Like many of you who may have watched the National on CBC last evening, we were horrified to see the effects COVID-19 is having on our society. The long lines of cars waiting to drop patients suffering from symptoms of COVID-19 at emergency wards at overwhelmed New York hospitals and the word that people who have had loved ones pass away in their homes and cannot find anyone to take them to the morgue or funeral homes. The reports of uncontrolled COVID-19 outbreaks amongst some of our most vulnerable populations at Nursing Homes across Canada. The rapidly growing number of people losing their jobs and facing financial and psychological hardship.
These images stand as a warning to us all.
As a nation, by many measures, we are doing better than most who have been affected by COVID-19. In New Brunswick, identified cases are low at this point and in McAdam we have not seen any confirmed cases to date. We have been fortunate our leadership at all levels took early steps to slow the spread of this disease across Canada through mitigation efforts such as social distancing. Unfortunately, we are merely entering the early days of this fight. The numbers of new cases are growing in Canada. While many Canadians, New Brunswickers and McAdamites take the COVID-19 threat seriously, we know from polling and personal experience that some 20% still do not and continue to flaunt social distancing. We can be proud as a community that we have taken our responsibilities in social distancing seriously and that this has likely had a direct affect on the lack of spread of the virus here but we need to work on that small minority. It is very difficult to change our habits in visiting family, friends and neighbours or traveling to Fredericton and St. Stephen to shop. However, we need to change, or we will be potentially responsible for killing those same family, friends and neighbours because we couldn’t stay home. Although McAdam has not yet had a confirmed case of COVID-19, the threat is real to our community’s collective health and we must not let our guard down. Please continue to follow social distancing, handwashing and personal safety guidelines.
Our community can take pride in it’s support of one another. Many McAdamites are looking after their neighbours by running errands, checking up on one another and providing us with much needed entertainment. As we know, many people are being and, have been, laid off because of the virus. As a result, the food bank has been seeing a rise in the number of inquiries and usage. These layoffs are putting many of our hard-working neighbours in a position where they may need a bit of a hand up. We can do this either directly or by supporting the foodbank.
Our nation’s best and brightest are working 24/7 on therapies to minimize the effects of COVID-19 and develop a vaccine to protect us. They will succeed. We just have to be patient and band together to support one another until they do. We are all in this together and together we will get through this.
