COVID spikes: don't blame the kids!

I decided to copy and paste the text of this article from Global News, so they can sue me if they like. But this article makes some very valid points from the standpoint of young people who are now being blamed and even scapegoated for spiking numbers of COVID-19. The problem is much more complex than the media and the public claim. I have four teenaged grandkids who are experiencing tremendous frustration and have protested the confusing muddle of misininformation and conflicting advice from health care experts, rules that seem to shift and change every day.

These are KIDS, people. Like all of us, they're tired of this shit and don't see an end in sight. But they haven't yet gained the maturity to take the long view, and neither have many adults, who have no excuse and should be setting a better example. These young people are missing the milestones of their coming of age, a situation that could affect them for the rest of their lives. What they are experiencing is real grief, not just youthful rebellion. And yes, bar owners should not stand there smoking a cigarette and ringing up the cash register. If they see COVID violations, it is their responsibility to close up shop IMMEDIATELY and stay that way until it's truly safe to re-open.

HEALTH
Here’s what B.C. youth have to say about the province’s coronavirus spike

By Simon Little Global News

Posted August 15, 2020 4:01 pm

A public health expert says telling younger survivor stories is much more effective in flattening B.C.'s curve.

As British Columbia faces a second wave of the coronavirus, youth in the province are speaking out about how they’re being affected by the pandemic.

It comes as new modelling shows that the recent surge in new COVID-19 cases is being driven largely by young adults, aged 20-39 years old.

READ MORE: Why one expert says B.C. fumbled its coronavirus message to young people

The issue has prompted the province to redouble its efforts to communicate with youth, including recruiting social media influencers, and calling on celebrities to add their voices to the campaign.

CKNW Radio’s Lynda Steele Show spoke to some of B.C.’s youth, who say their voices aren’t being heard in the debate.

Life on pause

Olivia Barbieri of Surrey says youth are being bombarded with “exhausting” messages about staying safe during the pandemic.

The 20-year-old understands the concern, but argues that older adults also need to recognize that her demographic is being uniquely impacted by the virus.

“There are some events in certain stages of life — like weddings, graduation, like having different study plans — that are very unique to these times of our lives,” she said.

“It’s really hard, especially as young people, to be like — okay, well our parents and everyone else have had these opportunities, so it’s hard to be like, okay, this isn’t happening for us.”

Barbieri, a third-year university student, was supposed to go to the Netherlands for a semester abroad this September. That has now been scrapped.

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She’ll now be studying online instead.

But she says many of those cases don’t involve giving up once-in-a-lifetime opportunities.

“I’ve been struggling,” she said. “You know, I would be packing up, I would be getting on a plane.”

Barbieri says she understands that all age groups have had to make sacrifices during the pandemic.

Back to school fears

Burnaby’s Ervin Cadiz, 16, is slated to head back to school next month, and says he doesn’t want to go back unless he can do it online.

“It’s upsetting to be forced back into school when the government has told us to keep our bubbles and contacts small,” he said.

“I followed all the precautions and guidelines set by health care officials ever since quarantine happened. So why is it now that we’re being put in groups larger than 50?”

Protesting B.C’s back-to-school plan

Cadiz said he’s worried he’ll be regularly exposed to large groups of people at school who may or may not have been following precautions, and will have to rely on transit daily to get there.

He worries he could come in contact with the virus, and bring it home to his family.

“It’s like we’re being given this ultimatum. Risk getting your parents sick, risk getting your relatives sick, or don’t go to school and get the education that you need,” he said.

Mixed messages

Tanysha Klassen, 24, of New Westminster says the province’s youth aren’t getting a consistent message from officials.

Klassen says she’s been working from home during the pandemic, wearing a mask and limiting her trips out for essentials, such as groceries.

But she says the way the province has reopened has suggested to young people that going out is fine.

READ MORE: Coronavirus exposure reported on 2 nights at Vancouver nightclub

“Things like restaurants and bars and nightclubs have been given the go-ahead to open up by the provincial health officer,” she said.

“Then we’re getting these announcements every day with the cases going up, saying that these are often coming from bars and nightclubs. And then we hear the media blaming it on young people because young people are the ones that go to these places.”

Klassen said it’s unfair to pin those new cases on youth when it’s the responsibility of bar operators to ensure safety protocols are in place and being followed.

She said if those establishments aren’t doing enough, it’s up to the province to crack down on them for breaking the rules.

“It seems like young people are just following the rules,” she said. “If people shouldn’t be going to bars and nightclubs, then they shouldn’t be open.”

Getting tougher?

Shumail Javed, a 29-year-old from Burnaby, says the province should have taken a clearer and tougher line in its messaging from Day 1.

He says he’s seen crowding at “party places” such as the beach and few people wearing masks.

“Maybe all people from different segments of society should have come together, form a digital campaign that could have helped people understand this,” he said.

“Make sure that it was simple, strictly like wearing face masks. Or enforcing fines in the party places like Kelowna or Tofino.”

Javed said the messaging around masks, in particular, has been too casual, leaving many people to feel like the pandemic had eased back to business as usual.

He said the province has also failed to open up more outdoor spaces and activities where people could congregate and have fun safely, prompting people to head back to bars and clubs.

I! CUT! MY! OWN! HAIR!!

I! CUT! MY! OWN! HAIR!

It was madness, I know. But it made me even more mad to look in the mirror  at the sticking-out-in-every-direction MESS which could not be combed, styled or even flattened down. 

I had a razor comb (not scissors, God forbid) so began carefully, gingerly thinning out the flapping wings at the back. Gradually I grew more bold as the bits of hair accumulated in the sink. Hey, why not – go for broke! It can’t look any worse, can it?

 When I thought I had taken off enough, I ran downstairs, all excited, and said to Bill, “Notice anything different about me”? He looked at my face, then at my blouse, and said, “Yeah?” and I said “WHAT DO YOU MEAN you don’t  see anything different!” and he made a “shrug” expression with his mouth and said, “You look nice.” 

Then I made him take my picture, which he never does because I hate it. This mad impulse came after I read a four-page manifesto from my stylist (likely a generic one from Health Canada or somewhere) which basically described the salon as a police state. The tone of it was: things will never be the same, and you will never enjoy a trip to the stylist again. So I thought: how long is this going to be, and how could it look any worse than it does now? 

I don’t think it does – I think it looks better – my head is lighter – and though I’m definitely greyer, I can more or less look at myself without alarm and have SOME hope I can keep it in shape until, gowned, masked, in full hazmat suits, my stylist and I will meet again, don’t know where, don’t know when.

SHEAR genius: Dublin sheep farmer cuts his own hair

FLATTEN THE CURVE!

Canada turns the corner. . . we hope.

"What the HELL is going on?" A weird, surreal time

I was going to do a lot of ranting today, mainly because certain people in my life have said things like, "Well, you can't do anything about it" and "it will just have to run its course". And yes, logically, both of those things are true.

But there is this.

To me, the "can't do anything about it", shrugging-off view is kind of like coming up to a weeping person at a funeral and saying, "Crying won't bring him back." To ME, usually out of step with pretty much everything, that only makes it worse, but some apparently believe they are offering a dose of logic and sound advice. Those who weep must just snap out of it, or stand corrected. It's the only view that makes any sense.

Even close friends of mine, or people who WERE close friends of mine, say I am overreacting and it's a waste of energy - in the category of "shrug - let's get on with it", and I do not find that helpful. 

No doubt MANY will say my "approach" is too negative, doomsday thinking, etc. and I should just wait for it to pass. "We're all in this together," people continually say, but I feel profoundly isolated and alone. I'm just not chipper enough, and my sleeves aren't rolled up enough to suit everybody.

And where is the leader of the free world? Not on any known planet. And WHAT is he but a complete idiot with a low IQ, a sociopath who only knows how to make money, a man who contradicts himself wildly every day, a man who campaigned on "How I love the undereducated!" - and WON. But if he rides out the curve of this pandemic without dying, I know he will win again. It's the American way.

I only complain now because the States continues to do appalling things, and no doubt this Easter Sunday will bring the usual public mega-church services, when stats are showing that up to 3/4 of people who go to those mass meetings come back infected. "But that's the STATES, Margaret!" (This is, of course, a separate universe, a separate reality.) "We're relatively safe up here. What are you so concerned about?" 

I've been told it's no good to obsess about statistics, which are just numbers. Why do I do it? It doesn't make my life any better, DOES IT?  But maybe, just maybe, I'd rather die of overreaction than be deadened by a world view that leaves people less than human, and worse than dead.

HOLY SHIT! Socio-pastor finally arrested

I was so GODDAMN happy to see that this creep, Rodney Howard-Browne, was arrested for holding his GODDAMN mass church services in violation of every moral law in the human condition. Many of these evangelicals/Pentecostals are giving services practically daily, with anywhere from 500 to 1000 people crammed together in sweaty pews in swampy places like Florida and Louisiana. This guy goes way back (I've posted about him before), back to the Toronto Blessing phenomenon where congregants screamed and flailed and threw themselves on the floor. It spread like a contagion, and this guy was at the forefront before he mysteriously disappeared from Canada. Since then he has popped up again to spread the manure of his beliefs, preaching here, healing there, dancing heavily and clumsily, and generally making an ass of himself, and THAT'S OK, but what he's doing in the States is the most immoral thing I have ever heard of. I would call him a socio-pastor. Below is a brief excerpt of the NBC News article that had me cheering for the first time in an eternity:

(YES, IT’S TRUE! Pentecostal pastor Rodney Howard-Browne (shown here in the throes of the Holy Ghost) has just been arrested for being a crazy, immoral, totally selfish dick-head. Here’s the story:)

“A controversial Florida pastor who refused to stop holding packed church services, in violation of coronavirus restrictions, was arrested Monday by a local sheriff who said the preacher was putting his followers’ lives at risk.
Pastor Rodney Howard-Browne was booked on misdemeanor charges of unlawful assembly and violation of public health rules after flouting social distancing orders at The River at Tampa Bay church.
Howard-Browne—an ally of President Donald Trump—has been an outspoken opponent of social distancing requirements, claiming his church has machines that can stop the coronavirus and vowing to personally cure the state of Florida himself.
'His reckless disregard for human life put hundreds of people in his congregation at risk, and thousands of residents who may interact with them this week, in danger,' Hillsborough County Sheriff Chad Chronister said at the press conference. Howard-Browne did not respond to an immediate request for comment.”

New rules of social distancing

 

Love in the time of COVID

A Trevor Noah comedy video asked viewers what their favorite song about the end of the world is (cheery thought, no?). I immediately thought of this one, then realized I had no idea who sang it. It was one Skeeter Davis, and I was very pleasantly surprised to find out how much I liked it. The song is simple, beautifully sung, and affecting in a way that reaches across the barriers of time. 

I don't even think I've heard this since its heyday in the '60s. This came out when I was eight years old, so I apprehended it with eight-year-old sensibilities - in other words, it probably hardly registered at all. But now I hear it with new ears. It's not about anything apocalyptic, of course (though one's first major heartbreak might fit into that category). Otherwise it would be too much, no matter how well-sung or heartfelt. What made me a bit queasy is that all the comments were posted in the last few hours, on a video uploaded in 2011! 

People have the end of the world on their minds. Comedy shows are becoming a bit forced, and more than a bit distasteful. I don't want to hear the "lighter side" of coronavirus, with visions of truckloads of dead bodies in Italy with nowhere to bury them. There isn't one, and that's final.

I am also miffed at all the "six simple steps to feel better under quarantine" and "how to improve your attitude" and "look on the bright side". Walking outside will soon be prohibited, so perhaps we will just have to walk in place. People with treadmills are prescient, obviously.

I don't know, I find myself hunkering down in a way which is sometimes scary, and sometimes almost enjoyable. I feel grateful that we have enough - so far, anyway. That my people, my close family are OK. I care about the world, and it is aching now, and infected. It's hard to drive the thoughts out of my head. I had a dream I was visiting with Bill's brother and his wife - we hadn't seen them in more than ten years - then suddenly jumped back, realizing I had to keep a "social distance" between us.

Seems to me the world is alienated enough, with technology standing in for human contact. But at the moment, it's the best we can do. Without it, the word wouldn't be getting out. It STILL isn't, not sufficiently to flatten the curve as we are expected to do. 

My office is now my cocoon, my doll haven and my troll village, Trollandia, a state of mind as much as a collection. They relax me palpably, and I don't question that. We were amazed and a little overwhelmed at how crowded Lafarge Lake was today, though for most people it's the only avenue left for any sort of outing. The ducks were fed to bursting point. Kids ran around as if they hadn't run around in days. It was heartwarming - and a little scary.

I'm  posting cats and cherry blossoms, because I always do this time of year - but with a difference. When I post one of them on Facebook, suddenly everyone "likes" them, when NOBODY likes my stuff, period! It's because people are nearly desperate for something that will make them feel good, if even for a moment. This led to a truly nasty little article about HOW TO AVOID COMFORT-EATING in this time of cholera. It's a pandemic, folks. I can eat whatever the fuck I want with impunity, because soon it may turn to famine. 

These are ramblings only, and I never expected to make them, at 1:30 in the morning. I had a surgery planned for next month which will likely be postponed. I am concerned, very, about my daughter's colleague, a wonderful reporter named Michelle Brunaro, who underwent months and months of chemotherapy and overcame Stage 4 breast cancer. She came back to work and was reporting on stories, almost like before. But today I thought about that, and the bottom dropped out. She should not be going out to work. Not at all. Even my daughter, totally fried with stress and nearly hysterical with anxiety, is penned at home, stuck to her computer, trying to stay employed.

I hope Michelle can go home now, stay home, stay safe. It was really good to see her again, but it was plain she was not quite the same. Her hair was short, her face a little puffy. I just hope this thing passes her by. I think of that weird thing in the Bible where somebody marked the doorway with an x in blood - could that be it? This sounds insane! - so that the pestilence would pass that house by.

I had better stop now, since I do not plan to edit this AT ALL and want to go to bed. This is a mixed-up time, and emotions are turned upside-down. People are doing weird things, like putting up their Christmas lights (!), claiming it will help to spread good cheer in the time of cholera. (I don't mean literal cholera, folks, I'm referring to the title of that novel.) If I saw Christmas lights and inflatable Santas now, it would weird me out so badly that I'd want to run home again. But that's what people are doing. To me, it's desperation: we'd better put our lights up NOW, because come December. . . Maybe that's not what they mean. But to me, Christmas lights in the first bloom of spring can mean only one thing. The world has been turned on its head, and it may be a very long time before it rights itself again.

Trump's answer to coronavirus: "Just get a flu shot!"

PANDEMIC: the fragile web

Most of my writing energy lately seems to go into the comments sections of YouTube and Facebook. I think it's a way to get my thoughts together, figure out how I feel about things, and sometimes even discharge some static in my brain. 

This is a response to one of those"Ask a Doctor!" videos of which there are so many thousands. These "doctors" do not need to show any credentials, but in this age of anxiety people are hungry for accurate information and advice. This one, like almost all of them, began with, "OK! Is this coronavirus likely to affect you? No, it isn't." 

He then spends eleven minutes recounting what is actually going on in the world, contradicting his initial statement in the space of a few seconds. People are  hungry for reassurance and crave some sort of de-escalation of their emotions, but many are being told they're silly and alarmist to be so concerned. It's minimizing, a form of denial which is often seen as healthy. It isn't. In this case, it may even be deadly. 

Here is what I had to say about all this in response to a particularly infuriating video, and it is NOT a popular view. It's not a polished essay, though I will say it took me more time to write than a hundred badly-spelled Presidential tweets. 

"I find this video not just misleading, but infuriating. How can you say "don't worry, this won't affect you", then in the next SECOND say there are cancellations and shortages everywhere, with even necessities becoming less and less available? People are blandly being told, "Oh, just be patient and wait until the store restocks their shelves." But warehouses are closing, factories are closing, and we are finding out just how dependent we all are on overseas sources for everything, including medical supplies and food. All our vegetables and fruit are imported at this time of year. ALL. But we need to keep up our nutrition, right? Can't live on macaroni (if we are lucky enough to have it).

But who has thought of that? We haven't had time to think.

People are having to cancel their weddings here. But that's just what immediately comes to mind. Yes, it's affecting ALL of us, A LOT. That doesn't mean "we'll all die". It means that these reassuring, "informative" videos by doctors do more harm than good, because they are so misleading. My doctor sent me an email saying they can't test everyone, not to come in unless you're really sick, and that "this story is changing moment by moment" so she could give us no meaningful projections at all, which is at least honest. 

If what we're seeing is overreaction, think of this: how are parents going to get child care? MANY day cares have had to close at a time when they are needed most. Will parents lose their jobs from just not being able to come to work? Will they get paid leave (almost surely not)? How many small businesses have already died from this, leading to still more unemployment? How will families with their income cut off get food in communities where it is already scarce?  The more I think about this, the more dire it seems. 

My daughter, a hard-headed, seasoned TV news reporter for 15 years, phoned me in a panic yesterday to say the local Superstore had a lineup of carts that stretched all the way around the store, and the shelves were almost bare. I have never known her to react like this, EVER, about a story she is covering. Today she stated we will very likely be on lockdown within a week, like most major cities in Europe. She has her finger on the pulse of world events as no one else I know, and she's finding it hard to sleep at night. Every time I get an update from her, my stomach turns over.

We live in a fragile web, and it is seriously breaking down worldwide. These "informative", "reassuring" videos, designed to keep silly old people like us from developing ridiculous, outlandish ideas, do MUCH more harm than good, because they are not realistic. People are shoulder to shoulder at O'Hare airport, fresh in from Europe and statistically MUCH more likely to be carrying and spreading the disease, many with no symptoms at all. The three feet of social distance and finger-wagging admonishments to "wash your hands" are like trying to put out a forest fire by pissing on it.

Are we not supposed to consider what will happen next? How are people on multiple meds (like me) going to be sure they can even get a refill? Many, if not most drugs are made overseas. Pharmaceutical warehouses are closing down everywhere, as are factories. Shipping is not happening. Whole countries are shutting down. What about deaths from people not being able to get their medications? My guess is that it will lead to a second wave of fatalities. The horrible, insensitive jokes people always make about psychiatric patients "going off their meds" are going to be a lot less funny to those assholes when it actually happens and people's mental health collapses. It might even happen to "someone you know". 

In Italy, a developed country with a fine health care system, the death rate of those infected is now 7%, and HUNDREDS died in the space of one day. Many people quote flu deaths as being many times higher. No. Flu deaths are approximately one tenth of one per cent of those infected. (I had to check that with my daughter, thinking it was one per cent.) Seven is just a little bit higher, and worldwide it is well over three. Those numbers are  only going in one direction.

If you're passing through O'Hare airport right now, as we speak, it is almost literally a petri dish for potentially fatal disease. If ONE person says, "oh, you're obsessed with this" and "you need to find something to do with your time", fuck them. I am sick of seeing these remarks every time I post a literate and carefully thought-out comment.  But there are worse things going on. What I hate most of all are pandemic experts getting up there at press conferences and urgently saying, "Don't touch your face!", then MOMENTS later licking their fingers, swiping their hands across their noses and rubbing around and around their mouths. One smoothed back her hair, her hand swiping across her face, AS SHE SPOKE. 

Another queasy moment came when I saw an item on the news about your phone being nothing but a tiny toilet constantly contaminated by your nose and mouth. It should be cleaned many times a day, as often as you use it. How to do this? "Just take a disinfectant wipe. . ." Oh yes. From that empty shelf over there! This is a sort of entitled "cake-ism", a feeling we'll always have a wipe handy because we. . . because we always have, haven't we? The thought that those literal billions of wipes should be saved for medical purposes never enters anyone's mind.

The truth is, we don't know what is happening here. And we don't know what WILL happen. Lack of information is the most stressful thing there is, and the human brain is wired to fill in the gaping hole because it abhors a vacuum. But constant reassurances that it "won't affect us" and admonishing people for their silliness is WRONG. Saying "just wash your hands" as a sort of magic charm is bullshit, and I am tired of all those earnest videos showing me how to do it. I predict the statistics quoted in this comment are already obsolete. It's not either/or (a choice between panic and denial). We need to be realistic, stay open, change our perceptions as well as our habits, and stop reassuring ourselves and each other that everything is going to be just fine. It won't. My hope is that we will, somehow or other, as we have with everything else, get through it. But we can't even be sure of that yet."

COVID-19: the new etiquette