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As my friend said, maybe you shouldn’t eat things that have mothers. Here in the Comox Valley, I am brushing up on my East Asian geography and reminding myself of the epidemiological terms I learned over forty years ago. The new coronavirus (COVID-19) epidemic has got my attention.

The etymology of Epidemiology comes from three Greek words epi, meaning on or upon, demos, meaning people, and logos, meaning the study of – the study of what befalls a population. 

As you all know by now, this Epidemic started because a novel agent (COVID-19) or a change in the virulence of an existing virus and susceptible hosts (humans via an intermediary species via bats) were present in adequate numbers. The  outbreak of the flu-like symptoms caused by the RNA virus, COVID-19 in Wuhan, Hubai China is linked to a large seafood and a live animal market, suggesting animal-to-person spread of the virus similar to SARS and MERS

The virus is transmitted by direct contact or coughing and sneezing and the pathogenicity of the agent is severe enough to cause an infection rate that is high enough for further human-to-human propagation of the virus occurs. Each infected person can spread the virus to three or four other others.

There are many unknowns. Can surfaces that are contaminated by infected people can infect others? How long can the virus stay infectious or can it be transmitted by other bodily fluids for example vomit, urine, feces or breastmilk? Is it transmitted by droplet nuclei? These are the residue of dried droplets of infectious agents that remain suspended in air for longer periods or blown over greater distances than the wet droplets from coughing or sneezing.

 The calculations for the risk of getting the virus or the attack rate are confounded by the unknown number of minimally symptomatic persons or those who are asymptomatic (a carrier) or convalescent – those who have had the virus but may still be spreading it.

The incubation or latency period, the time interval from exposure to the virus to the onset of symptoms is thought to be less than fourteen days based on information from the previous coronavirus infections, SARS and MERS.

COVID-19  may be asymptomatic or only cause mild symptoms. Mild symptoms may occur in as high as 80% of those infected but it is hard to put numbers on it – the data are changing hourly and there is no accurate denominator. (the true number of the uninfected) The severe flu-like symptoms or pneumonia, respiratory failure, other multiple organ failures and death seem to be occurring at rates of less than 20%.  

The transmission rates are unknown (see infection rate) but it makes sense that the sickest people would be most contagious – shedding the most virus. The virulence is unknown as health care centres are only seeing the sickest people. Critical to understanding both transmissibility and virulence is knowing definitively who is infected with COVID-19 and what if any other viral co-infections are present.

Based on overt data, the mortality is around 2-3% compared to about 0.1% for the flu. Death rates are higher in older and sicker people with other chronic diseases. The death rate may be a lot lower if there is a large undiagnosed population with mild or no symptoms.

Accurate testing for the virus requires enough high quality RNA sampling kits, appropriate swabbing of mouth and nose, storage, transport and analysis of the samples. These are all difficult variables to manage given the wide geographic spread of and high numbers of people possibly affected.

Symptomatic or COVID-19 positive patients are placed in isolation to prevent human-to-human contact between symptomatic and asymptomatic persons. Isolation is maintained until viral samples are negative. 

Quarantine is the isolation of potentially exposed but currently asymptomatic persons. The quarantining of a mixture of possibly asymptomatic but infected persons and uninfected persons in the setting of a cruise ship probably increased the risk of spreading the virus despite all the measures taken. 

Similarly, mandatory quarantine measures may have had the effect of widely transmitting the virus as the asymptomatic or mildly symptomatic persons, but also infectious chose to evacuate themselves further spreading the disease. There is nothing delicate about the imposition of quarantine restrictions and the martial measures required to maintain them. Smartphones are being used by local authorities to track the activities of quarantined Chinese citizens.

For COVID-19, the duration of quarantine is 14 days from the last date of exposure because 14 days is the longest incubation period seen for similar coronaviruses like SARS and MERS. 

Immunity to 2019-nCoV infection is not yet understood. Patients with the similar but more higher mortality MERS-CoV infection are unlikely to be re-infected shortly after they recover. It is not yet known whether similar immune protection will be observed for patients with 2019-nCoV infection.

There are no approved antivirals for the treatment of COVID-19 but trials are in progress with a combination of the antiviral agents, lopinavir and ritonavir. 

And in our global village, when does an epidemic become a pandemic – a large proportion of the population affected over geographically separated countries? As I look at the distribution maps in the New York Times, it seems that the “unaffected countries” are also the ones with the poorest health care resources to report or manage affected persons.

It has been the best of times and the worst of times with great cooperation of open source information that resulted in rapid genomic sequencing, on-going vaccine development and clinical trials of antiviral therapies. But then there is also the misinformation, racism, and the economic fallouts from cancelled business ventures, tourism, manufacturing and interrupted supply chains for all sorts of products including essential medical supplies.

Last week, when I tried to buy some alcohol-based hand sanitizer at a big chain drug store, I was told that they were sold out. Even the local pharmacy has This global event has reached my doorstep. A friend supposed that people are either stock-piling supplies or sending them to relatives or friends in need.

Things are changing so rapidly. I am finding the New York Times coverage, the CDC sites and this Lancet hub-spot most useful for reliable and current information.

But please try to keep perspective. Influenzas A and B have already caused more deaths this season that this new coronavirus.  The CDC estimates that so far this season there have been at least 26 million flu illnesses, 250,000 hospitalizations and 14,000 deaths from the flu. Get vaccinated annually!

And while you are at it, you may want to review this video of the CDC recommendations for hand hygiene. Remember that when properly used simple soap and water (adequate water availability is a huge issue in the developing world)  are more effective than hand sanitizer. 

At this time of year, I try to espouse the secular values of respect, humility, honesty, charity and forgiveness. And despite the allegedly cheery, oversized inflatable plastic snowmen, the strands of energy-smart twinkling lights and the shaggy tawdry garlands of maroon tinsel decorating the neighbourhood, I am shrouded in melancholic reflections surrounding distant family members and friends; gatherings that did or didn’t happen.

It’s the end of one year and the start of another. I undertake a somewhat un-compassionate self-examination of successes and failures in relationships. It’s a time of stocktaking. I have a fresh decade ahead of me to improve myself, to become more loving, kinder and more patient.

I’ve been thinking a lot about “staying in my lane”.  What does it mean exactly and is it a good strategy? The Merriam-Webster definition states:

“The phrase stay in your lane is used as a term of admonishment or advice against those who express thoughts or opinions on a subject about which they are viewed as having insufficient knowledge or ability.”

I wonder, who gets to decide what lane you are in?

My view of what is my lane is a nuanced and fluctuating thing. How do I know that I am in the right lane?

Often, three mornings a week, I am shrouded in the steaming scent of chlorine and the echoing splashes from swimmers in the six lanes at the local pool. I am a striving thrashing learner who is longing for the gentle athletic grace of the other talented and accomplished swimmers of the Master’s Swim Club. 

Lane Six is a new lane for me. I share it with several women and we all come to swimming from different backgrounds, with different compromising mid-life injuries and abilities. Here in Lane Six, we share the common goal of improving, being the best we can be. Is this the right lane for me? Will it be my lane next year? Will I learn to see my advancements rather than my deficiencies?

I do notice the effects the pain-free exercise is having on my brain and body. The rhythmic movements, the adrenaline surges and the moving meditation restore my clarity and concentration and provide the resiliency I may need to navigate the unknown chaos of the remainder of the day. I wonder if I am fixing, improving or simply maintaining my mind and body?

What is your lane is an evolving process. I would not have considered even trying Lane Six a few years ago. Rather than knowing what your lane is, I think it is more important to learn how to recognize an opportunity to try out a new lane.

And what about advice to others? Social media allows us to spout off ill-considered and poorly informed opinions to an audience we do not know and will never meet. Perhaps a bit of civility and restraint in reflex expression of opinion and criticism of others is indicated? It goes back to Franklin Covey and  “first seek to understand.”

So I wish you all well for the New Year.  My goals for the New Year and decade are to learn as much as I can in the lanes that I travel and I have to admit that perhaps I do dabble in too many lanes. I will try to dig deeper into the ones I am in.

Hello to you all. This is a quick post to let you know that notifications about new topics are now linked directly to the site and will come automatically from WordPress for each new posting. There won’t be any more notifications coming to your mailbox from Mailchimp.

I have a post from November 14th looking at racism and Ibram X Kendi’s latest book, How to be an Antiracist. If you have been following the Don Cherry story and our national reaction to his comments on Coaches Corner on November 11th, you may find my post interesting. Click on the blog to find it.

As always, thank you very much for your interest in and support of my writing. Happy reading and writing to you all.

Nearly sixty years ago, I received a Golliwog for Christmas. It was a large cloth black-face doll that I had seen in a toy store window that December. I desperately had wanted the brightly coloured doll that was dressed in a red felt jacket, black and white striped pants and a matching bow-tie. The doll had a tangle of black wool hair that was sculpted into an exuberant Afro. I was six and this was a enticing toy like a new princess doll or a teddy bear.

Cultures and attitudes change.  I now understand that my ignorance or lack of intent to denigrate racialized groups does not excuse my ownership of this toy. What was intended as an innocent doll is a crude and insulting caricature of a Black person. Over the last four decades, Golliwog imagery has been rightly relegated to history museums and cardboard boxes in basements.

It is important to realize that you can be an unintentional racist. Many of us are outraged when we are reminded by our children and peers that our comments or actions are racist. The frequent indignant retort is “I’m not racist. That’s not what I meant” and so on.

This leads me to Ibram X Kendi’s new book, How to be an Antiracist. The main premise of this book is that it is not enough to be un-racist. It is better to be an antiracist which requires more awareness and involvement.  

Mr Kendi is a thirty-seven-year-old author and Black historian who teaches at American University. He won the 2016 National Book Award for Nonfiction for his book Stamped from the Beginning: The Definitive History of Racist Ideas in America.

One of the compelling chapters in his latest book is his own recognition of his internalized racism toward Blacks. His indoctrination as a child by his family and culture to concepts that Black failure was personal and due to inherent traits such as laziness and criminality had framed his thinking. He thought that Black failures were due to personal shortcomings versus systemic subjugating policies. This is similar to the since retracted “Lean In” theory proposed to aspiring executive females explaining that their failings to succeed in the corporate world were personal, not systemic and could be overcome if only they would try harder.

Racism is a belief that race is the primary determinant of human traits and capacities. Racists believe that racial differences produce an inherent superiority of a particular race.

Racism is a result of both individual behaviours and systemic policies. Individual racism is behaviour based on internalized negative stereotypes and prejudices. Systemic racism is a result of policies designed to control, subjugate, assimilate or annihilate individuals based on racial difference. A racist sees difference as a deficiency where as an antiracist sees equality and a way to nurture difference among groups. A racist sees power and economic opportunity in exploiting difference. A racist blames people different from themselves for their own failures and hardships.

Mr Kendi offers several steps to examine and combat racism. Here are the steps for becoming an antiracist (slightly edited) from his book. (see pg. 226-7)

• Stop saying “I’m not racist.” Ask yourself, why are you being defensive?
• Examine and accept the definition of racist – someone who is supporting racist policies or expressing or acting on racist ideas
• Instead, look for and acknowledge the racist policies and ideas that you express.
• Examine the sources of your own racist ideas including negative stereotyping and prejudices – question your biases and look for systemic biases.
• Acknowledge the definition of an antiracist – someone who supports antiracist policies and expresses antiracist ideals.
• Stand up for antiracist power and policy in your spaces.
• Understand your racism needs to be intersectional. This means re-evaluating how you look at gender, religion, ethnicity, culture, sexuality, bodies, ages, economic class and others.
• Intervene when you are confronted by your own or others racist thoughts or actions.

Here in Canada, we are sometimes smug about the successes of our multicultural society. I think we can question this.

I ask you take a hard look at some of your thoughts about the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. Have you read them? Have you taken up any of the calls-to-action? What are your attitudes towards immigrants and minority religions? What about in the province of Quebec, where two-thirds of the population support the secularism bill that bans religious symbols in the public sector? 

What are your attitudes to other racialized or marginalized people –  your neighbours, your oral surgeon, your new colleague at work or the staff at the nail bar?

Are you accepting of cultural differences and traditions? How do you feel when you are talking to a woman wearing a hijab or a man wearing a turban? Do you participate in perpetuating negative generalizations about Syrians or Asians or others? If you are White have you reflected on your privileges? If you are male and White is there even more to acknowledge? Do you believe that your racial or cultural group is superior? Do you secretly believe that a man, a White man in particular would be more competent in a particular leadership situation? Are you nostalgic for the era of the Commonwealth and colonialist values?

Being an antiracist is an ongoing process requiring individual and institutional intervention. It requires reflection and acknowledgment of outmoded and dangerous stereotypes and prejudices. It requires the courage to speak out and possibly offend someone who has not considered that their comment or action is racist. Denying the rights of one individual puts the rights of all individuals at risk. When you choose to be antiracist, you are preserving your own dignity and respect for yourself. 

It is hard work not take an individual negative experience and generalize it to a group – from the singular “they do this” to the plural  “they do this”. It is easy to be seduced into a generalization – These type of people, this group of people” always do this – Othering (think of Don Cherry here)

Perhaps having a nice cup of tea and a re-reading of Dr Seuss’ The Sneetches might be a good way to reflect on some of these ideas. Note how Dr Seuss also understood the link between racism and capitalism. Racism is an exploitive for profit way for thinking.

Addendum: I started this post a few days before Don Cherry was fired from Coaches Corner and triggered another National discussion on racism. This piece has not been reviewed by a racialized reader and I apologise in advance if I have got something wrong and invite you to comment below.

Well if you are a Margaret Atwood acolyte, it has been a busy few weeks. Her new novel, The Testaments was released in September and resulted in record Canadian sales. The Independents and the box stores are loaded with lime green and black piles of her book.  It’s a page-turning stand-alone story but is also the long-awaited sequel to The Handmaid’s Tale which she wrote in 1985.

This year, I was in Halifax and her reading of The Testaments at the Halifax Central Library was immediately sold out. We gathered around the smart TV and watch the Live Streaming of the interview. She was her usual erudite, irreverent and funny self.  And remember, this is a woman doing a gruelling international book tour whose husband, Graeme Gibson recently died in September when she was in London. Yes, I am a shameless fan.

Her book is a testament to the subversive powers of the oppressed. My favourite character and this may be generational bias was, of course, Aunt Lydia. In particular, one of the sections that rang true for me was addressing generational privilege around page 287.

“struggles had ground off the softness that might have once been there.”

It is the burden of forebearers to be judged by their followers by the measures that are available to the followers. Perhaps we pre-internet, older feminists are searching for a little recognition and gratitude for the paths we have smoothed for subsequent generations of women? It is hard to be grateful for unknown experiences but more respect and tolerance and seeking to understand intergenerational differences might be more useful than criticism.

There are few other female contemporary writers with such knowledge of Christian scripture, its literary importance and how it can be interpreted and distorted. For every dictate, there is a contradiction. She likes to play with these conflicts and develops them in her three main characters. Just as I had finished the breathless reading of this page-turner and recovered from the announcement of the 2019 Nobel Prize winner for literature, (not Atwood) when the 2019 Booker Prize winners were announced. I have posted a Flash Fiction piece below that I wrote a while back about an imaginary Nobel Prize Literature Award winner.

This is the third time that the Booker judges have awarded a shared prize. Bernadine Evaristo is Atwood’s co-winner with her work, Girl, Woman, Other. This is Atwood’s second Booker.  She first received the prize in 2000  for the Blind Assassin.

I attended a few readings at the inaugural The AfterWords Literary Festival in Halifax and look forward to going again next year. The Festival is supported by the independent book store, Bookmark. 

On a historical note, I visited the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic where there are displays of the marine disaster trifecta: The Franklin Expedition, The Sinking of the Titanic and the Halifax Explosion. 

Denman Island’s own Hilda Mary Lacon (neé Slayter) whose gravesite in the Camp Hill Cemetery and former house are included in the Titanic tour. She was a survivor of both the sinking of the Titanic (on lifeboat 13) and the Halifax explosion. And if you are interested in more explosions and local history you can watch the DuPont video about the 1958 engineered explosion that removed the twin-peaked Ripple Rock navigation hazard from the waters of Seymour channel between Campbell River and Quadra Island.

It is perfect weather for writing and attending all-candidates meetings. Hoping that you all exercise your right to vote next week.

 

She Goes to the Nobels

Hello!

The reporters keep pestering me with inane questions. I know it’s rude but I can’t take them seriously. I know that at most they have only skimmed a few pieces of my work.  I’ve acquired a few platitudes that keep them and myself contented.

 
        Yes, my childhood days in Ontario were influential. Yes, raising children and divorce were difficult. Writing is just a matter of instinct and hard work, lots of hard work. The best way you can become a writer, the only training is to read.

            You were right, those patent shoes did crush my toes but I didn’t dare scuff them off under the table. I was drowning in a sea of spectacled, paunchy greying men compressed into naphthalene-scented tuxedos, men who were accompanied by glossy, taffeta gowned, bejewelled companions.

            The banquet settings were astonishingly elaborate. There were six sets of cutlery and five different sizes of crystal goblets.  The dessert was a frothy fruity meringue thing.

As I was furtively adjusting the stretchy waistband of my gown, I noticed the gentleman seated beside me pick up the delicate gold teaspoon off the table and slip it into the pocket of his white waistcoat. How could he dare to do such a thing at the Nobel Prize dinner?

He introduced himself.  It was impossible to hear what he said over the loud conversations and the chinking and tinkling of all the glasses and china. My hearing aid packed it in during last night’s dinner.  I had forgotten to bring the little kit with all the supplies and extra batteries.

Physics, I think he said but then I remembered there was another fellow who was also physics…particles or something. He seemed to be at a loss for conversation particularly after I identified myself as a short-story writer from Canada. It was difficult for me to talk to him without staring at the food stains on his tie.

Then before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Did I just see you steal a teaspoon?”

He glared at me with his wide grey eyes from behind the smudged gold-rimmed spectacles that were propped beneath his two furrowed bushy white eyebrows.  

“ Didn’t you take one? Everybody does. They expect us to.”

Turning away from his stare, I flushed and stammered. “They do?”

I clutched the gold-stemmed crystal goblet and focused on the tiny bubbles rising up in the remainder of my champagne. We sat in silence while I worried about what I should talk to him about next.

I wondered whom Doris had sat beside when she attended? Did she steal a spoon?  And if she did, did she list it in her will for a particular grandchild? And what about Nadine or Toni? What did they do? And then I thought that perhaps I should like to keep a spoon too.

Can’t wait to get back home. See you then.

G.