Seven Sundays

Celebration in Isolation: Bruce's dad turned 90 on Friday. Along with what you can see in the photo above, we sang "Happy Birthday" to him over the phone.

Every day this past week, I've walked past Women's College Hospital. Pictured above is just one half of the capacity set up to shelter people waiting for their COVID-19 assessment.

You'll notice there are no people waiting.

Based on my non-scientific sampling, there were:

• no people on Saturday March 28
• three people on Sunday March 29
• one person on Monday March 30
• and no people on any of March 31 or April 1-3.

By Friday, Women's College had closed half of its intake capacity. I'll check again today. 

On the other hand, this is the line up to get into the LCBO on Bloor Street West on Sunday, April 3, at about 2:30 in the afternoon.

I'm trying to make sense of the public health response here. 

While it is very clear that it is not OK for anyone to grow sick and die from the coronavirus, it is evidently OK to die from not receiving a necessary organ transplant or from breast cancer. At one of Doug Ford's daily coronavirus news conferences, a reporter asked Health Minister Christine Elliot about a woman whose surgery had been cancelled. Elliot responded, with a 'what do you expect us to do' tone in her voice: "We have to make sure we have the capacity to handle this disease."

For the foreseeable future, the whole province is focused on preventing one kind of death. While we don't want doctors to have to make a terrible trade off among COVID-19 patients, exactly these kinds of trade offs have already been made for other patients. 

Seen While Out Walking

This is in front of someone's home on Borden Street south of Bloor West. I can't decide if this is a curmudgeonly expression of distaste (maybe the artist attended a show and saw something that made him think 'I can do that') or a mischievously lighthearted sight gag. Or -- this is also a possibility -- it is a legitimate piece of Canadian folk art.

Another legit piece of Canadian folk art.

Seen While Online

And, in case you have not already seen Pluto the talking dog, click here for today's third example of legit Canadian folk art.

Thanks for reading!

Wash those hands!

Thank your store clerk!

Karen