Time to get outta town? Follow this Covid roadmap

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⇒ Issue #79 (In numerology, 79 is a number of introspection and intuition.)

⇒ Confirmed Covid cases in Canada as of 07/21: 112,938*

⇒ Confirmed Covid fatalities in Canada as of 07/21: 8,902*

⇒ Worldwide Covid cases as of 07/21: 14,729,037*

⇒ Worldwide Covid fatalities as of 07/21: 610,565*

July 21, 2020--With summer well underway, people's thoughts, including those of your correspondent, Chronicle senior editor John Evans, are turning to the idea of summer vacations. The call of the cottage, back country road tours, and visits to the old hometown are going to be particularly alluring to a population that has been largely house-bound for half a year.

Social isolation directives have been gradually loosened across Canada, so the questions are: Where can we go, and where should we avoid?

The Canadian Travel & Tourism Roundtable, a travel and tourism lobby group, has created an interactive map to help understand the current inter-province travel rules. That map is available at https://time-to-travel.ca Some interesting highlights: Canada's four eastern-most provinces have created an Atlantic Canadian travel bubble, allowing free movement between each other without any need for self-isolation while Canadians from outside PEI, New Brunswick, Newfoundland and Laborador are barred from entering unless they meet specific criteria. Nunavut and the Northwest Territories are also closed to almost all tourism. While B.C., Alberta, Saskatchewan, Ontario, and Quebec can be travelled to freely without self-isolation, that is not true for all travellers to Manitoba, which may dash your Vancouver-to-Montreal road trip plans.

When choosing a specific destination, though, it might be wise to avoid any major transportation hubs and border cities, though.

While cross-border traffic is down 90 per cent from the same time last year, the National Post reports that more than 80 per cent of those who do come across qualify for exemptions from regulations to self-quarantine for 14 days. Many of these are transportation drivers who are transporting vital supplies between the U.S. and Canada.

The article notes that overall, new cases arriving in Canada from other countries have been in decline since the borders were closed in March. But fewer is not none.

Domestic travel still carries some risk, too. CITY-TV news reports that passengers on two Air Canada flights on July 13—flight 111 from Toronto to Vancouver, and flight 8073 from Vancouver to Victoria were likely exposed to Covid-19, and travellers on those flights are recommended to self-isolate for 14 days.

Maybe another walk in a local urban park is more my speed.

COVID CHRONICLE 07/21/2020

• In positive news, early results are in from testing of a corona virus candidate being developed by Oxford University in the U.K. Findings from the phase I/II study show the candidate is safe and induces an immune reaction, and the study authors say the results are strong enough to warrant a larger-scale phase III investigation.The study was published in the Lancet.
  
• The Covid-19 crisis seems to be leading more Canadians to take more health matters into their own hands, and many seem satisfied with the outcomes, according to a recent survey. Consumer Health Products Canada commissioned Redfern Research to survey more than 2,000 Canadians in May 2020 about how they were informing themselves about medical matters and managing their health since social restrictions came into place in March of this year.
  Among the findings, roughly half of the survey respondents reported that they have missed an in-person appointment with a doctor due to the Covid-19 pandemic response measures. Of those who missed appointments, more than two-thirds had taken some steps themselves. That included 12 per cent who took care of the problem themselves, 53 per cent who availed themselves of virtual care services, and 7 per cent who sought out a pharmacist's advice.
  Half of those who had managed their health conditions themselves reported they were satisfied with the results, and more than half who had used virtual services said they would use them again, even after the pandemic was over. 
• On the 'it is an ill wind that blows no-one any good' side of good news, the pandemic seems to have been the push some people needed to take better care of their health in other ways. A report from University College London, U.K., says that more than one million people have stopped smoking since the Covid-19 pandemic hit Britain, while another 440,000 have attempted quitting.

(U.S. Air Force photo by Master Sgt. Roger Parsons/Released)

TODAY I AM READING:

I have dug out my copy of Robert Park's “Voodoo Science: The Road from Foolishness to Fraud” in an attempt to try and understand where some of the contrafactual and foil-hatty Covid-19 nonsense on my social media feeds is coming from. Honestly, the 'masks cut off your breathing' chicken littles have somehow forgotten all the mask-wearing blue-collar workers such as drywallers and welders that their day-to-day lives rely on.





RIGHT NOW I AM LISTING TO:

Relaxing Jazz for work and study. YouTube is loaded with long-play files of soothing, lyric-free music to keep the cabin fever at bay.

TONIGHT I AM COOKING:

Steamed pork dumplings, rice, and a side salad. Frozen dumplings are a quick, easy meal. And the leftover rice will get fried up with eggs for lunch tomorrow.

READY FOR HUMP DAY

Please use the comments section of the Daily CurveFlattener to let us know what you're up to today and please make a point of checking in via LinkedIn, email, or your favourite connector. Share this newsletter with your colleagues, if you please. Tomorrow, my colleague Kylie Rebernik will pick up the reins.