Lots of people are still wearing masks. It can feel a bit like we're the only ones at the store, getting pointed at or coughed on despite intentionally and conscientiously reducing the spread of a brain-invasive disease.
But entire industries, like film sets, are maintaining masking to protect their employees (i.e. movie stars). The boss perceives them as irreplaceable. (What does that say about the rest of us??) And many famous people are masking in public.
 |
| Wil Wheaton |
Professor Akiko Iwasaki and team just put out a pivotal paper showing that "passive transfer of IgG from patients with Long Covid into mice recapitulates increased pain and other symptoms." IgG stands for Immunoglobulin G; it's the most common type of antibody found in blood circulation. Without enough of them, you get more infections!
The paper is titled, "A causal link between autoantibodies and neurological symptoms in Long Covid." Last September, they started by looking at Long Covid sufferers with neurological symptoms, and compared their antibodies and autoantibodies with people recovering and with uninfected people. Autoantibodies are antibodies produced by the immune system that attack a person's own proteins and can cause autoimmune diseases (lupus, MS, colitis...).
Covid is amazing for harming the immune system, right up there with HIV. Even mild and asymptomatic cases of Covid harm the body's ability to fight off infections, and makes us susceptible to other viruses and parasites. Yale made a poster about it:
Statement from Yale School of Public Health (sources here):
"Five years with SARS-CoV-2 in our midst, and the CDC reports that 43 million Americans have experienced Long COVID. Some have recovered, but roughly 17 million - the same number of people who have cancer in the U.S. - still deal with the condition, and that number continues to grow. At Yale, Dr. Akiko Iwasaki's laboratory is investigating how the virus can create long-lasting impacts on the immune system. And with many left incapacitated by the novel condition and at risk from rolled-back mitigations, the desperate need for answers grows.
Noam Chomsky passed today at 95. --- Actually, he's still alive. He was just sent home from the hospital after a stroke, and people feared the worst!!
His efforts to dig beyond the surface level of propaganda in the media is needed now more than ever. I try to follow his call to act in such a way so you can look yourself in the mirror each night, and his unwavering optimism amid his deep dives into atrocities. Here's Jacobin's farewell and one from Yanis Varoufakis. I summarized some of his words in these posts over the last dozen years or so.
On Chomsky (summary of Understanding Power)
Chomsky's Forward to Albert's Realizing Hope: Life Beyond Capitalism
On Chomsky's Driving Forces in US Foreign Policy
Requiem for the American Dream
Nader Interview with Chomsky on the Requiem for the American Dream (with Ralph Nader)
Inconceivable! His Dinner with Chomsky (interview with Wallace Shawn - I don't get enough credit for my post titles!)
Chomsky's Optimism: On Climate. Change, Nuclear War, and Activism (podcast with Truthdig)
The Future of the Left with Natalie and Noam (interview with flippin' Contrapoints)
Chomsky's Lessons from 2021 (interview with Yanis Vanoufakis)
And a bunch of iconic quotes:
Three articles came out in the past few days that should remind us that Covid is really here, and maybe we should act on it. But all the facts in the world can't penetrate the wall of hopeful denial.
"Contrary to public belief, he warns, Covid is not like the flu. New variants evolve much faster, making annual shots inadequate. He believes that if thinks continue as they are, with new Covid variants emerging and reinfections happening rapidly, the majority of Americans may eventually grapple with some form of Long Covid. . . . Some people can get Long Covid, and maybe it ages them a little bit, but it doesn't change them very much. But for others, their lives are devastated. . . . Only 22% fully recover within a year. Others remain stable or get worse. . . . There are all kind of weird things going on that could be related to Covid's cognitive effects. . . . traffic fatalities increased by 19%. . . . .
"A little learning is a dang'rous thing;
Drink deep, or taste not the Pierian spring:
There shallow draughts intoxicate the brain,
And drinking largely sobers us again."
~ Alexander Pope
Is it, though?
We're in a mental health crisis and people need more access to help. How much learning is necessary to help one another, and is it dangerous to listen and offer another perspective or even some suggestions without an advanced psych degree? In old movies, people told their stories to bartenders, hairstylists, or cab drivers for the price of a beer or trim or trip to the airport. They just needed a captive audience willing to listen to their worries Now we want people with credentials as if that will provide more certain results.
But not all credentials are created equal.
Last year BetterHelp got in the news for allegedly sharing confidential health data to social media sites, and was fined $7.8 million. TV writer Mike Drucker wrote:
"EVERY BETTERHELP AD: 'We're like therapy but cheaper and easier! We have people for every problem so you get care just for you!'
ACTUAL BETTERHELP: 'We're gong to set you up with a confused therapist that will ghost after two sessions. Also we told Facebook about your assault.'"
More recently, the New York Times had an article on scams in the wellness coaching industry, describing scenarios in which the new recruits were bilked out of massive amounts for "tuition" made up of a few hours of videos, and then were never helped to find clients.
"Business is booming. . . . The number of coaches increased 54% between 2019 and 2022. Because the industry lacks standardized accreditation, it's most likely larger -- one of the dangers of life coaching is that anyone can claim the title of life coach. . . . [One coach] has spent an extraordinary amount of money on the certification and clung to the dream that had been sold to her . . . found herself short of clients and scrambling to make any income. . . . There is a problem in the industry of coaches who coach coaches to become coaches. . . . Life coaching attracts people who are vulnerable to exploitation."
Just this from xeviuniverse.
Here's the link in case embedding doesn't work.
@xeviuniverse I didnt have time to cover all the other vomit inducing things he did
♬ original sound - Xevi
The CDC put out some crappy comms with an image with a mask photoshopped upside down, with "N95" shopped onto a KN95, and only on the patient, not the doctor, which suggests that doctors don't need to wear them. I almost feel bad for how hard they failed on this except that disease prevention is THEIR ONLY JOB, and their incompetence has cost so many lives.
And now North Carolina is banning masks during protests and adding to the punishment if a mask is worn in a crime, but they added in a health exemption - after people protested - that allows medical grade masks to prevent spreading illness. However, the law still allows law enforcement and property owners to ask anyone to remove their mask for identification despite the reality that sunglasses obscure identity more than masks and there are no laws banning sunglasses during protests.
The Minden ER closed June 1, 2023. A recent article in the Minden Paper explains why this should worry all of us.
"After we analyzed the decision-making processes before, during, and after the closure of Minden ER, our team audited teh audited financial statements of every hospital in Ontario. . . . For FY22, 25% of Ontario hospitals posted a deficit . . . For FY23, 75% of Ontario Hospitals posted a deficit. . . . Their average deficit was $5.9 million. . . . One healthcare system -- Mackenzie Health [in Richmond Hill] -- posted a $93 million surplus. . . .
Without testing or wastewater data warning us of rising cases of viruses in our regions ahead of time, we can only look to excess deaths after the fact. Bleak times.
This is a graph of Finland's excess deaths relative to pre-pandemic levels. Pay attention to that blue line. It's the excess deaths of children aged 5-9. The dip in 2021 is when kids all wore masks and fewer died of RSV and the flu. The current excess death rate for kids is 2.4 times pre-pandemic levels. More than twice as many kids are dying, and we're still not acting on this.
Schools are the number one vector of infection. If we can halt transmission there, it will make a huge difference. We could have CO2 monitors in every room that beep at 500 ppm to alert the teacher to open doors and windows. And we could have super quiet and super cool CR boxes that run on computer fans. The CO2 monitor is a one-time buy at about $200 - likely far less in bulk, and the CR boxes are under $300 fully assembled or under $200 if you make them yourself - again, far less if in bulk. Those changes would be cheap and doable today, except opening windows and having CR boxes in class will get you in trouble in my neck of the woods. If we actually wanted to spend money protecting kids - and the rest of us by extension - we could add upper room UV!!
Business as usual means we're risking our lives for conveniences we didn't expect to have when I was young, and we pretty happily lived without. It's not a call to go back to the stone age, just fifty years or so.
In my house growing up, we rarely drove places despite being almost 5k from the closest mall. As kids, if we wanted to go anywhere, we could bus, bike, or walk. My parents lived their entire lives without ever being in an airplane. That's a luxury of excess, they said. That entire Aristotelean ethics is gone now. "Waste not, want not" was successfully drilling into our little heads. Now we'd rather buy new than get something fixed.
I occasionally get anon comments telling me, in one way or another, to stop writing about Covid and/or climate change.
It's really bizarre to me. I mean, I get that people don't want to hear about the crap going on in the world, and I get that a lot of people don't believe any of this is true despite lots of citations from many reputable sources. But what baffles me is that this is a teeny-tiny, little blog. They'd have to really go looking for this content just to tell me that I'm wasting my time writing it. That seems like a whole lot of effort with no result since I largely ignore them and they could easily just ignore what I write. You would think people had better things to do with their time.
Would you rather get used to wearing an N95 or get used to needing help to eat or sit up? It's a choice.
From Nate Bear:
"Neuroscientists are out here telling us that SARS-CoV-2 is worse for the brain than viruses we're rightly scared of like Zika and HIV, and this information is running into a brick wall at the institutional medical, media, and political level."
There's an extreme water crisis in Mexico City right now. They could run out of water within weeks.
From Peter Dynes of MEER,
"'Day Zero' is counting down to June 26th. The whole country is in drought conditions, and huge parts are in extreme drought. A society can't run without water, and that could become a reality very soon in some regions. This is due to the drying up of the reserves of the Cutzamala system."
Some commenters mentioned how Coke, Pepsi, and Nestlé have moved into areas with weaker political defences in order to suck their aquifers dry to sell their own water back to them. (That includes Aberfoyle, Ontario). Other point out that they will have no choice but to migrate further north. Maude Barlow predicted that the next wars will be over water, and Canada will be the next Iraq a good 16 years ago in the documentary FLOW: For the Love of Water.
"The rich will drink; the poor will die.
Adam McKay added,
"Most populated city in North America, and there's very little coverage. I never imagined the disconnect between news and reality could get this wide. And I made Don't Look Up."
I watched Furiosa yesterday. Not nearly as good as Fury Road. But both are a bit frightening in their depiction of a future that's feeling more and more possible. We're not coping by massing together in order to help one another like one would hope when times get bleak. We're at a point where hospital staff will refuse to do the bare minimum to prevent harm to babies by wearing a mask, and people are going gangbusters to burn up every bit of fuel flying around to see stolen stuff behind glass in museums on the other side of the world when we could just look at it all online (or maybe give it back), and to develop AI, which is something we didn't think we needed just yesterday, which is using up a ton of fresh water! It's all pretty fucked up.
And then there's this:
I had a birthday, and I was feeling pretty good with how I look and feel these days. Biking regularly and tons of energy and all my faculties intact, knock wood. Very little grey for being almost sixty. My mum was like that. Just a few strands here and there for a long time, then all at once.
Then my daughter sent me that second picture down there.
The WHO is trying to encourage masking again, but their ads show people in surgical masks (should be at least an N95), and they keep focusing on "crowded indoor spaces" as if spacing a few feet from people makes a difference with an airborne virus. But at least they're not still telling us that hand washing is enough. Baby steps.
But some people still haven't got the message.
In this interview with Erica Stanford, New Zealand MP, she makes the political obliviousness to solutions so crystal clear. Teachers are already falling ill enough for schools to be closed at the very beginning of their winter (from about 8 to 12 minutes):
She tries to fix the problem with sick teachers by throwing more supply teachers at the school, NOT by maybe preventing illnesses in the first place. With the interviewer's cajoling, she acknowledges that teachers have the highest cases of covid than any other profession because they're surrounded by sick kids. At 10 minutes in:
Interviewer: "Do you think there is a risk that in trying to avoid disruption, trying to get more kids back in schools . . . you will inadvertently create more disruption by having more illness?"
Stanford: "What would you say I should do next? . . . I don't have a magic bullet!!"
Aryeh Neier was born a Jew in Nazi Germany and escaped with his parents. He co-founded Human Rights Watch and was at the forefront of establishing international tribunals. He was interviewed on CNN, but I can only find the full interview on Twitter.
Neier says he was concerned with the size of bombs used in Gaza, but he didn't call what Israel is doing a genocide until they obstructed aid coming in, destroyed the farms, killed aid workers, challenged aid agencies, and turned a blind eye to defence forces and settlers attacking trucks. Those most victimized aren't Hamas, but children of citizens who will starve to death or at least be diminished by severe malnutrition.
"The use of the term anti-semitism to attack those who criticize Israeli policies degrades the concept of Anti-semitism. Anti-semitism has been a great scourge but it doesn't insulate the Israeli government from being held to the same standards as other government have to be held to around the world. . . . Jews are only going be safe if everyone's rights are respected."
Neier also wrote about this in the New York Review.
Recently Christa Peterson felt it appropriate to remind us how the Nazi genocide began with images from Robert Gellately's Backing Hitler. Notice how normalized each step was as reported in the media.
Would you rather have the convenience of being seen quickly at a local ER that was funded to stay open OR the convenience to buy mixed drinks at select grocery stores? Such a hard choice!!
Our public, taxpayer funds are going to companies outside Ontario so we can get booze easier, sooner. Brittlestar did the best video explainer:
The biggest issue is the money it's costing to open up August 1st instead of letting the contract run its course to December 31, 2025. It just means that supermarkets currently selling beer will be allowed to also sell larger cases and mixed cocktail drinks. It will extend to some convenience stores in September.
In September 2010, John Holdren, Harvard professor and Obama's science adviser, gave a speech on climate change arguing that people aren't aware enough of the ways we're affected by the changing climate: availability of water, productive agriculture, fisheries, forestry (paper and lumber), and the spread of disease.
Almost four years earlier, in a New York Times article, he said,
"We basically have three choices: mitigation, adaptation, and suffering. We're going to do some of each. The question is what the mix is going to be. The more mitigation we do, the less adaptation will be required and the less suffering there will be."
Some people think we're too late for significant mitigation, and we need to work on adaptation. Rupert Read takes a page from Vaclav Havel:
"To change the narrative from the evidently-failed 'Yes we can' to 'Can we please just face up to how badly we've failed, and admit where we really are now' might sound to some like 'giving up'. It is the very opposite of giving up. For the energy which will become available once we stop rather desperately staving off grief, depression, despair at the state of our world and the extent of our common failure, the energy that then becomes available to us is incalculably huge. . . . emotional power that is latent within us all, but held back by a dam of fake optimism. . . . We have to acknowledge what must be let go of, such as hopes for a smooth transition and of staying within the climatic safe zone. It all begins with admitting our incapacity. . . . For what you are then picturing is the game being changed. Soft denial being punctured. The media and political leaders unable to hold back the tide. . . . Havel wrote brilliantly about the power that anyone can touch and become by naming the truth, and confessing their own incapacity to act directly on it so as to change it sufficiently. This power of the powerless strips legitimacy away from failed ideologies, false dreams."
There's a small but real danger that some people will let the grief in and then be paralyzed by it. Some psychologists over the last century have referred to depression as being stuck in grief. And this isn't just grief over a loved one, but grief over all the potential for loved ones, the secure and comfortable futures of children and grandchildren, and all the many, many amazing plants and animals in collapsing ecosystems.
But if we can get to the other side of that, to an authentic place that is able to acknowledge the impermanence of it all anyway, then our task isn't to hope to save any species, but just to do our very best each day to care, to offer help, to teach, and to love while doing as little harm as possible in the very short time we have here without any expectation of success or completion.
From the Tao Te Ching (ch.29 - Stephen Mitchell trans.):
Do you want to improve the world?
I don't think it can be done.
The world is sacred.
It can't be improved.
If you tamper with it, you'll ruin it....
The Master sees things as they are,
without trying to control them.
She lets them go their own way,
and resides at the center of the circle.
And from Pirke Avot:
"You are not obligated to complete the work, but neither are you free to abandon it."
It's the same message from Buddha, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospels and the Stoics and Epicureans and Plato: Act rightly today without clinging to the fruits of your labour. I think we need to hear it over and over again because it's so hard to learn!
AI is an environmental issue.
Microsoft-backed OpenAI requires water - massive amounts of the limited resource:
"pulled from the watershed of the Raccoon and Des Moines rivers in central Iowas to cool a powerful supercomputer as it helped teach its AI systems how to mimic human writing. . . . Microsoft disclosed that its global water consumption spiked 34% from 2021 to 2022 (to nearly 1.7 billion gallons, or more than 2,500 Olympic-swimming pools), a sharp increase compared to previous years that outside researchers tie to its AI research. . . . ChatGPT gulps up 500 millilitres of water every time you ask it a series of between 5 to 50 prompts or questions. . . . Google reported a 20% growth in water use in the same period."
Check out what's happening in Mexico City right now. Taps are going dry for hours a day, water is brown, and key reservoirs are running dry.
Last February an article in Forbes addressed this same topic:
"1.1 billion people worldwide lack access to water, and a total of 2.7 billion find water scarce for at least one month of the year. Inadequate sanitation is also a problem for 2.4 billion people. . . . At the same time, our world is racing ahead to advance AI into every aspect of our world. With the rise of generative AI, companies have significantly raised their water usage, sparking concerns about the sustainability of such practices amid global freshwater scarcity and climate change challenges. Tech giants have significantly increased their water needs for cooling data centers due to the escalating demand for online services and generative AI products. AI server cooling consumes significant water, with data centers using cooling towers and air mechanisms to dissipate heat, causing up to 9 liters of water to evaporate per kWh of energy used."
