However,  because welfare recipients do not having the same resources to follow the news,  they are seeing the cause of this new wave differently.