Unbelievable -- for well over a year the world has been gripped in a COVID vice, squeezing the life out of people and the world-wide economy, creating desperation everywhere it strikes, and now that the miracle of a preventive vaccine is available, many people, even the most vulnerable to virus onset and death are unwilling to be inoculated against the pathogen. There is, for at least 40 percent of an entire population, little trust in science, evidently.

Ontario finally, to the great relief of its elderly population, has opened registration for appointments to be scheduled for vaccinations held at any number of temporary vaccine clinics. There were some initial glitches in registration but they appear to have been solved. Did the authorities think of the glitch in uptake that might eventuate? They're appealing to people to respond, to register, to receive their vaccinations because while they have thousands of open spots at the clinics for registration, they're going empty.

And furthermore, because some people have failed to show up for their appointed vaccination time, precious vaccines are going to waste. In addition, there is a problem from within the medical community itself whereby many there are loathe to, or refuse to be vaccinated. Among them personal care workers who are in daily contact with the demographic of health-compromised elderly requiring close and constant care.

A desperate situation has evolved in the last two weeks at Ottawa's Heart Institute where both patients and health workers have received their first dose of vaccine but in the interval between their first and second scheduled dose both patients and those administering to them at the hospital have contracted COVID-19. 

Under instruction from Canada's appointed National Advisory Committee on Immunization, the supply of vaccines has been 'stretched' from the manufacturer's fixed recommendation of several weeks between each dose, to an arbitrary four months in Ontario before the second dose is administered. This, in an effort to make the available vaccine doses stretch further so that many more people in the Canadian population can be inoculated than if the two-dose-two-week protocol is followed.

Interestingly, the hospital authority is calling upon the province to make an 'exception' for health workers and heart patients, to have their second dose stepped up immediately in light of the hospital's experience. Just as interesting is that two elderly retired physicians who have received their first dose, outraged at the decision to withhold the second dose for a four-month period rather than respecting the manufacturer's instructions, are suing the government presumably for a form of medical malpractise.

As for us, it will be a week Friday that we received our first dose. Our second is scheduled for mid-July; about 104 days' hence. We're grateful to have received the first dose and would be even more relaxed about the situation if we were to receive the second in another week. Everyone has aspirations of wishing to live to see another year.

It's raining again here. After yesterday's all-sun day and the full-day rain event of the day before that. The rain and more elevated temperatures have melted most of the snowpack from winter. And what's the weather forecast for the next several days? Well actually, snow, as the temperature continues to fluctuate wildly.

If that old ditty, 'Red sky in the morning, sailors take warning. Red sky at night, sailor's delight" is anything to go by, we shouldn't be having a rainy, windy and cool day today. Last evening as the sun was setting and twilight was just beginning to set in, we saw a blaze of red tinged with yellows across the sky. A nice way to cap off a sunny day to be sure, but it did not augur a fair day to follow, after all.

No ravine hike means a bit of extra time and since I've started the ritual of seasonal spring cleaning, and did half of the end-wall pantry in the kitchen yesterday, I cleaned out the second half today. That's just the beginning, there's tons more left to do. And it'll get done by-and-by.