Care, empathy and solidarity in a used-up world: Your job is trying to kill you, Adventures in public speaking and more

Listen to disabled people or get out of the way!

Photo by ian dooley on Unsplash

It continues to be a very busy time in my little corner of the academic librarian world. As such, this issue will be pretty brief in terms of commentary.

But fear, not. I’m still watching out for the best information and readings about Covid! 

As most have probably noticed, there is no paid subscription option for this newsletter. However, Substack does have an option where subscribers can pledge to subscribe “just in case” and a few kind subscribers have made that pledge. I very much appreciated the vote of confidence in what I’m doing here.  

What I’ve decided to do on a trial basis is to set up a “tip jar” on the Ko-fi platform. This will allow people to leave me a small gratuity. The tips start at $3.

I’m not anticipating a huge surge of income from using Ko-fi but whatever revenue I do end up with, I plan to spend on popular science books for this ongoing project and to support artists on Bandcamp. 

Will children inherit a used-up world? by Geoffrey P. Johnston / The Kingston Whig Standard 

SDG 3 commits the world to ensuring healthy lives and the promotion of well-being. Yet, SARS-CoV-2, the airborne virus that causes COVID-19, is spreading out of control around the world. COVID-19 can cause long COVID in children, leading to serious conditions, such as Type 1 diabetes, as well as heart, lung and cognitive problems.

How concerned is Save the Children that not enough is being done to make the air quality in schools safer?

“We are clearly concerned,” Djossaya responded. Citing UN General Comment No. 26, he said that Save the Children is calling upon governments “to invest in anticipatory actions across schools, across learning centres, so that children can really learn in a healthy environment.”

COVID Hasn’t Disappeared — But Empathy, Care and Solidarity Have by Tithi Bhattacharya  / Truthout  

In June, I finally get COVID. As does my daughter. Not because I did not take care, but because others did not.

My throat feels like a hundred knives are being plunged into it as I swallow. My temperature rises. Despite such morbid concreteness, COVID now is a phantom disease. It has become, thanks to capitalist institutions, a matter of personal belief and choices.

When one asks for the minimum protections, even the most sensible individuals shrug and say, “but for how long?” Those who ask, those who mask, are made to feel that we are demanding impossible things.

COVID has yielded the most stunningly pervasive gaslighting phenomenon in recent history. Willing and eager governments worldwide are abandoning citizens to a debilitating disease by one simple trick: saying it no longer exists.

COVID-19 rampant among musicians despite “end of the pandemic” by  / World Socialist Web Site

A remarkable number of musicians—from Ringo Starr to Harry Styles—have canceled concerts and other appearances in the past year due to acknowledged cases of COVID-19 or, more frequently, due to undisclosed illnesses. While governments have averted their eyes from the COVID pandemic, halting its reporting of cases and other crucial data, observable phenomena such as an epidemic of canceled shows demonstrate that the deadly, highly contagious disease is still very much with us.

COVID-19 is Killing Performers by Charles A. Waltz / Medium 

COVID-19 reinfections are killing performers.

Right now.

The combination of performing at large events, and a lifestyle that requires frequent travel and face-to-face contact with the public, means that performers are getting infected with COVID-19 again and again. Before vaccines were available, many performers died from acute COVID-19 infections. Now, performers are less frequently dying from acute infections, but more are developing Long COVID, or experiencing adverse health events as a result of COVID reinfections, leading to canceled events, retiring from performing due to new-onset chronic illnesses, and even sudden deaths.

I know. I maintain the google doc that color codes COVID-19’s devastating effects on performers. Yellow for canceled events. Orange for severe or new-onset chronic illnesses. Red for deaths.

You might be asking why this narrative hasn’t coalesced in the news. One answer is that, for a variety of reasons, including stigma, insurance not covering canceled events due to COVID-19, and a failure of public health authorities to correlate COVID-19 infections with new-onset chronic illness and sudden deaths, the illnesses and deaths are not always linked to COVID-19 infections. Some performers have confirmed the link between COVID and their illness, like actress Alyssa Milano, athletes Avery Henry and Mark Bavaro, and Hailey Bieber, who had a “mini stroke” following a COVID-19 infection. Others have canceled events due to “illness” or a “mystery virus,” or have developed new-onset chronic illnesses.

A-list musicians are becoming seriously ill: Lorde has a debilitating, new-onset autoimmune condition, Billie Eilish was “suffering terribly” from an illness while touring, and Harry Styles required supplemental oxygen while performing. And an increasing number of performers are simply dying. Many passed away in the period before vaccines, like Broadway actor Nick Cordero, but as we are discovering that vaccines do not prevent the cumulative damage from COVID-19 infections, now young and relatively healthy people, like WWE wrestler Bray Wyatt, are dying following complications from the effects of COVID.

California healthcare industry had highest COVID-19 death rate of all occupations early in pandemic by Mary Van Beusekom / CIDRAP

In the first 2 years of the COVID-19 pandemic, Californians who worked in healthcare, "other services," manufacturing, transportation, and retail trade industries had higher death rates than the professional, scientific, and technical industries, which had some of the lowest rates, finds a study published today in the Annals of Epidemiology….

Healthcare saw the highest relative death rate earlier in the pandemic, which declined over time, while other services, utilities, and accommodation and food services saw substantial increases in MRR in later waves.

Gatwick airport cancels more than 160 flights and imposes cap amid air traffic control staff shortages by Sami Quadri, Josh Salisbury, Miriam Burrell / Evening Standard

The south London airport said it would be forced to cancel 164 flights while the limit is in place until October 1, in a bid to avoid even more cancellations and delays.

The airport said it would be limited to 800 flights per day until then, with the hardest-hit day set to be Friday.

It said this was caused by sickness among flight control staff.

The UK’s provider of air traffic control services, NATS, said 30 per cent of its staff were unavailable, with some having contracted Covid-19.

Strike actions by 75,000 Kaiser Permanente healthcare workers to begin in early October by Benjamin Mateus / World Socialist Web Site 

It should be noted that the World Health Organization (WHO) estimated that by May 2021, between 80,000 to 180,000 healthcare workers had been killed by the coronavirus. COVID-19 continues to spread uncontrolled across communities and in healthcare settings, where all masking and testing has been essentially discontinued. This means that the overworked workforce, stretched thin, continues to face the perils posed by reinfections and the risks of passing on these infections, particularly to frail and vulnerable patients.

Liz Grigsby, a respiratory therapist at Kaiser Roseville with 26 years with KP, recently gave a personal account to the Sacramento Bee of one of her harrowing experiences during the pandemic. She said, “A mother, she’s pleading for her life. She’s battling COVID just after giving birth. She had a desperate plea. ‘Please, Please Liz, don’t let me die!’ I worked with her for several days. She sought comfort and connection to a familiar face to anchor her during her fight. And that face was mine. I made a promise to her to stay by her side, to come back and provide the support she desperately needed it. But the painful reality of short staffing prevented me from delivering that promise.”

Long Covid 'one of the most serious' impacts of pandemic on nurses by Louise McEvoy / Nursing in Practice

Short staffing meant nurses were looking after ‘significant’ numbers of patients which ‘far exceeded’ the nurse-to-patient ratio, she said, emphasising that ‘this was a patient safety risk’, with nurses ‘concerned a patient could deteriorate or die in one of the rooms without them knowing’.

Thousands of nurses worked with ‘inadequate [personal protective equipment], on understaffed wards, with inadequate training, risk assessments or support, while their own physical and mental health suffered,’ Ms Morris KC said, ‘causing them to hit breaking point’ and ‘doubt whether they were able to continue a career in nursing’.

She added that ‘the long-term failure by successive governments to invest in the nursing workforce meant health and care services were chronically under-resourced to deal with the pressures of the pandemic’.

Number of workers taking sick leave hits 10-year high by Phillip Inman / The Guardian

The Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development (CIPD) analysed sickness absence and employee health among 918 organisations representing 6.5 million employees, with 76% of respondents reporting they had taken time off due to stress in the past year.

Recurring cases of Covid-19 and long Covid were another trigger for workers to take time off while the cost-of-living crisis was cited by many as a reason behind sick leave.

Hamilton school board ices reduction goal as sick days hit new high by Richard Leitner / The Hamilton Spectator

Hamilton’s public school board is pausing an initiative that set targets for gradually reducing the average number of employee sick days after seeing absences hit a new high in the past school year.

Adventures in Public Speaking by Alice Wong / Disability Visibility Project

I’m going to be completely blunt Dean Cozier and say the public health community has effed over high risk, immunocompromised, older, and disabled people. Not just now during the pandemic but way before. We already have so many skills and lived experiences about being isolated, protecting oneself and each other, the eugenic nature of our society, and how the public health system and medical industrial complex was going to gaslight and dismiss people who present new symptoms as they had covid or long covid. And this is what enrages me to this day, the fact that we are considered expendable with little to offer because our society centers and worships normative bodies, whiteness, and youth. In a recent interview Dr. Anthony Fauci said to BBC, quote, “Even though you’ll find the vulnerable will will fall by the wayside, they’ll get infected, they’ll get hospitalized, and some will die. It’s not going to be this tsunami of cases that we’ve seen.” End quote. F U Anthony Fauci.

Listen to Disabled People or Get Out of Our Way by kate klein & griffin epstein / Midnight Sun

In interviewing union representatives for our Briarpatch article, one thing that became obvious is that many conventional mechanisms for pursuing labour justice have become almost impossible to use when it comes to COVID-19. It’s very difficult to prove without a shadow of a doubt that you got COVID in one particular location, so workplace health and safety claims have been getting rejected even when transmission has happened at work. People often can’t get workplace accommodations unless they have a medical diagnosis for themselves, which means they won’t be entitled to access to remote work – let alone universal masking – if they, for example, live or are in close community with somebody who is immunocompromised. It’s hard for union members to file a grievance related to COVID when everything in the collective agreement was designed for pre-pandemic times. A recent ruling by a California court that workers cannot sue over COVID-19 spread to their households may have a chilling effect on union organizing around COVID, even beyond the United States. It feels clear that unless labour organizers find new language and frameworks attuned to the present moment, workers will continue to be left inadequately protected. 

Never heard Wilson Pickett’s version of Hey Jude? The one with Duane Allman on guitar? You’re in for a real treat!

What are we even doing?

• Many parents not concerned about COVID-19 as children head back to class

• Despite rising COVID cases in Ontario, masks will not be mandatory in schools 

• She says her boss told her she can’t wear a mask, so she quit | CBC.ca

• Thunder Bay hospital stays with existing masking rules - TBNewsWatch.com

• Questions raised about radio silence from political, health leaders on COVID | iPolitics

• Seen on the red line this morning. COVID is surging and there are ads on the subway telling people to “forget” masks—despite overwhelming evidence that masks help prevent the spread of COVID. / Maya Chavez (@maya_chavez_) / X 

• Expected CDC guidance on N95 masks outrages health care workers