More Studies on Covid Harming Children -- How many do we need to act??

What do smoking, drinking, rollercoasters, and Covid have in common? They should all be avoided during pregnancy. 

One recent study found that when moms have Covid-19 during their pregnancy, their children have a significantly higher risk of serious growth and developmental delays and gastrointestinal malformations. They looked at children between 11 and 13 months (around their first birthday), and found a significant decrease in height and weight, a dramatic increase in the need for antibiotics in the first year (83% vs 10%), and the presence of malabsorption syndrome (can't absorb nutrients properly) in children whose moms had Covid while pregnant.

An RN commenting on the study online said,

"We have seen three babies born with imperforated anuses in the last year. That was something most nurses would maybe only see once in a 30+ year career."

Another study found that a Covid infection during pregnancy is linked to more than double the rate of abnormal fetal heart ultrasounds. From 2020 to 2023, the incidence of Congenital Heart Disease has nearly quadrupled. 

Reported in The Guardian today, a mom kept bringing her toddler to the hospital for Long Covid symptoms, and kept being reassured he'd get better on his own, often not making it past the triage room of emerg. One doctor implied the frequent visit were giving her son anxiety, despite her son growing increasingly weak and listless over six weeks. 

"The doctor told them that he had Covid, and, while the fever went away after a week, the toddler never fully bounced back. . . . She had stayed up all night Googling, writing down possible causes of her son's illness, including liver problems, Long Covid, inflammation of the heart... 'I said we need to be more thorough, and went down a long list. And for every single one of them, [the doctor] was just like, 'No, no, that's not what's happening. Kids are not getting Long Covid'. . . . When we left, I had been given a prescription for an allergy medicine. . . . [Eventually,] doctors confirmed Micah had an enlarged heart and blood clots on his liver. From her earlier Googling, Keri-Sue knew straight away he needed blood thinners, but the clinicians said they wanted to do more tests."

He didn't make it through the night. A blood clot caused a pulmonary embolism. Some parents are suing hospitals for malpractice, but we also need to cast an eye on the government and public health for spreading falsehoods around the safety of pregnant women and children getting Covid. If hospitals can be sued for their ignorance around treating Long Covid, then shouldn't school boards be sued for their ignorance around preventing Covid in the first place?? We know it doesn't just cause acute symptoms then go away like a cold or flu; it leaves blood clots in the body. We've known that for four years. Ignorance at this point, at the administrative or governmental level, can only be assumed to be willful. 

Covid is a leading cause of death of children, but we keep putting kids in schools without adequate ventilation or filtration for the number of people in a room, and without masks, which really work to prevent the spread of viruses provided they're worn all the time when in a building or near people outdoors. If we had gotten our kids -- and adults -- used to wearing masks to class four years ago, we wouldn't be burying so many of them today.

Break the Chain of Transmission!

BC's deputy provincial health officer, Dr. Bonnie Henry, actually announced to the public, "If you've had Covid recently, you've had a boost to your immunity. So that's a good thing." Many scientists in the field are responding with, more or less, "No it absofuckalutely isn't!!" A recent study of marines supports the objectors.

Prognostic Chats wrote about the study:

"Are you a US Marine? Or as fit as one? Scared of a silly little thing like Covid? That nothing-burger of a mild virus, no worse than a cld or flu?! A super fit young adult with no co-morbidities, nothing to worry about, right? The Lancet has got some bad news for you (all). 

In this population of healthy young (median age 18) US Marines with mostly either asymptomatic or mild acute Covid, ONE QUARTER of those infected with Covid reported physical, cognitive, or psychiatric long-term sequelae of infection (PASC). The Marines affected with PASC showed evidence of long-term decrease in functional performance suggesting that SARS-CoV-2 infection may negatively affect health for a significant proportion of young adults. 

Propaganda vs Real Risk Scenarios: Sickness is health.

Arijit Chakravarty is a biologist who uses biotech and math to understand and write about Covid. He wrote a very long thread that I'll abridge here:  

"Over the last five years, we as a society have developed a set of norms about Covid. As someone who's been actively publishing on the subject, I notice it very strongly. People will ask, 'Why are you still masking?', then wince when they hear my reply. . . . My reply is obviously not what they want to hear, so I often get the 'that was too much' look from my wife and kids. This plays out in the public sphere as well. 'Expert' opinion that's soothing or reassuring is platformed, even if it's repeatedly wrong. This is a form of propaganda (calm-mongering) and distracts us from the reality. 

Calm-mongering serves to form an Overton Window about what futures are - and are not - discussable in polite conversation when it comes to The Virus That Must Not Be Named. 'Experts' have debated seasonality, herd immunity, hybrid immunity, and viral attenuation for years. Much of this is closer to fantasy in the context of Covid. The chance this virus will attenuate (evolve to become milder), to pick one example, is very low. . . . But still, the oft-baffled experts wax (and wane) lyrical about these possibilities.

Saving You Time

 ...but destroying the environment and likely killing some cyclists in the process. That's Doug Ford's new Bill 212: Reducing Gridlock, Saving You Time Act. 

Despite all research, knowledge and reality to the contrary, Ford is trying to convince people that RIPPING UP bike lanes will save them time on their way to work. This is, without question, another in a long line of tactics of pitting one group of citizens against another in order to get away with a giant grift, stealing billions from the province! He's giving us all $200 in hope we like him and take our rage and frustrations out on our neighbours!! Hate the cyclists, the maskers, the environmentalists, the science centre nuts, the tree huggers, but love the gov! 

But I digress.

Masking in Hospitals

Toronto's UHN hospitals (Princess Margaret, Toronto General...) are reinstating masking requirements. BUT medical masks. N95s are allowed, but not required. AND masks are not required in lobbies and common areas. So you're fine to go up the elevator with a crowd of people without a mask despite that elevators are one of the easiest places to catch Covid. But it's way better than this other tactic:

Amazing that we got to this place that hospitals turn away sick people!!

But we're still just getting breadcrumbs.

Barry Hunt commented on the new mask measures, 

"Hospitals have set a pretty low bar for protection. Mandating 'masks' instead of 'respirators' for respiratory protection is like recommending sneakers instead of work boots on a construction site. Yes, better than flip flops, but give me a break."

The hospitals also explain that it's about avoiding seasonal illnesses, despite also saying, elsewhere, that Covid is NOT seasonal. 

Capitalism's Effect on Bird Flu

If you think Covid is bad (or even if you don't), if H5N1 starts passing from human to human, it could be worse. It's not just about the virus's effect on us, but on our food supply. Another four agricultural workers caught it where 800,000 chickens had to be euthanized.

Here are some highlights from Katherine Eban's recent article:

"They stumbled upon hellish scenes out of a horror movie: Feverish cows in respiratory distress producing trickles of milk. Dying cats. enough dead barn pigeons and blackbirds to suggest a mass poisoning. Living birds with twisted necks, their heads tilted skyward. . . . This should be a story of heroism, cooperation, and an all-hads effort to defeat a wily virus. . . . Instead, it is a story of intimidation and obfuscation. The vets who sounded the alarm have been silences. . . . 

The interspecies nature of the outbreak makes combating it a unique challenge that requires a different response form that of Covid-19. We're focused on protecting human and animal health, as well as the food supply. Perhaps the biggest wild card has been the USDA's other mandate, to serve as the government's chief dairy lobbyist. . . . Looming over the USDA's reluctance to conduct a more transparent and proactive campaign against H5N1 in dairy cows are export agreements worth more than $24 billion each year. . . . Rather than moving forcefully to contain and eradicate the virus in dairy cows, critics say, the USDA has tried to control the narrative and spread the message that everything is just fine. . . . Dairy operators are essentially capital asset managers. It's so consolidated. For family farmers, there are only one or two buyers of your milk. If you don't go along with the playbook, your market access is cut off and you go bankrupt. And H5N! was not in the corporate playbook. Dairy farmers, afraid their cows would be quarantines or that they would not be able to sell their milk, simply opted not to test. Some forced veterinarians off their property. "Everyone is so scared shitless." . . . Meanwhile, the USDA was sitting on details about infected farms. . . . 

Most cows that contract H5N1 eventually recover with treatment. The same cannot be said for chickens. . . . With poultry being treated as less important than dairy, the mental health issues that come with killing animals for disease control, the substantial economic impact--to just allow it to continue with no end in sight, that's an untenable situation. . . . It is unclear whether the virus, as it continues to spread and evolve, will ultimately pose a serious threat to human health. But if it does, thre could be a battle no less intense than the one still being fought over who should be held responsible for Covid-19. Looking back at the events of 2019, one thing almost everyone agrees on is that China should have been much more transparent about what it knew and when it knew it. . . . Now only have we not learned, we have regressed.

Leafs are Falling

There's a lovely man that works where I rent a car to go camping in the summer. When I walk in with my N95 in place, he starts wiping the shit out of the counter and applying sanitizer liberally to his own hands and the car keys before passing them over to me in order to keep me safe. So thoughtful! 

But he doesn't wear a mask. 

That's what bad public health comms does to people. It keeps people unaware that Covid lives in the air more than the counter.

And that's what's happening to the Leafs, as they succumb, one by one, to a mysterious illness. 

Mark Ungrin gives us a good analogy for the baffling nature of officials and media today: 

"Remember that kids' show where there's always a mystery and it's totally obvious but the townspeople can't figure it out, and then after half an hour of a toddler shouting clues at the TV, the dog finally puts it together and solves the mystery?"

It's not just from bad comms, although that's where it started. At this point in the game, shifting sides on this means letting in some pretty painful shit. 

Whenever acknowledging what is true can provoke feelings of guilt or shame for what we believed was true in the past, we will fight to stay ignorant. 

It's why some of the most caring and protective parents will NOT put their kids in a mask. Considering using masks to reduce illness means opening that door to the reality that they have been putting their child in danger, willingly, for years now -- that their decision to send the kids to school to raw-dog the air in there is the reason their kids got sick over and over and now one of them can barely sit up in bed. They have to keep that door firmly closed and bolted shut and fiercely fight against masks with the most unsubstantiated or incomprehensible claims that they can muster to somehow rationalize their parenting choices. 

Seatbelts? Always. Limited screen time? Definitely. Masks in class? I've heard they don't work anyway. 

It's okay. 

You were doing you best in the midst of some really confusing information. So many different important people were saying contradicting things at once. It's hard to know who to trust. 

But well-fitting good quality masks, like N95s, really work. And the virus really IS airborne. Cleaning off counters and washing our hands does very little with this one. It's still good to stay clean, for sure, but it's not doing the kind of work many people think it does. To stop transmission of a virus that spreads through the air and hangs around like smoke, we need to filter the air with HEPA or CR boxes, ventilate rooms by letting in more fresh air, and we need to wear a filter right on our face to stop any viruses in our body getting into the room AND to stop any viruses in the room getting into us! 

It's not too late. Every infection increases the odds of getting Long Covid, so even if the kids have been sick all year, stopping that cycle NOW is important. And wearing a mask in class is one of the best ways to prevent that -- and in the arena. And demanding exceptional air filtering and ventilation in classrooms and locker rooms to keep the people we care about safe can help when some people actually can't mask or when people need to eat or drink. 

It's so possible to prevent these illnesses. We have to spread the facts, not the disease. 

Long Covid Resources

Three -- SIX Covid resources to bookmark. 

This Educational Toolkit for Long Covid has a series of videos explaining Long Covid in children, how to return to school safely, the impact on the family, and how to support kids in the classroom. There's also a 31-paged handbook with scripts for the videos and more to help walk parents through having kids with Long Covid. 

A group of scientists created an interactional infographic on how Covid becomes Long Covid, who's likely to get it, and all the ways it can affect the body. 

And filmmaker, a scientist, an artist, and a father got together to make this 16 minute film, The Unravelling. They discuss the problem with how we understand it and what Long Covid is really like. The Vimeo embedding isn't working worth shit here, so check it out at the link!

AND, UC Davis College of Engineering created a series of videos about Indoor Air Quality and disease prevention and control!

AND Dr. Lucky Tran wrote a really concise Covid explainer that can be easily shared: Why it's still a good idea to avoid Covid!

AND Maria Gillespie wrote a FREE book about masking in class.

Masks or Longterm Illness in Children - It Shouldn't be a Difficult Decision

Sara Novak recently wrote about the study that found 20% of children have Long Covid, aka PASC (Post Acute Sequelae of Covid) that I discussed in August, but Novak brought in further backing from additional studies:

“In the most expansive study of its kind, researchers have for the first time shown serious and prevalent symptoms of Long Covid in kids and teens. The August study, published in the Journal of the American Medical Association . . . which followed 5367 children, found that 20% of kids (ages 6-11) and 14% of teens met researchers' threshold for Long Covid. . . . By enrolling children who had been infected with acute COVID-19, as well as those who had not, researchers were able to isolate Long Covid symptoms in kids and teens. 'It allowed us to separate symptoms related to Long Covid with those that may have resulted from changes in a child's environment during the pandemic.' . . . For example, learning loss and mental health changes that were caused by the pandemic vs those that were caused by prolonged symptoms associated with Long Covid. . . . The new research found Long Covid affected nearly every organ system in kids and teens. And experts contend that pediatricians need to be on the lookout for GI complaints in kids as well as complaints of extreme fatigue and cognitive deficits or perceived changes in mental acuity in teenagers. . . . 

On Burnout: "Can" is the New "Should"

I started reading about burnout when I walked away from teaching earlier than expected. Suddenly, I couldn't bring myself to open that door after over thirty years of bounding to work. A series of events wiped away any sense of agency, fairness, or shared values. Their wellness lunch-and-learns didn't help me, and I soon discovered I'm not alone.

An article published in JAMA last June looked at rising rates of burnout in healthcare, where 40% of physicians surveyed intended to leave their practice. They suggest, "To prevent a health care worker exodus, experts argue that the emphasis needs to shift from individual resilience to broader system-level improvements." They are looking for standardized methods to affect organizational management with "evidence-based interventions."  

Over 25 years ago, Michael Leiter and Christina Maslach came to the same conclusion. They identified six areas of worklife affecting burnout and created a specific assessment for educators. They determined the cause to be a "mismatch" between employee expectations and employer behaviours leading workers to be closer to the bleak end of a continuum from burned out to engaged. They suggest that "the task for organizations and individuals is to achieve a resolution." This is not just a matter of throwing wellness initiatives or resilience-speak into the mix, but addressing any reasonable expectations of employees with appropriate employer interventions in all six interrelating areas. 

click for clarity

Feels vindicating, right?!

We Can Prevent Chronic Illness in Children, But It's Kinda Inconvenient

Another NEW study shows, yet again, that SARS-CoV-2 is harmful to kids. Who knew?!?

This was a three-year study that followed 1319 children after a first infection. Almost all of the kids had a mild (89%) or asymptomatic (9%) initial infection. Almost 80% were unvaccinated. At 3 months post acute infection, almost a quarter of the kids had Long Covid. From 1-2 years 7 to 8% continued to have Long Covid. Some of the kids infected at the very beginning of the study, still had Long Covid at the 3 year mark. We're generally being told the chance of Long Covid is somewhere between 7 and 10% (the CDC pegged it at 20% earlier), but that misses the reality that many more kids are sick for months before recovering. 

Important to note: only 67% had a fever as part of their acute infection, yet that is STILL the only symptom we look for to determine if kids should go to school. Having a runny nose was the next most common symptom, but fewer than half had that (46%). Covid shows up in a multitude of symptoms. The current variant goes for the GI system, so diarrhea is an important sign. 

Who gets Long Covid? They found that teenagers (kids over 12) are significantly more in danger. And girls tend to get it slightly more than boys. They indicate that vaccination was protective, but I'm confused by their data, which make it seem like it isn't at all: They compare all patients to unvaccinated, and the unvaccinated numbers with Long Covid are lower across the board, but I must be misunderstanding something there.  

At any rate, Covid really, really damages kids. A quarter will lose out on at least three months of school and life at a very pivotal age, and 7-8% will lose years of their lives, possibly the rest of their lives to a chronic illness. I'm not sure how many more studies we need before schools will overtly and regularly start at least encouraging masks in class and before hospitals will mandate them everywhere. How bad does it have to get?? We know that kids (and adults) with a mild infection can go on to develop organ failure. Our only tool right now is prevention with good quality masks while we wait for the clean air revolution to kick into gear. 

Yesterday I posted this article, explaining that it's up to parents to take the lead, but I didn't summarize the tragic story it contained: A 16-year-old girl, Cara, who always masked at school to protect her mom dealing with chemo, was convinced to finally take it off. She got Covid, and brought it home, and her mother died, and now she has to cope with the guilt of that on top of her grief. The article says she was bullied as the only person masking in the school, but then explains that she stopped when she heard a child psychotherapist on the radio say that girls wear them to hide their acne. That was the last straw for her.

 From the article,

"In 2022, over six times as many children died from Covid than from flu in the US. The UN Convention on the Rights of a Child requires states to 'recognise the right of the child to the enjoyment of the highest attainable standard of health' and to fully implement this right. Children's rights to education include a safe environment not harmful to their health. Cara and her parents fought for these rights. They were denied, with devastating consequences." 

I can do absolutely everything I enjoy publicly with a mask on except to eat in a restaurant. So I order in for special occasions. Once you get used to it, masks don't hamper the pleasure of the event, AND you don't get or inadvertently spread a disabling, fatal virus to anyone!! It's win/win!! I understand that a tiny percentage of people actually can't wear a mask, but I cannot accept the argument that mask are uncomfortable or feel suffocating when the alternative to wearing a mask is children and their parents getting sick like this or dying.  

Grow. The fuck. Up. 

Predictable, Incurable, Disabling, Fatal, and PREVENTABLE

It's still here. It's still dangerous. We have the ability to stop it, but we can't wait to be told to because that's just not happening. 

Andrew Nikiforuk wrote in The Tyee about the dangers of Covid. 

"Although the media routinely dismisses all Covid infections as an inconsequential nuisance, that's not what the science says. The virus remains deadlier than the flu and repeated infections can radically change your health. . . . Even a mild bout of covid can leave a legacy of blood clots, heart failure, diabetes, decreased brain funciton, Long Covid (now affecting 400 million people worldwide) and immune damage that increasingly makes peopel more vulnerable to a plethora of infectious diseases and possibly cancers. . . . There is no such thing as a SARS-CoV-2 infection that does NOT have prolonged consequences. . . . There's not a fresh vaccine in sight. In fact, they are weeks away. . . . 

Pitting Health Against Education as We Debilitate a Generation

Covid is definitely causing a variety of longterm illnesses and public health still can't manage an effective PSA that undoes damage caused by their previous misinformation: teaching people how easily we can get infected, how harmful the virus is, and how to prevent it with N95s and cleaner air. And in many places, like my old school, people are still not allowed to bring in CR boxes or open windows if it's cold out or teach about Covid, and in some places masks are flippin' illegal! And children are in the middle of all this mess. 

from here 

It says, "Forcing families to choose between biosecurity and education is one of the great injustices of our time, violating children's fundamental human rights to life, health, safety, and education.

LONGTERM ILLNESS

In this 20 minute INET podcast with Dr. Phillip Alvelda, they explain that we are effectively debilitating a generation: 

"The danger is clear and present: Covid isn't merely a respiratory illness; it's a multi-dimensional threat impacting brain function, attacking almost all of the body's organs, producing elevated risks of all kinds, and weakening our ability to fight off other diseases. Reinfections are thought to produce cumulative risks, and Long Covid is on the rise. Unfortunately, Long Covid is now being considered a long-term chronic illness -- something many people will never fully recover from."

The Heart Research Institute in the UK wrote about the recent paper showing that even a mild or asymptomatic case can increase stroke, heart attack, and heart failure.  

AIRBORNE AIDS

If that's not enough to be concerned, the World Health Network wrote about Covid's overlap with AIDS:

Why Novavax: Choosing the Tortoise Over the Hare

Dr. Michael Lin explains what makes Novavax different from mRNA vaccines like Pfizer and Moderna's vaccines. It's not in block quotes because this is all from him. It's comprehensive, but complex, and just one thing missing: MASKS are a great way to prevent infection.

I made this graphic to show how different vaccine types work (back in 2021). We can just look at line 1 (protein vax like Novavax) and line 3 (RNA vax). In protein vax, antigen-presenting cells take up the antigen to activate B cells and T-helper cells. In RNA vax, your muscles cells take up RNA and translate it into antigen. This process tends to be a bit inflammatory (apparently that's inherent to RNA uptake) so some cells die and release proteins that are also taken up by antigen-presenting cells. The main differences between protein and RNA vax in practice are threefold:

Aim in the Right Direction

A Tiktoker, amylynn79, explained why she's not masking despite being very sick with Covid. She has few followers on that site (maybe because it's 9 minutes of rambling), but clips of it are travelling around Twitter. 

Here are the highlights: She's on day 4 of testing positive. This is her fourth time having it. Her symptoms: headache, dizziness, feeling cold, and feel like you're dying, like someone's ripping your spine out, diarrhea, brain fog, and massive sweating. She went to the doctors and got meds, which is nice for her. There's nothing much we can get here beyond Tylenol. Where did she pick up Covid? School, of course.

"Every time my kids go back to school, they ALWAYS catch something."

Appropriate Fear and Respect

We teach our children to have a "healthy fear" of the water, to respect that it's possible to drown in the shallows or to hit our head on a rock if we get knocked down by a wave. So we swim with a buddy who's paying attention to us. We should have a healthy fear of viruses too.  

It doesn't mean living in fear, but taking precautions so our littles don't get sick over and over. We need to provide good quality masks in all classrooms, and encourage everyone to wear them and take them home. If funds are an issue, Donate a Mask can help!!

Costs of Disability

Dr. Ziyad Al-Aly, the guy who told the Senate Hearing that the burden Long Covid is on par with the burden of cancer and heart disease, wrote a brief explainer of a recent study (Gascon, Martorana & Moore, 2024) that found "a significant surge in the number of people with a disability in the U.S."

I still have educated people in my life that argue Covid isn't a big deal because they know tons of people and don't know anybody who's been disabled or died from it. They don't seem to understand why the scientific method uses random sampling instead of taking anecdotal accounts as evidence. But the numbers don't lie. And the big picture will hit home eventually: 

Back to School in a Wave

This is the first September that I'm not going to school as a teacher OR a student since I was 4 years old (not counting maternity leaves for all my spring babies), and all I can think about is the giant Covid wave engulfing all the little ones without any mitigations even suggested. 

"New" research says that kids actually DO get harmed by Covid, which is something most should have known years ago. For a while there, the story was that kids carry it, making schools the number one vector of transmission, but somehow aren't actually affected by it, which is clearly malarky! Even without an eye to long term damage, just being sick for a few weeks several times a year takes a told. As a trustee in 2022, my phone rang off the hook with parents frantic that their kids were getting sick again. I talked to parents with kids in the hospital, so I can imagine in what universe people ever believed it's harmless.

Salon reports, 

"For years, public health experts have said that Covid-19 infections in children are 'mild.' . . . While some children with the coronavirus are admitted to the ICU and there are pediatric deaths, studies have found that underlying medical conditions including obesity, diabetes, cardiac and lung disorders, increase the risk of severe outcomes."

Canadian Public Health Has Spoken

Apparently we're all in with Pfizer and Moderna despite Novavax providing significantly better protection and fewer risks.

Trudeau claimed to want Canada to be a producer of Novavax back in 2020, and bought a plant in Montréal, but no vaccines have been produced there for public use. Last May, the firm said it would push ahead with vaccines. According to that article, as of February over 37,000 Novavax shots were administered in Canada, 70 million Pfizer, adn 33. million Moderna. The low demand for Novavax negatively affects the likelihood that the plant will get off the ground.

Novavax is preferred for people who can't tolerate mRNA vaccines as Novavax uses protein-based fomula instead. It's targeting the JN.1 variant, as well as KP.2 and KP.3, which originate from JN.1 and most widespread (the "FliRT variants"). 

Avoiding an MPOX on All Our Houses

The WHO has declared an international Public Health Emergency for a more lethal version of Monkeypox, now called mpox, which is clade 1b, aka 1 MPXV, and comes with a 4% fatality rate (compared to Covid's current approximately 0.7% rate -- or 1 in 25 vs 1 in 150). However, Forbes reports that clade I could "kill up to 10% of people."

The different "clades" (a broad grouping of variants) matter. Anyone can get it regardless of sexual orientation, but men who have sex with men had a significantly higher risk of getting Clade II, which was big in 2022. Right now, we've got Clade 1. an airborne infectious disease that is more severe. In Burundi, almost half of the cases are in children under 5, and, from Forbes, "children younger than 15 years old now make up more than 70% of cases and 85% of deaths. . . . The outbreak in children suggests that clade I is transmitted through air." So all the comments about gay sex are moot for this one, like these lovely examples:

Worst Scenario for a School Start Yet

In the fall of 2020 and 2021, we had masks, even if some were a poor fit or made of cloth. Now we have zero mitigations. School is starting soon at a time with the highest fall case count in the states since this all started!

If you saw a parent driving with a young child unbuckled in the passenger seat, would you want to tell them the risks?? That's how I feel when parents send kids to school without masks. Covid kills more than car collisions in my area. Well-fitting N95s work to save their lives, just like seatbelts work. 

But Covid doesn't just kill. It hangs around to reappear later in a disabling form.

Covid Olympics

It's the pinnacle of denialism and such a waste of talent to have top athletes practice for decades of their lives for this one event, then put them together with coaches and family members without ANY precautions, and then watch them get sick one after another. 

Sports Illustrated argued (from J. Offir), 

"If the International Olympic Committee insisted that all participants be at their mental and physical best at the moment of competition, no event would ever take place. . . .  Lyles said he never considered withdrawing. . . . Of course he was sick, and of course it affected him--and of course it doesn't really matter. They held the men's 200 at the Olympics this week, Noah Lyles was the third-fastest man in the final and that's that." 

In other words, we have to live with the virus. Tons of athletes are just going to collapse during or after or before performing. That's the new normal we're ushering in rather than wear N95s. In another article they splash the "R" word around: resilience!! We have to push through despite having preventable spread of a virus allowed throughout the Olympic village!! 

Embracing Fallibility

Many of us live in a punitive, carceral type of society that can make it difficult to have compassion for ourselves or others. It's an era of the glorification of the individual over the group, leading to perfectionism and narcissism and so, so much loneliness. We can't connect when we're working with blind determination to find our place above the rest. We can't connect when we don't dare show an ounce of vulnerability for fear of being taken down like a wounded gazelle on the Serengeti. Our quest to rise to the top for the security we think comes with status and money is completely at odds with our very real need to feel authentically known, within the security of a community.  

We're no longer following that love and forgiveness bit from Christianity, if we ever really did wide-scale. And we project our fear of losing on anyone who has suffered through difficulties, no matter if it's a natural disaster or massive layoff. We distance ourselves from the suffering of others by convincing ourselves they must have done something stupid to be in this position, and, therefore, we're safe as long as we keep on going hard. It's just a trick to make us feel safer, that unwittingly keeps us from too consciously noticing the floods and fires, layoffs and illnesses lapping at our heels.  

Fudging the Numbers for Calm Mongering

Leading causes of death have changed over the past four years. In the States, Covid slipped from 3rd to 10th place. Or did it? 

The numbers are from this study and discussed in this article.

Eric Topal looked more closely at the numbers. There were "still 50,000 [official] Covid deaths in 2023. Heart disease and stroke are not declining. Small reduction in cancer deaths."

In Need of a Church of the Covid Informed

 This is just bananas, but another county in NY State banned masks. 

From this article, 

"Nassau lawmakers on Monday approved a bill making it a misdemeanor--punishable by up to $1,000 and/or a year in jail--for anyone wearing a mask or any facial covering to hide their identity while in public places. The measure exempts people who wear masks for health, safety, 'religious or cultural purposes, or for the peaceful celebration of a holiday or similar religious or cultural event for which masks or facial coverings are customarily worn.'" 

That's a lot of words to ensure that Hallowe'en is safe. 

The Psychology of Diving into Polluted Water

We need external organizations to monitor for safety without any conflicts of interest! And we need to stop throwing people into dangerous situations as if human beings are expendable, expecting more and more to be available to fill their spot like it's flippin' D-Day!! 

Social psychologist, Dr. J. Offir, wrote a great thread on how hard it would be for Olympic competitors to not jump in the Seine despite how sick it was obviously making them: 

This was obviously a policy failure that we watched unfold in real time. ("Wait! Stop! Come back!" says Willie Wonka.) But it also demonstrates how people selectively trust authority figures when those leaders are saying what we want to hear. (This pattern of behavior has also been on clear display during the pandemic: people were suspicious of leaders whom they perceived as restricting freedoms, due to psychological reactance, but once those experts said to unmask and go to the mall, the same folks who had been disbelieving suddenly found faith in authorities' messages again. Ask people why they aren’t masking, and many will give you some variation on "the CDC said I don't need to.") 

Who Can We Blame for All of This??

I totally understand the feeling of being out for blood right now about the number of children who are likely to get sick in our public schools this fall, some who will never recover. We want to find someone to pay. 

But the nature of our fucked up bureaucratic system is that it's engineered so that nobody takes responsibility for anything. It's rule by nobody. 

If anyone should be in trouble, it's the premiers of each province. They're the ones who are in charge of directing the mess. Now the CMOs aren't their own entity, so they take direction from premiers. And, more to the point, school boards can't do much to override whatever direction they're given or they risk losing their right to govern themselves. That means a supervisor can be appointed by the government to take over a board. At some schools, teachers who have complained about how things are run have been suspended. 

If we want blood for the anti-mask rhetoric, then we need to aim at the top. But will that accomplish anything?? It might feel good, but is it productive? 

Rotting the Soul of a Nation

As a Canadian, we need to be concerned what happens to our neighbours. Their politics affects our lives. 

I don't typically write about this stuff, and so much has happened in a very short period of time, but Trump's speech last night was truly alarming. The whole thing is here, but the most frightening thing is this bit of encouragement for all the "christians" out there: 

"Christians, get out and vote, just this time. You won't have to do it anymore. Four more years, you know what, it'll be fixed, it'll be fine. You won't have to vote anymore my beautiful christians. . . . In four years you're not going to need to vote again. We'll have it fixed so good you're not going to have to vote."

This sound a lot like the very end of democracy and the beginning of a dictatorship. And in Trump's world, that will be a system that dismantles human rights for all but the wealthiest and whitest of men. From the way various members of that party talk, I predict we'll see women the property of men. Disabled people - like the journalist Trump mocked so long ago - will be left to die by merely denying care if not actually rounded up. Slave labour in the prisons will be expanded. We already know racialized people can be shot by police in their own homes. It won't get better for them under Trump. Some rumours are already spreading that Harris isn't American, isn't black, and had black kids imprisoned beyond their release dates, and others are scrambling to correct that misinformation. 

I had a moment of hope when Biden stepped down and Harris stepped up, but Trump's speech was bone-chilling for how gleeful he is about this announcement, and that he's not acting in secret. He's being totally upfront about it all. Remember that Hitler came to power legally in a democratic system, and then removed the possibility of ever losing his throne. That's what's happening before our eyes with Project 2025. He also added "we'll have lawyers at every polling station." We know republicans will do everything to keep the "wrong" people from voting. That's their schtick. 

I really hope good prevails. And maybe it's getting bad enough that people will wake up and make sure they're registered and make sure it's the right place (even if it's miles from home and changed at the last minute) and vote against all odds.    

We're already seeing this kind of thing in Canada, fascism-lite, with destruction to hospitals, schools, and  agricultural land, and billions of dollars missing. Yesterday, Ford successful managed to be allowed to commit illegal acts. From NDP MPP Chris Glover:

"Democracy in Ontario was dealt a real blow today. The Ford Conservatives know that they probably broke provincial laws with the Ontario Place Project, so they passed Bill 154 that said that, hey, this project, if we've broken the Heritage Act, the Environmental Protection Act, if any of our ministers or agents have committed acts of misfeasance, which means abuse of government power, well that is exempt from the laws, from the courts in Ontario. Ontario Place Protectors took this law to court, and they said this bill is unconstitutional. Nobody, no government, should be above the law. No government should be able to break the law and retroactively exempt themselves from the law. Unfortunately, the court found today that this law IS constitutional. With this precedent any government in Canada can break the law, and when they realize they've done this, retroactively exempt themselves from the law. It's a really dangerous precedent for the people of Ontario, for the people of Canada. It means that the government, Ford Conservatives, have put themselves above the law."

Time to wake up here, too! The fact that all the destruction in Ontario is from a premier that got 18% of the votes is enraging. And he's done this much destruction to our province in just over half of his term. I can't even imagine what else is in store for us. 

ETA: I just had a conversation with someone online who thinks Trump means, just vote this time, and after that he doesn't care because he can't run again, and they'll fix all the woke nonsense in the next four years. I countered that it's still ominous if it'll be SO fixed that people will never have to vote again. Trump is self-serving, but he also is the puppet of a much larger group, like Steve Bannon. Either way, I'm on eggshells feeling hopeful for Harris.

Letter from a British Prison: An Experiment with the Truth

 I write more about Covid than climate because we can actually dramatically decrease the problem with rampant viral transmission in the next few years with tools on hand if we make a global concerted effort. The climate is much, much more complex and multifaceted and just maybe beyond our most intense efforts. 

But check out Roger Hallam's letter sent over a phone from prison. He just started a five-year sentence. 

"This is not about five nice white middle-class people being banged up for 'protest' on 'the climate.' It's about a few million not-so-nice white people deciding to have a few hundred million brown people die. Just for starters. This is not about 'climate change'; we agree with the judge on that. It is about murder. At scale. Forever. And that is a bad things, a very bad thing, and evil thing. When the United Nations recently said we have two years to save the world, that they are not being 'melodramatic,' that economies will be 'devastated,' they mean it. Not in some distant future. In the next 10 to 20 years, that's what 1,000 public statement have said. It's what 10,000 peer-reviewed papers have said. It's coming. It is what it is. At some point, you'll be stepping over body parts on the way to work, going 'well, you know.'"

We're going to see a dramatic upswing in climate refugees, and at some point we'll all close our borders as we gather around the last bits of agricultural land that's still viable and not been paved over. As the watering hole gets smaller, the animals look at one another differently.

Hallam takes on both sides of the political spectrum:

"Conservatives are the bad guys and liberals are the bad guys who pretend to be good guys, and the latter are the worse, which is why historically they are held in more contempt. They knew, but they did nothing. As Martin Luther King said in a letter from a Birmingham jail, it's the moderates that repress, distract, sabotage the resistance to injustice."

I think they all know. I can't believe that all those conservatives see the floods and fires and still don't think something is happening to our climate and connect the dots. I could be wrong, but I believe they're more corrupt than naive. Ford, for instance, is stripping the province for parts, and lining his pockets so he and his family will be well protected for the coming collapse. The liberals are open about knowing, and then don't do anything substantial to change things, for sure. Even the NDP advocate for more pipelines. They said we're not ready for the big transition, but that transition's coming, ready or not.  

The fact that people largely don't say that climate change isn't happening, or even that it's not human caused, because both of those have been largely debunked, shows that it's not ignorance but greed that fuels them. The new denialism from those with ties to fossil fuels now say that climate solutions don't work, climate science is unreliable, and climate impacts aren't that bad. We're all just alarmists! 

Hallam writes,

"This trial was not about 'the right to protest.' It is not about 'a cause,' 'an issue.' It's civil resistance against the biggest death project in human history, the greatest ever act of criminality. This trial was an experiment with the truth. . . . We continue to speak even when the judges shouted at us to stop, had us dragged from the dock, banged up in jail. This is what evil looks like. It's what it does. And it's just the beginning. Integrity at the present time is resistance. . . . Integrity is a hard path. Your ego has to burn in a fire that destroys its desire to control. Integrity is humiliation, failure, being forgotten. As the greatest soul of the 20th century, Simone Vale [sic - Simone Weil], said: When you have an important decision to make, choose the most costly option." 

Simone Weil is one of the greatest souls to have ever lived! 

This is all about caring more about larger things than yourself, and that's not something most of us were taught in our current society. Instead, we've learned to laugh at that lesson, to scoff at people who want to protect others, who bike instead of driving and don't fly on vacation and avoid eating meat or buying anything they don't need. We've been trained to see them as weirdos because environmentalists are very bad for profits. 

But so is climate change, as we'll soon find out. 

Suffering from Premature Emaskulation?

You don't have to be an athlete or movie star to care about your health. You, too, can wear an N95 to keep viruses out of your body. This latest mutation is extremely contagious, leading to very high case numbers right this minute. If we want to stop Covid from mutating further, we need to stop transmission, which we can do if we wear masks -- especially in health care settings and schools, where transmission tends to be higher. 

The article at that link says, 

"It's very, very contagious, that's why we see a lot of cases at the moment. . . . If you don't want to get sick on vacation, you might have to take some preventative measures, like wearing a mask on a plane."

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." 

Where There's Money, There's Masks

"They only insist on unmasking you and your kids because you are not valued by the powers that be. Be smarter and mask up" (from Dr. Spela Salamon)

On film and series sets, the actors are not expendable. They must stay healthy for sake of everyone's paycheque. So everyone on sets still wears a mask around them.

And athletes are not expendable. They must be protected. So the Tour de France now has mandatory masking for everyone, including the audience. And some Olympic teams are masked. It's years and years of training to get there. It's foolish to give it up because a mask is a bit inconvenient or uncomfortable. This WILL be an advantage for the Belgium team. I wonder if others will join them, or if others will claim it's an unfair advantage. That wouldn't surprise me in the least these days!!