The Rise of Unreason

The Ontario Health Coalition put out a press release a couple weeks ago about the sharp increase in people infected with measles here. There were 816 cases from October 2024 to April, then 155 new cases from April 3-11. Our immunization rates are lower than most of Europe -- only 70% of kids have typical childhood vaccinations. Vaccination rates were reduced dramatically in 2020. "This is a Public Health failure that must be addressed with the utmost urgency." 

David Fisman recently wrote about it: 

Balancing Individual Rights and Community Health Requires Knowledge of History

Ontario is in the midst of a measles outbreak, and our Chief Medical Officer of Health (CMOH) is taking a “you do you” approach. No mandates. No strong guidance. Just a gentle suggestion that people make informed decisions…if they choose to. It’s a startling response given public health’s long history of collective action, and at times, authoritarianism. 

That authoritarianism wasn’t a bug of early public health. It was a feature. Modern public health emphasizes individual rights, but those rights can come into tension with the community’s right to health, especially during outbreaks of communicable diseases. Institutional public health grew out of fear. 

Orange Monday or MAGA Monday?

Time will tell which name will go down in history books. But April 7, 2025 will be up there with Black Monday (October 19, 1987) and Black Thursday (October 18, 1929).

Trump wants everyone to just calm down, already, in his own ever-weirdly worded way. But he said this just before millions of Americans died of Covid, too. 

Anomy: A Disturbance of the Collective Order

A few articles have come out recently concerned with the trajectory we're taking, particularly choices being made by young adults. But we need to acknowledge the upheaval we're currently living through to have any hope of traversing it well. 

Emile Durkheim wrote Suicide back in 1897, a lengthy report on the four ways people are provoked to give up on life: egoistic, altruistic, fatalistic, and anomic. His discussion of anomy is a useful warning for today: 

"Whenever serious readjustments take place in the social order, whether or not due to a sudden growth or to an unexpected catastrophe, men [he's talking generally of people here] are more inclined to self-destruction. .... Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience. ... But when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this influence. ... Appetites, not being controlled by a public opinion become disoriented, no longer recognize the limits proper to them. ... The state of de-regulation or anomy is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined, precisely when they need more disciplining. ... A thirst arises for novelties, unfamiliar pleasures, nameless sensations, all of which lose their savor once known. ... What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon. ... He cannot in the end escape the futility of an endless pursuit. ... Time is required for the public conscience to reclassify men and things." 

A Deflating Experience with Three Christmas Visitors

I was travelling on Christmas Day with two of my kids, literally driving to a stable, when my daughter's car got a flat tire. We tried to figure out the jack and how to get the tire off to put the donut tire on, but it was more complicated that I could have imagined. 

Anything to do with fixing cars kind of scares me a bit. It's the same with computers. I'm even more embarrassed to say, it's the same experience with my flippin' bicycle too, which I bring in yearly for a simple tune up because I still don't quite know how to oil my chain. I have all the tools to change a flat, but that doesn't stop me from just walking miles to a shop instead of ever even trying to fix it myself. There's something about mechanical things that shuts my brain down. It's a strong aversion as if I don't want to know how things work. I think part of me thinks that if I try anything, I'll somehow make it worse - I have actually broken a computer by trying to plug in a cable before by bending the little sticky-out thingies. I can build a website no problem, but I'm still a bit weird about using apps on my phone. I've watched as people helped me change a tire on my car twice before in my life, and my son has helped with my computer and phone a ton, and I realized that once someone is there to take over and save the day, I just stare blankly at the process without actually learning anything. The previous tire-fixing steps didn't register at all. I was completely useless. At some point in my life I seem to have learned that this type of information is just not for me.  

It's yet another reason why I didn't buy my first car until I was flippin' 53! 

It's World Brain Day!

The WHO announced it on twitter with a list of things to do for a health brain: be active, eat well, sleep well, stimulate your mind, look after your heart, and wear a helmet. Hmmm.... it feels like something's missing!!

Just last Tuesday, the CDC Report on Disability indicated another brain issue: Covid. From McKnights Long-Term Care News: 

"Cognitive disability emerged as the most prevalent disability in the United States in 2022, affecting 13.9% of adults."

No mention of masks or cleaner air in there, of course. They're still all about vax and relax, despite it being so obviously ineffective on its own.

Then last Friday, Time Magazine featured an article on Covid's effect on the brain:

"Covid-19 is associated with possibly long-lasting changes to the brain, potentially contributing to cognitive problems like brain fog, mental fatigue, and memory loss, as well as neurological and mental-health issues. The virus seems able to damage blood vessels and support cells in the brain and may kickstart changes to the immune system that also affect brain function. . . . There are people in their 30s and 40s who have neurocognitive deficits that look like mild dementia. . . . Covid-19 can hinder cognitive performance among adults of all ages, even those who ostensibly recover fully . . . particularly on measures of memory function, executive function--for example your ability to decision-make and plan--and reasoning. . . . The results equated to about a 3-IQ-point deficit among people who recovered completely from COVID-19 versus those who'd never had it. Among people with unresolved Long Covid symptoms and those who'd been admitted to the ICU, the deficits jumped to 6 and 9 IQ points respectively. . . . The cognitive risks of Covid-19 are yet another reason to stay up-to-date on vaccines adn avoid infection if at all possible." 

Avoid the Best to Avoid the Rest

Covid is amazing for harming the immune system, right up there with HIV. Even mild and asymptomatic cases of Covid harm the body's ability to fight off infections, and makes us susceptible to other viruses and parasites. Yale made a poster about it:

Statement from Yale School of Public Health (sources here):

"Five years with SARS-CoV-2 in our midst, and the CDC reports that 43 million Americans have experienced Long COVID. Some have recovered, but roughly 17 million - the same number of people who have cancer in the U.S. - still deal with the condition, and that number continues to grow. At Yale, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki's laboratory is investigating how the virus can create long-lasting impacts on the immune system. And with many left incapacitated by the novel condition and at risk from rolled-back mitigations, the desperate need for answers grows. 

Good News: You CAN Be Saved!

The CDC put out some crappy comms with an image with a mask photoshopped upside down, with "N95" shopped onto a KN95, and only on the patient, not the doctor, which suggests that doctors don't need to wear them. I almost feel bad for how hard they failed on this except that disease prevention is THEIR ONLY JOB, and their incompetence has cost so many lives. 

And now North Carolina is banning masks during protests and adding to the punishment if a mask is worn in a crime, but they added in a health exemption - after people protested - that allows medical grade masks to prevent spreading illness. However, the law still allows law enforcement and property owners to ask anyone to remove their mask for identification despite the reality that sunglasses obscure identity more than masks and there are no laws banning sunglasses during protests. 

Our Current Consumerist Culture is Doomed AF

Business as usual means we're risking our lives for conveniences we didn't expect to have when I was young, and we pretty happily lived without. It's not a call to go back to the stone age, just fifty years or so. 

In my house growing up, we rarely drove places despite being almost 5k from the closest mall. As kids, if we wanted to go anywhere, we could bus, bike, or walk. My parents lived their entire lives without ever being in an airplane. That's a luxury of excess, they said. That entire Aristotelean ethics is gone now. "Waste not, want not" was successfully drilling into our little heads. Now we'd rather buy new than get something fixed.

We CAN Reduce Illnesses!

The WHO is trying to encourage masking again, but their ads show people in surgical masks (should be at least an N95), and they keep focusing on "crowded indoor spaces" as if spacing a few feet from people makes a difference with an airborne virus. But at least they're not still telling us that hand washing is enough. Baby steps. 

But some people still haven't got the message.

In this interview with Erica Stanford, New Zealand MP, she makes the political obliviousness to solutions so crystal clear. Teachers are already falling ill enough for schools to be closed at the very beginning of their winter (from about 8 to 12 minutes):

She tries to fix the problem with sick teachers by throwing more supply teachers at the school, NOT by maybe preventing illnesses in the first place. With the interviewer's cajoling, she acknowledges that teachers have the highest cases of covid than any other profession because they're surrounded by sick kids. At 10 minutes in:

Interviewer: "Do you think there is a risk that in trying to avoid disruption, trying to get more kids back in schools . . . you will inadvertently create more disruption by having more illness?"

Stanford: "What would you say I should do next? . . . I don't have a magic bullet!!" 

No Ragrets

The frustrating experiences that linger with me the longest are the times I was able to make a difference in my tiny corner of the world or have some kind of effect or even have the potential to have an effect, and then it was derailed, often by a well-meaning person whose perception of their abilities might have been  greater than the reality. 

I have a far easier time coping with my own mistakes and inane decisions than watching someone else decimate my efforts. Maybe it's because I have more faith in myself to correct my own path than I have in others who seem more willing to let things fall to the wayside. 

This is just a personal rant as I try to work on disattachment from it all. I have some regrets; when someone takes over a project, from a small task to a political portfolio, it's somehow still ours to mourn or celebrate despite not having any agency to affect it. 

Government Provoked Global Suicide

Governments around the world have discussed solutions to climate change, but not enough are seriously acting to reduce this threat.

From environmentalist Stephen Barlow:

I'd far rather not have to spell out uncomfortable truths, and I have no agenda, other than to stop humanity committing global suicide by ignoring the seriousness of the climate and ecological emergency. If our governments had done what they'd promised to do, after these UN Environment Summits I've highlighted, there would be no need for me to spell any of this out. But the thing is, they didn't take any meaningful action to change direction. In essence, our governments have not merely carried on with Business as Usual BaU, as if the climate and ecological emergency did not exist, but they are planning to reinforce this globally suicidal policy for the foreseeable future. Hence, why we have a crisis. It's not that the things I'm saying are extreme, it's our governments, which are pursuing radical extremist policy, putting our civilization on course for global suicide and an unliveable future. It's not even just me saying that, but António Guterres [Secretary-General to the UN].  

Covid is Finally a Concern!

Maria Van Kerkhove, of the World Health Organization, is worried about Covid. If she's worried, then the shit has really hit the fan. 

Van Kerkhove is well known to have said, over and over, that Covid-19 is not airborne so masks aren't necessary despite it being known to be airborne by January 2020. There's a compilation video of her near the bottom of this post. Some mark September 2023 as the very first time she acknowledged that it IS in fact airborne!! She's less well known for being pivotal in the virus being called Covid-19 instead of SARS2 due to the negative connotation of SARS. She's been a minimizer from the get go.  Then something changed. It didn't go away; it got a lot worse.

On December 30th, she tweeted:

"JN.1 continues to rise in detection, but what matters to you is that Covid-19 is circulating in ALL countries. You CAN protect yourself from infection and severe disease. Mask, ventilate, test, treat, vaccinate: boost every 6-12 months depending on your risk group."

Telling people to wear a mask is absolutely huge for her!! I'm not surprised she advises boosters at 6-12 months instead of the 3-6 months recommended by studies that show how quickly we lose protection, but it's one of the best messages I've seen from the WHO.

Living in a Nightmare

"Many describe living in a sort of waking, powerless nightmare where an obvious catastrophe is unfolding but society just blithely ignores it."

That's from this Guardian article from May 2022 that could have been written today, and possibly needs to be written every day to wake us up: 

"People have described it as like they are at a funeral but everyone else is treating it as a party. People are still going to college, planning for retirement, doing all theh things as if the future will look just like the past when we know that's not true. There's a delusion of normalcy. . . . Carbon emissions leapt globally last year . . . Wildfires are now a year-round menace to the US west. On Friday, it hit 51C in Pakistan, while India has baked in such extreme, record heat that dozens of people have died and birds are falling from the sky"

You'd think climate change and Covid happening right in front of our eyes would affect our behaviour more, wouldn't you! Denial is a powerful drug.

Inaccessible Accessibility

Why is remote learning suddenly so difficult to access when we have all the tech we need to pull it off?

When I was in grade 12, I started to just show up to classes I needed to go to. I had high 90s, so I just went for clarification when I couldn't understand the textbook, and I showed up for every lab and test. That's what worked best for me as a learner. Unfortunately, missing classes didn't go over well with admin, and I was "disinvited" to be in school. I loved learning, and I did very well on tests and assignments, but I never actually finished high-school.

I didn't feel like a rebel or the trouble-maker they might have seen me as. I just found it painfully tedious to sit through lengthy explanations of something I already understood, and I was unable to (and not allowed to) just tune it out and do other work during class. Could you even imagine bringing a walkman to class?? It's rude to do other work while someone's talking, so every class was an exercise in tolerating the repetitive droning on and on until everyone understood and was quiet enough for me to finally start the homework questions. 

Then I went to university a few years later, as a mature student, and nobody took attendance, and I could actually learn in the way that worked best for me. I went to most classes because they were full of rousing discussion, but I didn't go when profs (often "instructors") just literally read out the textbook to us. I thrived in that environment that enabled autonomy over my own learning and went on to do a masters as well. 

Now universities take attendance, and it's vital to attend, in person, even if nothing significant is gained from my presence in the room for myself, for my prof, or for the class. 

For all the Fierce Raindrops: Lessons that Should Have Been Learned

Changing minds on big issues takes a long time and the work never ends. 

Anti-drinking and driving groups appeared in the early 1980s, like MADD, typically made up of survivors or relatives of victims who saw first hand that something must be done to prevent so many disabilities and deaths. I was a teenager at the time, and my circle didn't think twice about driving hammered. I remember people saying things like these boring old ladies should get a life and stop telling us when we can and can't drive! We were all pretty sure we could drive just fine after a few. Who are they to tell us otherwise? Breathalizer legislation was on the books in the 60s, and RIDE programs were legal in the 70s, but it wasn't until MADD came about that we got flooded with school visits and PSAs and then really strict penalties were enacted for drunk driving including jail time! And they we all sobered up about it, realizing our inconvenience in staying the night or going back to get the car in the morning doesn't really warrant potentially taking a life. 

Wheelchair ramps weren't an architectural requirement in public buildings until the 90s, but only after people with disabilities and allies fought for their rights to fully participate in society over decades, starting with Judy Heumann's winning lawsuit in 1970 against the NY Board of Ed that was preventing her equal access to the workplace because she uses a wheelchair. That was following by blocking traffic that got a weak bill passed, and then sit-ins that eventually forced politicians to listen and act. Check out Crip Camp, where activist Denise Jacobson said, "You can pass a law, but until you change society's attitude, that law won't mean much." And now we generally agree that everyone should have access to participate fully in society despite any form of disability. Right???

Early AIDS activists watched friends and loved ones die for years before they could get enough of an audience to have an effect on policy. "Sickness and death from HIV/AIDS was brought to a virtual standstill in the USA . . . by a vigorous public health campaign designed not around treating those who became infected, but by preventing infection in the first place." But it took years of activism, from 1979 to 1986, and many celebrities dying and children dying before public health started to issue PSAs, to actually teach the nation how to prevent the spread.

It takes a really long time to convince governments to impose safety measures that, in some way, affect people's freedom to do their own thing. It's not necessarily a bad thing on its own. to be careful about legislation, but it's very frustrating to be living during the activism phase watching so many children get sick. We've got children dying of Covid already. And lots of celebrities. But there's a huge coverup or spin or denial that has people claiming that, for instance, a fatal heart-attack at 13, 17, 27, and 44, all within a day of each other, is totally normal now. When my healthy friend succumbed to a heart attack in his early 60s, people were so fast to say that people die of heart attacks in their 60s all the time!! Instead of, you know, sorry for your loss. It's all ABC: Anything but Covid.

Trapped by our Insouciance

George Monbiot's article today is the perfect rant for our times. It's pretty much what I've been screaming into the void for the past while, but, thankfully, he has a large audience.

Monboit shames us with this, 

"When we forget the virus, we forget clinically vulnerable people trapped by our insouciance. Some can scarcely leave their homes as the danger to them of infection is so great. . . . Many who suffer [Long Covid] reported a lower quality of life than people with stage 4 lung cancer."

Yet my university will not grant accommodations if a student (like me) won't physically attend a class--that's always recorded and posted online--because the class is full of people who will not heed a gentle request to mask, and which requires daily group work, unevaluated, in which three or four people, a foot away, speak directly at their face. The CO2 in the room is regularly over 1200 ppm. Some people are perfectly capable of doing all the work of the program to a high standard, but just not in that room in that way. Sucks to be them (us). 

And we don't give a shit about harming healthcare workers despite desperately needing them right now. Monbiot continues,

"Symptoms of long Covid 'had an impact on health as severe as the long-term effects of traumatic brain injury.' Some doctors are unable to work, to care for their children, cook, perform basic arithmetic, even brush their hair. Some are now facing the loss of their homes, bankruptcy and destitution. Though most caught the virus in the line of duty, they've been bright-sided, sacrificed to the officially sanctioned delusion that it's over, and we should all get on with our lives. They must wish they could."

"For some people, going to hospital may now be more dangerous than staying at home untreated."  

Blazing a New Trail, Literally

Is this year different, or is this the new trajectory we're on to the very end?

The Climate Brink collected a series of unnerving graphs showing what an outlier this year is. 

Some pollyanna types are hoping just this year will be different, and then we'll somehow get back within our typical ranges despite doing fuck all to change anything, but I can't imagine how that could be the case. Tipping points have been tipped. We're on the last leg of our journey together.

In a review of Adam Welz's new book, The End of Eden, it's explained, 

The Difficulty of Knowing

The main character from Camus' The Plague, a medical doctor spending his days and nights helping the sick, said,

"A man can't cure and know at the same time. So let's cure as quickly as we can. That's the more urgent job."

This hit me as particularly poignant as we're still coping with wafting smoke from so many fires which is making us face the reality of the situation, which might render us immobile. We can't figure out an exit strategy from climate change - it's all too big and complex and overwhelming; we can only try to keep helping one another as best we can while we're here.

Dr. Rieux recognizes that the vastness of pain and suffering is horrific, and we can't think about it without being paralyzed by the thought. His tactic is to focus on whomever needs his help right in front of him, trying to help one patient after another for 20 hours each day, doing his utmost to maintain his personal integrity at the peak of the plague, Camus' allegory for fascism creeping up on the unsuspecting. We have very little control over the big picture, so mainly focus on being a good person, helping in any way you can. 

Climate change is devastating. The knowledge of it is paralyzing. We can't solve it, but we can still try to slow it down or at least try not to make it too much worse. While we do that, we have to focus on the here and now, on helping in whatever way we can - to heal, teach, console, befriend...  We can't get stuck in fretting. In others words, we have to stay in the present, with what's right in front of us, instead of the future of unknowns.

NRPI - No Real Person Involved

 In Ontario right now, 

"Hospital backlogs in pediatric care could affect children's health for the rest of their lives. Two-thirds of pediatric patients in need of surgery at two of Ontario's largest children's hospitals are being forced to wait beyond the recommended window as a result of backlogs and inadequate resources, putting them at risk for lifelong complications and setbacks. At Toronto's Hospital for Sick Children, the surgical wait list soared to 6,509 last week, the longest it has ever been. . . . It's hard to overstate the gravity of the situation. . . . At CHEO in Ottawa, there are almost 36,000 patients waiting to be seen. . . . We're talking about pediatric health interventions that can change the trajectory of an entire life. . . . What we need is a significant increase in resources to be able to bring the wait list down."

We need to fix the entire healthcare system that has unraveled in the hands of conservative governments, but, as one commenter said, we can also quit adding to the backlog by mandating improved "air quality in schools and school buses and prevent unnecessary illness of those attending school and those they bring illness home to."

In the states, Education Week tracked Covid deaths of educators to December 2022. They stopped at over 1,300. 

The first two valleys in Covid hospitalizations, where we almost hit zero, were in the summer of 2020 and 2021. We don't hit those valleys anymore. But we could. And imaging the difference if these 2,000 people a day weren't in the hospital. 

It's so curious to me that, online, I'm arguing about accepting and adapting to the new normal of climate change because we can't turn it around and get back to the kinds of summers we used to have. It's not that we shouldn't do all we can to slow climate change, but that we can't get back to an earlier baseline. This summer may be one of the coldest of the rest of our lives. I got royally trounced for being a fatalist and giving up no matter how many ways I explain that I am not giving up on doing all I can to slow things down, but there's absolutely no stopping it or returning to even 1°C above target. We'll be really lucky to stay under 1.5°C, which we've already dipped past. More on that another day.

But with Covid we CAN get back to a baseline!! And yet so many have given up completely, learning to live with a FATAL, DISABLING DISEASE. We can get much closer to zero if we all wear good quality well-fitting masks in public places, at least whenever the CO2 is over 500ppm. The only tricky part is eating lunch at schools, but once we started letting them leave the room at lunch, tons of kids at my high school chose to eat outdoors all winter. Because of that "nutrition break" in which all kids were forced to eat in their classroom together mid-morning - with nobody allowed to leave while everyone unmasked - we've never really had masking in school. 

Masks don't hurt. The newer models are comfortable enough there's just a slight indent after an 8-hour day. They're a bit annoying, sure, but is the convenience of going without a mask worth the risk to children's lives? I've been saying that since the beginning, and I'm just flabbergasted that people don't get the connection between going for groceries unmasked carrying an unknown asymptomatic case and that kid next to them in line at the check-out getting sick a few days later, infecting their entire class, and someone dying or becoming permanently disabled, unable to sit up for more than a few minutes a day.  

I get that we don't matter to the powers that be. We're all just cogs in the machine. All those tragic deaths? NRPI. Yup. But I'm still struggling with the reality that we don't matter to one another.

Quiet Comprehending

A pretty song for our times form Bo Burnham: 

Female Colonel Sanders, easy answer, civil war
The whole world is at your fingertips, the ocean at your door
The live-action Lion King, the Pepsi Halftime Show
Twenty-thousand years of this, seven more to go . . . 
That unapparent summer air in early fall
The quiet comprehending of the ending of it all . . .
Hey, what can you say? We were overdue.
But it will be over soon. You wait. 

A blogger buddy, "Mound" told me about Deep Adaptation and Dark Mountain ten years ago, and I thought it was all a little extreme. But now I'm at a weird place in which the people I once thought were completely off the wall, I now understand as prescient. Alternatively, it's entirely possible I have merely joined them in their lunacy. One or the other, and I'm not always confident of which. The fact that I still think Covid is enough of a concern that I'm provoked to wear a mask everywhere and refuse dinner invites puts me pretty squarely in the latter camp by many people's estimation. Most of my friends, definitely, but luckily not my children. Yet. 

Four years ago I wrote that all that Dark Mountain doomer stuff was a bit much because, "what if it's not all over, and there's still time to do something?!"

But then last Friday, the CO₂ on our little planet hit 425 ppm for the first time in human history. That's considered a vital sign by NASA. It was just 420 last month. Previously, it was in the 200 range for thousands of years, and hit 300 in the 1950s. Keeping it below 350 ppm was a goal for a long time. MIT says that we need to stay below 430 ppm if we hope to avoid overshooting the 1.5° rise in temperature.

This should be front page news, but it's not.