RiversdaleReporter.ca

Welcome, friends, explorers, and weary internet travelers! This is the unofficial local newspaper for Riversdale an upcoming area of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, Canada.

News on!

A friend and I took a walk along the Meewasin Trail, one of the things the province and city actually managed to get right -- and one of the rare times Saskatoon has managed to ape the behaviour of world class cities like New York, Shanghai, Hong Kong, and Roma or even destination Canadian cities like Vancouver and Edmonton. Our walk wasn't that long but it took us past the riverfront promenade in front of the new South Downtown development -- two other things Saskatoon got right.*

We were wearing masks and plastic gloves. Some people we passed along the trail were masked and gloved as well. Some were masked only. These people tended to give other trail users, as did my friend and I, personal space which is to say we practised "social distancing."

Too many people we encountered wore neither masks nor gloves.

And too many of these non-maskers or anti-maskers seemed not the least bit concerned about getting or giving the covid-19 virus. They made little or no effort to social distance among the members of their own group, or to social distance between their own selves or group and other trail users. It was like they had just arrived from some alternate universe or just emerged from some cave and the concept pf "social distancing" was completely unfamiliar to them, like the knowledge that we are living in the midst of a global pandemic something that had managed to elude them.

As of the date and time this is written (2-27-2021, ~ 21:00) about 113.75 million people have contracted covid-19 and about 2.5 million have died from it, world wide. In our southern neighbour, the US, roughly 28.29 million have contracted covid-19 and roughly 509K have died from it. In Mexico, roughly 2.08 million have contracted covid-19 and roughly 185K have died from it.

Fortunately the rate at which new people are getting infected with covid-19 or its variants is falling, thanks to lockdowns, travel restrictions, and vaccines. Unfortunately, the rate at which those who contract covid-19 die from covid-19 -- thanks to increased lethalness of some of the new variants and to overwhelmed health care systems, is rising. For those who like numbers 1 person is now dying from covid-19 and variants for every 45.5 people who are medically confirmed to have been infected with covid-19 and variants.

1 in 45.5 seems like pretty good odds -- the odds of you getting infected and dying as a result seem pretty remote. Would you play Russian roulette with a gun with 46 bullet chambers if you knew one of the chambers was loaded? Would you play it even once if you knew that if you play it you increase the likelihood you will have to play it another time, and that each time you play it you increase the likelihood that you must play it another time?

Please help slow the spread. Don't be a bad actor and irrational anti-masker. Limit the number of times you go out and when you do go out, wear a mask and gloves and remember to socially distance -- whether you are indoors or outdoors, and even when walking on the trails.

Stay safe. Keep others safe. Help slow the spread.

*    These three things that Saskatoon got right, and a few others, help convey the (false) impression Saskatoon is a prosperous and growing modern city. In point of fact Saskatoon is a city of deep divides with a real poverty and marginalization problem that has been dealt with mainly by policing and prisons, a city people grow up in and then move away from "in a province people move away from" -- a phrase a New York friend used to describe and demonstrate his knowledge of Saskatchewan that I thought was so apt I use it. It will take vision and great leadership and perhaps even alteration of the structure of the federal state or secession to change this.