Measuring Risk in the Woods

I was up north, camping, and started chatting to neighbours. I had a mask in my pocket, but thought it would be fine to just have a brief conversation together, outside, unmasked. But then they both started coughing. "Summer colds." 

I was dubious. They had done some travelling lately, and Colin Furness said travel was fuelling the current cases: 

"Much of the current Covid burden seems travel-related. Yes, that's right. Everybody flying everywhere with masking rates around 2% will ensure that any new variant that emerges anywhere will almost immediately be everywhere. (Yup: given what we know, nearly everybody traveling is choosing to act dangerously.)"

But I still didn't put on my mask. 

It just felt so rude to suddenly whip it out mid sentence. I risked my health, potentially my life, rather than offend people, just like a third of the participants in that Asch study. 

Covid is Still Here (likely worse in fall), and Masks Still Work

Listen instead of reading (about 7 minutes)!

Jeff Gilchrist summarized the results of a recent study on mask mandates:

"Over only a six week period in 2022, during a period of sustained respiratory viral activity in Ottawa, Canada, kids being absent was reduced enough to gain almost 2,000 school days. This was with mostly low quality masks. Imagine how much better if everyone had proper N95s or better."

The study published last week by Nisha Thampi et al, compared three Ottawa boards that lifted mandatory masking policies in March 21, 2022 to the one board that reintroduced them on April 13, 2022 and found a "statistically significant decrease in student and staff absenteeism." There are lots of limitations to the study, but it's so clear that masks at least help reduce transmission, that it's bizarre we're not on board to keep them on in hospitals and schools. 

Mike Hoerger, PhD and founding director of Louisiana's HealthPsych PhD program, explains that the study underestimates the real and potential benefits of masking: 

"Real Benefits:
Often, schools that have stronger masking policies are lower socioeconomic status. They don't have high-level ventilation and HEPA filters, so masking becomes more important. Moreover, at the lower-SES schools, families are more likely to be multi-generational, have higher occupational exposure, and more in-home exposure (smaller homes, more people, less ventilation). Since it's not randomized which schools mask, the schools with good masking policies are up against many other obstacles. It's truly remarkable to see the pro-mask schools actually perform better against all of these other obstacles, so the real benefit of masking is likely underestimated. 

AMOC - What it is and Why You Should Care

AMOC stands for Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation. It's slowing down significantly, and people in the know are pretty worried about it. 

According to Professor Stefan Rahmstorf, AMOC is "a near-surface northward flow along the Atlantic, from the far south up to the high north. There the water gives off its heat to the atmosphere, sinks down, and returns south at a 2-3 km depth." Here's a schematic animation from NASA, titled, The Thermohaline Circulation aka The Great Ocean Conveyor Belt:

"The AMOC is part of the global overturning circulation driven by density differences. It supplies the deeper waters with oxygen. Schematic from my 2002 Nature article; yellow dots is where the water sinks into the deep." 

Sometimes, Québec Does it Better

Québec is banning most private health agencies. Why is Ontario going in the opposite direction on this? 

Here's a tiktok explaining it (link because embedding is still so weird).

@frankdomenic Quebec is banning private health agencies, this is HUGE. Let's compare that to what's happening in Doug Fords Ontario. #ontario #onpoli #dougford #quebec #quebecois #qu #francoislegault #ontpoli #frankdomenic🍁 #canpoliTT ♬ original sound - FrankDomenic

Sinead O'Connor's Fight to Bring Truth to Light

The very first CD I ever got was a gift from a boyfriend after he bought us our very first CD player: He woke me up one morning back in 1990 with Sinead O'Connors' I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got. I wrote about the fond memory 10 years ago when I questioned how she tried to teach Miley Cyrus a lesson.

For the most part, she was someone I greatly admired. I remember watching that infamous SNL episode in 1992, and it provoked me to look into what she was on about. I had no idea. That's what good activism does - it gets people asking questions and reading. She largely got booed and harassed for her efforts. That's what happens in the first stages of activism on an issue. People get mad at you. People don't want to know; they fight the truth. I try to remember that when people are annoyed by my mask before I let them know that the wealthy demand that people around them be masked so they don't have to be. And we're making them money by dying earlier!!

It was another ten years after that SNL episode before the Boston Globe cracked the case on sexual abuse in the church and won a Pulitzer for their efforts. Bringing truth to light takes time, but it can be so hard to be patient.

Extremist Group Criteria

A mom delegated at a school board meeting in the states about the group, Moms for Liberty. Here's the Tiktok video (but also at the link in case - I wish TikTok embedded more reliably):

@nowthispolitics A mother in Wilson County, TN, read out some of the homophobic and demeaning messages her 6th grade daughter had received at school, simply for identifying as lesbian. The woman, Lindsey Patrick-Wright, was speaking out against a push, led by the far-right group Moms For Liberty, to ban several books in the school district. She also spoke out against a board member who had equated being LGBTQIA+ to mental illness and who had proposed a policy forcing teachers to notify parents if a student came out to them as transgender. #tennessee #LGBTQIA+ #school #news #momsforliberty ♬ [News] Music for news programs 10 mystery solving(1417504) - Takashi

Truth Matters commented:

"What kind of despicable animals take their political wars to the classrooms of public schools? Moms for Liberty my ass; they should be called Moms for Tyranny. Schools should be sanctuaries for learning, but the MAGA Cartel has turned classrooms into killing fields with their inaction on gun control. Not satisfied with that, they want to turn them into Christian Nationalist indoctrination centers, where hate, homophobia and racism is injected into the curriculum."

Earlier this month, The Hill explained how Moms for Liberty is an extremist organization started in Florida in 2021:

Initially focused on mask mandates and other Covid-19 restrictions in schools, the organization is now dedicated to fighting for the survival of America by . . . empowering parents to defend their parental rights. . . . More than half of the 500 candidates endorsed by the organization were elected to school boards . . . a major player in the war against so-called 'woke' instruction related to gender identity, sexuality, race and racism. . . .

BMJ: The World Expected More of Canada

The British Medical Journal is a highly credible journal with a focus on improving health worldwide, and they're calling out Canada in a series of articles by Canadian experts in the field It's not that we're the worst when it came to Covid, not by a long shot! It's that we present ourselves as a country that would have done much, much better than we did. 

At two years in, we had lower cases and deaths and higher vaccination coverage than most G10 countries. But...

"Despite a universal healthcare system, communities experiencing social and economic marginalisation in Canada were hardest hit. . . . its hoarding of vaccination doses and failure to fully support multilateral efforts to share vaccination doses globally led to global vaccine inequity. Lessons from a previous outbreak of SARS-CoV-1--which in 2003 impacted more Canadians than anywhere else outside of Asia--went unheeded and left the country's government and health authorities ill prepared for Covid-19. An independent, national inquiry is needed to review Canada's Covid-19 response, draw lessons, and ensure accountability for the past and future pandemic preparedness." 

Here's the gist of it all from here:

There's one article on how predictable the crisis in our Long Term Care Homes was, particularly in Ontario, which has privatized services. 

And an excellent article on how First Nations peoples handled Covid in the wake of HINI, particularly in Manitoba:

"During the HINI crisis the government sent body bags to First Nations communities and denied sanitisers to some communities, implying that alcohol based sanitisers were open to substance misuse. [!!!] These actions created mistrust between First Nations communities and the federal government and led to a desire to embed First Nations leadership in the Covid-19 pandemic response. To accomplish this, the Manitoba chiefs assembly passed a resolution to create the Manitoba First Nations Pandemic Response Coordination Team. The team includes leaders with primary care, nursing, and public health expertise. Their experience was critical for the logistic planning of the healthcare workforce, rapid tests, and vaccination deployment."

They had rapid response teams and accommodations to isolate people with Covid-19, deployed testing equipment, and vaccinations leading to over 90% vaccine uptake.

Maté: Part Depth Psychology, but Part Questionable Quick Fix

He received the Order of Canada, profoundly helped many people with addiction on the streets of Vancouver, and is much loved and admired, but some of Dr. Gabor Maté's claims feel like they don't hold water. And some claims might actually be dangerous if blindly accepted.

I've encountered Maté in a few courses I'm taking, and have been strongly encouraged to watch his newest film and read his book several times now; I opted for the former. One follower was excited to tell me, with great confidence, that ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease) is caused by a specific trauma and that everyone is carrying unresolved trauma which, if resolved, can heal physical ailments like cancer. Okay. I have some reservations that I've kept to myself until seeing so many in academia wholeheartedly promoting some poorly substantiated claims.

While Maté has some excellent techniques in the work he does, the way he presents and explains the material provokes me to look up research studies to try to corroborate many of his ideas.

I gobbled up his books twenty years ago, and there are some useful analogies and treatments in there, but even then there were parts that gave me pause.

A Microcosm of Arguments

This thread of comments of how Covid is affecting younger people encapsulates many of the attitudes affecting the people most affected - and general ableism. I used pseudonyms, and I'm not linking because it might not be the thing they want to be known for. It was Elsie's thread, so responses were to her.

Teen: "Why don't more people talk about what the Covid lockdowns did to young people like me? At 15 years old, I was involuntarily isolated from my friends for SIX MONTHS. I didn't see them, I didn't meet them. The lockdown RUINED young people like me. An entire Generation."

Elsie: "Okay, so I was 19 when the pandemic started. I caught covid in March 2020, before lockdown, and never recovered. Now I can't work, can't leave the house, and I've had no friend for 3 years. So which is worse? A few months of lockdown or a lifetime of isolation?"

Mom: "My daughter spent a year and a half doing virtual school. Lost out on a lot of dreams she'd worked hard for (National competitions etc). I'm immune compromised, and me dying would be worse, but do NOT diminish the impact of isolation on many teenagers." 

Elsie: "I was also a teenager! What about my dreams? Or do they not count. I might never live independently, never have a job, never get married or have children. Why are my dreams worth less?"

Mom: "Why are you hosting the Suffering Olympics? It's quite unnecessary."

Covid's Effects on Lymphocytes

A bit more on Cov-AIDS from Daniel Brittain Dugger because people need to be aware of the similarities between these diseases to, just maybe, provoke them to do everything they can to reduce transmission: mask, vax, and ventilate and clean the air. 

Long story short, Covid affects your immune system, making anyone who gets it open to getting all sorts of other things that their body would normally protect them from. The fewer times you get an infection, and the lower the dose of infection, the better off you'll be. DBD is arguing against the use of Paxlovid. Elsewhere he notes that those on HIV PrEP have the lowest rate of SARS-CoV-2 acquisition. It's just an argument being presented here, and I'm not an expert on it, so talk to your doctor if Paxlovid is right for you! This is a very complex one, so I explained some of the terms along the way. 

From October 2020

"As a member of the HIV community, who has endeavored to not only educate themselves about their own condition but that of a chronic SARS-CoV-2 infection, it troubles me that there is a population in decline that does not receive the attention it deserves: that of the CD4 lymphocyte."

Science as a Way of Thinking

 Some Carl Sagan on Charlie Rose:

"We've arranged a society based on science and technology, in which nobody understands anything about science technology. And this combustible mixture of ignorance and power, sooner or later, is going to blow up in our faces. Who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it? Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking. A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions, to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan, political or religious, who comes ambling along."

Maybe a bigger problem today is the number who believe they understand science better than they really do. Last year I wrote about a commenter insisting on the need to do his own independent research about Covid and masks because all research is biased. I explained how the scientific method aims to significantly reduce personal bias, unlike the unscrutinized unreviewed research the writer was doing alone in his basement. This is really hard for people to understand. They need to see the experiments themselves, but many studies are long and difficult to read, and they don't trust a summary. Some people will grab at a line that's out of context or read a study that isn't even an actual study but just a website sub-titled "peer-reviewed study."   

So now, before we can teach about the scientific method, we have to undo all the mess they've bought into, and before that, we have to convince people that they've been sold a bill of goods. 

We've got our work cut out for us!

Darwin on our Capacity for Love

 Linda McQuaig wrote about the Ontario Place debacle:

"Ford plans to "spend $400 million building a parking garage for the convenience of well-to-do spa users, while scrimping on the most basic educational materials in Ontario's schools. That scrimping--education funding has dropped by $1,200 per student under Ford--explains why classroom shelves are empty after teachers remove the learning materials they've provided. . . . 

The government is actually swimming in money--even as it hollows out key public programs, underfunding schools, shutting down hospital emergency wards and doing nothing for the homeless. . . . 

Not So Different from the US

Crutches_and_Spice, an American, has some hard truths for Canadians. 

She responded to this comment: "23 years old and I've never lived through a school shooting in my country, I get surgery for free, as a queer person I'm a protected class. 

Here's her response (link): "For now! I would estimate it's going to take less than five years for your entire healthcare system to be privatized...

@crutches_and_spice Replying to @Brogan ♬ original sound - Crutches&Spice ♿️ :

And a commenter responded: "This seems the big 'if' - maybe Poly-Error could pull a minority, but I just don't see Cons pulling enough votes in 905 to ever get majority." 

And C&S's response to that (link): "You're concerned with the wrong party..."

@crutches_and_spice Replying to @holmskjellhylar ♬ original sound - Crutches&Spice ♿️ :

I have many of the same concerns. It's nice to think that Trudeau is nice, but he often looks very cosy with Ford. I feel like they're playing us with a good cop, bad cop shtick and that idea that the Libs will save Canada from the meanies is an illusion - Chomsky's been saying that since forever - but it gives me the tiniest bit of hope in all this bleakness. 

If he's not our knight in shining armour, then it's up to us to save ourselves collectively. 

And I have no idea how to do that. 

There's no point in complaining to MPs if they're all in on this - at best on either end on a neoliberal continuum from "let them be sick, hungry and homeless and remove LGBTQ rights" (gross) to "let them be sick, hungry and homeless and keep LGBTQ rights" (swoon), but definitely on that continuum. And I still maintain that that little bit on offer, not just LGBTQ rights but continued access to abortion and less racist, less ableist party should win (maybe NDP in Ontario next time). But we can't rely on government to help us. We have to educate the masses about the actual effects of deregulating industry, watering down rights,  privatization, and continuing to let Covid run wild. In a class discussing dementia and the elderly, I mentioned the neurological effects of Covid that will create a huge need for help with dementia for all ages, and this was brand new information for people. The general public still doesn't know the risks they're taking going to the grocery store unmasked.

I have no idea how to get the message out. I've been preaching to the choir for a long time.

Who are the people who are on board with Ford's privatization path? I literally haven't met any online or in real life. It clarified how tight my bubble is when he was re-elected. But I get it: Since the hospitals are full, because of Covid, and we want faster service, we should have a right to pay for it, and that will reduce the wait times in public hospitals. Except that simplification misses the fast downward spiral caused by shifting funding from public to private entities and a whole host of other issues. It's another Me First scheme that benefits a few at the expense of the many and brings out the selfish in people. When we get into survival mode, we'll be all id, fighting for our place at the front of the line. 

So many conversations about all this go nowhere, but sometimes I'm able to have an effect. I keep wearing a mask in public in the face of laughter or worse, but sometimes there's a moment of solidarity with another masker, or, on rare magical occasions someone sees me with my mask on and PUTS ON A MASK. And every little bit reduces transmission, which reduces the burden on the healthcare system, which will reduce wait times, which will take away all the perceived benefits of privatizing healthcare. In our era, we can fight the man just by wearing a mask!   

I don't really know how to fight. But I hope I can go out with kindness if I don't get too scared that my lizard brain takes over. 

(Also, on all the "Canada's better than the US" comments C&S is getting, here's a comparative look at how we fare. Pretty much on par.)

The Deadly Destruction of the Innocents

This is courtesy of Maarten De Cock (and G.B. Morrison). People have been lamenting the air quality in schools and knew how to prevent transmission of viruses since at least 1887.

"Why is it regarded by the public with such indifference? . . . Why does the intelligent parent send his child to a school-room poorly ventilated . . . breathing into a stagnant air the germs of disease and death?"

"The deadly destruction of the innocents by impure air goes on silently, constantly, and powerfully."

(click for clearer reading)

Depending on One Another

A.H. Reaume, disabled from a brain injury, wrote about how dramatically her life changed with some help once in a relationship. Her partner does the household chores and makes sure she eats well and regularly. 

"Being in my disabled body feels different with him than without him in my life. I can work more and make more money. I can do it with pain even. I have much higher hourly earning potential, so I work more hours than he does, and he does things that make my life simpler. I've never made more money freelancing in my life, and I can do that only because of him. I feel better. Being partnered as a disabled person is a vector of disabled privilege we really don't talk about enough. I could not do this single."

It made me think of all the men throughout the last couple hundred of years who made huge contributions to society with the help of someone doing all the other work necessary in their lives. Her partner isn't doing anything different than has been done by countless wives. 

Mixing Church and State

The religious far right is growing and getting more powerful and unnerving, and we know the fights happening in schools board meetings. This 25 min. BBC video from earlier this year is instructive. It's telling that Patriot Mobile put millions of dollars behind school board elections, taking over politics from the bottom up, and Steve Bannon was there to explain that "the school boards are the key that picks the lock," looking to restrict access to books and bring God back - first in schools, and then into the federal government. And it's working in many American schools. One of their stated longterm goals: "I want a definition of marriage to what it's always been."  

Saw that coming.

Fox News is completely out now as the messenger of the far right, for better or worse. Once they support DeSantis over Trump, the far right completely turned on them. I wonder if that's why suddenly Fox is reporting that Covid still exists - they're no longer on the payroll of these wingnuts. 

The Turning Point Action Conference was on the weekend. See Steve Bannon's rant at 6:30 here -- that's the 6.5 hours mark. Here's a little snippet: 

The Role of Public Health under Neoliberalism

The air quality is bad again today, but public health hasn't issued any warnings, and it's not on the Weather Network website. A few people were commenting on their eyes burning and asthma being triggered. Sure enough, the air particulate numbers are up. So, it looks like we're on our own to track which way the wind is blowing and if we're downwind from any fires and should close the windows. Good to know.

Dr. Christopher Leighton, radiation oncologist and medical educator in Windsor, wrote in Post yesterday that public health "went rogue in 2022." He asks, "If public health isn't there to protect the vulnerable, then why bother?" He made an FOI request last fall after so many protections were dismantled, and got documents in late March, which he shared with MPPs and the Chief Ontario Human Rights Commissioner. Here's his synopsis:

"During a time of increasing contagiousness and immune evasion of the circulating Omicron variants, and when less than 37% of children had completed a primary series of vaccinations, the Ontario government ignored calls to strengthen public health measures. Instead, they gradually withdrew them in overt opposition to expert guidance. . . . Dr. Jessica Hopkins, Chief Health Protection and Preparedness Officer, PHO in a March 4, 2022, communication to the CMOH and Associate CMOHs, shared a technical briefing on the removal of mask mandates and stated: 

'Mask mandates are associated with reductions in population-level SARS-CoV-2 transmission. The benefits of masking likely remain in the Ontario risk context which includes possible early resurgence, introduction of Omicron sub-variant BA.2, low uptake of booster doses among eligible populations, low vaccine effectiveness of three vaccines doses against omicron infection, low levels of immunity among children under 12, negligible immunity among children under 5, and large numbers of immunocompromised individuals. Mask mandates are less restrictive than other measures used during the pandemic.'

The risks could not have been stated more clearly, yet just a few weeks later, the Ford government ignored seemingly every aspect of that evidence briefing and removed nearly all mask mandates in Ontario, also in opposition to Science Table Members and three Medical Officers of Health who publicly pleaded for a resumption of mask mandates. 

ASD Assessments

Assessments for Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) are sometimes a piece of work. I'll look at two of them here.  As a reminder, everyone with ASD is really different from one another. If you know one person with autism, you know one person with autism. The diagnostic categories are general and symptoms can be incredibly broad. 

The ASSQ is about 25 years old but still used today. It's to be completed by people who live or work with the person in question. It mainly just asks, "Is this person weird?" Check out the use of language: Do they behave in a way that's eccentric, idiosyncratic, with a deviant style of communication, fussy, old-fashioned, robot-like, with a deviant gaze, unusual facial expressions, ungainly, awkward, bullied by others yet surprisingly good at some things, and, of course, lacking empathy.

Lacks empathy is a highly contentious item on ASD assessments. Many people with ASD have no problems experiencing profound empathy, and many are even empaths or highly-sensitive individuals (HSIs). The belief that there's no empathy in place is sometimes from misunderstood social cues, but sometimes it's from an expressionless reaction (flat affect) to a person despite a whole host of empathetic feelings going on internally. Communication differences for people with ASD can be in receiving or sending unspoken information.

Changing the Atmosphere

A.R. Moxon wrote about an interaction with an old friend, he calls Stove Minivan, who became a MAGA guy. At first Moxon tried to explain reality to him, but soon became frustrated:

"Minivan was not somebody whose intentions could be trusted. He was not operating in good faith, and I believe he well knew it, because many of his favorite sources of information have written instruction books on how to engage with people in bad faith. Minivan was not debating; he was using debate to inject his counterfactual beliefs into the discourse, which were designed to further marginalize already marginalized people while simultaneously cloaking himself in self-exonerating grievance. More, he was exerting an active effort to not know things that could be easily known, and to demand to be convinced out of deliberate ignorance, not because he was interested in having his ideas challenged, but because he demanded a world in which he got to decide what was real. 

Further still: Minivan learned from me. The effect of telling him he was using one or another logical fallacy was not to sharpen his reasoning, but to teach him about the existence of logical fallacies, which let him (incorrectly) accuse others of those same logical fallacies. So Minivan was deploying the language of logic in ways that betrayed a total lack of understanding about what those fallacies were, granted, but in ways that likely made him seem more knowledgeable and reasonable to a casual or sympathetic observer. He learned to ape our phrases and arguments, in much the way he’d learned to ape the style of Alex Jones and all the various Breitbart and Newsmax contributors he used to inform himself."

And then Moxon tried to understand Minivan's trajectory and that of enough people to actually vote Trump into office (and Ford and all the other conservative premiers here). The rise of the far right is daunting:

"Stove Minivan, it turns out, wasn't some weird outlier. 

The Dream Logic of Parenthood

Storyteller, writer, and podcaster, Jay Acunzo, has a great thread up on parenting. 

"I just spent 3 days with dear friends, all of whom have kids ages 8 month to 4 years. Something I need to get off my chest about being a parent of young kids and the culture we live in: 

What the culture shares and even demands you share about having kids/being a parent is that it's precious, it's a gift, it's a joy, etc. But this is not what actual parents talk about or how actual parents feel. Instead...We talked about the fact that our physical and mental health had gotten problematic. Our careers had taken huge hits. Our friendships were drifting. Our relationships with our partners felt strained (one person summed it up as: they're basically just the other parent I live with). We didn't sit around writing Hallmark cards to the joys of parenting. We sat around going HO-LEE FORKING SHIRTBALLS this is impossibly hard and every dimension of our life got worse: health, finances, career, love, etc. EXCEPT a new dimension called Loving Our Kids (10/10 great).

Now, the culture (and indeed, the voice in my head) is going... walk it back, man. Add asides like "(even though I adore them!)" But the way the culture talks about parenting is not how actual parents talk about parenting to each other. 

The Charter's not a Buffet

Trudeau spoke to parents concerned with their right to decide what their children are taught in schools. The group of Muslim parents were very worried about the "gender ideology" being forced on their children. The reporter called his answer evasive. Listen for yourself; here's what he said in full,

"I've heard this concern many, many times, and I know that it is a very real issue. First of all, there is an awful lot of misinformation and disinformation out there are people on social media, particularly fueled by the American right-wing, who are spreading a lot of untruths about what's actually in the provincial curriculums. The federal government doesn't control what's taught in the schools. That's the provincial government that controls what's taught in schools. That's not something that is directly on the federal government. But at the same time, the federal government is unequivocal about standing for everybody's rights and freedoms. And the highest expression of parental rights is, of course, the safety and well-being of the child. Your concern with the community is, broadly, safety, the well-being and strengthening the protection for your children. I entirely understand that. 

The one thing that is really, really important in Canada, is, we're a place that stands up for everybody's rights, and certainly when it comes to the Muslim community. We were the government that pushed back against the conservatives that, you know, made a political campaign against the niqab, that brought in a snitch line against Muslims. You know, the Islamophobia pushed by the previous conservative government, in a whole bunch of different ways, was something that we all have stood against. Now, this government has and will always be the strongest ally to all minority communities, including particularly Muslims who have faced terrible violence. And when you look at the black Muslim women in Edmonton who were attacked, that is the Islamophobia that we absolutely have to stand against. 

The issue though, is that the Charter of Rights and Freedoms that protects your religion gives you the freedom of religion, allows you to fully participate in the society that gives you all the protections, protects all minorities as well. And it's not a buffet. You can't get the protections you want out of the charter and leave aside others. Standing up for people's rights means standing up for everybody's rights. 

How the Media Works

A new study just out that followed 548 people with Long Covid in Spain and found that only 7.6% of them recovered in the two years of the study. People think Long Covid means you're sicker a little longer, but this study suggests that most people possibly don't recover. Yet you can only hear about this if you follow sciency types on social media. It's not a mainstream newspaper headline despite the reality that it's having a huge effect on our workforce.

In so many shows and movies about journalists, someone gets wind of a story, begs their editor for the scoop, has to fight and plead to show that it'll be big, then spends weeks -- the rest of the movie/series -- hunting down the story details. Former journalist Nate Bear wrote a thread that suggests otherwise:

"If I hadn’t spent the last 15 years working in media and public relations, I too would interpret the media silence around covid and new covid research/science as a sign that there is nothing to worry about. But I have. So here are some things you should know:

What Do We Tell the Kids?

A couple weeks ago, Obama, interviewed by Hasan Minaj, explained his thoughts on climate change (at 5:37 and 10:25, and 15:29):

"If you're not stressed about climate change at a time when we're seeing record forest fires and haze floating right here in DC coming from the north and flooding and all the evidence is that we're not moving as fast as we need to, that should cause some distress and some anxiety. So the issue for me at least, and maybe this helps you out, is not to be blind to the genuine challenges and threats that are in front of us. 

Two things I guess I do for myself: Number one is, I do try to maintain some. perspective. When you say this is the worst things have been since you've been around, sure, well, dude, you've only been around 37 years, right? Ask your parents or your grandparents whether this is the worst that they've seen."

We've just had it really good for a surprisingly long time, sure, but I think even my parents would say this is very different. This is a forever kind of problem we're dealing with. 

He never tells us the second thing that he does for himself.

The Winning Mindset: Billionaires in Bunkers

An article from a year ago came my way, about how the super-rich 'preppers' are planning to save themselves from the apocalypse. Douglas Rushkoff was hired by some über rich men to field questions about, basically, what they need to do to survive in a bunker. One of their biggest concerns was how to ensure that their security--vital to keep out the masses-- doesn't turn on them! Plato had a similar concern. He solved it with an excellent education that provokes the warrior class to care more about the city than themselves. It's too late for that here. 

"The billionaires who called me out to the desert to evaluate their bunker strategies are not the victors of the economic game so much as the victims of its perversely limited rules. More than anything, they have succumbed to a mindset where 'winning' means earning enough money to insulate themselves from the damage they are creating by earning money in that way. It’s as if they want to build a car that goes fast enough to escape from its own exhaust. Yet this Silicon Valley escapism – let’s call it The Mindset – encourages its adherents to believe that the winners can somehow leave the rest of us behind. . . . The Mindset also includes a faith-based Silicon Valley certainty that they can develop a technology that will somehow break the laws of physics, economics and morality to offer them something even better than a way of saving the world: a means of escape from the apocalypse of their own making."

Then he met J.C. Cole:

On Training Children

I have some nuanced or maybe fence-sitting views about Applied Behaviour Analysis (ABA) that I'll try to sort out below. As a trustee, I went to a PD session in part about the WRDSB's use of ABA, which I questioned, and I'm currently taking a course with some material about Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) that I questioned. But this post is prompted by a new book, which I haven't read, that's been briefly and scathingly reviewed by Ann Memmott. I'm just interested in the anti-ABA arguments presented, which I'm seeing more and more:

Behold. Here it is. Our new reading material, the book entitled, Handbook of Applied Behavior Analysis for Children with Autism - Clinical Guide to Assessment and Treatment. Brand new. 2023. So, the new ABA, eh? Shall we take a look? . . . 

We start with their fascinating summary of autism:

"...difficulties with social initiation and responsiveness, reduced creative and imaginative play, interfering behaviors including inflexible adherence to routines, repetitive speech and atypical sensory reactions . . . a history of difficulties developing and maintaining friendships and relationships  . . . aggression and self-injurious behaviour and behaviours of deficit"

Then we are straight into saying how wonderful Lovaas is. Let's remind ourselves of Lovaas's methods...content warning. [from an interview in 1974]

Emperor's New Clothes 2.0

Paul Krugman wrote about how someone like Robert F. Kennedy Jr. becomes such "a crank":

"One sad but true fact of life is that most of the time conventional wisdom and expert opinion are right; yet there can be big personal and social payoffs to finding the places where they’re wrong. The trick to achieving these payoffs is to balance on the knife edge between excessive skepticism of unorthodoxy and excessive credulity. 

It’s all too easy to fall off that knife’s edge in either direction. When I was a young, ambitious academic I used to make fun of stodgy older economists whose reaction to any new idea was 'It’s trivial, it’s wrong and I said it in 1962.' These days I sometimes worry that I’ve turned into that guy. 

On the other hand, reflexive contrarianism is, as the economist Adam Ozimek puts it, a 'brain rotting drug.' Those who succumb to that drug 'lose the ability to judge others they consider contrarian, become unable to tell good evidence from bad, a total unanchoring of belief that leads them to cling to low quality contrarian fads.' . . . 

Their financial success all too often convinces them that they’re uniquely brilliant, able to instantly master any subject, without any need to consult people who’ve actually worked hard to understand the issues. And in many cases they became wealthy by defying conventional wisdom, which predisposes them to believe that such defiance is justified across the board. Add to this the fact that great wealth makes it all too easy to surround yourself with people who tell you what you want to hear, validating your belief in your own brilliance. . . . 

Famous, wealthy men may be especially frustrated by their inability to control events, or even stop people from ridiculing them on the internet. So rather than accepting that the world is a complicated place nobody can control, they’re susceptible to the idea that there are secret cabals out to get them."

Could This Be You?

So, you're at the grocery store on Saturday morning, in the check-out line, and perusing the gossipy mags and debating a chocolate bar, and the air you exhale is quietly raining down on a little boy standing in line a foot in front of you. But you're fine, so what's the worry? Where's the story?

He goes to school on Monday and learns some and plays some, and, by the afternoon, is coughing a bit. The windows are closed to keep out the rain, and the HEPA is turned off because it's too damn loud. So every exhale adds a virus to the air that all the other kids and teachers breath in. He's unwittingly hotboxing the classroom. 

Like a third of all cases, you never felt sick. Why should you have to wear a mask when you're clearly well?? 

The boy was fine until he wasn't, but it was just a couple weeks of endurable hell. No biggie.

But another classmate he didn't really know, who tried to keep her mask on despite being the only one, had a mild case. It was kind to her, it seems. But it was doing a sneaky, underhanded number on her system. Then, the following month, she got strep. She went from a bit of a fever, to burning up, to we can't save her in just a few hours. Her parents had CR boxes in the house and had been able to avoid getting sick from their daughter's original illness, but they were no match for the hospital emergency department full of people coughing, and retching and babies crying and mothers wailing as their own wee one grew listless in their arms. And the ER doctor working with them, right in their face, had a bit of a sniffle.

Now her mom, while grieving her only child, has to care for her dad with Long Covid, feed him, bathe him, and help him get back and forth to the bathroom every day for the rest of their lives. 

So that's why people say things that sound so mean and awful and alarmist like, 

"Chances are, if you got Covid and were in public, you've killed someone. 

Cognitive Decline in Children

Tern highlighted a few key points from a new study in Nature about the long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2. This is all from them, so I just put the parts from the study in quotation marks:

"The incidence of dementia and psychiatric disorders in patients with SARS-CoV-2 infection was significantly higher than that in patients infected with influenza virus or other respiratory viruses. . . . The subclinical cognitive impairment was also a common complication after the recovery from mild to moderate Covid-19 in some young patients. . . . In addition, encephalopathy during the acute phase of Covid-19 might be the important risk factor to patients and the prognosis was more related to neuronal damage. . . . We further illustrate the possible long-term effects of SARS-CoV-2 infection on human brain and memory, the mechanisms and factors of SARS-CoV-2 affecting human brain and memory."    

The three routes offering a straight shot to the brain: [basically, the nose, mouth, and eyes]

Those people who said Covid couldn't infect the brain? THEY WERE WRONG!

Problems with Psychiatry

 Paul Minot, MD, wrote a thread inviting other threads on the practice of psychiatry. Caveat, I have no idea of the credibility of any of these claims, but some make a lot of sense to me: 

"I've been practicing psychiatry for 38 years. I love my job, my peers, and my patients. but I've come to the conclusion that I'm participating in the biggest intellectual scam of this era. We claim to be a science, but have no understanding how thought or behavior is generated. Many billions of dollars are spent each year in an industry built on a corrupt body of pseudoscience, cultivated and exploited by monied interests for decades. This scientific fraud has been more successful than any other of our day. Our diagnoses are contrived by our guild, the APA, with the collaboration of monied interests--and are so unrelated to actual science that they are copyrighted and published to profit that organization. In the process of selling a corporatist, medication-oriented model of treatment, psychiatry has been stunningly successful in redefining what it means to be a human being. Meanwhile, 20 years of peak psychiatry has resulted in a 30% increase of suicide in the United States--and American psychiatry has absolutely nothing constructive to say about it. Please tell me what I've missed." 

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.

Undarkened Generations and Pizza Dip

A bit from Alvin Foo, a "Venture Partner," whatever that is. But it's good summary of our times. It's been said before, but maybe needs to be heard again:

"Imagine you were born in 1900. 

When you're 14, World War I begins and ends when you're 18 with 22 million dead. Soon after a global pandemic, the Spanish Flu, appears, killing 50 million people. And you're alive and 20 years old. 

When you're 29 you survive the global economic crisis that started with the collapse of the New York Stock Exchange, causing inflation, unemployment and famine. 

When you're 33 years old the nazis come to power. When you're 39, World War II begins and ends when you're 45 years old with a 60 million dead. In the Holocaust 6 million Jews die. 

When you're 52, the Korean War begins. When you're 64, the Vietnam War begins and ends when you're 75. 

A child born in 1985 thinks his grandparents have no idea how difficult life is, but they have survived several wars and catastrophes. Today we have all the comforts in a new world, amid a new pandemic. But we complain because we need to wear masks. We complain because we must stay confined to our homes where we have food, electricity, running water, wifi, even Netflix! None of that existed back in the day. But humanity survived those circumstances and never lost their joy of living. 

A small change in our perspective can generate miracles. We should be thankful that we are alive. We should do everything we need to do to protect and help each other." 

Pain is pain and can't be compared. I get that. But I worry about my adult children's attitude towards life right now. It's great that we are all so much more aware of our feelings and to other people's experiences, but I worry we're all a little too soft for all the bad news today, for smokey days and covid and climate change and Nazis.

Everything my dad talked about when he talked about the war (WWII) is happening now. Iodine pill distribution as a precautionary measure is the most recent. It's unnerving. 

Precautions Still Make Sense

The National Post, a mainstream paper even, has a great article about why people are still wearing masks. Has the tide of media silence around Covid precautions turned?? 

"With three times more deaths and three times the number of hospitalizations than the pandemic's period of lowest risk, people still have reasons to wear a mask. . . . 'We're still running a significant excess mortality, which is a stand-in for how severe the problem is,' said Tara Moriarty, a University of Toronto infectious disease researcher and co-founder of COVID-19 Resources Canada. . . . Currently, the Covid risk is 'elevated,' according to Moriarty's team. The federal government frames it as low to moderate, but Moriarty's group estimates that Canada as a while has been under-reporting Covid hospitalizations by 1.5 fold, which would put the true number of people in hospital with Covid now at 2,862."

Marnie Wedlake, a registered psychotherapist and assistant professor in the faculty of health sciences at Western University said, 

"Masks are a visible reminder of Covid, something most people would rather not think about. They're a measure of protection; they protect against a disease that's known to be fatal or life-threatening for some, and that causes serious illness and/or disability for others. Most people want to get as far away from the effects of the pandemic as they can, including that sense of vulnerability that was experienced for so long by so many. Seeing someone in a mask pokes at the collective will to deny and avoid those feelings of vulnerability that we all want to be rid of. For some bullies, or aggressors, it's just an extension of their behaviour during the height of the pandemic. Bullying is essentially an expression of the bully's lack of capacity to manage their own discomfort with what they perceive to be weakness, vulnerability. This is one of the reasons we generally view bullying as a cowardly act."

The article ends with this bit of news that we almost never see anymore outside fringe groups on social media:

"Infectious diseases doctors say masks remain prudent in crowded, poorly ventilated indoor spaces."

Things are better than they've been for a while, so maybe it's being discuss because it's bad, but not so bad as to terrify people from reading about it. 

Google on C-18

 It's a bill, not a virus. 

The gist of it is that it requires American tech companies to pay Canadian news organizations for content that appears on their platforms. The hope is that the law will help Canadian news agencies. But Google and Meta responded that they're just going to block any Canadian news so they don't have to pay for it. That very much sounds like the bill is having the opposite effect as intended. But the legislators knew of this possibility back in February, andAustralia already went down this path and were successful at negotiating the deals necessary to get compensation to their news agencies. It appears to be a waiting game. 

Deputy PM Chrystia Freeland, who negotiated a flippin' NAFTA deal with Trump, commented on the Google/Meta response to bill C-18,  

"I really believe that the way to get a good deal for Canadian journalism and for Canadians is to be firm, clear, polite and at the end of the day to stand up for national interests"

Many people are wary, including John Ibbotson:

"Such boycotts could harm the news operations the legislation was intended to help. And this purported help has probably come to an industry that, in its current form, cannot be rescued. . . . Today, the physical newsroom [at the Ottawa Citizen] is shuttered. A small remnant of reporters and editors work heroically to put out a paper and sustain a website. . . . It's hard to imagine that any injection of revenues from Google, the federal government or anyone else could restore those papers to their former glory. . . . Many magazines are in dire shape. National Geographic laid off the last of its staff writers this week. . . . 

Quality journalism requires more than a few columnists offering opinions, or a few reporters covering local crime and traffic accidents. It can involve weeks or even months of effort by a team of journalists to uncover and document abuse, corruption, conflict-of-interest or other misdeeds. We cannot and should not ask taxpayers to sustain newspapers as they were in the glory days. It may not even be worth asking them to prop up what's left." 

Some people are advocating boycotting the boycotters by using DuckDuckGo, Bing, or Yahoo. I don't expect enough people will be in the know or care enough to have any effect on these international companies. 

I don't know how much it will help, but consider a subscription to any magazine or paper you hope to save. Check out The Narwhal, The National Observer, iPolitics, The Line, The Walrus, The Tyee, The Local, The Trillium, The Logic, and IndigiNews for starters. Also directly follow reputable journalists on social media to access their work. Good news is absolutely vital to a good democracy. We're on shaky ground these days! 

And happy Canada Day from Google!