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.
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:
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."
Apparently we're all in with Pfizer and Moderna despite Novavax providing significantly better protection and fewer risks.
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").
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:
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!
But Covid doesn't just kill. It hangs around to reappear later in a disabling form.
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!!
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.
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."
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.
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.")
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?
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.
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.
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."
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."
"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!!
The Tour de France is now mandating masks after several riders got Covid and had to leave the race.
But so many other reports of people getting physically sick still attribute illness to bizarre causes:
Professor Danny Altmann gives an excellent interview here, explaining the seriousness of SARS-CoV-2:
Earlier today, Salvatore Mattera wrote this piece about the media silence -- or censorship -- around Covid. Otherwise known as propaganda by omission. This rest of this post is entirely from that thread:
The 1918 flu is called the "Spanish flu" because in most places, the media censored it. Except Spain, where they reported honestly. This isn't a conspiracy theory - it's a historical fact. And I think it is occurring right now again with COVID:
This article in The New Republic - "How America’s Newspapers Covered Up a Pandemic" - provides an overview of what happened in 1918. In short, the media either avoided talking about the flu altogether, or they blamed something else for the damage the flu was causing:
"the big-city newspapers...sugarcoated the truth, practicing an alarming level of self-censorship. Any article or headline suggesting more than casual concern about the disease would be open to attack. . . . Only by putting together the tiny headlines on page 11 of the Boston Post could a dutiful newspaper reader get a sense of the full extent of the epidemic"
Is this happening again right now with COVID? I think for the first few years of the pandemic, most of the press covered it honestly (indeed, some articles at the time noted the contrast between the media's early coverage of COVID and the censorship of 1918). But as time has passed, there's been a shift towards censorship. Articles that should obviously mention COVID now rarely do. In some cases, this is debatable, like a story on student absences. But for coverage of health trends, this is inexcusable.
If you were having a lot of sex with various people -- or even if you just had a quickie with one person without any protection, then having unprotected sex with the next person becomes a moral issue.
Maybe it's just the case for those of use who came to age when AIDS was finally getting some public health recognition. I wonder how much that concern has dropped. Right now it's still illegal to have unprotected sex if you know you're HIV+, but ethically, having prior unprotected sex means getting tested before having unprotected sex again. Just in case. Because you can never know if you've picked up something along the way -- not just the big one, but any number of sexually transmitted infections.
