Last week Hard Rock reported that the COVID ward at the hospital is down to 50% occupancy.  Yesterday Hawkeye confirmed that outbreaks at senior care homes are down by a similar number.  Spring is only a few weeks away.  Vaccines are on their way.  It may still be rainy and dark today but the future looks bright indeed!

How did we get so lucky?  How has Vancouver been so lightly touched?  Hard Rock mentioned a hypothesis concerning the humidity and how it doesn’t allow Coronavirus to stay airborne for long.  Others have noted our beautiful sunny spring of 2020 and the plentiful virus-killing sunlight plus the immune system building vitamin D. 

Certainly our sane response to the pandemic helped: “Be calm, be kind, be safe.”  The fact that our parks remained open for public access unlike Ontario’s.  The fact that we didn’t launch large protests and rallies against closures and masks.  For the most part we behaved civilly and rationally.  Whether or not we agreed with the measures enacted, we did remain calm and most of us remained kind as well.

I’m sure all of those factors played into our relative success so far and the pandemic isn’t over yet so we need to keep doing what has been working.  But I’ll suggest one more major factor that has helped protect us from the worst of the pandemic:  It is your obsession with health!

The culture of Vancouver is all about health and fitness and getting outdoors.  It is nothing like the rest of Canada.  Certainly not like the places I lived growing up in Ontario.  In the first days of last year’s city-wide shut down I made some observations that led me to publish a very optimistic blog post expressing my confidence that we were going to get through this alright.  What I observed was that the grocery store shelves were bare of frozen fruits and vegetables but full of ice cream and frozen desserts.  People were stocking up on fresh meat and produce but leaving the snack aisles untouched.   With most people not working, the beaches and trails were filled with cyclists, joggers and people walking their dogs.  Every park was filled with people enjoying the sunshine, half of them doing workout routines.  Fitness stores sold out of fitness equipment and stood empty.  I got phone calls and emails every day from strangers asking to buy or rent our fitness equipment for top dollar.

It wasn’t like this everywhere.  Comparing notes with my friends out of province, I know that in the places I was raised there was a run on processed and packaged foods, folks were encouraged to stay indoors and fitness stores were not ransacked by panicking home gym enthusiasts.

Whatever other factors came into play, your commitment to fitness unquestionably played a role in our success so far.  Your response to the pandemic filled me with confident optimism and now 11 months later I feel the same hopeful confidence coupled with a great swelling of pride for my adopted city.  2020 gave me just one more reason to be grateful that I chose Vancouver as my home.  I loved this city before COVID-19.  It’s not just the climate or the natural beauty, it’s also the people and the culture.  The pandemic gave me another reason to declare “West Coast, Best Coast!”

Wednesday WOD

Equipment: Barbell or barbell alternative. PVC pipe or alternative

Warm Up
1 min forward/backward scales
1 min shoulder pass throughs
1 min squat hold
1 min forward/backward scales
1 min PVC OHS
1 min crow pose hold
1 min handstand or headstand hold
1 min centre plank
1 min side plank left
1 min side plank right

Tech
OHS & Alternatives

WOD
OHS
3-3-3-3-3

Cool Down
1 min Upper Body Rolls
1 min Lower Body Rolls
Quad Stretch