Travel-related Dr. Robert Strang, Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health confirmed, 20 new cases of COVID-19 in the province on Tuesday, bringing our total to 147. Although community spread has been concluded as the cause of one case, most of the confirmed cases — 96%, according to Strang —Read More

Community Spread Nova Scotia’s chief medical officer of health, Dr. Robert Strang announced on Monday that, having been unable to trace a case of COVID-19 to travel or a known source, they have concluded that transmission has occurred within the community or “community spread.” Strang has been warning for daysRead More

Editor’s Note: A story unfolding as rapidly as the COVID-19 pandemic doesn’t lend itself to weekly coverage so the Spectator is going to experiment with a daily COVID-19 update. This content will not be paywalled, so if you find it useful, feel free to share it. I intend to continueRead More

Timeline update I have realized that there is a better source for Canadian COVID-19 confirmed case totals than the one I used in compiling my initial COVID-19 timeline (I used the Wayback Machine to consult the page each day when I should have simply consulted the cumulative total tables maintainedRead More

Sometimes during a pandemic a good place to be is down a rabbit hole — like the one I went down trying to understand how testing for the virus that causes COVID-19 is done and how it’s being handled here in our province. Let’s start with the basics, which youRead More

I have learned that, time-consuming and deeply annoying as verifying the information can sometimes be, making a timeline is an excellent way to understand an event or series of events. In the case of the current coronavirus pandemic, though, events have been unspooling so quickly I needed a timeline justRead More

There’s a passage in Emily St. John Mandel’s wonderful (and surprisingly not too depressing) book, Station Eleven, about the world before, during, and after a pandemic which I want to quote at length because it captures better than anything else I know how I am feeling right now. It goesRead More

Week two in self-isolation and it’s not been bad at all. Haven’t run out of the necessities, food and TP specifically, and, thanks to our provider, am grateful not to have to join the masses who seem programmed to get right out there and ignore the warnings they are hearingRead More

Steve Drake’s informative piece on March 18th was revealing — an excellent explanation of why the roof-falls are continuing and of what might be the only ‘fix’ possible. It appears that supporting the roof at these depths is best done with the steel arches. It would be quite something ifRead More

The COVID-19 pandemic has laid bare the extent to which our individual health is dependent on the health of everyone in our community. Public healthcare is our best defense against this crisis and others like it. However, our ability to endure crises and care for each other has been erodedRead More