The other day I took my first ride on the Toronto subway system since the Covid-19 crisis began, and I was both impressed and shocked.
Impressed by the cleanliness of the cars, and the efforts to promote social distancing, but shocked by how many passengers weren't wearing masks.
There are plans to make masks mandatory, but the fact that people have to be forced to wear them is a real problem.
For while Canada has been making good progress in its war on the deadly virus.
I feel like I've waited half my life to get a picture of Donald Trump as good as that one, for never have I seen him look so beaten.
It sums up what was one of Trump's worst weeks ever, and hopefully will be the one that will cost him the presidency.
As you probably know, the picture was taken when he returned from a rally in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that he had promised would be huge or YUUUUUUGE.
But sadly for him it turned out to be an almost total bust.
About three weeks ago I wrote a post looking at those who were still refusing to accept the deadly nature of Covid-19.
I warned that kind of ignorance could kill us.
And I wondered why a Coronavirus denier was blogging at Progressive Bloggers.
I see the pictures of the coronavirus deniers on TV, echoing the murderous ignorance of their master Donald Trump.
I talk about them with some of the frontline workers who are risking their lives to try to defeat COVID-19.
We try to laugh at them, but it's so hard when the coronavirus they are mocking is so deadly.
There are few worse ways to die than with a bad case of pneumonia, gasping for every small breath of air, a burning pain in your chest, your panicked eyes bulging out of your head.
But it's the way most Covid-19 patients die, and why ventilators that can pump oxygen into their damaged lungs are so important.
Unfortunately however, there may not be enough breathing machines for everyone.
Nobody seems to have prepared for a monster like this one...
The great Canadian cartoonist Michael de Adder drew that one seventeen years ago, during the SARS outbreak. But it works just as well today.
For it reflects what many people all over Canada are feeling about the latest killer virus, Covid-19, as it keeps ramping up.
Shock. Fear. Panic. Stunned confusion. Madness.
But as for me, I just hope Canadians can be made to understand one of the biggest lessons of SARS:
Protect our hospitals and health workers, or watch a pandemic turn into a living nightmare.
