The news, the news. Not very inspiring at the best of times and these are not the best of times. On the one hand we have the almost-imminent appearance of a vaccine that it is hoped will obliterate the presence of the horrible novel coronavirus that has afflicted the global community for almost a year.  The world economy has suffered, but above all, there is now one-and-a-half million dead whose family members will never come to terms with their loss.

But there appears to be another type of affliction that people suffer under, apart from the physical distress, apart from the disabling physical effects of the SARS-CoV-2 virus that so mysteriously entered the pantheon of deadly diseases preying on the animal kingdom, and that has relentlessly stalked the world in such a sinister manner. 

People have been doubly victimized, their organs succumbing to the dire destructive effects of the virus on the respiratory system and other vital organs, and aside from and together with that there is the psychological affect. People already suffering mental insecurity, and those newly introduced to the intensity of fear and loneliness are experiencing a greater loss of equilibrium; debilitating mental illness.

 A new poll just released by the Mental Health Commission of Canada and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse has revealed that respondents who claim to be in "strong mental health" has realized a fall in numbers by 23 percent over the time the global pandemic was set loose on humanity. In 2019, 67 percent of Canadians felt themselves to be in a condition of strong mental health, and that number has now declined to 44 percent. Over half of Canadians now think of themselves as being in a perilous level of mental health.     

Suicide help lines have been beleaguered by a wholesale increase in calls of desperation, vastly outstretching their ability to effectively cope with a mental health crisis that has afflicted youth in particular with one in five seen to be acquiring or worsening a mental health disorder, according to the Canadian Institute for Health Information. Emergency department visits and hospitalizations for mental health disorders among young people rose in the last decade by 60 percent even as hospitalizations for other issues fell by 26 percent. And the numbers are rising, thanks to COVID.

In effect, this disaster that the public has been warned about for years has been realized at a time when no one appeared to take the warning seriously, that a global pandemic was due to appear, and would have to be dealt with. Governments ignored the warning, health authorities took heed but did little to prepare, since it takes financing to do so and public health is financed by the public through taxation, a dirty word when it is suggested that more taxes need to be forthcoming to handle an immense problem that might or might not appear in the near-to-distant future.

Well, it appeared in the near-enough future and that future is now, and we are living through the disaster that just about everyone found too difficult to assimilate into their unreceptive minds as being something that had to be prepared for. That lack of preparation has resulted in horrendous consequences. On the other hand, it's difficult to imagine  how matters could have turned out differently. There are simply so many issues of vital importance that have to be seen to and dealt with, even absent the appearance of a global pandemic.

So much for a thought process in an effort to see this problem in the round, neutrally and relatively unaffected as among the truly fortunate people so far spared a more intimate, gruelling and fearsome tussle with COVID and an overburdened health care system. The broad net effect of what has occurred in Canada is little different other than in scale of numbers than has happened elsewhere.

We go about our business. All of us do. Despite the physical constraints, the constant self-reminders, the cautionary steps we take -- the continual little voice whispering in the ear from the minuscule self sitting on our shoulders -- we get on with life as best we can. For us, it's a relatively simple affair. Tending to routine, minimally impacted in direct comparison to so many others.

Another dismally overcast day greeted us this morning, with the temperature set to rise above freezing to 2C. A damp day where even that level of cold creeps through protective layers of winter clothing to clutch at and penetrate our very essence beneath our parkas. But how wonderful to be out in the open, to stride along winter forest trails, to greet the occasional other hiker, to look up at the pewter-coloured sky, to see the bold, dark silhouettes of trees, to hear far-off woodpeckers call, to watch as tiny red squirrels hustle along the forest floor.