We are TANZANC
I know we are not out of the woods yet, by any means, but here in the Yukon it seems like the further we get from the holiday season and the further we get into the vaccination program, it feels like we are breathing a collective sigh of relief. Or maybe it’s just me. Or maybe it’s the lengthening days, or the beautiful sunshine and cold we’ve been having lately that are bringing some more lightness to our Northern lives. (As I said to my daughter the other day, “Do you realize that we basically live in a snow globe?!”)
In this relief, I am in no, no, no way advocating for the lessening of any of our protective health measures. I am just enjoying this sense of a bit of emotional and mental reprieve at the moment. Because having little to no cases here does not necessarily equate to little or no stress or other life impacts here, over the past year. On the other hand, as many have commented, “We were made for isolation! Isolation is our lifestyle!” If anyone can keep it up, in terms of our closed borders and our restricted daily lives, surely we can do it!
We talk about it - wonder just how the Yukon has gotten so, SO “lucky” with avoiding any major outbreaks or spread. And we ponder what the factors may be.
Apparently we’re not the only ones who have noticed. Apparently we are part of an acronym - TANZANC. It stands for Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Atlantic & Northern Canada, democratic areas that have (at least until this was coined in November, situations may have shifted in numerous places and times since then) managed to escape the worst of the pandemic.
According to Global Canada https://global-canada.org (a non-governmental organization committed to enhancing Canada’s global impact and identifying global best practices that assist Canada’s own challenges),
“The TANZANC (Taiwan, Australia, New Zealand, Atlantic & Northern Canada) successes demonstrate that democracies with the right intrinsic characteristics and well-crafted policies can achieve zero COVID transmission, with strong economic and societal benefits and superior resilience to future COVID waves.”
From: The TANZANC Model And Zero COVID Transmission: A Better Strategy for Canada?
I think we are both more vulnerable and more strong than we knew. Maybe our strength is in our wee population, our vast size, our remote distance, our sense of interconnectedness, our culture, our climate. AND there is a lot of knocking on wood up here these days, counting our lucky stars, and of not traveling, not congregating, keeping a caribou’s distance apart, wearing masks, and being grateful throughout it all.
