Omnicron meteoric rise sees the city prepare for closures. Restrictions are in place, but are they too late to stop the explosive growth of coronavirus?
Lisa fluffed up her hair and killed the news feed with an impatient hand. Her wine-colored bangs seemed to droop before her very eyes. The clock above the mirror read 11:50 am.
Bummer these limp locks. She wished she could have more body to her hair. No time to deal with it now.
She threw on her heavy black coat she'd got at the Thrift store and took the stairs two at a time. She sped up Chapel and down Laurier in Sandy Hill, being careful to put her mask on. It'd been freshly washed last night. A lot of reports went around of people breathing in dirt and bacteria and other contagions on the mask fabric. Not a good time of year to get sick. Yikes.
Before long she reached the university and paused to catch her breath. Hands on knees, she experienced a wave of nausea: either she was out of shape or the extra-thick mask was killing her. A big honking sign stood posted at the entrance, 'Visitors must be vaccinated to be on campus'. Apparently the same applied to visitors at hospitals. She'd recently had her jab. Nothing to worry about re being stopped by campus security.
She walked faster through the courtyard past a small group of protesters near the library steps. Many were waving provocative signs. 'No VAX for STUDENTS', 'END the TYRANNY'. None of them were wearing masks.
Lisa stepped by, disguising the sharpness in her tone. "You're all supposed to be wearing masks."
One of the taller girls turned around to examine her with an amused look. "Take a pill, Jill." She gripped her 'No vax passport' sign as she ruffled the shapely shoulders under her jean jacket. "Try taking off your mask too, you dumb git, you'll breathe easier."
Lisa turned, incensed. She was stung with an urge to snap out something equally toxic, but fell short, almost a sense of shame washing over her. Re-enrolling at Ottawa U in September had been tough, what with the vax passport and mandatory vax requirements for students. The landscape had changed dramatically. A part of her knew that what was happening to society, this obsessive mask-wearing even in the streets and this lockstep mass vaccination, was unnatural, but everyone was doing it and it was no secret that it became harder and harder not to follow the herd. She stepped up her pace.
"That's it," quipped another, "keep hustling by, pretty girl, stay muzzled like the other sheep. Baa! Baa! Cat got your tongue?"
Okay that was it. Lisa squared off, hands on hips. "Don't you know you guys are a health risk? Standing there elbow to elbow. You're not even social distancing."
The lead girl, the tall one who'd originally insulted her, probably in her early twenties, scoffed along to the sniggers of her four other companions. "Yeah, health risk, like standing outside in the fresh air? That's a good one. What planet are you from?"
"I could ask you the same thing, morons. At least, I'm getting my next shot. You guys probably haven't even had one yet. I'm surprised security hasn't kicked you guys out of here."
One of the young men in the group piped up in a jocular voice, "Oh, they will. They're a little late on the draw today. Slackers."
That brought a few laughs from the others. "Let her go, Mickie. Little Miss Priss's got to run off and do her civic duty and report us."
Lisa fumed and stomped off, glad to be away from the group of miserable fools. The slogans on their signs burned in her memory. 'Vax tyranny, reject it. 1984 is here. Forcing masks on children is child abuse.'
Her immediate reaction was to dismiss such anti-vaxxers as mischief makers, but an image of a video clip, of Dr. Fauci in a 60 minutes interview, flashed in her brain. Someone had sent her it on social media, she couldn't remember when, and he was quoted saying early on in the pandemic that 'right now people in the United States should not be walking around wearing masks... When you're in the middle of an outbreak it might make people feel a little bit better, but it is not providing the perfect protection that people think that it is.' The irony, literally a few weeks later, the same Anthony Fauci was key in signing off on national mask mandates. Go figure.
None of it made any sense. But was it supposed to? Everything was nebulous these days, stories changing, rules changing, new bombshells dropping.
But maybe it was better to be safe than sorry. She'd heard of people's lungs filling with white phlegm and then suffocating to death in ICUs. Her mind couldn't stop imagining herself as one of those victims. No way. She was too young to die. But a teenager had recently died of covid. It was all over CNN and the mainstream news.
A voice shot out at her amid a clatter of footfall on cobbles. Lisa scowled and turned to behold the tall girl with the wavy hazel hair who'd called her a git. The girl had a worried look in her eye.
"Wait, my name's Jasmine. You said you were heading to the clinic to get the jab?"
"What'd you care?" Lisa kept on walking.
"Before you go, read this—" and she thrust out a pamphlet in her hand. On top was an angel bearing a sword of golden light. The site was labelled TruthWatch.
"What's this crap?"
"Crap that might save your life."
"Exactly how?"
"Just check it out. There're reports by people a lot more knowledgeable than me talking about how all this health crisis stuff is a bunch of nonsense. Doctors, researchers, journalists, all talking about the fraud and shedding light on what's really going on. I'm here to try to spread word. Or at least some awareness of the things people should hear but aren't." She clicked her tongue in a fit of frustration. "God knows, the mainstream media sure isn't."
Lisa took the flier with reluctant fingers. "Yeah, I'll look at it." She resented trying to mask her annoyance and to find some sympathy for the person before her. "My name's Lisa." She turned to the young woman. "You know, you guys should learn a bit more manners and people skills before you try accosting them in public."
"Easy to say, but you have to see it from our side. All day we get hecklers and zombies rubbing us the wrong way, the same masked fools just following rules and what they hear on CBC and what their friends and families tell them."
"So you don't believe in the vaccine?"
Jasmine sneered. "You think? If you believe in gene-modifying serums maybe."
"What'd you mean?"
"I mean—man—" Jasmine rolled her eyes "—you don't even know about that, do you? These experimental, gene-altering serums modify your dna in order to 'stimulate an immune response'. Frankenstein science, if you ask me. Rushed out and not tested properly. That's not the least of it."
"Really I don't know what you're talking about. I didn't know any of that."
"Of course you don't, no one does. Why would the shamsters at Big Pharma advertise such when they're trying to push a vax on the entire world?"
"Yeah, I can see that, but..." Gingerly she fingered the pamphlet. "Maybe I'll check this out tonight."
Jasmine nodded. "You better..and I'd take a time out before you get your follow up jab. Or are you on your boosters now?"
Lisa ignored the comment. She tucked the paper in her purse, not a little rattled by this new information. "You go to this university?"
"Nah, I dropped out a few years back. Poli-sci and economics wasn't my shtick."
"Really? Why'd you get disenchanted?"
"It was a bogus course. I could learn more going to alt-news sites and following my intuition than going to those boring lectures. My reading list expanded the deeper I dug."
Lisa drew back with a frown. The flagstoned square seemed cold and distant and the small group of hecklers seemed faraway and like little stage figures on a faraway set. "So what are you doing here on campus?"
"Trying to stop people like yourself form going to the clinic and getting vaxxed. They don't let us hang out too close to the main doors. The campus by-law squad will come and kick us out right away."
Lisa could picture that. An estranged silence ticked on. "I take humanitarian studies, second year. So far so good." She hurried to add, "I want to go on to study anthropology."
Jasmine's glazed look seemed to reflect her opinion of the course. "Whatever floats your boat."
Lisa scowled. She made motions to go.
"Look." Jasmine reached out a hand. "I'm sorry for calling you a sheep earlier." She bit her lip and shook her mane of hair. "I just get a lot of people lashing out at me as I said, for following something my heart tells me. I don't cow to the establishment. All this blind obedience bugs me. This mindless mask wearing and pandering to authority seems so wrong to me. Look around you, every university student seems trained like a pet seal to wear masks outside."
Lisa saw that it was true. She flashed back to her last year in high school when she applied to Ottawa U and Queen's in Kingston. She'd accepted the Ottawa offer as her family lived in Kemptville close to Ottawa. She wondered: would it have been any different in Kingston? She thought not.
Jasmine waved a hand. "I'm a rule breaker, a truth-seeker. I've been searching for answers for a long time, ever since I dropped out of that dumb course. I follow all the alternate-news streams like Amazing Polly, Dr. Kaufman, Corbett Report. Highly recommended. You should check them out. They're on the web site pamphlet I gave you." She motioned to the papers she was holding.
"Sure. But never heard of any of these guys."
Jasmine gave a low laugh. "Doesn't surprise me. Listen, I gotta go. Promise me you'll read the stuff before you decide on your next shot. My email's at the bottom of the flier if you ever want to talk."
"Sure. But don't you have a cell phone?"
"That's another thing you want to get rid of, Lisa, at least if you don't want to be tracked and traced."
Lisa nodded. "Of course. I should have known. Slap my wrists." She gave her head a shake. "You know, you're something else."
Jasmine shrugged and loped away like a lioness across the court toward Laurier St. Despite her rough, rebellious nature, Lisa couldn't help but admire her. Her long-legged stride and thick wavy curls were something of a signature trademark. Boy, if she could have hair like that...Lisa caught herself with a disgusted scowl. She shook her head and chastised herself for thinking so enviously about someone else.
She brushed off the incident, grabbed a cafe mocha at the nearby Starbucks. She hesitated before the vax clinic. There it was right here, just a jog away.
But something stayed her impulse. Call it fate...providence. It seemed better to peruse some of these links at the library before committing to her shot...
Thanks for reading!
You can read the rest of the story at
https://afna347.wixsite.com/golden-age