Fearfully frightening realities. The coronavirus making huge strides. Everywhere. Precautions not to be taken lightly, yet confoundingly there are groups of people convinced that the current health crisis gripping the world community is nothing but a conspiracy to bring us all into a massive dictatorship plot. How people arrive at such delusional convictions is beyond knowing other than their minds are twisted, unable or incapable of facing reality.

But those twisted minds who rail against social distancing, facial masks and avoidance of large gatherings because they insist they will not abide having their freedoms eroded, and lend themselves to the state conniving to victimize them, place everyone at risk. There is just so much that health and government authorities can do to apprise the public and ask for their cooperation.

It would, of course, help enormously if those same authorities stopped sending contradictory and confusing messages; at first denying the usefulness of masks, then supporting their use. Shutting down small businesses while permitting large corporate interests to continue opening their premises to the public.

Having each of the provinces and territories enact processes at variance with others. Above all, the federal government delaying vital decisions until they fall into the category of 'too little, too late'. And the examples of senior leaders in government preaching to the public best practices for safeguarding themselves and their communities, while themselves breaking the very regulations they impose on others.

Suffice it to say that people are well and truly fed up with the confusion and lack of good sense. We empathize at an emotional remove with health professionals who are on the front lines, seeing and attempting to treat people in deep distress burdened with COVID-inspired organ failure, as they watch those stricken, both the elderly and health-compromised and younger people in seemingly good health, lose their battle for life.

Canadians look to the United States' figures for COVID infection cases and consequent deaths and shudder in the belief that the situation is nowhere near as dramatically awful in Canada. But in very fact, it is just that. We underestimate the effect the coronavirus has had in Canada at our own peril. Globally, Canada has the third-highest case fatality rate (3.4) to date among medium-large, high-income peer countries: "higher even than Spain France, the U.S.A. and Germany", according to University of Toronto infectious disease researcher Dr.Tara Moriarty.

We personally are beyond fortunate that we are able to isolate ourselves because we live in a single, detached home in a community that is only moderately dense in numbers of residents, with easy access to outdoor recreation to relieve the tedium of boredom, to enable us to obtain physical exercise, to continue to be healthy and well-adjusted. Restraining our shopping expeditions to the absolute necessities and taking reasonable precautions.

And hoping that we will somehow manage to evade the ghastly spectre of community infection that is sweeping the country. 

 This morning it rained again, but not heavily. And when it stopped out came the sun. Only the sun can guarantee a positive outlook on a day; exposure to it  is useful in other ways, building our daily vitamin D intake, yet another measure that helps to fortify the immune system and aid in avoiding contracting the SARS-CoV-2 virus.

Through all of these contradictory and confusing issues we are beyond fortunate, with much to be appreciative of. Indications are that by early spring at least, one at least of the emerging vaccines will be rolled out in Canada and a giant effort to organize mass inoculation will be set to take place. A hoped-for event that will answer our wishes to return to the kind of life we lived before we became aware that a strange new virus was entering our lives, one whose particulars and impact puzzled science, and still continues to.