The Mike Harris Abomination

 

Those who live in Ontario and are of a certain age will remember the disaster that was the Mike Harris premiership. Yet despite all the damage he did to this province, (and continues to do as the Chair of Chartwell which, by the way, is rewarding its investors handsomely while presiding over a multitude of deaths in its homes), he has been awarded an Order of Ontario.

To say that this appointment has met with controversy is to understate the resulting outrage. For example, almost 68,000 have signed a Change.org petition to stop this betrayal of all who suffered under him.

And, as always, Toronto Star letter-writers have not held back. June Mewhort of Woodville, Ontario writes:

Mike Harris receiving the Order of Ontario is a slap in the face for Indigenous people in Ontario. It is also a slap in the face to all Ontario educators, all Ontario nurses, all Ontario single moms and all Ontario municipalities.

Municipalities are still struggling with the egregious downloads the Harris government burdened them with.

And now, we have the long-term-care debacle. It was Harris who opened up the LTC arena to private consortiums and he became a beneficiary of his own legislation by becoming chair of Chartwell.

This awarding of the Order of Ontario to this man is the Progressive Conservatives rewarding a man who has done nothing positive for this province.

Doug Ford is stroking his back for future favours.

Wasn’t Harris also the politician who sold Highway 407?

It is unconscionable that he be given this prestigious award.

Peter Voth of Ajax, Ontario reminds that some things are unforgivable:

 The article about Mike Harris being appointed to the Order of Ontario dealt mostly with his connection with private long-term-care homes, but he should be denied the appointment simply based on his record as premier.

In a time when statues of Sir John MacDonald or Egerton Ryerson are questioned, why is Harris even considered for an appointment for anything?

Ask the citizens of Walkerton, or the First Nations of Ipperwash.

What about the stripping of the school curriculum, and the removal of the word “environment” from those documents? What about the hospital closures? What about the downloading of our secondary highways to the regions and the confusing renaming of roads across the province? What about the famous strategy to “create a crisis” in education (to use the words of John Snobelen, Harris’s education minister)?

Harris wasn’t called “Mike-the-knife” for nothing.

Perhaps we should build a statue of him so that we can rip it down the next day.

We live in a time when public morality seems to be but an increasingly quaint notion. Mike Harris's 'reward' is just another sad illustration of this. 

Time For Some Sober Second Thought

 

A recent poll shows that about half of all Canadians are ignoring the Covid guidelines telling people to socialize only with those in their own household:

A new survey suggests nearly half of Canadians visited with family or friends over the winter holiday period.

The Leger/Association for Canadian Studies poll found 48 per cent of those surveyed visited with people outside their households, compared to 52 per cent who said they did not.

Public health officials had pleaded with Canadians to sharply limit their contacts during the holidays to avoid massive spikes in COVID-19 cases.

But it appears something gave for Canadians, said Leger vice-president Christian Bourque.

“Usually we Canadians are sort of much more, I would say, disciplined when it comes to going by what governments are recommending in terms of our behaviour, but over the holidays, apparently, it was sort of tougher on Canadians,” he said.

A study from Korea suggests that it is more than time that such people give a sober second thought to their recklessness. It is a story that suggests the easy transmissibility of the virus and calls into question whether the two-meter social distancing guidance is adequate

Dr. Lee Ju-hyung has largely avoided restaurants in recent months, but on the few occasions he’s dined out, he’s developed a strange, if sensible, habit: whipping out a small anemometer to check the airflow.

It’s a precaution he has been taking since a June experiment when he and colleagues re-created the conditions at a restaurant in Jeonju, a city in the southwest of South Korea, where diners contracted coronavirus from an out-of-town visitor. Among them was a high school student who was infected with the coronavirus after five minutes of exposure from more than 20 feet away.

It appears the culprits here are being indoors with others and airflow.

Linsey Marr, a civil and environmental engineering professor at Virginia Tech who studies the transmission of viruses in the air, said the five-minute window in which the student, identified in the study as “A,” was infected was notable because the droplet was large enough to carry a viral load, but small enough to travel 20 feet through the air.“‘A’ had to get a large dose in just five minutes, provided by larger aerosols probably about 50 microns,” she said. “Large aerosols or small droplets overlapping in that gray area can transmit disease further than one or two meters [3.3 to 6.6 feet] if you have strong airflow.”

Lee, a professor at the Jeonbuk National University Medical School who has also been helping local authorities carry out epidemiological investigations, went to the restaurant and was surprised by how far the two had been sitting. CCTV footage showed the two never spoke, or touched any surfaces in common — door handles, cups or cutlery. From the sway of a light fixture, he could tell the air conditioning unit in the ceiling was on at the time.

Lee and his team recreated the conditions in the restaurant — researchers sat at tables as stand-ins — and measured the airflow. The high school student and a third diner who was infected had been sitting directly along the flow of air from an air conditioner; other diners who had their back to the airflow were not infected. Through genome sequencing, the team confirmed the three patients’ virus genomic types matched.

Clearly, there is still much to be learned about Covid-19. Those who think they know it all and conduct themselves blithely may not live to regret it. 

A Timely Reminder

 With the travel circuit as busy as it is, now is a good time to remind each other that our political 'leaders' have advised all Canadians to avoid unnecessary travel:

Nothing Seems To Deter Him

 The him here, of course, would be Donald Trump who, true to form, will never accept the fact that he has been voted out of office. Despite failed efforts at promoting outrageous claims of voter fraud and bogus lawsuits being filed and rejected, the Orange Ogre is still clinging to the delusion that he can remain president.

As reported in News and Guts, the Washing Post writes of an extraordinary call Trump made to Georgia's Secretary of State, Brad Raffensberger:

In the call, Trump urges the fellow Republican to “find” 11,780 votes to overturn the president’s defeat in the state. The Post writes:

The Washington Post obtained a recording of the conversation in which Trump alternately berated Raffensperger, tried to flatter him, begged him to act and threatened him with vague criminal consequences if the secretary of state refused to pursue his false claims, at one point warning that Raffensperger was taking “a big risk.”

Throughout the call, Raffensperger and his office’s general counsel rejected his assertions, explaining that Trump is relying on debunked conspiracy theories and that President-elect Joe Biden’s 12,779-vote victory in Georgia was fair and accurate.

You can listen to excerpts of that call below:

It would seem you can take the Donald out of the White House, but you can't take the Don out of the Donald.

 

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A Warning From The WHO

 I doubt there is anyone amongst us who doesn't wish this pandemic were over. The cost in lives, health and jobs has been unprecedented in modern times. Yet to think that the vaccines, remarkable achievements that they are, will end all of our Covid-19 troubles, is akin to wishful thinking, as the following video attests.

Looking At Ourselves In The Mirror

If you have access to the New York Times, there is a piece well-worth reading by Michael Benson. Entitled Watching Earth Burn. it includes photos of our planet taken from three weather satellites in geostationary orbit high above the Equator. These photos attest to the ravages of climate-change induced wild fires plaguing the world, although Benson does not ignore human-caused destruction, as in the ravages of the Amazonian rainforest where, thanks to 

the rapacious policies of President Jair Bolsonaro of Brazil, predatory agricultural, logging and mining interests had set his country ablaze. By late September the already hellish 2019 escalation in deliberately set forest fires had been exceeded by 28 percent, with more than 44,000 outbreaks recorded in the Amazon and Pantanal this year.

The entire article makes for grim reading, and is a cogent reminder of just how late in the day it is for mitigating the worst of  the damage threatening the very existence of our species and countless others with whom we share the earth.

Yet the piece ends on a cautiously optimistic note:

If the war has started and we’re losing, what can we do about it? Or to put it another way, what would I like to see happen over the next year, even if I won’t yet be able to observe it directly from my Olympian perch among the satellites?

Actually, our response to the pandemic already suggests the way forward. Faced with an existential crisis of a scale not seen in living memory, we deployed the planet’s best minds, funded them well and turned them loose on the problem. They in turn were able to draw on a wealth of prior knowledge about how viruses infiltrate our bodies, and three decades of hard-won experience in learning about and finally creating RNA — purpose-built synthetic copies of a natural molecule integral to our genes — devised to prompt an immune response within our cells. This paid off spectacularly. And all this was accomplished in record time — months instead of the previous standard of a decade or more.

We need to follow this immediately with another sustained global effort. Imagine what human ingenuity could produce if unleashed in comparably coordinated, well-funded fashion on the climate crisis. The good news is that, as with the new RNA vaccines, we have significant prior research to draw on. It covers carbon-neutral power production, energy conservation strategies, carbon capture and sequestration, global reforestation and an intercontinental effort to build a high voltage, DC power network 40 percent more efficient than AC and thus able to compensate for the daily fluctuations in wind and solar power systems.

In short, we need an all-hands-on-deck fusion of the Manhattan Project and the Marshall Plan, only this time funded by all of the world’s major economies and led by the largest: the United States, the European Union and China.

Time is obviously short, but as I commented on Marie's blog entry about the existential threats we face, human beings seem much more able to respond to acute threats than long-term ones. If we cannoit change that propensity, there really is little basis for hope. 

Let's Give Him A Classy Sendoff

 I think the following fits the bill:

A Masterful Takedown

 No one does it better than Chris Cuomo. 

Even if you only watch a couple of minutes of the above video, you will see that he has taken the true, full measure of Donald Trump.

Squeal Like A Pig

 One of our true national treasures, Linda McQuaig (why has she not received an Order of Canada?) recently wrote an article detailing the abysmal conditions under which pigs await slaughter. It is a piece that should make all of us cringe, whether or not we regularly eat pork:

Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

That’s why the Canadian pork industry, sensitive about its public image, decided to eliminate the practice — a move hailed by Canada’s Humane Society as “a watershed moment for farm animals in Canada.”

This led to a rare round of positive coverage for the beleaguered industry, with the media reporting that the move would please Canadian consumers and bring Canadian animal welfare practices in line with more advanced European standards.

All that happened back in 2014. Yet, six years later, millions of pigs in Canada continue to spend their lives locked in these narrow cages — because the ban doesn’t actually come into effect until 2024.Many people — meat-eaters included — object to the factory farm practice of confining pigs for virtually their entire lives to metal cages so small they can’t even turn around.

In fact, that leisurely 10-year phase-in period seems about to get longer. The pork industry has decided it needs more time and has indicated its desire to grant itself a further five-year extension.

How is this possible? In a word: self-regulation, a self-regulation that is aided and abetted by the Doug Ford government, which

just made it easier for the industry to shield its operations from public view, passing legislation last month aimed at cracking down on trespassing activists and journalists who often work undercover on industrial farms in order to take photos and videos.

Those videos have done a great deal to raise public awareness of the conditions under which our food makes its way to our table:

 One undercover video, aired last month on CTV’s national investigative program W5, included graphic footage of adult pigs being hit with heavy objects and baby pigs squealing and squirming in pain as workers cut off their tails and castrate them.

Lest we be inclined to think of animals as insensate beings, consider this:

As renowned anthropologist Jane Goodall notes: “Farm animals feel pleasure and sadness, excitement and resentment, depression, fear and pain.”

The intensity of animal emotions has been captured on videos of rescued farm animals experiencing their first taste of freedom. They run, romp and play — even enormous adult pigs — and certainly appear to be experiencing something akin to joy.

 Of course, any dog owner can confirm that animals feel emotions. And any dog owner would gasp at the thought of their dog trapped in a confining cage, 24 hours a day, unable to even turn around.

But the factory farm industry is counting on us not making the connection. And the best way to ensure that, as Doug Ford knows, is to prevent us from seeing photos of locked-up pigs looking every bit as sad and scared as our own dogs would be in those cages.

Whether we are vegetarians, vegans or regular or occasional consumers of animal flesh, it is incumbent upon all of us not only to be aware of the deplorable conditions under which our food is processed but also to demand much better both from the industry and the Doug Ford government.  

 

 

Capturing A Certain Ethos

Be sure to click on the image so as to enlarge it:

 Unfortunately, the mentality depicted above is not confined to the United States.

Some Frank Talk

 

I readily admit to being intolerant of childish, narcissistic adults. And never have those defects of character been more evident than during our Covid-19 world crisis. People whining that they won't wear masks or maintain social distancing, that such stipulations are an assault of their personal freedom bespeak minds untutored and character unspeakably selfish.

It was therefore with some satisfaction that I read Vinay Menon's latest column, one devoted to a rant actor Tom Cruise engaged in as he rebuked two of his crew for not following protocols during work on his latest film. Audio of the rant has been leaked, but there is nothing that Cruise said that should offend anyone with a sense of social responsibility:

“We are the gold standard,” he says at the start of the clip, reportedly addressing 50 staffers at the Warner Bros. Studios in Leavesden. “They’re back there in Hollywood making movies right now because of US! Because they believe in US and what we’re DOING!”

"I’m on the phone with every f---ing studio at night,” Cruise continues, the weight on his shoulders now crushing any hope of a PG-13 scolding. “Insurance companies! Producers! And they’re looking at us and using us to make their MOVIES. We are creating thousands of jobs, you MOTHERF---ERS!”

He ends by issuing an ultimatum: termination if this behaviour happens again.

There is more to Cruise's rebuke than I have included here, but the full measure of it wins Menon's full approval:

One of the most depressing tentacles of this global pandemic — and it has been a Kraken of misery — is the absolute ignorance of too many among us. If I had my druthers, I’d load every antimasker and anti-vaxxer on a rocket ship and shoot them to Venus. What these people really are is anti-other. Their brains are poisoned by misinformation. Their hearts are infected with an incurable selfishness.

To refuse to do the bare minimum to keep everyone else safe does not make you a freedom fighter — it makes you a public menace. Trying to frame COVID-19 as about personal liberty is like arguing you should be allowed to drink and drive or set random fires on your block.

In the early stages of this pandemic, I had the impression that most of us were on the same page regarding our collective responsibility to contain this deadly virus. However, as time has gone on, the fault lines that divide us have become increasingly apparent.

And that spells danger and greater deprivation for all of us.

 

When You Think About It

... this makes perfect sense for the times we find ourselves in:

You’re watching Sportsmax. The network for REAL Jets fans. pic.twitter.com/Y5rGuZMLez

— Saturday Night Live - SNL (@nbcsnl) December 13, 2020

Such Compelling Rhetoric

...requires no commentary on my part:

Overheard at a "freedom rally" in Regina... a day in the life of a journalist in 2020 I guess🤷‍♂️ pic.twitter.com/4sw9jOsGuS

— Connor O'Donovan (@ConnODonNews) December 13, 2020

Beware Mr. Covid

It has been several months since my last post. Originally I had anticipated but a short break,, but events conspired against me and I wound up in the hospital for several weeks. Although my hospitalization had nothing to do with Covid-19, the latter has been much on my mind, particularly owing to the fact that so many people, judging by the surging numbers, lack the maturity and character to do what is necessary to keep this dread disease at bay. 

 I was therefore not surprised at Alberta's effort to bring home the gravity of the situation by producing an ad that reveals what the government thinks of its child-like citizens:

A Short Note

Just to let regular readers know that I probably will not be posting much for a little while, as my time is required on a family matter (trying to get my brother into a seniors' residence).

Hope to be back soon.

For Your Saturday Consideration

With apologies to anyone (well, almost anyone) who suffers from a reading disability, I enjoyed this, and hope you do too:

Fox News is right: Any idiot can read off a teleprompter pic.twitter.com/3S1EE2ky4x

— The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) August 21, 2020

The Dismantling Of Democracy

I'm not writing much in the way of commentary these days, partly because other matters require my attention and partly because I feel almost anything I say may simply be stating the obvious, especially at it pertains to our benighted neighbours to the south. Nonetheless, when I see items that others might have missed, I like to post them on this blog.

The following is one such item; the story is essentially another in an ongoing series of efforts by Donald Trump and his enablers (in this case Louis DeJoy, the new Postmaster General) to disrupt and dismantle what is left of American democracy. The images are disturbing, the implications frightening.

Please start at about the 13:15 mark:

Americans Do Love Their Snake Oil

Fortunately, people like Anderson Cooper have the real cure:

I had to phone a friend to turn on CNN and watch Anderson Cooper mocking with a serious face the MyPillow shyster and Donald Trump stan because it was so LOL and yelling at the TV. BRAVO! https://t.co/A7AYc7aJEj

— Antonia Zerbisias (@AntoniaZ) August 18, 2020

Know Your Limits

Having worn glasses since I was nine, I learned early in life about limitations. Being myopic meant having to accept that I could never become an airline pilot, play most contact sports (not that I was ever so inclined), be a 'cool-looking' guy, etc. Nonetheless, I managed to eke out a reasonably successful life within those parameters. A mark of maturity is accepting things you cannot change.

Since the advent of Covid-19, a new and apparently widespread affliction has emerged: the 'inability' to wear a mask to mitigate the spread of the disease. This has led to an array of problems, not the least of which is the accusation that 'sufferers' don't give a damn about their fellow citizens. And no amount of effort to convince them that they will not suffocate or become ill if they wear a mask seems to help.

I therefore have a modest proposal for such people. Like I did long ago, learn to live within your limitations:

The Bottom Line

While the emphasis thus far has been on the fact that wearing a mask protects others from contracting Covid-19, new research suggests that they are also effective in protecting the wearer.

The Journal of General Internal Medicine reports that there

are two likely reasons for the effectiveness of facial masks: The first—to prevent the spread of viral particles from asymptomatic individuals to others—has received a great deal of attention. However, the second theory—that reducing the inoculum of virus to which a mask-wearer is exposed will result in milder disease [italics added]...has received less attention and is the focus of our perspective which compiles virologic, epidemiologic and ecologic evidence.

Masks, depending on the material and design, filter out a majority of viral particles, but not all. The theory that exposure to a lower inoculum or dose of any virus (whether respiratory, gastrointestinal or sexually transmitted) can make subsequent illness far less likely to be severe... has been propounded for some time. Indeed, the concept of the 50% lethal dose (LD50), the virus dose at which 50% of exposed hosts die, determined via controlled experiments in which a range of exposure doses are administered to animals to calculate a dose-mortality curve, was first described in 1938. Other studies have examined the LD50—or the dose that leads to severe disease or death—for a variety of viruses in hosts or animal models.

The bottom line: Wear a mask.

When Pathological Liars Speak

Hold them to account.

I've been complaining for four years about interviewers not fact-checking Trump to his face.

In the past few weeks, we've gotten some good evidence that this is not only necessary in principle, it actually works. My video this week: https://t.co/VJdortztoR pic.twitter.com/SFMDWdiPyZ

— Daniel Dale (@ddale8) August 8, 2020

O Brave New World

I have reached the point in my life where whatever optimism about the future I might have once held has given way to a searing, even corrosive pessimism. Looking at the world as it is would seem to preclude any other position.

And yet...

There are still those among us with vibrant visions of what could be, what is still possible even at this late date. It is perhaps best represented by what is known as the Green New Deal. One of its chief proponents in the United States is Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasion Cortz who, along with Avi Lewis, scripted and narrated a short film of what could be, the idea being to use art to fire the imagination of people. Writes Naomi Klein:

Just as [Molly] Crabapple and I started mulling over the idea of a Green New Deal short film, The Intercept published a piece by Kate Aronoff that was set in the year 2043, after the Green New Deal had come to pass. It told the story of what life was like for a fictionalized “Gina,” who grew up in the world that Green New Deal policies created: “She had a relatively stable childhood. Her parents availed themselves of some of the year of paid family leave they were entitled to, and after that she was dropped off at a free child care program.” After free college, “she spent six months restoring wetlands and another six volunteering at a day care much like the one she had gone to.”

The piece struck a nerve with readers, in large part because it imagined a future tense that wasn’t some version of “Mad Max” warriors battling prowling bands of cannibal warlords. Crabapple and I decided that the film could do something similar to Aronoff’s piece, but this time from Ocasio-Cortez’s vantage point. It would show the world after the Green New Deal she was championing had become a reality.

The following is the film that seeks to dispel the pessimism so many of us feel about the future.



Should you be interested in becoming more informed about the possibilities, I recommend Jeremy Rifkin's book, The Green New Deal, which offers substantial detail on how this brave new world can be accomplished.

On The Covidiot, Anti-Masker Cohort

Those who read this blog with any regularity will likely know that when it comes to those who refuse to don masks as their contribution to our collective safety, I have only withering contempt. It is a contempt fueled by the fact that almost no medical condition exists precluding the use of these simple but effective life-saving devices.

Recently, Christine Sismondo wrote about some of the factors fueling these covidiots:

... social and cultural psychologists like [Hilary] Bergsieker have found the greatest correlations to be related to the society and culture people live in.

“People in more collectivist societies may be more willing to adopt things like mask-wearing that maybe impinge on individual preference but are good for the collective, which is one explanation for why mask-wearing has become so normative in East Asian societies dating back at least to the SARS epidemic of 20 years ago,” she says. “People have been more willing to wear masks out of a sense of care for and connectedness to others versus the individualistic tradition of a lot of the western nations.

“The issue is whether you see society as just made up of disconnected individuals, each of whom maximizes his or her own self-interest and their own preferences, versus seeing people as fundamentally interconnected,” she explains.

The pandemic, however, should be a massive object lesson in the fallacy of libertarian-ish notions about disconnectedness and individualism. No matter how wealthy and privileged someone is, it is next to impossible to protect oneself entirely against a contagious disease. Just ask Louie Gohmert. Or Bolsonaro. Or Herman Cain. Oh no, wait. You can’t ask Cain. He asserted his right not to wear a mask at a rally in Tulsa, Okla., and didn’t live to tell about it.

Wise words, but I leave the final ones to this astute letter-writer, whose suggestion earns my unequivocal approval:

Psychology behind mask resistance isn’t new, Sismondo, Aug. 4

Christine Sismondo’s questioning of people’s psychology to discover what motivates them to resist following the rules is fascinating human-interest reporting.

But focusing on quirks of personality overlooks a more meaningful discussion of the social responsibility a dissenting individual owes to society.

Henry David Thoreau maintained convincingly that individuals should not permit governments to overrule their consciences. Those among us who don’t want to follow the safety rules — masking, distancing, testing and contact tracing — during this deadly pandemic don’t have to.

But then, just like Thoreau, they must isolate themselves from society. Thoreau stopped paying taxes to protest his government waging war and withdrew from society to live alone beside Walden Pond.

Those advocating civil obedience as their legal human right should exile themselves during this pandemic.

Tony D’Andrea, Toronto

Too Quick On The Draw

Newly-released bodycam footage of the arrest of George Floyd reveals he was in a blind panic when officers drew guns on him. His revelation that he had been shot in the past suggests he was suffering from a form of post traumatic stress, which would explain his resistance to the officers' attempts to detain him.

The following is disturbing to watch, and one wonders what the outcome would have been had the police not been so quick to point their firearms at an unarmed man.

Begin at the 11:00 mark.

I'm Sure It's All Just A Big Misunderstanding

The Keilbergers probably just really like Bill Morneau. But you be the judge:

Some Days, I Truly Despair

Mendacity, the constant litany of lies that defines Donald Trump, is one thing, but when the Incompetent-In-Chief extols people who believe that illness is demon-caused and science is experimenting with hybrid human-alien DNA, the world has entered a whole new level of crazy.

Watch this video for context, then read about the viral video that Facebook, Twitter and You Tube have deleted due to the misinformation it conveys.



For Trump, the obvious allure of this group, which is called America's Frontline Doctors (whose website has suddenly disappeared), is their promotion of the now-discredited Covid-19 treatment, hydroxychloroquine, which he has so vigorously advocated for. The Incompetent-In-Chief's ego requires constant fluffing. However, there was some heavy baggage accompanying that extollment:

The video Trump shared Monday night showed a collection of doctors speaking in favor of treating COVID-19 patients with the antimalarial drug. The clip focused on the testimony of a woman named Stella Immanuel, who received a medical license in Texas last November, according to state records. The doctor did not return a request for comment.

Immanuel says she previously worked as a doctor in Nigeria and also calls herself a "Deliverance Minister" who is "God's battle axe and weapon of war." She has given sermons attacking progressive values and promoting conspiracy theories including, in her words, "the gay agenda, secular humanism, Illuminati and the demonic new world order." Another doctor shown in the video, a noted Trump supporter, called Immanuel a "warrior."

"You don't need a mask," Immanuel claimed in the video, contradicting the widely accepted medical advice that has been promoted even by the White House coronavirus task force and Trump himself. She repeatedly called studies questioning the safety and effectiveness of hydroxychloroquine "fake science."

But wait. As they say, there's more:

The Daily Beast reported Tuesday that Immanuel has claimed in the past that some gynecological ailments are caused by people having sex in a dream-world with demons, with the demonic semen as the origins of the afflictions.

Immanuel has also claimed that doctors used alien DNA in medical treatments, and that lizard-like “reptilian” aliens are involved in the United States government. She thanked The Daily Beast on Tuesday for “summarizing” her work. “The Daily Beast did a great job summarizing our deliverance ministry and exposing incubus and succubus. Thank you daily beast. If you need deliverance from these spirits. Contact us,” she tweeted.

Years ago, Carl Sagan wrote The Demon-Haunted World, which in part discussed how to think skeptically and critically, explaining methods to help distinguish between ideas that are considered valid science and those that can be considered pseudoscience. A tough medicine for some, perhaps, but it would seem to be the cure for much of what ails those who lap up the twaddle dished out by the likes of Donald Trump and Stella Immanuel.

The World Judges Donald Trump's Covid-19 'Strategy'

The New York Times offers a report on how people around the world evaluate the response of "the greatest nation on earth" to the Covid-19 pandemic. The Coles Notes version: unlike many Americans, they are not taken in by Donald Trump's empty rhetoric and outright lies.

From Beyond The Grave

It's been 12 years since George Carlin left us, yet the ensuing years have made him even more relevant than he was in his day. The following video uses his profanity-laced upbraiding of the system to good effect, I think you will agree.

This video is completely devastating for Trump. George Carlin gives him the finger from the grave. Whatever you do don’t make it go viral! #AmericaWakeUp pic.twitter.com/vy2zz0j8DB

— Mrs. Krassenstein (@HKrassenstein) July 26, 2020

Makes Sense To Me

I get the sense that Jonathan Pie is a tad vexed about government irresolution and people's stupidity when it comes to the wearing of masks:

The Benighted Among Us

If you read this blog with any regularity, you may know that I hold in absolute, unmitigated contempt those who refuse to wear a mask. When hearing and reading about such people and their myriad of contrived (i.e., absurd) reasons for non-complance, I am almost tempted to believe that the world is experiencing two pandemics: Covid-19 and abject stupidity.

Apparently, I have the wrong attitude.

Charlie Warsel writes that e have to meet such people where they live:

As the Ebola epidemic raged in 2014, some West Africans resisted public health guidance. Some hid their symptoms or continued practicing burial rituals — like washing the bodies of their dead loved ones — despite the risk of infection. Others spread conspiracies claiming the virus was sent by Westerners or suggested it was all a hoax. In Conakry, Guinea’s capital city, an imam was arrested for violating his quarantine, and residents protested by not letting health officials check for fevers.

So the World Health Organization sent Cheikh Niang, a Senegalese medical anthropologist, and his team to figure out what was going on.

For six hours, Dr. Niang visited people in Conakry inside their homes. He wasn’t there to lecture. Residents asked him to write down their stories. When they finished, Dr. Niang finally spoke.

“I said, ‘I hear you,’” he told me recently over the phone from Senegal. “‘I want to and will help. But we still have an epidemic spreading and we need your help, too. We need to take your temperatures and we need to trace this virus.’ And they agreed. They trusted us.”

Trust, at a time when mistrust in science is rampant, becomes central to convincing people to follow health guidelines.

As does empathy. Julia Marcus, an epidemiologist and assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, wrote an article in The Atlantic about men who don't wear masks in which

she acknowledged that masks don’t feel cool, can be obtrusive and block important body language signals, while still arguing emphatically for their importance. Dozens of non-mask wearers contacted her to thank her for the piece.

“These men were universally grateful to read something about anti-maskers that didn’t shame or demonize them,” she wrote. “It made them want to hear what else I had to say about why it might be worth wearing a mask.”

None of which I find especially compelling. Perhaps it is just my nature, but I prefer the facts over having to jolly people along. The kind of facts, for example, that are to be found in this very informative post on Northern Currents.

And the facts that are readily apparent in this report by Jeff Semple:



Jesus said, "The poor you will always have with you." Regrettably, the same must be said about the benighted who, some days, appear to be legion.

The Lincoln Project Strikes Again

I have to say I am quite enjoying the output of The Lincoln Project. As noted by Wikipedia, it

is an American political action committee formed in late 2019 by several prominent Republicans and former Republicans. The goal of the committee is to prevent the reelection of Donald Trump in the 2020 presidential election and defeat his supporters in the U.S. Senate. In April 2020, the committee announced their endorsement of presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden.

The Hill reports on their latest salvo, an ad that justifiably ridicules the Infant-in-Chief:

The ad begins with an image of the White House and the caption "Trumpfeld," which is modeled after the logo for "Seinfeld," along with music similar to the hit '90s sitcom's signature theme song.

The video plays a laugh track over several of Trump’s comments, including his repeated denial of several Fox News polls.

Enjoy:

No re-election for you pic.twitter.com/cKkevBNYln

— The Lincoln Project (@ProjectLincoln) July 21, 2020

Pretty Basic Stuff

But how much better off everyone would be if they just followed these basics:

Thought For The Day

Amen.

Another Disease Is Spreading

The affliction, manifesting in a steadfast refusal to wear a mask, appears to arise from a combination of idiocy, sociopathic indifference to public health, and just profound ignorance. And the fact that it is spreading in Canada (the Americans being a lost cause) pains me deeply. With our culture and history of concern for the collective, I expect better.

As discussed in an earlier post, there is almost no medical condition preventing a person from wearing a mask. That fact, however, has not stopped the proliferation of fake exemption cards that are being promoted on social media, all, of course, at the expense of public health during our current pandemic.

The cards in Canada are allegedly created by an “anti-lockdown group” that opposes mandatory mask bylaws.

The Canadian Human Rights Commission is listed on the back of a card, claiming to give the holder an exemption from wearing a face mask.

“These are fake. The Commission has not and would not produce posters or cards claiming that the cardholder has an exemption from wearing a face mask in closed public places.

The card is also stamped with the Canadian Red Cross emblem, which did not approve its use.

The use of such cards brought a sharp rebuke from Ontario Premier Doug Ford:

“This isn’t the time to use fraudulent cards and to get away and be able to go into a store, don’t be a scammer. To say you can’t wear a mask and make up some fraudulent cards, it’s unacceptable. Everyone else is wearing a mask, wear a mask,” Ford said.

As well, medical opinion on the use of masks is unequivocal.

Are there any valid reasons not to wear a mask? One of the most abusive shoppers recently caught on camera was yelling about how masks make people sick. “It’s science,” he said, referring, we presume, to the “science” offered up on social media about Co2 building up in masks.

“This is nonsense,” says Dr. Ken Chapman, professor of medicine at the University of Toronto. “There is no evidence whatsoever that wearing a mask will cause your carbon dioxide level to build up and certainly there’s no relationship between wearing a mask and damaging your immune system and other nonsense you read online.”

The Canadian Thoracic Society recently issued a statement similarly claiming there’s no evidence that wearing a mask will exacerbate an underlying lung condition.

Then there is Dr. Maitiu O Tuathail, a general practitioner in Dublin, Ireland, who made a video that even the most obtuse should be able to understand:



None of this, of course, will deter the true (dis)believers, those who maniacally worship at the altar of toxic egoism, junk science and bizarre conspiracy theories.

A pity, though, that Canadians aren't more resistant to such virulent, destructive ways.

The Benighted Speak

There is a new report showing the continuing spread of Covid-19 in California. It seems that three counties, San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange, have now surpassed Los Angeles county in per-capita case rates.

The idiocy on display in the following video helps explain why.

"This Is What National Decline Looks Like"

Take a couple of minutes to watch this searingly accurate assessment and indictment of the United States under Donald Trump. I did not hear a word with which I disagreed:

Just Wear A Mask

That is the message, simple and direct, delivered by CNN's Becky Anderson:


Somehow, I doubt her message will resonate with the unhinged who have emerged from their lairs during the pandemic. This recent delegation at a Palm Beach County hearing into masks should provide more than ample incentive to avoid the Sunshine State for the foreseeable future:



Lest we be complacent as Canadians, however, Emma Teitel writes:

Yes, Americans can be wacky. But so can we. In fact, we’ve got our own version of the God’s-wonderful-breathing-system brigade right here in Ontario. Last week, anti-mask protesters broke mandatory mask regulations when they rode the TTC barefaced, and this week reports emerged about anti-lockdown activists printing phoney official looking cards claiming to give people medical exemptions from wearing masks in public.

According to a survey by Policy Options, Canadians are not immune from believing conspiracy theories about the virus. From the think tank’s survey, “Almost one in 10 Canadians believes that the COVID-19 pandemic is a way for billionaire Bill Gates to microchip people.”

She ends with this simple but powerful advice:

Stage 3 is days away. Now is not the time to be cocky, or bored. Now is the time to be vigilant. And though not much fun, a big part of being vigilant in a pandemic is listening to public health experts. Wear a mask where distancing isn’t possible.

Or to put it even more succinctly: Time for everyone to grow up a bit. Maybe this report from the CDC will help in the maturation process.

A Sad Decline

I recently completed The Splendid and The Vile, a book by Erik Larson exploring the first year of Winston Churchill's prime ministership. He assumed the leadership in 1940, at which point Britain had already been at war with Germany for one year. With the U.S. following an isolationist policy, things did not look very hopeful for the island nation.

Despite facing fierce odds against their survival, and despite repeated and brutal air attacks by the Luftwaffe, both the population and its political leadership soldiered on, finding within themselves the character to resist despair and defeat. They truly were The Greatest Generation.

I do wonder whether that kind of national character is as much on display today as we battle Covid-19.

Ninety-three year-old Toronto Star letter-writer Syd Bosloy of Thornhill also wonders along similar lines:

I am 93 years old, but I have never seen anything like what is happening in America today. The U.S. is in a crisis. They are harbouring and ignoring those “covidiots,” who refuse to obey simple precautions such as wearing a mask. As a result, the U.S. is responsible for a quarter of all the world’s cases and deaths due to the pandemic. It’s indicative of what’s wrong with America. I believe it is because their citizens lack a sense of personal responsibility for the good of others, when you compare them with the British in London during the Second World War, for example. Is it because they have never had their country under sustained military attack or occupied during their lifetime? Are Americans satisfied with the “dog eat dog” attitude of their citizens, politicians and police?

Sadly, however, the kind of idiocy Mr. Bosly describes is not confined to the United States. We have our own special breed right at home:

A week after anti-mask groups rode the TTC without face coverings to protest against new city bylaws requiring them, the same groups are now making "exemption cards" that claim they are medically exempt from wearing face coverings.

CBC Toronto is not naming the groups, nor the people involved with them, so as to not publicize false information.

The Canadian Red Cross says the cards contain a version of the organization's emblem that is being used without permission.

Despite dire potential consequences, some are treating these fake cards as a joke:

Posts about the cards can be found on many social media platforms. In one such video, a man smiles and laughs while holding the card and saying, "Mandatory mask? Not with this."

The account that shared the video is run by a man and woman who are leading one of Toronto's anti-mask groups. It has also shared a host of debunked material and conspiracy theories in recent days.

In another online video shared by the same account, a man visits Toronto Western Hospital, where he is told by an employee he has to wear a mask to seek care. He responds that he has a medical condition, and shows the card. Later, he smiles at the camera and says "the card definitely helped."

Dave Watson is one person who isn't laughing.

"It's a load of crap," said Watson, who has cystic fibrosis, a genetic condition that causes severe respiratory disease, making patients more susceptible to lung infections.

"If anyone couldn't wear one, it would be me."

Watson says that depending on the day, he is typically running at between 34 and 42 per cent lung capacity. Breathing can be tough, especially in high heat and humidity.

Still, he hasn't thought twice about wearing a mask in public.

"It makes sense to wear a mask, and for people to make these cards, it's pretty insulting," he said.

"I've done my part. The least you can do is do yours."

Increasingly, my patience wears thin with the idiots around me quite blithely endangering others. They represent some of the worst aspects of humanity and as a Canadian they make me feel deeply ashamed.

Time to start imposing severe sanctions.

He Speaks For The Majority, I Suspect

That would be The Star's Patrick Corrigan:


Meanwhile The Star's editorial board offers some insights into why Canada has fared so, so much better in dealing with Covid-19 than the United States:

It’s a terrible thing for an old, dear friend to watch America — as a result of its wilful blindness, contempt for science and gross mishandling of the pandemic — descend to the status of a pariah state.

The Atlantic’s George Packer described in one searing paragraph recently just how pitiful the former promised land of the planet had become.

“When the virus came here, it found a country with serious underlying conditions, and it exploited them ruthlessly. Chronic ills — a corrupt political class, a sclerotic bureaucracy, a heartless economy, a divided and distracted public — had gone untreated for years.”

The crisis demanded a response that was swift, rational and collective, Packer said.

Instead, it got Donald Trump’s singular ignorance, delusion and pathological instinct to see everything, even matters of life and death, in political terms.

Canada is an entirely different story for a number of reasons:

Part values, part experience, part humility of people and their leadership, part consistency of government messaging.

At core, our national DNA favours the collective during a crisis that has demanded collective action, mutual sacrifice, looking out for the other rather than insistence on personal liberty and pursuit of happiness.

Many of the characteristics frequently cited as negatives in comparing Canada to the U.S. — our smaller size, our humility, our greater trust in government, our commitment to community and social services, no sense of our own mythic exceptionalism — have become assets in this crisis.

We have also shown ourselves capable of learning some hard lessons:

After SARS, Canada redesigned the federal-provincial relationship on public health and infectious diseases. Our public systems are more amenable to coherent reaction to widespread crisis than the private institutions in the U.S.

As well, not having the same level of poisonous political partisanship as does the U.S. also helped:

In Canada, unlike the United States, the partisan cudgels were put aside — mercifully avoiding the vexation of states forced to deal with what Washington wouldn’t, and governors putting political affiliation and loyalty to the president ahead of science and medical expertise.

As recent events have demonstrated, our leadership is far from perfect. But compared to the Americans, we do have things to be proud of as this first wave of Covid-19 wanes.

And, of course, we must keep that border closed for the foreseeable future.

Meanwhile, In Arizona

... the worship of sickness and death continues:

UPDATED: Utterly, Despicably Shameful

I'm not entirely sure why these things bother me so much, but I suspect it has a lot to do with my hope and expectation that Canadians are better than their American counterparts in dealing with Covid-19.

As you can see in the following ugly incident, which occurred at a Mississauga T&T Supermarket between an employee and a benighted fool, that is not always the case:



Perhaps the original poster of the video put it best:

"My heart was broken and tears shed ... When that guy shouted at him, he didn't know how to fight back, he kept saying 'I'm Canadian.' Obviously, Canada is his home! Where is our multiculturalism? Where are our national values?"

"Even PM Trudeau called grocery store employees heroes! Why are heroes treated like this? I don't understand."

UPDATE:

pic.twitter.com/Ju8V5WLGow

— Michael Rich (@damnthing9999) July 9, 2020

UPDATED: Mask Madness

With increasing evidence that small, potentially infectious airborne particles of Covid-19 can remain in the air for hours, you would think that the use of masks in enclosed spaces would be one of the sanest and safest practices that people would readily and enthusiastically adopt.

Yet it remains a contentious issue for some, even in Canada.

You have likely heard of the hapless Letitia Montana, the Toronto woman who somehow thought she would garner sympathy and support by posting online her denial of service at a city hospital because she stoutly refused to obey the mask rule.

Went into the Emergency Dept. at St Joseph’s Hospital in #Toronto for a suspected broken finger. I was asked to wear a mask, which I refused to do. As a result, hospital staff asked me to leave and immediately called 3 security guards to escort me out. #filmyourhospital pic.twitter.com/7KlDa11udk

— Letitia Montana (@LetitiaMontana) July 5, 2020

Rightfully, her misbegotten ploy backfired, earning her worldwide contempt from people like George Takei and model Chrissy Teigen:

“This is a new level of moronic and entitled,” actor George Takei tweeted.

“Proud of the healthcare workers who threw her out!,” tweeted model Chrissy Teigen.

Putting things into perspective, as I indicated in a recent post, it is my sense that the vast majority of Canadians are behaving responsibly during this pandemic. Nonetheless, this must be asked: What are we to do with those who are too selfish or benighted to act as responsible citizens in this pandemic?

The fact that this question even has to be posed irks me to no end and, quite honestly, does little to reduce my innate cynicism about our species. My own feeling is that simply refusing service to the selfish is the best response, but unfortunately, that does not address how to stop such individuals from spreading the virus.

The Toronto Star offers this from sexologist Jill McDevitt:

Scrolling through Instagram recently, she saw post after post raging against people not wearing masks. She found herself shaking her head. Public shaming didn’t make people practise safer sex, either, she said.

“We’ve already tried this with condoms, and it’s going to fail,” she said. “They might deserve to be shamed, I don’t know. But if we’re talking strategy, (shame) doesn’t work.”

While condoms in some form have been around for thousands of years, it wasn’t until HIV began to spread in the early 1980s that they became a matter of urgent public health policy, and advocates have learned a lot of lessons since then, she says.

The big one is that you can’t judge people into changing their behaviour, she said. “It’s going to make them feel more and more validated that people don’t understand whatever they feel is their particular reason why they don’t want to wear one or feel like they can’t wear one,” she said.

McDevitt also suggests some empathy is warranted here:

Much of the messaging has been “like, ‘Wear it and deal with it, otherwise, you’re rude and you don’t care about other people,’” McDevitt said. “But, can we acknowledge and have some empathy for the fact that this is not pleasant for people?” She notes that condom companies have made major strides in fit and comfort in recent decades, which has helped.

Peer pressure clearly has a role to play as well:

... a recent trip to the post office gave her hope.

Although the office had a sign encouraging everyone to wear masks, it wasn’t required. When McDevitt walked in, the lineup was a sea of masks. But while she was waiting a man entered without one.

“He’s standing there and more people come in line behind him wearing masks, and he finally says, ‘Can you hold my spot so I can go and get a mask on? I don’t want to be the only one with out one.’”

Were I more magnanimous of spirit, I probably could readily endorse all of the above advice. As it is now, I feel more like giving those mask-refusing ninnies a good slap across the face.

Guess I need to work on my anger issues, eh?

UPDATE: Apparently, Letitia Montana is still defiant. As a Canadian, this makes me feel deeply ashamed:

Letitia Montana is back. Here with groups MAD- Mother’s Against Distance, and Hugs Over Masks. On Day #1 of Toronto’s ‘mandatory’ mask order, the group of app. 40 boards/travels on the TTC via subway, mask-free. #topoli #onpoli pic.twitter.com/JkigQ4k3uv

— Cristina Tenaglia (@cristina_CP24) July 7, 2020

A Much-Needed Perspective

I don't know about you, but I have always felt deeply uneasy about fervid professions of patriotism, especially the kind that Americans are given to. Their earnest hands over their hearts, their shedding of tears upon hearing the national anthem, their stout professions of "My country, right or wrong," have always made me wonder about their capacity for critical thinking, self-reflection and humility.

In the following, 'the greatest country in the world' gets a much-needed reality check from Colin Kapernick:

Black ppl have been dehumanized, brutalized, criminalized + terrorized by America for centuries, & are expected to join your commemoration of “independence”, while you enslaved our ancestors. We reject your celebration of white supremacy & look forward to liberation for all. ✊🏾 pic.twitter.com/YCD2SYlgv4

— Colin Kaepernick (@Kaepernick7) July 4, 2020