So, it’s happened here in Alberta. We’re all opened up. Even in Calgary, the one city that was a little more recalcitrant about it has voted to drop the mask bylaw and let things open again.
And yet, if all you went by was what you see at the stores, you wouldn’t know it. I toured around a little bit on Wednesday, just to see what the lifting of restrictions looked like, and aside from the very occasional person not wearing a mask inside, things looked very much the same. Often even restaurants are maintaining the wider seating, with some tables still marked as off limits for spacing. So maybe it’s just me, or just a factor of this being an urban centre, but those who have been screaming for an end of restrictions seem now to be shown to be very much a tiny minority of the people around here.
Unfortunately, even a tiny minority can be a vast vector for disease spreading, so the restrictions were required to keep those people from endangering the rest of us. Again it seems that we are the reason we can’t have nice things.
At any rate, however, things have now opened up and while there are talks of booster shots being eventually required, it seems that we may have finally put the worst of the pandemic behind us. I’m hopeful it will now be relegated to the same level of nuisance as the flu virus. Some epidemiologists, however, have spoken about their hopes that people will not forget the lessons learned and continue to both wash their hands with more frequency and consider wearing masks in crowded situations, as what slowed the spread of COVID-19 has almost entirely stopped the flu, and with it, the deaths that are normally associated with it.
Who knows, if we, as a society, can manage to make masks a fashionable choice, maybe we can save more people from hardship and disease with hardly any effort on our part.
Meanwhile, this week’s Voice Magazine brings us a feature interview with student Amy Mayer. A student who reads in the fantasy genre while at the same time aiming toward a career in library services, something which, to my mind, is one of the least fanciful (and under-valued) career choices there is, so my hat’s off to her for that one.
Plus, this week, the Struggling Student Rants gives us some advice on how to get the best job you possibly can. Oddly enough, it’s primarily by quitting your current one.
We also have a music review of the new single by country artist Jennifer Nettles, the student approved reading list for your July summer reading, a weighing of the pros and cons of extreme exercise, a timely look, given the onset of the Tokyo Olympics (which will be one of the strangest Olympics ever, now that Japan has declared that there will be no spectators during the games) of how some successful athletes seem determined to lose it all, and why there may be more to it that we think.
And of course we have a selection of events, scholarships, course reviews, thoughtful articles and more just waiting for you. So enjoy the read!
