Plus C'est la Même Chose

It's the 80s all over again. We've got a killer virus that people are largely ignoring despite a small group of people continuing to fight for protections and medications. We've got a big conflict with Russia that could affect us in a nuclear sort of way. And now we've got a lone man walking into a university Philosophy of Gender class with intent to do some damage. He stabbed the professor and two students before being caught by police. 

I was writing an essay for class while this happened on Wednesday, and I was sitting in a large auditorium class in my undergrad during the Montréal Massacre. 

Here's one student's account of the events:

It took no time at all before we started hearing the lone wolf rhetoric. And people talk about mental illness and if this attacker is the cause of this type of violence. 

He's just a player or a pawn, depending on his connections and motives.

Lost Counterculture

Henry Madison, just some random dude on twitter, wrote an interesting bit on concerts and the enmeshment of generations. I disagree with several of his claims below:

Blondie

"Imagine a 77-year old favourite of the boomers’ parents, playing at Woodstock in the 1960s. The oldest performer at Woodstock was Ravi Shankar, who was 49. (He didn’t like hippies and never did it again.) There’s a serious point here. A 77-year old artist playing at Woodstock would have been born in 1892. That would be the equivalent of Louis Armstrong or Jelly Roll Morton playing there. We have artists at Glastonbury this week approaching 80 years of age. None of this is ageism, I should add. If people want to keep playing into their 80s, good luck to them. But we’re talking about headlining music festivals, festivals predominantly (like Woodstock) designed for the young. To me this means unhealthy things.

What’s said about the counterculture movement of the 1960s was that it was profoundly anti-establishment. Today the closest beliefs are labelled neoliberalism. It’s strange the bedfellows beliefs keep. And who invented neoliberalism? The same boomers. That was the same movement, as it morphed into a highly profitable middle and old age. The richest generation in all of history, by a mile. Anti-establishment beliefs were great business: the boomers dismantled many of society’s institutions, and then privatised them. Most of the corporate behemoths that now dominate our lives in our ‘neoliberal’ societies were set up by boomers, who also profited the most from them. They monetised the wreckage of their earlier anti-establishment assault. 

I don’t think people see this clearly at all. 

Covid or Cov-AIDS??

 

I wrote about concerns about the similarity between SARS-2 and AIDS back in November:

Here's info on Covid causing lymphopenia (aka lymphocytopenia), the reduction of B, T, and NK cells that fight off intruders in the body (i.e. our immune system). The only other disease that causes this is AIDS, and now some people are referring to Covid as Airborne-AIDS [or Cov-AIDS, more recently]. Back in January 2020, the Lancet published a paper that found 63% of Covid patients had lymphopenia. Public health should have been screaming this from the rooftops!!

I also mentioned it in December and April .

But Pedro Lérias wrote a much more compelling comparison even before all that:

"The HIV pandemic was first suspected in 1981 when cases of a rare form of pneumonia started to pile up. By then, the people who were dying had, on average, become infected ten years earlier, in 1971. 

Now, imagine that you are in 1971. The people getting infected with HIV then suffer flu-like symptoms for a few days and then recover. No one dies from the acute infection. If doctors had known about the HIV virus then, what conclusions would they have reached? Some people got ill for a week or two with this virus; others barely had a sniffle. No deaths. They would have concluded it was pretty mild. Better still, those already infected seemed to have acquired immunity and didn't suffer the acute symptoms if they got infected again. They would have probably imagined that herd immunity would happen once everyone was infected. 

Teaching in the Face of a Bleak Future

I can't imagine teaching right now. This post is a mishmash of thought around teaching at such a momentous time in history. Well, momentous for us. 

I've only been retired a year, but the world has gotten so much worse in that time with climate change hitting some serious tipping points and potential collapse predicted to come 38-81% sooner than expected from older models (and we won't even get into Russia's "zone of nuclear catastrophe"). We tend to underestimate our impact on the world while overestimating our ability to fix the damage, so here we are!

John Gibbons: "There is NOTHING like this on the instrument record."

Tons of fish are escaping the oceans as their habitat becomes unliveable: in Texas a lack of dissolved oxygen in the water caused them to suffocate, and in Thailand they bailed because of plankton blooms. Both are a result of the warming of the oceans primarily from human consumptions of fossil fuels (oil, gas, coal) and methane production from farming cattle (not from littering, as a few students each year bizarrely believe, conflating litter with air pollution). It's no wonder the orcas are revolting. 

Frankl's Logotherapy

The second half of Frankl's Man's Search for Meaning was added in 1962 to provide greater detail of Logotherapy, in which patients must hear difficult things in contrast to psychoanalysts provoking telling difficult things (see the first part here). It's less introspective and more focused on our place in the world:

"Logotherapy defocuses all the vicious-circle formations and feedback mechanisms which play such a great role in the development of neuroses. Thus the typical self-centeredness of the neurotic is broken up instead of being continually fostered and reinforced . . . the patient is actually confronted with and reoriented toward the meaning of his life. . . . Striving to find a meaning in one's life is the primary motivational force in man. That is why I speak of a will to meaning in contrast to the pleasure principle on which Freudian psychoanalysis is centered, as well as in contrast to the will to power on which Adlerian psychology, using the term 'striving for superiority,' is focused" (98). 

We're Back to Rhetoric of Welfare Cheaters

An old one, but the agenda still fits!

According to Queen's Park reporter Jack Hauen, on Monday Premier Ford said:

"What drives me crazy, is people on Ontario Works--probably 3-400,000--that are healthy. . . . It really bothers me that we have healthy people sitting at home collecting your hard-earned dollars. . . . We need to encourage them to contribute back to the province and find gainful employment. I'll support anyone that's having a tough time. I have no problem with that. But eventually you have to go out there and start working and contributing back." 

This is the old, but not yet worn out, trick of pitting people against one another. Don't hate the wealthy premier pretending to be looking out for you while sitting on $22 billion and often absent from parliament; the real enemy is all those fakers on the dole!! 

Don't fall for it - especially now with Long Covid creating more disabilities, more people who struggle just to get to the bathroom and back to bed. The last thing they need is someone hounding them to get back to work! We need more supports than ever before. We need a guaranteed basic income!

This is @lifeofa_fashiongirl after she got Long Covid. The only job she can do right now is, maybe, being a Conservative premier!

@lifeofa_fashiongirl Long Covid Awareness Day #longcovid #longcovidawareness #longcovidrecovery #chronicillnessawareness #chronicillnesswarrior #bittersweetsymphony #nhsuk #fyp #fyphealth ♬ Bittersweet Symphony

ETA: This eye-opening article on the blowback caused by Ford's comment. There are only 393,886 people using Ontario Works, so Ford essentially thinks all of them should be working. A former caseworker describes the incredibly invasive program that monitors every aspect of people's lives once on OW. Lots are single mother fleeing an abusive relationship. OW provides just $733/month; "Nobody has a good life on Ontario Works. Period."

It's all the Scientists' Fault!

We're at the stage in climate change news that it's time to blame scientists for not telling anyone about it before now. Headline from The Hill: "Catch-22: Scientific communication failures linked to faster-rising seas"

"Scientists failed for decades to communicate the coming risks of rapid sea-level rise to policymakers and the public, a new study has found. . . . Scientists have soft-pedaled the kinds of catastrophic risks most easily headed off by cutting emissions. While scientific communication has improved in the 2020s, this trajectory led policymakers to make decisions based on risks that are better understood, easier to quantify--and also easier to write off as an acceptable long-term risk."

This is so totally bananas!! 

I'm a nobody with a flippin' philosophy degree. I've blogged about the environment since May 2009, when I start a blog for the explicit purpose of trying to get other environmentally-minded high school teachers and students involved in an amazing collaboration of ideas to help green our schools. I tried valiantly, writing at least once/week for two years, with few commenters and no joiners, then slowly gave it up. I get few commenters here, too, but I'm just barfing out my outrage now, not hoping to actually work with people on a solution. It's too painful when it's so fruitless.

Anyway...

Even I knew all about the causes and solutions around climate change. Heck, I remember learning all this from my grade six teacher, worried about global CO2 rising ONE degree back in 1976! Aw, so cute. 

The information was always out there for the taking, so if policymakers chose poorly, they have NOBODY to blame but their own idiocy.  

The study they cite, big surprise, doesn't slam scientists for failing to communicate coming risks. It's very specific to communication of "sea-level projection uncertainty." Analyzing how best to explain types of uncertainties is very different than claiming a failure to communicate! A better news article here. 

The article does get to the meat of the study, but later in the article, and it's definitely not indicated by the headline. And all too often, people don't read much past the headline.

Hey, mainstream media! Maybe it's time to look in the mirror, and consider how well you communicate. 

On the Importance of Solidarity with the Covid Cautious

This is all from Conor Browne following a bit of in-fighting online: 

I consider the unmitigated transmission of SARS-CoV-2 to be the single most important risk facing humanity. Climate change is, of course, a close second. Both of these are systemic risks - that is to say, they are risks that involve the breakdowns of entire systems. However, and considering only the risk faced by SARS-CoV-2 from this point, it is important to note that while unmitigated transmission is a systemic risk, it is also an individual risk; infection is a significant risk to the health of the person infected.  

So, SARS-CoV-2 is both a systemic and an individual risk. Mitigating the latter involves personal NPIs: respirator use etc. Mitigating the former (in the absence of high-efficacy vaccines and/or therapeutics) involves the adoption of societal-level interventions (most obviously, the mass adoption of indoor air filtration), which, crucially, requires policy change from political institutions. This in turn means - and this is vital - that people like me have to be able to 'sell' the policy. This involves convincing political and business leaders of the value of investing significant amounts of money. 

Investment requires a demonstration of return: that is to say, that not only can environments like schools and restaurants be made considerably safer, but also that this increased safety will lead to medium-term cost saving / profit. The entire argument for improving indoor air quality is based on making the indoors like the outdoors in terms of risk of viral transmission. Not eliminated, but significantly reduced. That is the art of the possible. This process - convincing policymakers to effect political change through institutions - is currently the only route we have to mitigate the systemic risk posed by SARS-CoV-2. Remember - at this point it is impossible to eliminate this systemic risk. It can only be significantly reduced. 

My point: risks intersect in unexpected ways. Insisting on respirator-wearing everywhere (outside and inside) - which is an excellent mitigation of individual risk - also diminishes the core argument (improving indoor air quality) for mitigating systemic risk. Also, much as SARS-CoV-2 is a highly significant individual risk, it is obviously not the only individual risk any given person may face in their life. My feeling is that we - the Covid-cautious - are in this for the long haul, and a general and compassionate recognition of these unpalatable facts is necessary. Why? Because we form the core of the pressure group that will continue to push for mitigation of systemic risk. If we fracture, that itself is a significant risk because it means systemic risk mitigation is less likely to occur. So, I implore you, think strategically, compassionately, and pragmatically going forward. 

Symbols of Class

The Titan submersible hasn't been found yet, and the supply of oxygen is gone. Some think they perished days ago from pressure or another type of malfunction, all horrific to think about. That likely won't stop anyone from looking for the vessel in order to recover the bodies. 

It's my worst nightmare to be under water in a container, particularly if it's bolted shut from the outside. 

Lots of comparisons are being made between this submersible containing five wealthy men who paid ¼ of a million dollars each to see the Titanic, stuck somewhere about 700 km off the coast of Newfoundland, to another vessel that went down 100 km from Greece, a fishing trawler carrying 750 passengers, some who gave their life savings to get from Libya to Italy, of which 81 bodies have been found so far. Neither vessels met regulations for travel, but if we have extra time and money to be creative, like make a sub that's run with a game controller, it's called innovation. If we do something similarly questionable or reckless for our own basic survival, it's criminal.

An Assault on Gender is an Assault on Democracy

Here's Judith Butler on gender. She's a prof in California who teaches literature, philosophy, and critical theory, and wrote, most famously, Gender Trouble and Bodies That Matter. Abridged transcript of the video below for easy skimming and with links to more information. 

"There are many different theories of gender, and mine is just one. Sometimes, people who really hate gender name me as the one who made this up, but that's actually not true. You know, in my view, everybody has a theory of gender, and what I mean by that is that everybody has certain assumptions going about what gender is or should be. And at a certain point in life, we ask ourselves, "Wow, where'd that assumption come from?" At this point, I'm less concerned about whose theory is right and whose theory is wrong because the assault on gender is also an assault on democracy. 

It's Hard to Immigrate to New Zealand. I Checked

This one minute video is the type of thing the government of New Zealand posts: a virologist explaining that every Covid infection significantly increases the risk of getting diabetes, mental health issues, blood clots, breathlessness, chronic fatigue... so we need to do everything possible to protect ourselves.

Yup, Covid will quite likely be here forever. But that doesn't mean just resign ourselves to perpetual illness. Car accidents will be here forever, so we go to town with precautions: seatbelts, airbags, little screens helping us back up, and tons and tons of RULES around what we are allowed to do with our personal vehicle. You can't drive a beater on the road if it doesn't pass a safety - not like the good old days. We all just got on board with all these restrictions to our freedom because collisions can ruin lives. Sure, a small minority bitched and moaned about it all - no booze while driving in particular, but we ignored the bellyachers and moved on, to follow each new laws in order to protect ourselves and others. 

So why can't we do that with Covid? We just need a tipping point of people to get on board with having masks indoors - particularly in hospitals, schools, and grocery stores - until we get some legislation going to make clean air in public buildings and apartments mandatory. For some reason our government has aligned with the complainers who want personal freedoms at the expense of collective rights. And then we all lose. 

New Zealand dropped mask mandates in 2022, like the rest of us, but they've been working collectively to get the message out that Covid is still here, still very dangerous, and that masks work to prevent transmission. Where are Canada's PSAs to help people make wise risk assessments?

A poll of people in Japan found that over 80% of people voluntarily mask when they go out, so it's possible:

And how we're all doing, per capita:

Quick multiple choice quiz from Freakinbox: 

Which of these causes more learning loss?
a. remote learning
b. masks
c. fused brain cells

On Debating Science

Dr. Peter Hotez is a medical doctor in Texas who did his undergrad at Yale and his medical degree at Cornell. He has been successful at creating Covid vaccine technology cheaply and patent-free so it can be distributed to low-income countries. His work has been "nominated for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize for its innovation in 'decolonizing' the global vaccine ecosystem and making life-saving interventions available to the world."

Robert Kennedy Jr., of the Kennedys, is a lawyer who is adamant that vaccines cause autism.

Joe Rogan is a trained jiu-jitsu fighter and a comedian who did UFC commentary and a stint with Fear Factor before becoming a star and millionaire as a podcaster. His interviews are very entertaining, and clearly, openly, lean to a libertarian position on the far right that misunderstands the nuance of so many things, but he's a comedian. His show isn't news. 

Rogan wants Hotez to get into the ring to debate Kennedy about vaccines, and the twittered demands are along the lines that if Hotez doesn't, then it proves he's wrong! He even offered him $100,000 to a charity of his choice to show up, and Elon Musk got in on it for kicks. But it's not just on-line harassment. Some of Rogan's more unhinged followers came to Hotez's home on Fathers Day demanding a debate! 

I love debating and watching debates, and I used to sometimes adjudicate at high school debate meets. But the problem with all this mess is that scientific research is not something we determine with a debate. Debates are typically about thing like meaty moral issues that we can't know for sure, so the best arguments can win, like Is Populism the Way of the Future? or Is Political Correctness a Form of Progress? Someone who's completely anti-abortion could be swayed by a persuasive debater. We don't debate if gravity exists or if the world is flat. And if someone is swayed on something scientifically verifiable because they heard a good argument, then they missed the importance of the science part of that. 

Autistic Pride

Today is Autistic Pride Day. It's well researched that people with autism are disproportionately 2SLGBTQIA+. 

A study, from the Journal of Autism and Developmental Disorders in 2010, studied people who had visited a gender identity clinic, and found that almost 8% were ASD, compared to 1% of people with ASD in the general population. Then a study of over 600,000 people, published in Nature in 2020, found that people who are trans or gender-diverse are three to six times more likely to be autistic than people who are cisgender. They theorized that it's possibly not that there are more trans neurodiverse people, but that people on the ASD spectrum generally don't care nearly as much as neurotypicals (NTs) about how they appear to other people. They're far less affected by cultural norms of behaviour - for better or worse. 

"Autistic individuals may conform less to societal norms compared to non-autistic individuals, which may partly explain why a greater number of autistic individuals identify outside the stereotypical gender binary."

The following year, a study published in Autism Research reported that significantly more autistic people reported being bisexual or homosexual than neurotypical people, and they also cautioned that, 

"autistic individuals may have been more candid about their experiences than others due to differences in communication style and/or lessened concerns about adherence to social norms." 

The upshot of these studies, then, is that autistic people are themselves more than NTs, more publicly authentic and more honest about who they are. And, the corollary: that most neurotypical people do not expose their real selves to the world; they hide parts of themselves from others and maybe also from themselves. And that's a shame.

Sometimes that open authenticity is embarrassing for friends or family, and that's the very thing that we need to overcome as a society: difference isn't bad. Instead of shunning, ostracizing, or humiliating people just for being different, we need to take all that rabid, judgey energy and focus it on people actually causing harm to others out there, particularly those in power.  

Because those people coming for the 2SLGBTQIA+? They'll be coming for the neurodivergents next if history is anything to go by. All the deviants could be rounded up or forced to conform to a narrow version of normal in order to hide themselves. When that circle widens enough, eventually what counts as deviant could very well include YOU, so this is an absolutely vital time for overt solidarity!

ETA - Okay, I'm a dope and didn't realize it's not a day about people who are autistic and 2SLGBTQIA+, but about being proud of being autistic! It's confusing because this is Pride Month, so I thought it was a subset of that. Nope! But all the rest stands - there is significant overlap, and we have to stick together. But also, yay for autistic people! Everyone's brains are different and that's awesome. Haters just don't get that - yet. 

A Laughing Matter

I got laughed at in the grocery store today. That hasn't happened in a while. Cases of hospitalizations/day are at their lowest since December 2021 right now, which is fantastic, but they're still higher than some of the earlier peaks that once sent us into lockdown and masking everyone everywhere. Our perception of risk has been altered so that we think it's weird to try to prevent the spread of disease. But stopping mitigations because cases are going down is like buying a stock that's at a peak! We're really bad at expecting the trajectory to continue in the same direction despite our behavioural changes. We need to mask in the valleys to prevent the peaks getting so high. 

Aside: What's curious to me about the point-and-laugh types is that, if it is the case that I'm a conspiracy nut, who openly laughs at someone with a mental illness?? And then I came home to mindlessly scroll Twitter during breakfast, and someone posted a lengthy monologue by someone clearly suffering from delusions. I scrolled the comments for a voice of reason that might say something like, "Maybe don't post videos of people at their worst," but hundreds of comments were full of people making fun of the person. Were we always so callous and cruel? Or is it brain damage from Covid mixed with tacit permission - even encouragement - from leaders like Trump to berate any sign of difference? Or is it just that the internet shows us the worst of everyone?

Anyway, Paul Matdowski, mainly a climate science guy from Germany, wrote a great thread explaining why we can't keep ignoring Covid:

"Here's the public health decision every state worldwide now faces, broken down to its essence. Do you want to live with a SARS virus in your much shortened, disease-ridden lives, or would you rather not? That's the only real question here:"

Moral Injury and Definition Creep

In a class this week we talked about moral injury, but it was presented and discussed as if it meant any time there's a clash of values. One of the examples given was being in university and realizing people in the next bed were having sex. Another explained that people protesting 2SLGBTQIA+ rights are experiencing moral injury, upset that what's acceptable has shifted, which is against their morals. 

Those examples hit me as decidedly not what I understand moral injury to be. So I researched the origin going back to Jonathan Shay and his definition, which he amended from his original to include further research:

"Moral injury is present when there has been (a) a betrayal of 'what's right'; (b) either by a person in legitimate authority (my definition), or by one's self--'I did it' (Litz et al.); (c) in a high stakes situation. Both forms of moral injury impair the capacity for trust and elevate despair, suicidality, and interpersonal violence. They deteriorate character."

The high stakes part of it can't just be dropped to include every situation or else all coming of age experiences and cultural differences are necessarily injurious. I provided my own example, back in September 2020, in which the province and school boards decided we all had to mask but everyone had to take off their masks at once for a 45-minute nutrition break halfway through the morning (they were just there for four hours of school), and kids weren't allowed to leave the room at the time. They all had to be in a room unmasked together. This was six months before vaccinations were available and at a time when some hospitals ran out of sedatives for intubated patients. It was nuts! I spoke up, over and over and over, and was chastised or ignored. I was struck then with the horrific punch-in-the-gut realization that those in power had a concept of acceptable losses of schoolchildren.   

On the Inclusivity of "Queer"

 A bit of bell hooks to mark the middle of pride month (from here at 1:27):

"All of our lives we've experienced ourselves as queer, as not belonging as the essence of queer. I think of Tim Dean's work on being queer, and not as being about who you're having sex with, that can be a dimension of it, but queer as being about the self that is at odds with everything around it and has to invent and create and find a place to speak and to thrive and to live." 

That means that, provided you're not maintaining the status quo of the dominant structure, the neoliberal capitalist machine that enables people to be so absorbed with entertaining themselves that they're oblivious to the atrocities at their feet, and instead you sometimes find yourself hitting a brick wall when trying to express yourself to other, trying to get them to see the bigger picture or the tiniest nuance that might knock down their fortifications or even just to see you, or you just sometimes feel out of place or weird, then YOU are invited to the party! 

Climate Conspiracy

Journalist and activist George Monbiot wrote on why we can't actually explain the problems with certain arguments anymore:

Conspiracy fictions have succeeded, as Steve Bannon hoped, in "flooding the zone with shit". It is almost impossible now to have a rational conversation about the real sources of oppression, destruction and injustice, as so many have been so badly misled. Climate science denial has come roaring back, though the evidence of climate breakdown is now all around us. 

It's a tragedy: we need to unite around the greatest predicament humanity has ever faced, but millions have been persuaded that it isn't happening. 

Bannon was one of Trump's advisors. There was a conversation between them (that I'll never find now), from early on in Trump's first run, with Bannon decidedly convincing Trump of the benefits to his campaign if he's openly racist. I'm almost positive it happened, but it was possibly a nightmare.

I wrote about Bannon's propaganda efforts over six years ago. Now we can see it all come to fruition as nothing makes sense.

When Hospitals Remove Protections

Dr. Kashif Pirzada wrote yesterday about this graphic from Robbie Meriales from the perspective of a doctor in a hospital in Toronto that's lifting all mask mandates.

"So much truth in this one graphic. 

True story, on a recent shift, I had to run and help a patient who had collapsed on our waiting room floor, short of breath. Hypoxemic. The family was diligent, and tested before coming, and lo-and-behold, they were positive. With some help, got her on a stretcher, I rolled her the acute zone myself, and we got to work stabilizing her. Triple vaccinated, in late middle age, no serious medical conditions, and this thing still got them sick enough to come to us. Another anecdote, right in the middle of summer when these things are not supposed to happen, where I can only say to myself, “what a curse on humankind this virus is”

“Shouldn’t she be in an isolation room?” someone asked. Good question. 

“What’s the point. Isn’t our hospital mask mandate ending soon?” someone else said.

Ah, now we get to the point.

If we were actually following the science, we would have screened her to a separate zone, away from the other patients in the waiting room. She could have infected any number of children, chemo patients, pregnant patients. Instead, we and every patient are now expected to make our own decisions on how to protect ourselves. You could roll into a cancer clinic and cough on every single patient in the waiting room, and not violate policy now.

While many are eager, even celebrating the end of mask requirements in our hospital, they still don’t want to be anywhere near an infected patient outside of an isolation room, of course.

I don’t get it.

Now I’m not about to go on some hopeless career-ending crusade to fight this, when most people don’t even want to think about it anymore... people have moved on, and that is that, I'm repeatedly told

.... but it is profoundly sad to see all the preventable suffering around you, to personally see the public get sicker over time, to see the young people with inexplicable blood clots and strokes, to see the life expectancy numbers continue to plummet, knowing that the only people who will come out of these troubled times relatively unscathed are the tiny minority who are wealthy, well-informed or well-connected.

It is, sadly, almost a certainty that I'll be seeing more patients like the poor woman I had to lift off the floor that night."

Then he asked ChatGPT to write a poem about his experience in the style of the King James version of the Bible:

In sorrow do I witness suffering's reign,
The public's decline, inflicted by this bane,
The young struck by blood clots, strokes untold,
Life's flame grows dimmer, as the years unfold.
Alas, these troubled times, they weigh me down,
More patients, sick and frail, shall soon be found.
But I, a witness, helpless, cannot sway,
For many turn their gaze, move on, they say.

Meanwhile, this is the current signage in Cedars-Sinai Medical Center in LA.

It's amazing to watch Canada be shown up by the States in terms of progressiveness, wisdom, and just basic decency - when it comes to Covid precautions in hospitals at least. 

Ideology and Indoctination

We've got marches and rallies surfacing, sometimes right outside of schools, with people chanting, "Leave the kids alone" in order to put an end to "gender ideology." 

What does this even mean? 

First off, check out this 8 minute TikTok on indoctrinating kids (also here if embedding doesn't work):

@headonfirepod Replying to @Katie ♬ original sound - Don Martin

"I was just a kid trying to be a kid but your kids wouldn't let me."

On one side is the belief that people like Don Martin need to be protected from harassment and assault that might come from other children (and adults) who don't understand that people can be different yet equal to us. We're no better or worse than one another because of our interests, or our clothing, or who we date. But on the other side, there's a belief that the children are right to do everything to let him know that he's not living the right way. They're saving him, and no teacher should intervene to indoctrinate children in that first belief, as if that kind of difference is in any way acceptable. 

So, which belief system is an ideology, what does that even mean, and how can we sort our which is the better system?

I'm going to get into the weeds here for a bit, but then I'll come to the issue further down. 

We're Reaping What We've Sown

There's tons of news about all the smoke - so much about the smoke. But I'm finding very little information about the actual fires. We know that firefighters are coming to help from the states and from South Africa, which is fantastic, but where are the videos of planes water bombing the shit out of this mess? Why aren't the fires front page news every day? It's annoying not to be able to sit outdoors for breakfast, sure, but so many people have lost their homes. And the wildlife. It's baby season in Canada, so even if some animals were able to flee and then hope to return (?) to the charred remains of their habitat, they're leaving all their littles behind (see what happened in Australia in 2020). And can we possibly prevent this in future?

The smoke is horrible, but the fires are horrific. So far almost 4 million hectares is on fire this year, about twenty times more than the average, and it's only June!

Brain Fusion and Long Covid

 I can't find a way to embed this, but a three minute video seen at this link is making the rounds. It's an interview with Professor Yazi Ke of MacQuarie University, in Sydney, Australia, explaining Long Covid at the neurological level. She says,

"What happens is when this virus infects our brains, the brain cells start fusing together into these giant multicellular structures. With that it causes a lot of brain functions to not happen. With that it's what we see with Long Covid symptoms. . . . The virus in different individuals can affect different parts of the brain . . . wreaking havoc in these brain areas. . . . There are a lot of viruses that cause neurological symptoms, things like HIV, rabies, Japanese encephalitis . . . If I were to think about it now, knowing what I know, I would say that it's quite permanent. Over time, I can imagine that these large structures of cells actually eventually might die because they don't get to do what they're supposed to do." 

They figured this out by creating mini brains from stem cells, then infecting them to watch what the cells do, which is much better than actually infecting people. In this image of neurons (from here), the pink show typical neural activity, making pathways of communication, and the yellow shows a mass of fused neurons, no longer able to communicate with other cells. Here's the study.

There's no way to unfuse the damaged cells. We need to lower viral loads or avoid the virus entirely to avoid this effect of the virus. This is what brain damage looks like. 

And here's a great 13 minute video explaining Long Covid with simple metaphors to help understanding:

Ontario School Safety

This small but mighty grassroots organization, Ontario School Safety, was at Queen's Park Wednesday, on Clean Air Day, to plead for clean air in schools and school buses. They unmasked as they spoke with a CO2 monitor on the podium never getting beyond the 400 range of ppm, which means being in that room is like being outdoors. Here's the 20 minute video and a highlighted transcript for easy skimming, but it's pretty much in full. MJ Nabuurs, of the brilliant ReSisters podcast, also spoke briefly, but just while Kate was getting to the podium.

Trans Rights are Human Rights

The trans community isn't safe in Canada, that's why Pride month is necessary. And there's no straight month because nobody has ever been discriminated against for being straight! Last week I said, "a glance towards Florida should be enough for the rest of us to recognize this anti-pride position as absolutely terrifying!" But I should have looked closer to home.

A pastor in my city recently told his congregation, "If you're going to live a lie to the point where you're willing to mutilate your own body, it's going to send you into dark despair." 

He was referring to the death by suicide of a Redeemer University student, Bekett Noble, back in November 2022. Noble had fought with the school about the climate of intolerance there. Shortly after their death, over forty students came forward with complaints about Redeemer, calling their time there "the darkest period of my life" and calling the culture there, which included policies "forbidding same-sex intimacy," "agony" and terrifying for 2SLGBTQIA+ students. The students at the school believe the school's climate of intolerance is what led to the suicide, not their trans identity. 

Here's what I've seen in my many encounters with people who are transgender and from working with students in general. Being trans can be part of a happy, fulfilling life. Being ostracized, humiliated, and discriminated against on an ongoing basis can lead to depression and self-loathing. Try to meet up with and listen to at least ten trans men, trans women, and/or non-binary people before committing to condemning them or preventing them from having access to care. 

This is going to be a long one.

Conformity Experiments

 

This image comes from a century ago, of course. It's still very hard to be different, but sometimes it's vital.

When I taught a course called the Challenge of Change, I offered up a number of challenges along the way. Students who were uncomfortable participating in any of them were allowed the alternative option of writing a brief paragraph explaining their reluctance. Some took that option, but most participated. 

The first challenge came with our discussion of the differences between Functionalism and Conflict Theory perspectives, one leaning towards maintaining the status quo to avoid anomie which can lead to an increase in suicides; the other critiquing that theory as a way to perpetuate a system that benefits those at the top of the status hierarchy. We brainstorm current norms that are beneficial, neutral, or harmful. That list always included some still-too-rigid gender binary norms including, "Guys have to pay for dinner." Then I ask them to break a norm that doesn't benefit anyone in any way, maybe one that actually harms us or holds us back from being our most authentic selves! 

The why: Often it's perfectly fine to blindly follow social norms, but sometimes, every once in a while, it can permit atrocities to happen: from cruel conspiracies against that one person in your friend group that's a little different to genocidal actions to nuclear war! So it's absolutely vital to be able to think about the norms we follow and, from time to time, to break the less useful ones just to make sure we still can. We need to practice non-conformity to make sure we can do it if we need to, and it's always wise to take a minute to think, "Do I really agree with this?" before acting.

I've been basically practicing for this my whole life in an army jacket and hippie dresses. So is anyone punk or with purple hair, etc. Although the challenge is to do something out of the ordinary for you, which might mean the goth kids shows up with very mainstream hair for a day.

PSA: Ontario Pollution Concentrations

You can find how much particulate matter is in the air in your community at this link, Click on the little graph beside the number to see, in real time, how things are right now and whether or not it's okay to hang out outside or even open a window. Air quality index forecasts are here, and a fire and smoke map is here.

You can tape a MERV11 (Filtrete 1500) filter or better to open windows to filter out any pollutants, and an N95 will filter out particles, but can't filter gases like carbon monoxide (or oxygen, as we've been explaining for years now), so check those levels at the first link at the top of this post. 

If you haven't been masking for Covid because you've been convinced masks don't work and suffocate people or otherwise harm them, it's time to get over that and get comfortable wearing them outside when the ratings in your area are higher than normal. If it's yellow, you're okay to be outside if you're not in the 'sensitive' class: asthma, elderly, children. But avoid the outdoors if it's orange or red.

And, don't forget, Ford cut the firefighting budget by 67% back in 2019. He says we'll be fine, but I'm not so sure. 

In case you think it's fine to just ignore the smokey hazy enveloping the area, experts say, 

"Some research suggests that wildfire smoke 'may be more toxic' to the lungs than standard urban air pollution since it contains a distinct mix of particulates that activate inflammatory cells 'deep in the lungs' while hindering other cells that can dampen the inflammatory response later. These same particles also can migrate from the lungs and 'disrupt and upset the natural tone of blood vessels."

On Track for Privatization

A couple weeks ago, Texas came very close to passing a bill defunding public education: a "school choice" bill that would provide vouchers for parents to be able to "use taxpayer dollars to pay for private school tuition." It passed in the Senate, but then died in the house. They'll try again.  

Jordan Roberts pointed out that "the Ford government has hired consultants from Texas, Louisiana and Tennessee to help do the same here." Earlier he provided receipts to show that "Galen Weston's cousin, Claudia, developed Fraser Institute's programs to undermine public education. She sits on the SickKids Foundation board with the rest of the worst people in Ontario":

Spot the Difference!

Which crowd would you feel safer in, especially with wastewater levels of Covid very high and in an upward trend in places, and no longer being monitored elsewhere!  

Here's the Combo Breaker gamer conference:

And the UBC medical school graduation:

Fun fact: (from a study published in NIH in October 2022)

"Functional MRI brain imaging analyses found that children who played video games for three or more hours per day showed higher brain activity in the regions of the brain associated with attention and memory than did those who never played. . . . . [and] more brain activity in the frontal brain regions that are associated with more cognitively demanding tasks."

ETA - Even if the med student grad area had amazing air ventilation and filtration, that won't prevent spread of so many people so closely packed together. Covid can spread on a crowded beach or an outdoor concert. We need layers of mitigation, people, layers!! 

Graphic Response to Mask Removal in Hospitals

Dr. Evonne Curran sent a 3,000 word letter to the medical authorities in Scotland because "prevention is primary, and our job is to keep people safe. Withdrawing masks in hospitals is unsafe." It's all neatly summarized in this graphic. 

Most important to remember: "Long Covid affects children." That's entire full and fruitful lives affected by ongoing disability - including neurological issues affecting their very identity -  because it's kinda uncomfortable to wear a mask. I just don't get it.

Rough-Cut Research Peer-Review: On Remote Work

 One more thread to be saved before I write something of my own; this time it's James Heathers' scathing take down of Talia Varley's article in the Globe and Mail. in which Varley attempts to prove that remote work negatively affects our ability to learn and innovate. If I were still teaching, I might give Varley's article to students to have them explore the studies for research method and stats issues, and then let them read Heathers' review! This is a huge call out to all school boards to make stats or research methods mandatory! Kids (and adults) needs to be able to understand problems with some of the "research" spreading around out there. Heathers explains,  

I'm starting to get more and more interested in the formal positioning around remote work, because it heavily involves two things I do: manage people, and punch up on bad science. So, with that in mind, I did not like this article. I will tell you why and try not to swear. 

Two links here. Let's actually click them.

Ely's Long Covid Disability Roulette

The Washington Post put out a free article about a new study that defines long Covid. They identify 12 key symptoms to create a common language on this. The symptoms are attached to point with the general idea that the more points, the worse the ability to carry out everyday activities:

They don't explain why loss of smell/taste has the most points, but I'll hazard a guess that it's a strong indication of brain damage! 

Then Wes Ely MD wrote an article about our current game of Long Covid "Disability Roulette" in the Boston Globe that starts like this:

"While society yawns, impatient to move on from the Covid-19 pandemic, Americans still play disability roulette. About 1 in 10 of the 1010,000 people who catch Covid this week in the United States, many for a second or third time, will be left lastingly ill. Even some vaccinated people; even some young, previously healthy people, after only mild cases." 

And then he wrote this thread:

* No longer a mass Death event
* Covid-19 is an ongoing mass Disability event
* You and I might get Long Covid
* But society is yawning

This tread unpacks science, policy, and hope. 

On Keeping Kids "Safe" From Pride

Student Trustee Kenzy Soror wrote an excellent, brief thread on the problem with parents keeping their children home because it's pride day or month:

"I take great concern with the decision of some families to 'keep' WRDSB students at home on June 1st. I hope that those who made this decision realize that LGBTQ+ students will still exist in schools on June 2nd and going forward. We should all realize how unfair it is for students to be left with the task of justifying their own families' choices to their peers - some of which who are inevitably feeling targeted by said choice. Students are not pawns to be kept or released in an effort to make a point."

It was followed by a bunch of comments that more or less say: 

"Your concern is valid, but their choice and right to keep kids home during prime month is also valid. Respect parents' right to say 'no' to minor children."

And one good comment reacting to the haters:

"Seriously? And what if their children actually turned out to be LGBTQ? Might actually be hiding that from their parents? This has become so wrong. So much progress undone by bigots."

Absolutely! Suggesting that it's reasonable to keep children away during pride month when being gay/bi/trans.. is celebrated is akin to suggesting it's reasonable to keep kids away during Black history month, when Black people throughout history are celebrated. It reeks of unfettered prejudices that some see as acceptable. A glance towards Florida should be enough for the rest of us to recognize this anti-pride position as absolutely terrifying! 

A Quick Evolution of Masking

After my laptop died, and I found out the harddrive was corrupted, and all my pictures were lost, I started backing up my phone photos, and noticed an evolution in my mask wearing that evaded my memory. I actually don't remember wearing cloth masks at school! 

I'm not much for selfies, but I did take a few along the way.

Social Identity and Narratives

 From Alan Levinoitz:

A lot of politics can be explained by ignoring Maslow's hierarchy and realizing that people care as much about symbolic meaning, a sense of dignity, narratives in which 'your people' are the heroes, as they do about promises of material well-being. 

Why--ask liberals--do conservatives vote against policies that would secure material well-being, like healthcare, housing, education? Because those policies come at a cost. Not a financial cost, but the cost of letting go of a narrative about what forces make the world better. 

Why--ask conservatives--do liberals play down material costs of reduced policing, such as increased theft and crime, in areas that need police? Because acknowledging that in some cases increased policing is good comes at a cost: the dismantling of a quasi-mythic truth about police.

Why--ask some environmentalists--are other environmentalists vehemently anti-nuclear, when nuclear energy can help produce climate friendly energy? Because supporting nuclear means revising a vision of what 'clean' energy looks like: natural (sun and wind) vs. unnatural (nuclear). 

Abandoning narratives, especially those with deep symbolic power IS A BIG COST. It is painful. It is difficult. It can alienate you from friends and family. Ignoring those costs, or dismissing them as irrational, is a mistake.

I think a big part of this is that most people craft their identity around their affiliations. We want to have a sense of who we are, but searching inward is difficult and time consuming and sometimes frightening. Far easier is to look outward to branding through clothes and allegiances. This provokes people to take on all the values of their tribe because taking on just a few and rejecting others causes conflict within their group and we've forgotten how to work through that, how to meet a thesis with an antithesis in order to form a new and often enlightening synthesis. 

When students in my classes would say they're right or left-wing--or anyone for that matter--my first question is always, "What does that look like to you?" Only when we get into the nitty-gritty of what we actually value do we see how closely aligned we all are on so many issues. Nobody really thinks people should be kicked to the street if they can't pay rent when rents are beyond the reach of anyone working a minimum wage job - or jobs. Nobody wants to have to wait 20 hours in emerge or to have to pay for a private clinic so that have the people can't afford help. So it can help to ask people to go beyond their labels of social identity to find themselves again.  

Why We're Not Keeping Kids Safe from Covid

I mentioned a bit about McKinnon and Co. in footnote to a recent post on health care privatization, but these threads need a wider audience. I can't verify any of this, but it all comes with legitimate links and images from the documents. Long story short, Canada put economic recovery and in particular getting women back to work, over children's health and safety. To get women working, they needed them to believe that their kids would be safe in schools and daycares.

First, from Anneke (a bit tidied up for comprehension):

So, remember when I said the Special Advisory Committee on Covid-19 was “the force behind our Canadian pro-infection train?" Well, now I think the "Industry Strategy Council" established by @ISED_CA in May, 2020 was the force that drove them all. Here's the who, what & why… 

On May 8, 2020, Canada’s Minister of Innovation, Science & Economic Development announced that this new council will serve as “advisory board to assess the scope and depth of Covid-19’s impact on industries and inform government about specific sectoral pressures.” Industry Strategy Council Meetings were held June 8-Sept 15, 2020 where members shared experiences and heard from ministers/industry about hard hit sectors including transportation, air travel, tourism/hospitality, retail and oil and gas, and worked on positioning Canada for "economic recovery." 

And @GovCanHealth only attended two meetings, the 1st to provide "an epidemiological overview of the pandemic and public health approach for restarting the economy" and the 2nd to "present health indicators to guide PHOs in monitoring & preparing for Covid-19 resurgence scenarios as the Canadian economy reopens." Whereas McKinsey & Co attended exactly three Industry Strategy Council meetings. The 1st to provide "supporting materials highlighting economic responses to Covid-19 across the globe," the 2nd to show "health measures other countries have taken as they re-open their economies." At the 3rd meeting, McKinsey & Co "presented economic recovery scenario modelling for the advanced manufacturing, agri-food, health and biosciences sectors" and "international approaches to understand sectoral pressures and cross-sector strategic directions." All meetings are here.