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.