Why Is Everyone Suddenly Sick??

Some people are working hard to believe this level of illness, getting sick several times each year, has always been the case. The latest bizarre reason I've heard for all the illness recently is microplastics. It's definitely a problem that there's so much plastic in our world, and has been for decades (mainly from car tires), BUT that's not why so many people are sick now. T. Ryan Gregory explains a more likely reason below:

I'm sure infectious disease minimizers are attributing the record-shattering surge of severe flu this year to "immunity debt". Let's think this through, shall we?

1. Serious mitigations ended more than 4 years ago. Why would immunity debt only kick in now? And why wasn't four flu seasons without mitigations enough to repay whatever "debt" there was? We wrote this more than two years ago.And yet we had to reiterate the same point this year because the "debt" is somehow still not repaid. 

2. There is no long-lasting immunity against infection with seasonal flu and new strains evolve every year. That's why we need annually updated flu shots. So whether or not people were exposed to 2020 strains is not obviously relevant to infection rates in 2025.

3. Most people do not actually get flu very often. Estimates would put it at once every 9 to 12 years. So most people would not have been infected during the period of mitigations anyway.

4. It's not just more cases in general, it's more severe this season. Immunity debt struggles to explain it being disproportionately severe. This also presents yet another challenge to the myth about viruses automatically becoming more benign or endemic meaning mild. 

So what could it be? Several things (not mutually exclusive): 

A) Immunity theft. Previous Covid infections causing reduced immune function. Could be short-term and/or longer-term and perhaps increasing with reinfections. This would be be consistent with more severe flu. Why now if it's immunity theft? Unlike most years, we had a surge of Covid in summer/fall (it's NOT seasonal), which could have set us up for worse short-term immune effects when flu arrived in winter. Also, more repeat infections could worsen longer-term immunity theft.

B) Coinfection. Flu + Covid can make severity worse than infection with just one of these alone. There is still a lot of Covid this winter on top of a major surge of flu.

C) Evolution of flu strains to become more virulent. Yes, that's entirely possible. No, viruses don't evolve to reach a happy equilibrium with hosts. 

D) Some of it could be H5N1. At the very least, H5N1 is getting closer and closer to human-to-human pandemic potential. 

Three other points of note: i) There have been low flu years before, not followed by severe surges. ii) The last time it was this bad (2009), there was H1N1 swine flu in the mix. iii) Vaccination rates are not typically high, but they're down even lower (thanks, minimizers!)."

Improving Indoor Air Quality

Literally years ago, as a trustee around February of 2023, I noticed that the CO2 monitor testing proposal that was ratified had a sneaky line about not beginning the test until after we're back to pre-Covid ventilation levels (i.e. no longer bringing in more fresh air), which might never happen. I was the one to push the issue, but I was told that I shouldn't be the one to put the motion forward because I had just proposed encouraging people to mask, so I was the seconder on that motion to re-write that motion. 

Shop Canadian here!

The motion was just to try out having CO2 monitors in three schools as a test case. The monitors wouldn't be visible to people, but hidden in the vents, remotely monitored by board staff, and that's a line they wouldn't budge on. If they were visible, then teachers could use them to decide if windows should be opened for a bit to air out the room or the HEPA filter actually plugged in! Maybe they were worried about it causing a panic. Who knows! Before I left, which was before that motion was going to be argued about and voted on, I pleaded with the chair to try to add in a line that the reporting of the monitors must report per classroom or at least a range, not just give an average per school. She didn't seem to think it was important. 

It's so clearly important. The school average could show 700 ppm, which is pretty good, and miss that some rooms are at 500, and others at 2,000. As a teacher with my own monitor, I was in a classroom that regularly hit over 2,000 - every day - while other rooms were much better. My room also barely got any heat in the winter. It was an ongoing problem for decades that never really got fully addressed. 

The bureaucracy around all this is part of the reason I left. I argued in social media at the time and since that it would be SO MUCH FASTER to crowdsource the data. We just need one parent of one kid in each classroom to send a monitor to school with them and track it. Alternatively, one monitor could be rotated to test rooms on different days to look for problems. But that never got any traction. Part of the problem is that kids sometimes get in trouble for having CO2 monitors on their desk. Parents don't want this to fall on their kids, and I get that. It's a shame more teachers won't take up the cause. There are much cheaper, faster, and easier solutions that could happen today, but will be bogged down by more committees, motions, re-writes, and reports. 

In September 2023, they formed a committee that, in part, advised looking into the use of CR boxes which are significantly cheaper and quieter than HEPA units, especially ones that use computer fans.

Jump to two years after it all started, and the board is being celebrated yesterday as the first to ratify its first clean indoor air policy last October 2024, "probably the first in the province". (Can't we check if that's true instead of qualifying it?) The new board policy is on page 63 of this Committee of the Whole agenda. In a nutshell it says the board is committed to following building standards and CSA standards, making sure there are protocols in place to prevent problems with indoor air by expanding their maintenance program and monitoring and responding to malfunctioning equipment, using air purifiers "in a manner consistent with Ministry of Education guidelines," continuing to add CO2 sensors to classrooms to ensure timely response to anomalies, lower CO2 signal levels, invest in air quality infrastructure, provide specialized ventilation for specific programs (science, tech, which is already in place), monitor air quality tech, and make policy available to everyone. 

Here's the thing, meeting the ministry guidelines means following whatever Ford says, which isn't going to be enough. There's a caveat, "It is not within this policy to address the concerns of individuals who report adverse health effects and/or symptoms of discomfort even when generally accepted industry standards are met," so if you don't like that the CO2 is 2,000 ppm, that's not their problem because, in the most recent report I could find (2023), ASHRAE advises "If CO2 levels exceed recommended limits (typically outside air level +750 ppm set point or 1100-2000 ppm) for 90 minutes, further recording should be implemented." Their ratings are still to take out noxious odours, not to mitigate viral infection. We should be aiming for under 800 ppm and then advise opening a window. ASHRAE also advise 3-6 air changes per hour (ACH). Joey Fox is quoted in the article saying we should have 9 ACH in high schools when accounting for room density, but that doesn't matter if that's not what the ASHRAE advises. The board can hit just 3 ACH and still be following this policy. 

ASHRAE also advises there be HEPA or UV machines in each classroom, but that's for their advanced indoor air quality guidance, not the minimum. I'm quite certain the board will follow the minimum guidance possible. Despite that the board committee wanted to do something to get CR boxes in the mix, none of that language made it to the final policy that was voted on. As far as I know, they're still not allowed in schools.   

So, I love when it's reported that other people are still in the game to try to reduce illness in our schools. Since leaving Twitter, it's less apparent to me. And it's nice that indoor air quality concerns in schools are still in the news, absolutely! But when will there be CO2 monitors in each classroom, and what will actually be done if they hit over 2,000 ppm? And will ASHRAE ever change minimum guidance in classrooms to reflect illness mitigation??

What a Failing Democracy Looks Like

Rachel Gilmore lived in Tunisia just before the fall of their democracy, and has important markers for us to notice: 

"The canary in the coal mine for a failing democracy are society's most vulnerable members. If people who are low income or are members of vulnerable groups are sounding the alarm, you should listen. ... Democracy is not something you have, it's something you do." 

Timothy Snyder explains that what Musk is being sanctioned to do is definitely attempting a coup. It doesn't feel like it because it's all digital instead of physical, but that's the world we live in: 

"The individuals seizing power have no right to it. ... It is all illegal. It is also a coup in its intended effects: to undo democratic practice and violate human rights. ... The possession of that data enable blackmail and further crimes. ... Musk would also make democracy meaningless ... he can make laws meaningless. Which means, in turn, that Congress is meaningless, adn our votes are meaningless, as is our citizenship. ... Each hour this goes unrecognized makes the success of the coup more likely."

Meanwhile, in Ontario, Doug has a huge contract with Musk worth $100 million. He said he'd rip it up, but now it's back on, and he was caught on a hot mic saying about Trump, 

"On election day was I happy this guy won? 100% I was. Then the guy pulled out the knife and fucking yanked it into us."

Andrew Wilkin writes,

"Ford, like Trump, has a similar political economic worldview where policies support easy money, debt forgiveness and socialism for the mega-rich, while the rest of us get neo-liberal austerity. Ford and Trump both favour government deregulation, privatizing public good and not properly funding public education and health-care systems in order to enable their privatization. ... could pose a threat to unionized public education jobs ... emergency rooms are overflowing, private clinics are expanding over public options, and health-care workers are burning out ... has questionable views about the equality of women and uses sexist rhetoric ... scapegoats immigrants ... falsely blamed immigrants for crimes, urban sprawl and dismantling environmental protections ... has questionable sympathies to violent far-right extremists ... willing to use secrecy and heavy-handed government power to stifle democracy and take away average working people's rights. ... Any vote for Ford is probably a vote for Trump-style politics."

If we don't want to follow the states, we HAVE to vote Ford out!! If ever there was a time the Libs and NDP should join forces, this would be it. But clearly that will never happen. Seriously, could you imagine, the day before the election, if one of them said to vote for the other in order to save our province!?! Nah, me either. No miracle on Wellesley Street for us! We ALL have to get out there this time, in the snow. You can vote NOW at your local elections office, or in advanced polls February 20-22 just in case there's a storm on the 27th. This is a vital moment for Ontario. All hand on deck!

Like Al Capone in a Syphilitic Period Trying to Do a Shakedown

A couple videos not to be missed:

Charlie Angus on Trump - full transcript below:

Angus: "What President Trump also said is that the tariffs will not come off until we give up our birthright and our sovereignty to a convicted predator. That is never, ever, ever going to happen. So what Donald Trump has done is unify Canadians in a manner I've never seen before. And while Americans may be waking up to the tariffs, we've already started the pushback. People in Kentucky, did you know that your biggest export market for spirits is Canada? We just took everything off the shelf. California, did you know that the largest purchaser of wines in the world is the liquor agency in Ontario? You don't get any more California wines in Ontario. Elon Musk, our premier just canceled a $100 million deal today. Canada is getting ready for this fight because we know that he's erratic, may be this week, may be next week, but there's a huge actual boycott going on. Grocery stores, ordinary people, people stopping on the streets. Nobody is buying anything that comes out of the United States right now, because we understand this is a threat to who we are as a nation." 

Interviewer question: "There are also Republicans here in farm states concerned about ingredients for fertilizers that come from Canada as well. There are a myriad of products that we are just learning about as Americans. Fascinating, although perhaps not under duress to learn about them. He's obviously looking for some kind of concession. You hear him. He talks about Colombia. He's talking about Mexico and the 10,000 Mexican troops, and I know you view him as unreasonable, to say the least here. But do you think that ultimately Canada might end up conceding, or is that not even a possibility?" 

Angus: "Well, I think the issue is, is that Donald Trump is claiming Canada is a narco state. The man's a liar. So would we put some more money on the border? Sure. I'd love to put more money on the border to keep American guns from shooting our people on the streets. We would do that to avoid a trade war. We're reasonable as Canadians. But when you have somebody threatening our sovereignty, well, we're hunkering down for a fight here. So, yes, for people in the grain growing belt, potash from Canada is essential. For the tech people, critical minerals; we've already had our B.C. Premier talk about shutting off the critical mineral flow. Would you need that? But the big issue, and I think it was raised by some of your previous panelists: auto. The auto sector is so integrated that within a week, even without the retaliatory trade, pressure from Canada, you'll start to see Lansing, Toledo, Bowling Green start to sputter and go down because this is just-in-time delivery. Our whole North American economy is based on this. So Donald Trump thinks that Canada is his biggest enemy? The guy wouldn't stand up to Putin; he gives a feather to China, but he's going to pick a fight with us? Well, if that's the way it's going to be, we will be there, pound for pound. It's going to hurt us a lot. But the American people are much more divided than we are right now, and we are unified. So, we wait to see what comes next." 

Interviewer Question: "We're going to see this call or hope to see soon what comes of it. It's supposed to take place in about 45 minutes. Would you say then that Canada is going to call his bluff, or is already calling his bluff?" 

Angus: "Well, we've already announced, I think $125 billion in retaliatory tariffs. We will give 21 days pause so that our companies can start to retool before we launched the next level. We've already started pulling off a lot of American products off the shelves prior to this. I'm hoping that our prime minister will cut a deal. I think with Donald, it's so important that he looks like he's won something. I mean, this isn't gunboat diplomacy. This is really, I don't know, like Al Capone in a syphilitic period trying to do a shakedown. So, yeah, we'll make concessions on something that, you know, he can write a press release about. But on key areas, Canadians would, I think, would hunt our leaders down if they bowed and kiss the ring to the man from Mar Lago. It's not going to happen. So we shall see. I'm hoping that we can get through this and get back to work with our American cousins."

Time will tell if placating Trump by adding troops to the border was Trudeau's Neville Chamberlain move or the best possible strategy. Angus isn't running for leadership, and we have no Churchill in the wings.

AND check out how much Poilievre is copying Trump directly. We really have to keep him out of power. 

 

It's like that lovely father and son scene from Jaws, except these guys are going to destroy life for anyone remotely marginalized. 

ETA: Bruce Arnold, in The Star, wrote:

"Trump truly, wrongly believes tariffs will enrich the United States. He is an incompetent blusterer, and even though Canada got Trump to back off his tariff threats, the idea of annexation is planted. That threat won’t vanish. This is economic wartime. We are not dealing with a logical opponent; we are dealing with a mad, foolish predator surrounded by fanatics. Canada fights together now, or Canada falls apart. 

Some people, fattened and cosseted by the relative safety and sleepiness of this country, or blinded by the post-pandemic problems — and really, by Canada’s general post-Cold War austerity in health care, housing, education, long-term care, infrastructure, the military — have demanded a reason to fight for the country. What binds us together? Hockey? Less than ever. Medicare has been badly bruised, despite the professionals holding it together. Housing is a nightmare, and the pandemic expanded society’s cracks. So many of the common cultural values we once held have largely atomized in the age of the internet: we don’t have “The Beachcombers” to watch anymore. But there’s still something here. You’re damned right Canadians are booing “The Star Spangled Banner” at hockey and basketball games; you’re damned right Canadians are taking U.S. liquor off the shelves. You’re damned right we’re furious. I’m furious at the fascists and criminals ransacking the American government, and furious at the quislings and Vichy Canadians who have decided patriotism might be optional. If you feel that way, you were never very patriotic at all....

No other nation is as threatened by Trump, and the world will watch how we respond: whether we fortify ourselves against the madman and his fanatics, or whether we splinter. So what are we fighting for? What did Canada do for you? It allowed you to live in a country that welcomes people who share the value of collective individuality, and that has been largely sheltered from the harshest currents of the world. You got to be a part of this thing. Well, the world is arriving in a rush, now. Time to be Canadian, for everything it’s worth."

Here's a Made in Canada Guide that might be a start.

Staying Informed and Sane

 Who I'm reading to get through this mess (among many others):

#1 - Timothy Snyder

Yesterday's piece, "The Logic of Destruction," should be read in full, but here are some important bits:

"The parts of the government that work to implement laws have been maligned for decades. Americans have been told that the people who provide the with services are conspirators within a 'deep state.' We have been instructed that the billionaires are the heroes. All of this work was preparatory to the coup that is going on now. ... The oligarchs have no plan to govern. They will take what they can, and disable the rest. ...They will have bet against the stock market in advance of Trump's deliberately destructive tariffs, adn will be ready to tell everyone to buy the crypto they already own. ... The economic collapse they plan is more like a reverse flood from the Book of Genesis, in which the righteous will all be submerged while the very worst ride Satan's ark. ... 

Trump's tariffs (which are also likely illegal) are there to make us poor. Trump's attacks on America's closet friends, countries such as Canada and Denmark, are there to make enemies of countries where constitutionalism works and people are prosperous. As their country is destroyed, Americans must be denied the idea that anything else is possible. ... [These oligarchs] are possessed, like millennia of tyrants before them, of fantastic dreams: they will live forever, they will go to Mars. None of that will happen; they will die here on Earth, with the rest of us, their only legacy, if we let it happen, one of ruins. They are god-level brainrotted." 

So, yikes! It doesn't look good for us here no matter how you slice it. As long as Trump is in power, Canada is in danger. Snyder calls for Trump and Vance to be impeached, but so far I don't see many standing up to him beyond Sanders and AOC. That's not enough. Beyond that, he calls for government workers to keep working until officially fired to slow the process down. Muddle up the works as long as possible. 

#2 Heather Cox Richardson

The Art of Life

Here's a nice distraction from our nutty lives: I watched this lovely film about Michael Behrens, a math prodigy who studied at MIT, then left it all at 29. Now he's 82, living in Hawaii where he can walk through the forests and swim with dolphins. He says, "I spent 13 years in the university learning how to think, and now I'm spending the rest of my life learning how not to think."

He explains that loving everything that's positive and beautiful is one strain of spirituality, but he practices perceiving everything as beautiful. It's only 38 minutes long, but I'll get to the bits I like below:

We're all separate beings, but we're also all just molecules shifting in space. Both things are true at once. While we need to work to feed and house ourselves, we don't need big goals beyond what we do today.

Norms are for Breaking

Anonymous is urging me to move on away from precautions and towards prior norms of society in a string of comments on a previous post. I had too much to say to the most recent comment, so I moved it here.

from Catherine Flynn

Anon responded for a third time (or a third Anon -- who's to say) to this point from a week ago in which I borrowed the analogy that sharing air unprotected with someone likely carrying Covid is about as wise as having sex unprotected with someone likely carrying chlamydia:

"Analogies often fail with covid. This isn’t really like seatbelts or smoking which are additions to our base state in the world. If we’re going to play analogies, then perhaps this is like setting the right speed limit for cars. People die in crashes every year. We have speed limits to limit harms. What should these speed limits be? Some might want cars abolished. Some might want German autobahns. But here we’ve set certain norms based, ostensibly, on some sort of cost/benefit ratio. The pandemic was like a pile up on the 401. Everyone had to slow down and for a while we were all stuck. But now we're back to normal speeds. Some, though, are shell shocked. “I’m not driving again!” Some are now petitioning to lower the speed limits and to educate others to the dangers of driving. It’s all good. But life goes on and things go back to the norms that were.

Still with the Immunity Debt Claims?

Two competing claims were made in the past few days on whether Long Covid should be a concern for parents of children or if children actually develop greater immunity from getting sick. Still.

In one corner, two Canadians and an American:

Dr. Lyne Filiatrault, Arijit Chakravarty, and T. Ryan Gregory wrote this week on immunity debt: 

"Infections do not build a stronger immune system. There is no lasting immunity to RSV. If you get infected one year, it does not mean you avoid it the next. ... With influenza, the virus in circulation this year is not the same as last year. ... You can get infected over and over with SARS-CoV-2. ... In the absence of public health measure to limit transmission, repeated waves of infection will continually surge through the population driven by the evolution of new variants and the waning population immunity from infection and vaccines. If you are lucky, your most recent vaccine will offer you some protection against being infected, but this protection varies from one person to the next and lasts only for a few months. ... Long-term effects [of SARS-CoV-2] are shockingly common. ... Evidence is accumulating that the virus damages our immune system."

We're Not Invincible

If an attractive person flirted with you, but then mentioned, just by the way, "I've been sexually active with someone with chlamydia, but don't worry because I don't have any symptoms," would you have unprotected sex with them??

Hopefully you're aware that people can carry and transmit chlamydia without having any symptoms of it themselves. That's true of tons of diseases. It's very true of Covid, in which almost 60% of infections come from people without symptoms (pre-symptomatic or asymptomatic). 

Hopefully, you'll also recognize that it doesn't matter how healthy you are, how many supplements or micro-nutrients you take, how much you exercise, or how smart and well-educated you are when it comes to catching an infectious disease. We have a weird association between diseases and people living in filth and squalor and ignorance, but that's likely from poverty making it very difficult to avoid exposure to other people. It's exposure to a virus that determines whether or not you catch it, not your diet. 

And just maybe you're aware that Covid isn't like a cold. It's more like polio or HIV+ or chicken pox or any number of other viruses that hibernate in the body to come out later. With polio, only 0.5% of infected people were disabled by it; most people just felt a little unwell for a bit, yet we went to town to prevent even that small number from lifelong difficulties. I'm not entirely sure why we just don't give a shit about the lowest estimate of possibly 5% of people being disabled by Covid, but there it is. 

Dr. Noor Bari further takes down the invincibility some people feel they have and believe that they can somehow bestow upon their precious children: 

"Here’s the thing. There is a neat pyramid of wood, and a pile of kindling soaked in gasoline at the base. I’m telling you it will burn, and they are telling you “there’s no evidence yet”. That is how obvious the data pointing to blood and blood vessel damage, plus brain inflammation, plus immune system damage etc of C19 looks to me. That it will cause problems. That it is even now causing problems. 

I didn’t need the data we have even now to know this would happen because we already had decades of data from other conditions that do similar things. You tell me something has activated macrophages? I’ll tell you there’ll probably be fibrosis. It really is as simple as that. We did not need to infect the world to count how many fibrosed organs there are. Endless examples (here and here). Upsetting the triad of clotting regulation is another one. 

Anyway. COVID-19 is still a problem, and it’s going to remain a problem, and pretending that your qualifications are going to protect your kid is not going to work unless you use those qualifications wisely and appreciate the whole picture. The whole picture is that humans are not well designed to tolerate chronic C19 exposure or infection. We don’t have the antioxidant and tolerance systems to deal with it for the most part. Our big delicate brains aren’t designed to be assaulted like this."

It doesn't have to be like this. 

Anomy: A Disturbance of the Collective Order

A few articles have come out recently concerned with the trajectory we're taking, particularly choices being made by young adults. But we need to acknowledge the upheaval we're currently living through to have any hope of traversing it well. 

Emile Durkheim wrote Suicide back in 1897, a lengthy report on the four ways people are provoked to give up on life: egoistic, altruistic, fatalistic, and anomic. His discussion of anomy is a useful warning for today: 

"Whenever serious readjustments take place in the social order, whether or not due to a sudden growth or to an unexpected catastrophe, men [he's talking generally of people here] are more inclined to self-destruction. .... Man's characteristic privilege is that the bond he accepts is not physical but moral; that is, social. He is governed not by a material environment brutally imposed on him, but by a conscience. ... But when society is disturbed by some painful crisis or by beneficent but abrupt transitions, it is momentarily incapable of exercising this influence. ... Appetites, not being controlled by a public opinion become disoriented, no longer recognize the limits proper to them. ... The state of de-regulation or anomy is thus further heightened by passions being less disciplined, precisely when they need more disciplining. ... A thirst arises for novelties, unfamiliar pleasures, nameless sensations, all of which lose their savor once known. ... What blinded him to himself was his expectation always to find further on the happiness he had so far missed. Now he is stopped in his tracks; from now on nothing remains behind or ahead of him to fix his gaze upon. ... He cannot in the end escape the futility of an endless pursuit. ... Time is required for the public conscience to reclassify men and things." 

One-Liner Film Reviews for 2024

Most years on New Year's Day I try to remember everything I watched over the year for a round-up, but typically forget most of them. This year I kept track!!  (Next year I'll track my reading, too, but I mainly do that here - although I've definitely read more than eight books this year. I think I'm in the middle of more than eight books right now!) I'll divide the into categories of shows and films, but I tend to binge watch shows in a sitting, so, honestly, I had to look up a few to see which category it fit! They're more or less in the order I watched them, but with ratings out of 4, and I highlighted my top 5 favourites:

Suppression is the Goal: A Final Covid Plea for 2024

We've survived 2024, but excess mortality compared to pre-pandemic rates is quite high for young adults (18-44), and in school-aged kids, it continues to increase year over year, with 2024 the deadliest year since the pandemic began. 1 in 15 people in the US is immunocompromised (possibly two kids per class), and getting a simple virus could be much more dangerous for them. It's safe to say that we'd still be wise to take some precautions to prevent harm to one another.

Gregory Travis's graph above clarifies the benefits of wearing masks for anyone that cares about reducing childhood mortality rates. Lockdowns were lifted in most places in the US in August 2020, but the mortality rate decreased substantially below baseline in 2021 because of masks until the just before school started. In January 2021, Biden called for compliance with the CDC in respect to wearing masks, at the lowest mortality point on the graph, but in April 2021, he started suggesting that people who are vaccinated didn't need to wear one, and in May 2021, the CDC dropped mask recommendations. Remember when Biden said those fully vaxxed earned the right to greet others with a smile?? In July 2021 the WHO started using the term "breakthrough infection" when people got Covid after being vaccinated -- until it became too common to maintain that farce, and the excess mortality of children started rising. If it's just a spurious correlation, what else could have caused that dramatic fall in deaths for the exact period that kids wore masks in class? 

A Deflating Experience with Three Christmas Visitors

I was travelling on Christmas Day with two of my kids, literally driving to a stable, when my daughter's car got a flat tire. We tried to figure out the jack and how to get the tire off to put the donut tire on, but it was more complicated that I could have imagined. 

Anything to do with fixing cars kind of scares me a bit. It's the same with computers. I'm even more embarrassed to say, it's the same experience with my flippin' bicycle too, which I bring in yearly for a simple tune up because I still don't quite know how to oil my chain. I have all the tools to change a flat, but that doesn't stop me from just walking miles to a shop instead of ever even trying to fix it myself. There's something about mechanical things that shuts my brain down. It's a strong aversion as if I don't want to know how things work. I think part of me thinks that if I try anything, I'll somehow make it worse - I have actually broken a computer by trying to plug in a cable before by bending the little sticky-out thingies. I can build a website no problem, but I'm still a bit weird about using apps on my phone. I've watched as people helped me change a tire on my car twice before in my life, and my son has helped with my computer and phone a ton, and I realized that once someone is there to take over and save the day, I just stare blankly at the process without actually learning anything. The previous tire-fixing steps didn't register at all. I was completely useless. At some point in my life I seem to have learned that this type of information is just not for me.  

It's yet another reason why I didn't buy my first car until I was flippin' 53! 

Basic Christian Morals

I was scrolling mindlessly yesterday morning, on Christmas Day, and came across some outrage around unhoused people being put up in a hotel at taxpayer's expense. The naysayers clearly have never seen Dicken's A Christmas Carol or even Bill Murray's Scrooged. Remember when that line, "Are there no prisons? Are there no workhouses??" came back to bite him in the ass?

Matthew 25:35-40

First of all, what the heck are taxes for but to ensure the basic needs of all?? If we decide that each person has to manage on their own without help from anyone, then we're back to law of the jungle, and we don't need much in the way of government or leadership at all or any social organization. If we're back to might makes right, with "might" referring to the power of wealth, then we're no longer in a civilization. For thousands of years we've known that a healthy, well-functioning society requires a way to care for the less fortunate. From the most base analysis, if we don't help others, they'll be more inclined to steal from us. This stance might claim to want social organization for education and hospitals, but it seems like they just want to ensure they have it for their own families, not for everyone in general. The things that they can afford to pay for somehow don't count as basic needs to provide for all. 

Curious.

Spike Proteins Sticking Around

 Yet another study indicates the brain is negatively affected by Covid, yet we're still okay with children getting it repeatedly. 

Ali Max Erturk explained his recent study published in Cell Host and Microbe on Twitter. I love when researchers explain their work in plain English like this!

Our new study shows that SARS-CoV-2 spike protein accumulates and persists in the body for years after infection, especially in the skull-meninges-brain axis, potentially driving long COVID. mRNA vaccines help but cannot stop it. Summary: We found SARS-CoV-2 spike protein in the skull-meninges-brain axis in mouse models and human post-mortem tissues long after their COVID, which was associated with vascular, inflammatory changes in the brain along with neuronal damage. Approach: To discover all tissues that are targeted by SARS-CoV-2, we used unbiased DISCO clearing technology and mapped tissues hit by coronavirus spike vs. Influenza HA proteins (flu).

WHO: "We Cannot Talk about Covid in the Past Tense"

Dr. Tedros said this in the WHO Director-General's opening remarks at Tuesday's media briefing where he also suggested that over 20 million people have died from SARS-CoV-2 so far, and we're still averaging 1,000 deaths each week just from countries that still report.

The full transcript is here. He starts by discussing some diseases eliminated from some countries and other good news, then turns to the conflicts costing so many lives and the threat of pandemics from mpox, Marburg, H5N1, and a mysterious new outbreak in the Congo, and an increase in deaths from cholera, measles, and diabetes. And then he got to Covid. Here's that part (video clip here):

"The end of this month, the 31st of December, will mark the fifth anniversary of the first reports to WHO of pneumonia caused by a then-unknown pathogen. In the past five years, more than 7 million deaths from Covid-19 have been reported to WHO, but we estimate the true death toll to be at least three times higher. We cannot talk about Covid in the past tense. It’s still with us, it still causes acute disease and “long Covid”, and it still kills. On average this year, about 1,000 deaths from Covid-19 have been reported to WHO each week – and that’s just from the few countries that are still reporting. 

The world might want to forget about Covid-19, but we cannot afford to. WHO continues to support countries to prevent and manage Covid-19 alongside other health threats. Today, WHO is releasing a package of policy briefs [outlined below] to help countries update their policies to monitor and reduce circulation of Covid-19, and to reduce illness, death, and long-term consequences of the disease. 

Developing the Capacity for Rational Choices

"As the world falls around us, how must we brave its cruelties?" -- Furiosa 

Imprisoned climate activist, Roger Hallam, recently wrote about the necessity of expanding emotional well-being as we face bleak events happening around the world. While climate scientists try to "help people through the horrific information that they are being given," they also need a way to manage their emotional reactions. We can no longer afford to merely distract ourselves from the inner turmoil. Beyond climate, we could very well be entering into a period of much greater conflict at a time of even more viruses, some destructive to our food system. When the watering hole gets smaller, the animals look at one another differently.

To move forward with compassion, at a time when divide and conquer strategies have created polarization and infighting, seems to require an effort from each one of us.

Hallam writes,

"We might want to think about why saint-like people are enormously influential, even powerful. . . . They see the world as dependent upon the mind. . . . They are not enslaved by the world; their minds are intent, driven even, to change it. They do not see this as an end in itself."

Wading Through the Fetid Swamp

Charlie Angus is on a role. The NDP MP has a book excerpt in The Walrus explaining the rise of neoliberalism starting from Reaganomics.     

The rules of the neoliberal game advise to take advantage of or create a crisis in order to shrink governmental oversight, bust any strikes, lower marginal tax rates so the wealthiest pay very little, reduce or obliterate corporate regulation or allow dubious self-regulation, and privatize the shit out of public services. Naomi Klein did a great job explaining it all in The Shock Doctrine, which he mentions. 

Mr. Angus says, 

"The crisis of the 2020s is something different than a lingering cultural stasis. The reality is that the political, environmental, and economic forces unleashed in the 1980s have finally caught up to us. . . . Operation Break the Working Class has created a generation of billionaire oligarchs form the stolen wages of the American working class. . . . To find our way out of this mess, it is necessary to confront the false history of the 1980s. Historical amnesia is not accidental--it is a political construct. If you scratch the sheen of '80s nostalgia, the underlying socio-economic fractures are readily apparent. These contradictions in the popularized narrative constitute a dangerous memory."

Trump's Tariffs

Yesterday Trump threatened, 

"'On January 20th, as one of my many first Executive Orders, I will sign all necessary documents to charge Mexico and Canada a 25% Tariff on ALL products coming into the United States, and its ridiculous Open Borders,' he wrote on social media, complaining that 'thousands of people are pouring through Mexico and Canada, bringing Crime and Drugs at levels never seen before,' even though violent crime is down from pandemic highs. He said the new tariffs would remain in place 'until such time as Drugs, in particular Fentanyl, and all Illegal Aliens stop this Invasion of our Country!'"

Lots of people are starting to understand how these tariffs will play out for them. Six years ago, Ben Stein revised his Ferris Bueller bit to teach more of the lesson. Tariffs imposed in the 1930s made the depression worse for the US.

Some people, like Anonymous, think,

"Mexico and Canada are the biggest trading partners for the US. Starting a trade war with the people who provide nearly half the food or water you consume is suicidal."

Then, six hours later, they added, 

"Trump and Musk have already stated that their plan is to crash the economy. Picking a trade war with China, Mexico, and Canada will do that. They have no plan to restore the economy. This is how they plan to cull part of the population and pummel the rest into subservience."

I can't help but wonder if it's a provocation to get just enough of a reaction that would enable him to justify (weakly and likely illegally) taking measures against Mexico and Canada in some throwback to Manifest Destiny. He's already looking at a "soft invasion" of Mexico. The fact that he is also demonizing Canada points to the start of a movement towards, I believe, coming for our water and other resources. Is that what Musk meant when he said a Trump win would bring temporary hardship?? Trudeau is hoping the premiers stick with him in a united front, but several of them might be more interested in the IDU than Canadian interests, in a shift to "authoritarian populism," a weird kind of oxymoron.

I have no concrete ideas about any of this, but I do believe greedy people don't like when anyone has something they don't have. They have to have all the things. The rest of us are collateral damage.

CAN-PCC Survey

CAN-PCC has put out a survey on its draft of recommendations for Long Covid (PCC = Post Covid Condition) that anyone can comment on. They're asking us for evidence of any claims we have, and it closes Wednesday night (Nov. 27).

Their recommendations are a whole lot of diet, exercise, and CBT and virtually nothing promoting any type of tests to help determine if someone has Long Covid, not even a d-dimer test, or any kind of medications to try. It explicitly says NOT Taurine based on a study that tests hand strength with and without use, completely ignoring studies that show a significant improvement in tinnitus, with some implications for neurological improvements after Long Covid. It's a curious inclusion in the survey. Nothing about Metformin or Paxlovid. And definitely nothing about prevention with N95s or cleaner air.  

I commented that offering CBT to someone with a physical illness is patronizing. Would they suggest it to heal a broken leg, too?? Long Covid is a PHYSICAL illness. The body is invaded by a virus wreaking havoc in so many different places that it will take a concerted effort to create a simple and effective test for it. So, apparently, they're just going to skip that initiative.

Brian Hughes posted his comments - and some of the questions - in The Science Bit. Check it out, then craft your own responses. They're asking for feedback, so we should chime in. BUT isn't it curious that an official body financed by the Public Health Agency of Canada is seeking out random public comments through Cochrane Reviews instead of, you know, getting the best scientific advice possible from teams of scientists?? Public policy on health initiatives for a serious illness shouldn't be determined by a majority rule by the public, but, if it is, then we have a duty to comment.