I've been thinking about my old students today as I read the news.
I taught about the Israeli occupation in Palestine for a good 20 years, under the media bias and propaganda curriculum section of my course. I had been reading about genocidal types of activity since my professor told us about East Timor back in the 80s and introduced us to Chomsky. At the time it woke something in me, an outrage that a whole group of people were attacked and killed without anybody I knew, outside of class, ever having even heard of their country. Dumbfounded at the mechanisms that enables a genocide to happen without it hitting the news, I started reading everything by Chomsky, then Timothy Snyder and Chris Hedges, and Naomi Klein when the US invaded Iraq, and Linda McQuaig on privatization, all informed by prior reading of Hannah Arendt on bureaucracy being led by nobody.
And I taught about neoliberal politics after I read that Alan Greenspan, the dude in control of the US Federal Reserve, was a fanboy of Ayn Rand, the biggest hack that some still call a philosopher, extolling the virtue of selfishness which ushered in an age of overt greed and profit hunting and a new version of cannibalism.
When I was pregnant with my first, in the early 90s, my midwife cautioned me about wearing nailpolish because phthalates can get in the bloodstream and cross the placenta. And I did a deep dive into plastics, and started teaching about that too.
And I've kept an eye on climate ever since the 70s, when my grade six teacher explained why it would be a huge problem for the world if the mean global temperature rose by ONE degree (so cute!), and she explained, way back then, how CO2 blankets the earth and traps the heat, and that we have to cut back on burning fossil fuels, which means walking and cycling as much as possible, something within the power of 11-year olds to do. That lesson make me anti-car and an avid reader of science articles.
I hope at least a few of my students remembered my lessons over the years and could use them to help them understand the headlines today.
We had a lengthy heads up on all of this.
I had some students argue with me at every turn, and I provided lots of sources and additional reading for them. Some asked me not to talk about Palestine, but I did anyway. I told them they could leave the room if they liked. Some asked me not to talk about climate change, either because it's upsetting or because something that far away is unknowable as if our projections can't possibly be accurate enough to act on. Twenty years ago I warned that we'd be in big trouble, with much of the world uninhabitable by possibly the 2030s if we don't start changing our lifestyles. I tried little things that felt closer to home, like trying to get people to use the backs of paper to save trees logged from our Boreal forests in order to save Ontario songbirds, and I was mocked by some colleagues for thinking paper use has any connection to birds.
I'm not courageous or smart or prescient or anything. I'm motivated by sheer annoyance, by being frustrated at people's lack of knowledge and awareness on major issue -- not at the people, necessarily, but at the culture and systems in place that maintain ignorance. I think people should be in the know about what's going on in the world so they can think about their place in it all. It's so curious when people disagree with sharing clear and well-grounded information.
I'm very happy to be proven wrong, to be shown that it's somehow good to bomb the shit out of a country, or that unfettered capitalism benefits the weakest among us, or that plastic in our bodies is healthy, and I'd really love to find some compelling evidence that climate change is a hoax, like Ches Crosbie, former leader of Newfoundland's PC Party, argued in parliament recently: "The climate changes all the time. Having looked into the whole subject matter, I think that the theory that carbon output caused by humans is causing catastrophic climate change is bogus. . . . It's a heavily subsidized government program to cure a problem that doesn't exist."
Unfortunately he didn't offer any evidence at all, yet the CPC continues to block the development of renewable energy in Atlantic Canada.
I'm used to people calling me crazy and telling me to just stop talking about it all. Even as a teacher, they thought I should stop educating teens on what's happening in the real world. What some call "doom and gloom" I see as as a call to action! Or, at the very least, it's fulfilling an obligation to educate the next generation about real issues happening right now.
It's too depressing because it's too big, some say. It's not possible for us to do anything anyway, so we may as well just party on until we die, shop 'til we drop, even with little ones at risk. But protests helped get the US pull out of Vietnam, and they helped raise wages, and they helped get Earth Day on the map provoking Nixon to legislate environmental protections, and this week's massive protests just might light a fire under the necessary audience to stop bombing children. We can't change the trajectory towards the worst possible future without knowing where we're at right now and what needs to happen to reduce the damage.
I hope I planted a few seeds along the way there and here. That's about all I can do. And I really hope there are tons more teachers out there like the ones I had along the way who taught me the importance of having a clue (and the importance of logical argumentation and the scientific method), but now we need them willing to stand up against parents' rights rhetoric as well.
Then Covid hit our shores, and I watched videos like this, from March 2020, that shows how virus particles float in the air and stay there unless you open a window, making it so clear that we need to filter the air we're breathing. And I read posts like this, from Jennifer Brea, also from March 2020:
"Please stop telling young people they should avoid Covid-19 infection to protect the old. Tell them to protect themselves. Long-term symptoms six months post-infection: EBV: 11%, Q fever: 11%, Ross River Virus: 11%, West Nile Virus: 31%, SARS: 87%, Ebola: 90%, Covid-19: We have no idea. In general, the topic of long-term, post-infectious sequelae is not well-studied, probably for the same reasons ME/CFS has not been well-studied. But maybe a few hundred million people being infected by a novel, zoonotic virus will (unfortunately) change things.
The quality of data by infectious agent varies––a lot. By the time we start worrying about survivors, the pandemic apparatus has usually long moved on and the money just isn't there to study the people left behind. But here are some studies that should give us all pause to think. And to start including MORBIDITY, DISABILITY, as well as MORTALITY in all of our Covid-19 public health messages. Many of those who are long-term ill from these infections experience symptoms very similar to "chronic fatigue syndrome" ME/CFS. If that doesn't strike fear into the heart of all the 20-something's living it up this weekend in New York, Chicago, etc., it damn well should. . . .
A lot of people have responded to this thread by saying, "But we have to protect the old, too!" Yes, of course. And millions of chronically ill, disabled children, teens and adults, too. Also, the possible neurological complications of Covid-19 don't sound so great: In addition to being a fairly nasty respiratory virus, Covid-19 can invade the central nervous system and/or cause profound neurological disease. Another reason why MORTALITY is not the only statistic to track or report.
A case series of 3 hospitals in Wuhan found that 36.4% of Covid-19 patients had central and/or peripheral neurological symptoms. These symptoms included "headache, dizziness, impaired consciousness, ataxia, acute cerebrovascular disease, and epilepsy; hypogeusia, hyposmia, hypopsia neuralgia, and skeletal muscular symptoms." . . .
I'm interested in this because there is another illness that used to occur in epidemics, that also began as an upper respiratory infection, and could cause profound, long-run CNS and peripheral muscular symptoms: myalgic encephalomyelitis. Whether post-enterovirus, post-EBV, post-SARS, post-COVID-19, we need to put much more effort into studying post-infectious (neuro) syndromes not only as isolated phenomena of distinct outbreaks but also as a whole. After decades of underfunding ME/CFS research, we are woefully unprepared to deal with the long-run fallout of Covid-19, and I don't think we needed to be. Being a good citizen, self-isolating at home and want to learn more? Watch my doc."
And this familiar type of rebuttal was there from the get-go, even before mask mandates or lockdowns:
"I believe in sharing information to help Americans understand whats going on and what to do to help reduce /slow the spread of this virus. However, the info. you are posting now just builds more fear and anxiety; it's unnecessary given our current circumstances."
Brea's response:
"I believe accurate information that encourages people to take sensible precautions and avoid harming themselves and others is very important."
John Berry said the same as Brea in The Great Influenza: (out in 2005, shortly after SARS1)
"The cities that most successfully contained the 1918 pandemic have leaders who told the truth about what was happening and admitted when they didn't know."
And then I did a deep dive into everything happening in Italy and China and told my colleagues we should be wearing masks, and one colleague countered that we have to follow the rules and save masks for healthcare workers, and I shot back that we can at least make our own layered masks. It's not perfect, but it's better than nothing. And other colleagues openly made fun of me or complained about me. By June of 2020, admin was wearing gloves everywhere (and touching their faces with them) but no masks. In September, kids were given pieces of cloth without even a nose clip in them to keep them up, and they all had to take off their masks to eat lunch together indoors. They weren't allowed to go outside to eat, despite my many irritating emails full of evidence that we know it's airborne sent to my admin and the board office.
The frustration with this extreme level of willful ignorance by people in power over children set my blood boiling, and it hasn't even begun to cool down!
I'm no longer in a classroom, so this is my platform to get studies out, explained in simple language, to show the errors of our policies and plans and the very simple ways we can alter our lives to mitigate some of these problems at least a little bit while we're still here. It comes down to everything many philosophers and religious figures have said for thousands of years: live simply; separate your wants from your needs; take just what you need and leave the rest; love your neighbour, and do no harm.
11 comments:
I’m glad you taught our children and perhaps challenged them to confront difficult questions. If people could just think and be intentional about how they live, that would be a good first step. Thank you!
As people get older, though, you start to realize that political positions are much more complex and nuanced than portrayed by even the best philosophers, critics, and influencers.
It’s easy to paint one perspective as rosy and to strawman your opponents. We’re given to extremes. For instance, there are few that would want unfettered capitalism, where monopolies run unchecked and where there are no social safety nets. Similarly, few would want pure socialism where we attempt to define and eliminate all inequalities of outcome. No, instead, with some semblance of practical wisdom, we wrestle somewhere along the spectrum—allowing the ebb and flow of opposing views to check one another as we fumble through life together.
Debates of all the kinds are worthy to have. It’s valuable to see how people reason for why the needle should move this way or that. But as with many things, there is no final answer. There is no perfect resolution. There is rarely a win-win. We scramble to find an authority, a paper, a group to validate our intuitions. Polarization deepens. How ironic; in an age where everyone can have a voice and reach anywhere on the planet in an instant that we gravitate to like minds and end up amplifying our own echo. Why is that?
Me? I’m more given to capitalism, the patriarchal family, nature over technology—meaningful limits as to how we should intervene in life and death, and in the personal choice to all health-related augmentations to our ‘natural’ state. I consider these things our shared tradition, the very tree where—regardless of stripes—we find shelter and shade and the freedom to dream of a better tomorrow. And so I glare with skepticism at those who with willful myopia hack at this trunk, that as if by knocking down this tree they could force their dreams to become reality (by moonshot or revolution).
There is a time and place for radicals, but it is so much more powerful when honed by the principle of charity.
Science is a blind guide—the certitude of what-is offers little bearing as to how we should act.
Absolutely we need to teach nuance. And right now, as Ford is decimating the provincial social safety nets (education, healthcare, housing, LTC...), it feels like unfettered capitalism is very much the trajectory. The internet played a helping hand in polarization, letting fringe groups find one another - for better or worse. I agree that science just provides facts (that many leaders are willfully ignoring) without clear direction, which must be tempered with some type of moral code deduced from philosophy and/or scripture -- not blindly taken from there either, but carefully contemplated. I err on the side of do not harm and continue to wear an N95 in indoor public places and try hard to avoid spewing out any more GHGs than is necessary for my survival.
Your perspective is coherent and reasonable. I cannot see how being cautious can ever be wrong.
This whole trek through the COVID era has been interesting. We’ve applied an intense focus on one specific public hazard. Doing this can lead to certain biases, where we become acutely aware of things that were always true. We’ve always been immersed in viruses—many of which are coronaviruses. People get sick and die all the time from a myriad of things.
As we practically see things return to ‘normal’ levels—and as we see psychosomatic and other knock-on effects retreat—we can only expect the majority of people to return to life as it was. Some will resist this, refusing to look away from the microscopic, intense view of COVID. They will likely see others as minimizing the hazards and/or feel that humanity should embrace a new normal of ‘more safe’, but this is likely to attenuate and disappear under the ineffable workings of social pressures.
I don’t doubt COVID is unique. I don’t doubt that some wrestle with long COVID. Yet, there is an unmistakable retreat to the hazards and harms that we’ve witnessed since 2020. The sensitivities of individuals to this retreat across the strata of society is hard to discern and quantify, but the movement is obvious.
What is the exit strategy for the ‘COVID-is-not-over’ crowd? What limit or KPI would you want to see reached before dropping the mask?
I don't think people ignore the facts, they simply evaluate them differently.
The cost of public services is always a challenge. It's tricky that in a democracy we have to strike a balance with what level of services we can afford as a group. Here I think the public sector is often blind to the struggles and effort of the private sector.
Harms come in many forms.
The KPI I'd like to see is 500ppm CO2 in buildings. In some places in more progressive countries, CO2 monitors are on display and measures taken immediately to rectify if the number rise. At my uni and at my former high school, it often hits over 2000ppm. That means we're directly inhaling other people's lung backwash. Gross! We figured out how to clean the water for safe drinking and now nobody would even think of drinking unfiltered water. We know how to clean the air, but people are all too happy to breathe unfiltered air -- until they're directly affected, like when the wildfire smoke is thick. If you haven't read my rants on this, I quit teaching when they made me get rid of my Corsi-Rosenthal box and close my windows. I had no means to reduce CO2 levels in the room to protect the kids in front of me, many of whom had already been sick from it at least once or twice, and some of whom had lost a parent or sibling to it.
Taylor, what would it take you to wear a mask inside public structures? More measles cases when we no longer have enough vaxed to reach herd immunity? That appears to be on the way. Or would it make a difference if you lost a loved one to Covid - or had to care for someone night and day, one of the 10% of cases that becomes Long Covid?
I wonder if things will shift towards masking as more people get disabled or die, and then more of the population knows someone personally affected by this. It's hard to be affected enough to change behaviours by something you can't see. That's why we're so fucked by climate change. We'll be burning fossil fuels willy-nilly until the fires consume us.
But wearing N95s in hospitals and healthcare facilities? That should be a forever thing. There's no reason anyone should get sicker from trying to get better.
“what would it take you to wear a mask inside public structures?” This is a good question. I wouldn’t mask under any circumstance.
If there was a rule to do so, I would exclude myself from those spaces.
The conservative impulse is towards the ideal—which in this case to live face-to-face despite a perceived alarmism.
The progressive impulse is towards ensuring some don’t get left behind. Each has its place and there are actors on both sides that help hold our society sane.
"I wouldn’t mask under any circumstance." - not even if you knew you had Covid or measles or TB, and were in a room with people who were immune compromised, like in a hospital or doctor's office (or grocery store - we never really know)? Do you just not believe that N95s can reduce transmission? Or do you think your personal freedom is more important than reducing harm to others?
So, if I knew I had some illness that was contagious, then I would stay home. I have no desire to carelessly spread sicknesses. The problem, as you know, is that with many viruses you are contagious before the onset of symptoms.
As to not wearing masks, I’m uncomfortable thinking about this in terms of ‘personal freedom’. At this stage in my life and with so many relational commitments at home and at work, I don’t have much, if any, personal freedom. Even if I was alone in life, my wishes and my autonomy are not high in my hierarchy of values. No, I reject the underlying shift to the definition of ‘harm’. I reject the heavy-handed logic that peddles in probabilities. I reject the myopia applied in evaluating the cost/benefit rationale to masks. I reject the failure to apply the law of diminishing returns in terms of mitigations and interventions.
Kissing the heads of my kids, a warm hug from a friend—normal life is worth protecting against the coddling and appeasement of the fears of the few.
I’m cynical as to how people know they are immunocompromised. I’m sure some are, but with others it could be an irrational caution, fear, or hypochondria.
Regardless, someday I will likely be counted among those who are truly immune compromised. When that happens, I will not be among those who demand my needs and my convenience above the baseline of the families and kids at the apex of health. That’s just not the ethic I was brought up to have.
Community is complicated. There is an interplay of forces inscribed in our very body that I don’t pretend to understand—one minute swapping fluids with kisses and beyond, the next recoiling in disgust at a sneeze or double dipped food. We’re strange creatures. We don’t want harm to come to us nor to deal harm to others. But all that is good in life comes with risk—and many of our devices to ward off harm do so at a cost—that for some is too high a price. I can wince lying in bed when I hear one of the kids start to hack and cough in the middle of the night, but I know there is no one to blame and little that can be done. The world where we start to think and act as if otherwise is one I do not want to see.
But if you have a contagious disease, you still sometimes have to leave the house - like to go to the doctor's or a hospital. That's when N95s come in handy. The big danger with Covid is the not knowing if you've got something. It kinda sounds like you picture me masked 24/7, but I only wear one inside public buildings. I still hug and kiss my children -- and can hug anyone while wearing an N95. I still have love and joy in my life; I just make sure not to catch or transmit an on-going brain-invasive disease when I'm at school or at the store or if friends come over who have been out and about unmasked over the last few weeks by wearing a breathable, comfortable, well-fitting N95.
I don’t pretend to know where or when you mask. That’s none of my concern. I don’t agree with your position but I respect it—for I believe you are sincere in caring for yourself and for others.
I can imagine that some people do mask more often than you perhaps even in their own homes with their own family. To them, you would be taking careless risks in a time of great uncertainty. What justifies you over them?
And it is to this that I’m most intrigued: how subtle differences in our views and values on ‘what is’ and ‘what we ought to do’ can lead to such different conclusions, how our backgrounds and communities shape our ideas and practices, and how times of heightened anxiety can fray the tacit peace between us.
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