Week 13! Which means I’ve been doing this for 1/4 of a year! Which means we’re a quarter of the way through the year?! ¼
I’ve mentioned previously that I’ve trusted our Provincial Health Officer unwaveringly for the past 12 months and I’m doing my very best to continue with that. What makes that a little tricky is the disparity between the – somewhat paraphrased – statement that “when this is all over, if things go well, it will look like we have overreacted” and how I’m feeling right now. Vancouver Coastal Health has the most amount of active cases we’ve had during the entire pandemic, we have more people in hospital then we’ve had in months, same for folks in ICU, VCH has had two days of more than 200 new cases, something that hasn’t happened before, and our trendlines for all the key indicators are…not good. Not forgetting of course that hospitalizations and deaths are a lagging indicator from the number of active cases. It really, really does not feel like we are overreacting right now. At all.
I also mentioned a while back that it felt like we were in a race between the variants of concern and vaccinating people. Even though we are vaccinating people at a really good lick at the moment, and things are definitely trending in the right direction in that respect, we must also not forget that people who receive their first shot are not substantially protected for a couple of weeks. I can’t help but feel that we have lost the race and that something must be done. And I also can’t help but feel that that something is not to allow indoor religious ceremonies or to allow people to see those folks in care homes; both of which we’re allowing. Frustrating isn’t the right word.
I’ve been thinking about when I get my vaccine and what it means when I get the first shot. That first shot is for society. It should help reduce transmission, it should help reduce the likelihood that I need to go into hospital, it should do the things that are needed for the greater good. The second shot – the one I’ll get a few months later – is for me. That second shot, assuming that it is a two-shot vaccine that I’m given, is the one that will allow me to return to do the things that I’ve not felt comfortable doing for the past 12 months. Things like hugging my friends (I’m a hugger, with permission of course), things like sharing a table with someone outside of my household, things like going to a restaurant with my partner, and hopefully, in time, things like being able to see my parents. If you don’t know that means, either I or them have to get on a plane which still seems a long way off.
Right now, it looks like my first shot will be administered some time in June which would mean my second should be in August or September. So, with luck, it’ll mean a subsiding level of anxiety over the summer, ending in one hell of a hangover at some point before the leaves start to change colour.
I’ve been re-watching Start Trek: The Next Generation from the very start and I’ve loved it. The episodes with Q, time loops, and the Borg have been as excellent as I remember and we’re not even done with season 2. I’ve been keeping track of the ratings of the episodes as I’ve watched them and I’ve mostly agreed with them apart from “The Royale” – that was panned by most folks it seems, whereas I love it. Tasha Yarr’s timeline still hits pretty hard. 🚀
I wanted to make it easier for folks to build add-ons for my Content Visibility plugin. I’m really proud of the basic architecture of the plugin and how it can be extended, but my documentation was somewhat lacking. That’s why I’ve created an example add-on plugin for Content Visibility which has both code comments and a readme that hopefully provides insight into how things piece together and what is required of an add-on. 📚
Shared by Joel Goodman in the always-excellent WPCampus Slack team, is this equally excellent collection of web components which talks about the accessibility of those components. Some good learning to be had here.
Also on the web components front is this excellent, comprehensive post on Smashing Magazine.
The gov.uk site sometimes refers to accordions as ShowHideyThings. Wonderful.
A short twitter thread about making accessible tables in very few lines of HTML and CSS.
BC COVID-19 Vaccine Count: 12.40% (+2.88%) and 10.91% (+2.87%) Canada-wide. 👩🏼⚕️
