No, COVID is not back. And for that matter, it never left technically. Today what I’m referring to as lockdown 2.0 is a result of the air quality situation affecting the northeast of the United States, due to the Canadian wildfires.
Today is the third consecutive day that I can remember Our (local) air quality being visibly affected due to these fires. No, it’s not as bad as the images we saw from New York City a few weeks back. What it looks like right now is just a constant fog hanging in the air. But even worse than that is the odor. At times it has smelled like a campfire, or burning leaves and trees. At other times however, it has smelled like burning plastic.
The most frustrating part of all this is the fact that we haven’t really heard a whole lot about the actual fires, outside of their mansion and weather reports. In fact, I was just on cbc.ca trying to find actual news stories about these fires. To the conspiracy theorists, I’m happy to report that yes, these fires are real.
NPR has a great article about how their reporters have experienced poor air quality overseas.
In a 2016 article , Time magazine was reporting that the smog in china was a deadly as smoking. And while I know that the smoke from the Canadian wildfires is nothing compared to this, it does suggest a disturbing trend. We are experiencing things now in America that we thought happened in other countries. I know that sounds very “ugly American” of me, but it’s true.
For years, we’ve been seeing people on the streets in Japan and China wearing surgical masks. Three years ago, we were ALL wearing masks and social distancing. Today, seeing someone wearing a mask in the streets due to illness is just a part of life.
But the stuff with air quality is what really concerns me. I’m not some raging environmentalist or anything; but I think you -with even half a brain – you can deduce that the environment is in danger. what’s this planet gonna be like in 20 years? 30 years? 50 years? What kind of Legacy are we leaving for my kids?
UPDATE 7.19.23 – We’re still having air quality alert days – probably more often than not. Nothing has been nearly as bad as it was 4-6 weeks ago. We don’t have the haze, let alone the smell that we had 4-6 weeks ago, but I’m sure we haven’t seen the last of these bad air quality days.
Rebuilding Rob 
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