Son #3 comes home

Peony time!

My son just left this morning to return home. It was a very good visit, we seemed to be on exactly the same page as far as activity level and need for alone-time. I was pleasantly surprised at how good-looking he is becoming as he ages, I almost didn't recognize him when I went to pick him up at the airport. 

Mind you, that wasn't completely due to handsomeness. With his knitted cap, sunglasses and mask he looked like an alien. Towards the end of the week he talked about how much he was enjoying this and how sorry he was he hadn't booked a longer visit. After so many years he was afraid that a week was about as long as he could stand.

I bought tickets for us to go to a concert together at a local community hall. I thought it was a great concert, he was more critical. He thought the band's sound system and/or how the sound was being managed was lousy. Lousy enough that he didn't want to venture an opinion about how good the band actually was. 

Before we went into the hall we met some friends of mine and there was a lot of joking about how many friends/neighbours had Covid, how many last minute cancellations there were due to Covid. My son forgot his mask but I had two. We went in and shared a table with some more friends of mine, and they too joked about how many people they knew with Covid. Initially my son took has mask off to imbibe the drink he ordered, but quickly put it on afterwards. I asked him later about the fact he wore his mask for the entire concert when hardly anyone else (including me!) did.

He said, Are you kidding me? This place is a cesspool!

I had to admit he was right. The longer since the mask mandate was removed, the laxer we all got. The rate of infection and number of deaths have come down since April, but they are still much higher than previous waves. They say it is so bad here because we never got any herd immunity. We were so strict about the rules that we all stayed safe, but once the mandates were removed we all went a little crazy and ended up with one of the worst rates of infection in the whole country.

While here my son reconnected with an old friend. They hadn't seen each other in over a decade and a lot has happened in both their lives in the interim, so I think they were a little reluctant to meet since they didn't know if they still had a relationship. Turns out they very much did. They had several very long conversations while hanging out together and one of the things that came up was that neither could remember a time when they didn't know each other. They became friends before their memories kicked in. 

It's true, they were very young when they first met, and they only met because their parents were friends since before either of them were born. In spite of long periods living in different parts of the country, they had some remarkably similar life experiences. On his last night here the friend took him on a quick tour of the area, they hit several beaches and some other places, after dark. I thought that was pretty cool of the friend to do that.

My son was a little apologetic to me about how much time he was spending with his friend. I said, Don't worry, I'm not jealous. Spending an intense amout of time with anyone—even a beloved offspring—still takes its toll on me and I am happy for a bit of a break. I would have been very happy if he had booked a longer visit, but at the same time I don't know whether I would have had the stamina for it.

One morning he was up before me and he wanted to make coffee for me. But he took one look at my fancy espresso machine and decided otherwise. He referred to it as my Junior Chemistry Set that I call a Coffeemaker.

We had to be at the airport two hours before departure time, and it takes over an hour to drive to the airport. We had to be up at 6.00am and leave without breakfast. I was giving him directions (he drove), but normally he relies on Google for directions. I got distracted and we overshot the highway exit for the airport and had to drive an extra 25km to get back. I said something about there being highway signs but then realized that he probably never looks at the signs because he relies on Google to tell him. I am old school, I even keep a paper map of the province in the car.

So today I am so exhausted that I am just killing time till I can go to bed. Not so good at napping.

Crowsnest view

Many years ago, back in the '80s, I planted a dozen pine trees along the north edge of my property, but only two remain. When I moved back in 2010 there were three, but one of them showed signs of disease and I had it cut down before it infected the other two. 

At the tippy top of the one you see in the photo above, there is a crows nest. First time ever. I can't really see the nest, it just looks like a dark spot at the top of the tree, but there is always one crow up there and it calls pretty much incessantly. Yesterday I caught sight of "the changing of the guard," as one crow left and the other arrived. Whichever crow is not in the nest is very busy foraging.

Unfortunately I am having the roof redone this month, and that will be directly below the nest, probably just as the eggs are hatching. I don't know how that will go and I can't reschedule. I hope the crows don't get their knickers in a knot but manage to maintain the nest and nestlings in spite of the commotion. I will warn the roofers.

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I quit the Pacing program after the second session. The second session was run by a student OT as the first OT had left for unspecified reasons, and the third session was going to be run by another OT. Each session so far has consisted of an hour and a half or more of Powerpoint slides, and the third session OT sent an email with the slides for the session attached. 47 slides! I emailed back that that was way too stressful, and she responded that if this did not serve my needs I should phone to cancel my participation. I did that.

Who does that kind of thing?!? Even for healthy people at an in-person workshop an hour of Powerpoint is more than enough, and for unhealthy people using Zoom, an hour and a half is absolutely over the top. I used to teach the effective use of Powerpoint and other methods of information delivery, a twenty minute presentation is more than enough. I realize OTs are not trained in online teaching but, ... O.M.G.

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J came by yesterday and we took the cover off my truck and started her up. It was lovely to see it again, instead of a yellow blob in the driveway. The battery needed a bit of a kickstart but other than that the truck is fine. J is replacing the tires and rims on his truck next week, then he will give me his old rims and he will mount my new tires on them and the truck will be ready to go. He has lined up a buyer for my Mazda as well.

The Mazda is a kind of soccer-Mom minivan in nondescript grey, but it has run well through the winter and it transported Hapi everywhere after I sold my old truck, so I will kind of miss it. But having two vehicles in the driveway is inconvenient. The "new" truck (it's actually older than the Mazda) is a bit small which is a good thing and a bad thing. No extended cab so no big dogs can sit in it. But the roof of the cap on the box is low enough that I think I can manage to get my kayak on it by myself. I already figured out the method on the old truck and this one will actually be easier. Better be, the muscle wasting that has occured since I became ill is quite shocking.

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I ordered a daybed for my livingroom. My sofa is great for sitting on but not so much for lying on, and I do way more lying down than sitting up these days. I wanted a bed I saw on the IKEA website but they wouldn't deliver and going into the city to pick it up seemed daunting. I checked Walmart and Wayfair, their beds weren't as nice or as economical but they did deliver. 

In reading a lot of customer reviews I realized that all of these beds have to be assembled by the customer and assembling wooden beds appeared to be a very frustrating experience, no one mentioned frustration with the metal bed frames. So I looked at the metal beds and found one on Wayfair that I thought I could live with, at a reasonable price. They say it takes 30 minutes to assemble but all the customer reviews said it was more like 2 hours. No one wrote that it was frustrating, just that it was important to read the instructions carefully. I look forward to its arrival.

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I visited some friends earlier this week and it turned out they had Covid. So I was exposed, having walked in maskless without checking. I immediately left, went home and washed up as best I could (even a nasal rinse and salt water gargle! not that that would make a difference, but you never know) and then went grocery shopping to stock up in case I got it. Today is Day 3 after exposure, so far so good but I read that symptoms are not likely to appear before Day 3. According to the CDC in the US, I should test on Day 5, and if symptom-free test again on Day 7. So the next few days will be the critical ones.

I later talked to one of those friends on the phone; he said it was like a very bad cold. His wife got it first and she is already out and about, she had a mild case of it. He's still "under the weather." He advised me to stock up on ready-made food, that it's important to keep eating even though your appetite is gone. Since I am already ill, I don't want to guess how getting another bout of this will play out.

B got Covid in her nursing home, now the home is in lockdown. B is okay, I've talked to her a couple of times since she got sick. A bit spacey but okay.

Nova Scotia used to be one of the best for low case counts and adherence to mask mandates; now that the mandates are all removed we are the worst. The Omicron is rampant and I know way too many people who have or have had it.

Sign seen on campus

And on and on it goes

Happy New Year.

I guess.

Well, maybe it will be, who knows. The signs aren't good though.

I walked to the Reservoir this afternoon, looked at the melting ice. A week ago I got to skate on it when it was a glassy smooth sheet of ice, now it's a mess of melted ice, pooled meltwater and piles of melting snow.

Eventually it'll freeze up again, but whether it will be glassy smooth or not is anybody's guess. Usually the first few days after it first freezes are the best, but then it's not very thick so you're taking your chances. Best not to go alone.

On my way home a friend who was driving by stopped and asked if I wanted a ride or not. I jumped in her car and said, "Your timing is perfect!"

These days I am out of bed no more than 6 hours a day at best, most of that time taken up with chores and errands. But if the stars line up, the weather is good, and there's no chores or errands, then I can go for a walk. I can no longer walk to the Reservoir and back without exhausting myself, so I was glad she showed up when she did.

She's not in much better shape than I am, doesn't know if it's physical illness or depression. I said, "Does it matter?" Not a lot one can do about it either way.

We've both gone in search of laughter, I found it in old "Seinfeld" shows and she in "Friends". By the time she dropped me off I think we both felt better, nothing like a good laugh to cure what ails you. Temporarily anyway.

My son's family in Toronto all have the Omicron. Today they said Ontario has more than 18,000 new cases, and since they're not doing extensive testing that's just the tip of the iceberg. It's the same here, we have no idea how many cases there really are. Today I read that the booster shot wears off pretty quickly; 65-70% protection at best and down to 45% after 10 weeks. Israel is already starting a 4th round of shots.

We're doomed I tell ya, we're doomed!

Since I am not really up and about that much, I have less to report that's anywhere approaching fun or even pleasant; so I probably won't be posting that much. There's only so much gloom I can write about before I bore myself.

Hi Jerry's Mom!

Now I am in self-isolation, hopefully just for a couple of days. Came down with cold symptoms (runny nose, headache) but to be safe I got a Covid test and have to self-isolate until I get a negative result. I've booked a Covid booster shot for 4 days from now and I really don't want to cancel it because the next available slot around here is not until late January. Hopefully it's just a cold, but even so, nobody wants a cold now. 

Covid is roaring back, thanks to a recent event in another university town and the high mobility of students and their parents at this time of year. From last Thursday until Sunday night I was ushering for several Christmas-themed musical events, mostly on campus. I felt lousy on Sunday and tried to beg off, but the organizer said they were short of staff and needed me. He called me this morning and was shocked to hear that I'd gone and gotten myself tested today; he had not thought of the risk, since everyone was masked. 

One of the events—a Matt Anderson concert—was sufficiently big that a lot of people came up from the City (another area of community spread) to see him. He does an excellent show, I'm glad I got to see/hear him. Since he lives locally, he chatted casually about local irritants, which was fun. And he gave a shout out to our local grocery store which has been handling the pandemic really excellently. Got a round of applause for that one, they really have. He had with him another local, Kim Dunn, a set of black gospel singers and a couple from Newfoundland (don't remember their names), and a great bass player whose last name might be Dixon. The gospel singers called him 'Uncle Baby' because he was the youngest of a large family and was already an uncle at the moment of his birth.

Rather ironically, my job was to check people's vaccination status at the door. So every single person attending got to stand in front of me, in close proximity, while I examined their ID and vaccination proof. It was cold outside and there was a long line-up to get in so the outside door was kept open and my hands froze. After a while of reading teeny tiny print my eyes were watering and I couldn't read at all. Not to mention the discomfort of wearing a mask with a runny nose and a headache, and the reflection of the overhead lights on the plastic IDs. The concert was delayed by half an hour due to us being so diligent about checking vaccination proof, a couple of people thanked us for being so careful. 

I had the official app on my phone for scanning the vaccination proof, but it worked haphazardly. Everyone had different versions of proof, some paper some plasticized, some big some small, some with a scan code some without. Some even from out of province. It was actually faster just to eyeball the documents rather than try to scan them.

People were trying to show me their driver's licence photo, thinking that that was what I was looking for. But it wasn't, with everyone masked a driver's licence photo is useless. I just needed to check that the name on the licence or other ID was the same as the name on the vaccination proof. It's a small town so a lot of people I recognized anyway.

One person said, "Hi! I'm Jerry's Mom!"

Jerry's mom?!? Who the heck is Jerry? Then I remembered. Jerry is a dog and I used to walk with Jerry and his 'Mom' when Hapi was alive. But by the time I remembered she was gone.

Hi Jerry's Mom!

November arrives late

November rainbow

November weather finally arrived: wet, cold and grey with a touch of frost and snow. Up until this past week we have had almost idyllic weather all summer and most of the fall, but it had to come to an end sometime. Meanwhile western Canada has been hit by phenomenally bad weather: a summer heatdome, lots of forest fires, and now intense rain, wind and flooding. A once-in-a-lifetime Very Bad Year weather-wise. But here we had an awesome year. I don't often use that word, awesome, but it applies this time.

Locally we're seeing a surge in Covid cases and deaths, thanks in part to "faith" gatherings where the participants did not see fit to follow Covid health guidelines. One pastor had the gall to comment that the subsequent deaths were unfortunate but just part of God's plan. Initially the provincial government was lenient, saying that they were more focussed on education than enforcement, but apparently the God's plan comment put our premier over the edge. When the powers-that-be give you a pass you don't go all smug about it.

Some participants in the gathering thought they were adhering to the guidelines, that since church services do not require vaccination passports being checked, therefore a much larger gathering involving many hundreds of participants from far and away should also be allowed to go maskless and passportless. Dr. Strang said that was not so and the guidelines were clear about that. However, I will say that when I checked the guidelines with respect to another gathering I was involved in, the guidelines were not clear at all. I came away wondering what exactly was supposed to happen. So I will give the organizers of that faith gathering a little benefit of doubt on that score, but the God's plan comment was kind of over the top.

The other gathering I attended was the first in-person meeting since before the pandemic of an organization I belong to. I went to it just because I was thinking I'd get to see some people I hadn't seen in that long since I haven't been attending Zoom meetings. Apparently at least half the membership was thinking the same thing and so there were many more people in attendance than had been planned for. Where we usually got a dozen or maybe a couple dozen attendees in the before times, I am sure well in excess of 50-70 people showed up at this meeting. Passports were checked and everyone wore masks, but at a certain point the president of the club suggested that people could take their masks off. I thought, Nothing doing, mask stays put. I'd only just gotten my 'flu shot and didn't want to chance even getting a bit of 'flu.

We had a speaker that night as we usually do and her topic was the story of Abraham Gesner. You may or may not be aware that Gesner invented kerosene, and that he grew up not far from my town in Nova Scotia. I only knew that because there is a country road intersection with a stop sign not too far from town where there is a monument and plaque honouring him. It's kind of out in the middle of nowhere, the monument stands at the edge of a farm field. Every time I stopped at that intersection, which is not frequently but maybe once a year or so, I wondered who the heck is this guy. Well, now I know. 

Our speaker was a retired history professor who has written a book about Mr. Gesner and she had a lot to say about him. So much so that she went overtime and people were fidgeting and growing quite restless long before she finished. A vice-president finally stepped up and told her that time had run out. It was an unfortunate end to an otherwise interesting talk.

Briefly, Gesner grew up on a farm in the early 1800s but was not in the least talented at farming. He met and courted a young woman who was the daughter of a prominent physician, and the prospective father-in-law encouraged young Abraham to get trained as a doctor, since it was obvious he would never be able to support his daughter by farming. Abraham ended up going to London England for his medical training. In those days medical training was a loosey goosey affair, Abraham took a variety of courses including geology. It turned out that his real passion was for geology, not medicine or farming. Nevertheless he completed his medical training and returned to Canada to practice medicine in New Brunswick. He made lots of home visits around the countryside since that is what doctors used to do, and on his travels he collected rocks. Lots of rocks. Eventually he switched careers to become a geological surveyer and then his travels expanded to almost the entire province of New Brunswick.

Unfortunately Mr Gesner ran into trouble advising the province that they had coal deposits suitable for mining when in fact the deposits were entirely unsuitable. He lost his job. He experimented with liquefying coal to use as a replacement for whale oil in street lamps. He was eventually successful and came up with kerosene ("coal oil"). He opened a factory in New England for the manufacture of kerosene but ran into business trouble and was sued multiple times. I don't know the details but I rather gather it was bad luck, ignorance and the highly competitive market that he was operating in that was his downfall. He returned penniless to Nova Scotia. He did manage to secure a job teaching at Dalhousie College in Halifax, but before he could take it up he died, in his early 60s.

Nowadays kerosene is made from petroleum but Gesner's process of converting coal to kerosene saved a lot of whales. It was in fact the beginning of the end for the lucrative 'Boston coast' whaling industry. That industry revived somewhat when it was realized that whalebone was very useful in women's undergarments (corsets and such), but kerosene was definitely the first nail in that coffin.

Gesner firmly believed that the Earth was only a few thousand years old, as Bishop Usher had proven through his biblical studies. He was not to be deterred, he argued firmly in the defense of a youngish Earth. However towards the end of his career and studies he came to admit that perhaps it was not so, perhaps the Earth was millions of years old. I admire that he defended his beliefs so vigourously but in the end changed his mind in the face of overwhelming evidence. He was scientifically inclined and willing to change his mind with enough evidence for doing so. He died before Charles Darwin published his Origin of Species but the writing was already on the wall with the revelations of geological strata associated with a progression of fossils toward modern species. Darwin's big discovery was not so much about evolution but the natural mechanisms facilitating evolution.

I think I find this man interesting because he tried his hand at a number of different things, some successful and some not, and he loved exploring. He was training in England at the start of the Industrial Revolution and very interested in the potential for change it portended. He came back home to Canada fired up about the possibilities and in the end he made a contribution. As I said, he saved a few whales and provided an affordable source of light before electricity became the norm. Having myself depended on kerosene for light at a certain period of my life, I think that is notable.

Complexity

It's a good rainy windy day to stay indoors and recuperate.

I went to the clinic yesterday, about an hour's drive away on the highway. The highway goes through the interior forest of the province, rocks, lakes and trees. The reds and golds of the maples and birches were nicely setoff by the dark green of pines and spruces. A very nice drive.

The visit itself was long and tiring, I was there for 3 hours seeing a nurse practitioner and a care coordinator. They deal with longterm complex chronic conditions and I fit right in. I actually felt validated, this is not all in my head, it's not psychological, it's a real physical illness that is not well understood by doctors and medical researchers. The diagnosis I got is a kind of either/or thing; it's either Long Covid or it's ME/CFS or it's ME/CFS triggered by Covid.

They have two streams of treatment, one for Long Covid and one for everything else which they refer to as Central Sensitization (Fibro, ME/CFS, PTSD, and a bunch of others). They will let me know which stream they are assigning me to but they are not hugely different. The main thing is that they recently got funding for Long Covid and have to keep it separate, but seem a little vague as to whether a positive Covid test is a requirement. A lot of people had Covid in the early days but couldn't get tested because of the restrictive testing criteria at the time. So they believe I had it, they just don't know whether the lack of a positive test disqualifies me under the funding terms.

Ironically, when I was sick I was offered a test but I declined it because if it came back positive I would have to be quarantined and then I could not take Hapi off the property for a walk. She would have driven me crazy. At least without the test I wasn't quarantined. I did stay away from people and wore a mask when outside my house and got all my shopping done by neighbours, so I don't think I put anyone at risk.

It's going to be another few months before treatment actually starts, sometime in 2022. Not that there is a cure (there's not) or even an agreed upon treatment protocol, but simply guidance, support, various therapies for symptom management and referrals for testing as needed. So it doesn't really matter which stream I end up in, the only significant difference is that the Long Covid stream has a physiotherapist and the Central Sensitization stream does not. We have free physio at our local health clinic in town so if I needed that I could probably just get them to refer me there. Although I wouldn't even need a referral, I could just put myself on the waitlist. I don't feel like I would benefit from physio, but who knows.

I came away feeling quite positive about the whole experience, but exhausted by the time I got home. An interesting thing I learned is that many people in my condition often have good summers and then crash in the late summer/early fall. That has certainly been my experience. I was told that the crash could last till next summer. Or, I might improve a little over the winter and then crash again in the spring. That's more or less what happened this past year, so I guess I can expect more of it. I am glad I got a good summer. I also learned that I am very unsteady on my feet. I kind of knew that but the tests made it very clear.

The NP said, "I won't make you try to walk a straight line heel to toe because I can see that you would just fall over."

A couple of weeks ago I went for coffee with a friend who has been otherwise supportive, and she strongly urged me to not go to the clinic. That really I was just anxious about the pandemic. That kind of ticked me off, it's what I don't like about an invisible illness: people feel free to tell you it is not real. So it was nice to be somewhere that I was taken seriously and know that they deal routinely with a lot of people like me.

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I spoke to a neighbour the other day on the street, she's a lot more politically active than I am. At any rate she has recently written a lengthy letter to the town council about the student situation in our neighbourhood. She forwarded the letter to me and later in the day I read it; it was quite an eye opener. I tend to keep my head down about local issues because when I get involved I don't like what I see and it is a little upsetting. But she's younger and new in town and very gung ho about getting actively involved. We know each other because she has two big dogs who didn't like Hapi, we had to keep them all apart because Hapi would have been more than happy to set them straight about who was the boss dog around here.

So, our part of town has been zoned "R3", which is much denser than "R1". R3 is where all the poor people and all the students live, plus people like me who are not exactly poor but by no means rich. R3 is all I can afford here. R1 is where professors and doctors and town councillors and such live, nice quiet neighbourhoods with wide empty streets.

There's good money to be made by developers who have bought up all the big old houses in our neighbourhood and converted them to crowded student housing. They are still working on buying up whatever they can get their hands on that can be turned into the very profitable student housing. Bylaws state that they can't create apartments with more than 3 bedrooms, but they do. So a former single family home can now house 5, 10, or more students, each one with their own car. On the face of it, you see these big old houses in this neghbourhood and it looks not much different from R1, but the streets are packed with cars, there's garbage strewn around and properties are barely maintained. The town does not enforce the bylaws. The developers all live in R1 neighbourhoods, and so, for that matter, do all the town councillors. Out of sight out of mind.

When I lived here before, back in the '80s, it wasn't like that. There were students but the majority of houses were occupied by families. As kids grew up and moved away, parents either chose to stay or moved away too. The more houses that were bought by developers and converted to student housing, the more older residents moved away because of the declining neighbourhood quality. Now there are hardly any young families, just old people who either couldn't afford to move away, or stubbornly insisted on aging in place, or both. One older person in her 80s was told that if she didn't like how students behaved, why did she move into this neighbourhood? She's been here for over 60 years!

So, when the students rioted during Homecoming Week, I now blame the town council as much as anyone else. They let the developers create a ghetto, they even officially blessed it by calling it zone R3. What did they think was going to happen? Students are transient, they have no particular attachment to this town beyond the 3-4 years it takes to get a degree, they live in squalid conditions, why would they care?

What bothers me now is, should I go ahead and get solar panels? If this neighbourhood is going to the dogs and the town doesn't care, why should I take the risk of investing in my property only to have it torn down by some developer who wants to cram in yet more student housing? And how much of this noise and congestion and irresponsible behaviour can I take before I too want to pack up and leave? I am wondering now whether to sign the contract or not. They called me last week to say that funding for this year has been used up but there will be more next year so I should postpone signing the contract until December.

Yup. If at all…

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The birds aren't stupid, they've figured out the squirrel-proof feeder. I put the old feeder on my back deck so they now come to both feeders. The jays dominate the back feeder and the doves hang out on the deck floor below them because the jays are messy eaters: lots of leftovers for them. The chickadees, cardinals and nuthatches come to the squirrel-proof feeder in the front where they don't have to compete with the jays. So I can watch birds now from either my livingroom or kitchen windows.

Swimming and reading

My swimming companions

Since getting home from my kayaking expedition at the beginning of the month I've been swimming at the Reservoir, almost daily. I swim with a woman who seems to be an amazing source of local gossip. Some of it good, some of it not, some about people I know and some about people I don't. I occasionally have gossip tidbits to exchange, but not very much really. The main benefit of all this gossip is to keep me swimming; I can do 4 laps while listening and at best 2 laps while not. So, there's that. 

She has a neighbour who sometimes shows up to do serious swimming (the crawl, with flippers, goggles and ear plugs), it turns out he is also a serious kayaker. So I mentioned to my swimming companion that I am always looking for fellow kayakers and she said she'd pass that along, which she did. So we shall see. I've pretty much decided that I don't want to combine kayaking and camping any more, at least not the way we have been doing. Maybe a single base camp for a 4-day trip, but not changing campsites every day or even every other day. So what I want is people I can do day trips with, sans camping.

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Today is a wet stormy day and after today the temperature will take a downturn, so I may not be swimming anymore unless we get a mini heat wave in October. Not likely. Today I am doing more or less nothing. This past week, besides swimming I also did some rather strenuous yard work so doing nothing is my idea of a rest. I watched the storm outside the window, I read, and got caught up on bills.

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I just finished reading an interesting book which I can recommend: The Premonition, by Michael Lewis. I'd never heard of Lewis before, and on the back cover of the book is a review comment: "I would read an 800-page history of the stapler if he wrote it." I absolutely agree, it was an enthralling read and I learned a few things, albeit rather depressing things. But no matter, he writes in a very upbeat style leaving one with hope and a little faith in the fundamental goodness of human beings. The book is a pandemic story, specifically about Covid19, but it starts in the early 2000s, under the G.W. Bush presidency. I learned that Bush did one good thing during his presidency, he read John Barry's book about the 1918 Flu Pandemic and it scared him into creating a committee to come up with a pandemic plan for the USA. The membership in this committee was brilliant, they did their homework and they came up with an official pandemic plan that—had it ever been implemented—would have changed the course of the American experience of the 2020 Covid Pandemic. Sigh…

Lewis focuses his book on a half dozen individuals, some of whom were original members of that committee, and some of whom were latecomers to the party. All of them brilliant in their own ways, all of them heroes who went above and beyond in their attempts to stem the carnage of the pandemic in the USA. The book reads like a thriller, you get inside the lives and heads of Lewis's subjects, and in the process you learn a thing or two about how bureaucracy works. That latter bit leaves me a little depressed, but it's good to know that heroes exist.

Lewis says an interesting thing about government in general. He says that the federal government—and I think this applies to any federal government—is a manager of a portfolio of existential risks, whether natural disasters, financial panics, military, energy or food security, and so forth. It is the job of government to be ready for any of these risks and to jump into action when they happen. To that end they maintain a stable of experts, a host of disaster plans, and a cohort of people ready to act according to plan when disaster occurs. But that's expensive, and it means a whole lot of people being held at the ready for such a disaster to materialize, and people who are against the idea of Big Government just want to eliminate all that. It makes the cvil service look wasteful. A couple of things that happened when Covid exploded in the US were that the plan was forgotten or ignored and it turned out the supplies necessary for addressing a pandemic weren't there, they'd long since expired and not been replaced.

We hear a lot about how Trump sabotaged the Covid response but Lewis does not dwell on that. He talks about a whole lot of other failures that contributed, and how his little team of heroes tried to mitigate them. These heroes did not have job titles reflecting their importance, they were what one person referred to as "L6": so far down the hierarchy of authority that they should have been inconsequential, but they weren't. They really took the ball and ran with it, regardless of the consequences to their careers. Few of us get that opportunity, but these people did and their stories are inspiring.

Fragile Miracles

Yesterday was the last day of morning kayaking. The director of the program came out to the lake early to unlock the gate and give us Regulars an extra hour of paddling, she brought her son and a couple of his friends with her to play on the paddleboards while she oversaw the kayak registrations and sendoffs for the day, because the students who usually do that job ended their summer jobs the day before.

It was a gorgeous day for it. The latest heat wave ended yesterday so it was warm but not scorching. A few of us did not come because the early hour was just a bridge too far, but those of us who did come set out in search of the mythical Fish Ladder.

Word has it that there is a fish ladder on the lake, we kind of assumed it would be near the power dam. D and myself had already explored the environs of the dam but had not sighted the ladder, so the group set out for a wider search of the lake. However, after a two-hour paddle the mythical Fish Ladder remained mythical, a project for next summer. It was an exhilerating paddle, especially since we kind of lost track of the time and left ourselves only a half hour to get back to home base. We went straight down the middle of the lake, a flotilla of little kayaks paddled in unison.

Next week is a week of morning appointments, things I postponed until kayaking was done. The week following is the kayak-camping trip on Kejimkujik Lake. Last spring we had organized a four-day kayaking trip at a lodge (Milford House), but that was cancelled due to Third Wave lockdown. Here in Nova Scotia it was actually the second wave, but for the rest of the country it was the Third Wave. Anyway, we had so many people wanting to come on that trip that I was half-thankful that it was cancelled; it was going to be crowded. But now we are hard-pressed to get four people willing to go, perhaps because we are all of an age when sleeping on the ground and camping in the rain are less than pleasant prospects.

But for me, four days on the water sounds like heaven, rain or no rain. And I am ridiculously fit, I feel more up for this than I have in decades. One night this week, insomnia had me up in the wee hours and while failing to get back to sleep I was marvelling at how hard my stomach muscles are now. My thumbs were very sore for a while but they have recovered, paddling hard for an hour now hardly affects them. In spite of lack of sleep I am still up and ready for an active day first thing. It feels like some kind of miracle and I don't want to waste it, at this age one is keenly aware of how fragile such miracles are.

Last night I was watching TV with the back door still open, the last of the heat wave was dissipating and leaving windows and doors open was nice. At a certain point I had a very strong sense that Hapi had just come in through the back screen door to check on me, it was quite overwhelming. I had to turn off the TV and walk around the house for a bit to try to shake it off. In spite of having a very good day I went to bed sad. One of my appointments this week is an interview at a seniors housing co-op, and one of their rules is no pets. For the first time since Hapi died I wonder if that will work for me. In addition to missing Hapi, I miss my backyard cardinal and the chipmunk that lived for a while in my window well. One grows attached.

Conspiracy theory and other news

Yesterday was a busy day for me. I was scheduled to pick up the truck in the afternoon and I had to go to the bank in the morning to get the cash. My bank is not in my town, I had to go down the road, and since I was there anyway I did a bit of 'essential' shopping on the way.

Picking up the truck involved getting a ride with J to the truck owner's house and then hanging out for an hour or so just yakking. It was a nice sunny day so hanging out was not so bad except that I really had to go to the bathroom and was thirsty as all get out. J is diabetic and was overdue for his pills so we both had 'personal problems' being there, but I guess it was part of the deal. The truck owner loves the truck and is very reluctant to see it leave, but he needs the money. J told me that the only reason he sold it to me was because J assured him I would take care of it the same way he did. That could be just a line but I believe J, I felt the same way about my old S10.

When I got home J came by after taking care of his own issues and installed the radio in the truck. It never did get an oil change so I scheduled one for next week. I called around about insurance, I was thinking of going with CAA because they offer a cheaper price than my current insurance company, but I spent so much time on hold just trying to get a quote that I thought better of it. The extra cost is worth it to have a local broker who answers the phone without resorting to a complicated menu of options, not to mention lengthy on hold times.

So now I have two vehicles in the driveway and am thinking of keeping both, one for summer and one for winter. The underside of the truck is in pristine condition, it would be a shame to expose it to Nova Scotia road salt.

It stays light so late now that after supper there were still hours of daylight left in the day and I hadn't gotten much exercise so I went for a walk. I visited my Bubble buddies about a 20 minute walk away and sat in their backyard watching their new puppy at play. The puppy is much bolder now and her teeth are needle sharp. She definitely needs puppy training but nothing is open at the moment. The vet also recommends waiting until all her vaccinations are in effect before she socializes with other dogs. Same as people.

Then my friend said something surprising. He mentioned reading an article about how the SARS-Cov2 virus (aka Covid-19 virus) is more than likely to be lab-generated. Among all us anti-Trump types that is a positively heretical thing to say, and I asked him what the evidence was. He said he was not science-oriented so he couldn't really say but he thought if I looked it up I might be able to understand the argument since I have a science background. He couldn't remember off hand what the article was and I didn't want to go in his house to see his computer since I have spent the last few days hanging out with non-Bubble friends. So I went home to look it up.

Well, the jury is still out, but when Trump said the virus might have originated in a Chinese lab, he definitely had access to suggestive information. He just kind of shot his mouth off about that without naming sources or verifiable facts. Because, if true, then American military and scientific organizations are also implicated, not just Chinese. Also, the PCR test used to identify Covid infections came so fast after the pandemic started (like, about a month) and is so specific and was so quickly peer-reviewed and published, that the origins of the test are also in question.

Anyway, I found a couple of articles in two different places that have describe such a scenario. The sources are not rock-solid virtuous tellers of the truth, but they are interesting and suggestive. I provide links below, look them up, look up the authors and the websites and make your own decisions. These days that's about all you can do.

We are all mostly aware that 'the military-scientific complexes' of several (if not many) countries engage in biological terrorism research. With the ability to not only sequence genomes of many different organisms including viruses and the technology to modify such genomes, scientists now can and do create genetically modified organisms (GMO). All over the world there are labs for doing so, some benign and some not so benign. Depending on how dangerous the research is considered to be, biological labs have different levels of lab safety protocols in place, ranging from BSL1 to BSL4. BSL4 is the most restrictive and therefore the most protective; the chances of an accident happening in a lab certified at BSL4 are very small.

However.

Scientists are human, every last one of them. One of the things we humans do is cut corners. BSL4 is uncomfortable and slows your work down by a lot. It involves wearing spacesuit type coverings and going through elaborate cleaning rituals and being tethered by air tubes and wearing gloves that make handling things difficult and headgear that make seeing things difficult. Not to mention hot and sweaty and awkward. There have been accidental releases of pathogenic viruses from BSL4 labs ever since that kind of research started, including a smallpox release that resulted in a number of illnesses and deaths. For the most part these accidental releases have been covered up and the resulting damage contained.

There is a type of research called Gain of Function, which involves adding a pathogenic function to an otherwise relatively benign organism. This means that, say, a coronavirus that is incapable of infecting humans, or causes only mild illness, is genetically modified to be lethally infectious and contagious in humans. The virus is weaponized. Once the deadly virus has been created the scientists then work on a vaccine for it. President Obama banned such research in the US, however there is an escape clause in the ban that allows some research to continue to be funded, particularly by the Pentagon.

So, what if such Gain of Function research was being done in a lab far far away but partially funded by an American organization interested in such things, but due to the BSL4 protocols being so onerous, there were lapses. What if that lab was, as many of these labs are, located in a densely populated city at the centre of a highly active air transportation network?

On the other hand, what would it take to get a virus from a bat cave hundreds of kilometers away to the city where the illness first occurred in humans? Especially since so far no one has yet to isolate SARS-Cov2 in the wild? Yes, SARS-Cov2 is very similar to coronaviruses that infect those bats but are not infectious or contagious in humans. But the necessary evolution from a bat virus to a human virus is complicated, at least as complicated as creating a pathogenic virus in a lab and allowing it to escape into the local human population.

SARS-Cov2 contains a small structure called a furin cleavage site in the spike on its outer coat that is the means of breaking through human cell membranes. Without the furin cleavage site the virus would be harmless to humans. The furin cleavage site on the SARS-Cov2 virus is fairly unique in its genomic structure, it is not seen in any coronaviruses related to SARS-Cov2. However other forms of furin cleavage sites are seen in viruses that are contagious and infectious in humans. Scientists have the ability with CRISPR technology to create and insert a furin cleavage site into a coronavirus. It could have evolved naturally, but so far there is no evidence of that.

China has sealed the lab records of the scientist at the head of such research in the BSL4 lab located in Wuhan, so we will never know for sure. Chinese scientists and officials have been cooperative to a certain extent, but vigourously deny culpability. Many other scientists and public figures have denied categorically that this happened, or could have happened. Because, if it were known to have happened, then public outrage would be pretty darn, well, outrageous.

Trump may not have understood the scientific or political details, let alone the need for secrecy, but he would have had access to this kind of information. He was inclined to say publicly whatever he thought played to his electoral base, and conspiracy theories definitely play to his base.

My sources are linked below. The author of the first link has a checkered past but is not altogether unreliable. I have not found any critical reviews of this particular article, but since it is relatively recent that may come. It is long and technical and far more specific and detailed than I have been, so read at your own risk:

https://nicholaswade.medium.com/origin-of-covid-following-the-clues-6f03564c038

The following link gets a middling review as reliable. Again, read at your own risk:

https://www.independentsciencenews.org/news/peter-daszaks-ecohealth-alliance-has-hidden-almost-40-million-in-pentagon-funding/

Into the heart of darkness

Yesterday I took a trip into the city for a medical appointment. It was a cancellation, so I only got the appointment the afternoon before and had to revise all my plans for the remainder of the day. I had planned to spend an hour or so working in the back yard—mowing and prepping one or two garden beds— but ended up spending more like four hours. Exhausting.

Anyway, we're not supposed to leave our communities except for essential reasons and a medical appointment qualifies as essential. Google mapped out a route for me that avoided The Rotary (every Nova Scotian's nightmare) so I was grateful for that. All along the highway were large handpainted signs thanking truckers and essential workers and flashing LED signs admonishing drivers to stay safe and not travel. Our numbers are going the wrong way, Strang and Rankin had expressed the hope we would see lower numbers at this end of the week, but not so. Third Wave Variants here we come.

My appointment was with a neurologist, a young woman. After applying nasty electric shocks to my arms and legs she told me my nerves are completely normal. But I still have nerve pain. She recommended Gabapentin. I said I had some leftover pills for my dog, could I use those?

She said, "I am supposed to say no, but my Mum was a vet and she supplied our antibiotics when we were little…"

She wrote a prescription for the drug. I tried one of Hapi's pills last night, and it was weird. Not sure whether I'll take any more. 

She mentioned that my GP had sent her a copy of a sleep study report that said I had severe sleep apnea.

I said, "What? She never told me that."

She said, "I can print out the report if you like."

I said, "Sure."

I read the report and what it said was that I had severe apnea in the supine position. Oh, that. I knew that. Right from childhood I had these awful nightmares about being paralyzed and unable to breathe. In the nightmare I would be struggling to move, I thought that if I could just move one toe or one finger then I would be able to breathe. Which was true. After many years, decades even, I put two and two together and realized that sleeping on my back caused the nightmares and they weren't really nightmares, they were actually happening. So I learned to never sleep on my back, and to avoid even sleeping on my side for fear of rolling over onto my back while asleep. The sleep study report just verified it. Apparently I spent one hour on my back and had enough apneas to qualify as severe. But once I got on my stomach, I was fine.

I had packed a lunch since I did not want to stop anywhere in the city if I didn't have to. I felt like I was at the heart of the plague and just wanted to get out of there as fast as I could. I even hesitated to open car windows for (the unfounded) fear of the virus blowing in. But I wasn't all that hungry and thought that if I booted it I'd be home before I got really hungry. Stopped once for gas and that was it, home in time for a late lunch.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

Called my Bubble friend to tell her about some puppy supplies on sale in the hardware store flyer and we chatted about the puppy, and about the recent death of a mutual friend. I read in the little newspaper that comes with the sale flyers a tribute to this friend, I had not known about her death. The tribute took up the full front page and included a nice picture of her and her husband and children and grandchildren. Everyone I know who is on Facebook knew about it but I did not. I 'lurk' on Facebook but have not acquired any 'Friends'. I've often thought since the pandemic started that I should get back on since these days that's the only way to keep up with folks, but the price I pay for being on there regularly still seems steep.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~ 

My son is working on an online film festival, he said he could stream some films for us to watch if I wanted to pick out anything I would like to see. I went over the list online and one stood out for me. It's called Stray, about three stray dogs in Istanbul. In Istanbul you are not allowed to kill, capture or move stray animals: where they live is their home. Vets tag stray dogs to keep track of them when they get veterinary treatment and to find owners for them, but that's it. 

Another film I liked the sound of was about everyday life in the war zones of Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan. The blurb said it was not about the atrocities of war but simply what the people are like and how they get along. It is an area of the world that I would have loved to visit were it not for the various wars there. Istanbul too. I was talking to a friend on the phone about these films and she mentioned that her husband had visited Afghanistan a couple of times and hated it. He is/was a cameraman for a major TV network, he's been to a lot of places for his job. In particular he hated the smell and the bleakness of the landscape. My friend said they had to wash everything he brought back from there because of the smell. But he was only in one small part of the country, a military base to be exact, so I think that his experience was unique to that time and place.

Keep on checkin' in

Hapi on a good day, emerging from the canal

Hapi has good days and bad. I think her good days coincide with cold clear weather, her not-so-good days with warm or wet days. Today is a warm wet day and I felt like maybe I should move up the euthanasia date, I don't know if she is suffering but sometimes it appears that way. She had a long nap and then went outside to 'patrol the perimeter', the important stuff.

I bought some bones for her but she is not interested in chewing them, just burying and reburying them. The back yard is full of muddy holes—all the former burial spots—who knows where the bones are now. Then she comes indoors with mud piled on her nose, which she uses to shove the dirt back in the burial hole. I now keep a paper towel at the door to clean off her nose before I allow her indoors.

I joined a Covid-long-hauler group on Facebook. I don't know for sure if that is what I have (or hopefully, had), but I wanted to ask the question: can you get Covid, get better, and then get 'long haul' symptoms several months later? Well, I asked my question and turns out quite a few long-haulers say that is what happened to them, and the long haul was worse than the original bout. So maybe that's what I have/had. Somebody posted that the good news is, when you finally get your first vaccination, it will be like a booster shot, you'll be good to go. Mind you the vaccine reaction symptoms will be worse. But that is temporary.

These days, I get more and better information from others in the same boat than from the so-called experts. Everybody chips in their little bit of info and you begin to get a bigger picture. Doctors only see what other doctors see, they don't really pay attention to anyone else because, after all, they are not medically trained experts. So round and round they go, where they stop nobody knows.

So today it was announced that my age group could get the first vaccination. But, the only two local places where you can get vaccinated are not taking appointments, haven't been for almost a week now. I'm allowed to get vaccinated, I just can't book a vaccination. On the other hand, if I lived in the city, easy-peasy. They have so many open appointment times that they are begging people to book them. I tried phoning the vaccination number, had to wait almost an hour on hold, but when I finally got a live person she acknowledged that they had been getting a lot of calls from my health region asking 'what gives?' and they don't know. And apparently, she said, all the higher-ups who might know, are 'in a meeting'...

Just keep checking she said.

~ ~ ~ ~ ~ ~

Postscript, April 2nd: I took a neighbour's advice and logged in really early this morning, around 6.15am, and managed to snag a vaccination appointment for two weeks from now. I went back two hours later and there were no appointments left available. This is the only time there have been any appointments available in almost a week and they were gone by 8.15am.

Bad news, good news

Even the statues around here have to wear masks

Bad news: yet another Covid exposure. Same grocery store, different day/time.
Good news: It took exactly 2 hours to find out, book a test, get tested, and be back home again.
Bad news: ran over a blue jay backing into my driveway after dark, after the test. It scuffled away from me in the snow so I left it.
Good news: Bird gone in the morning.
Bad news: Crow sitting on a snowbank in the front yard making funny noises, I took another look and saw the blue jay lying in the snow.
Good news: The jay moved, it was still alive, so I went outside and brought it indoors to warm up. It obviously can't fly, maybe its wing is broken? At least no visible blood.

Scuffle marks in the snow where the crow was "investigating" the blue jay

I went on the internet to see what to do about the bird and it turns out there is a wildlife rescue and rehab organization in this province, Hope for Wildlife. I texted them. I put the bird on a towel in a box in my windowless bathroom with the lights off and the door ajar. Hapi won't go through a doorway unless the door is wide open, she was asleep anyway. Two hours later someone from Hope for Wildlife called me and said they would send a volunteer over to pick the bird up. 

Where I found the blue jay, still alive

Good news: The volunteer arrived promptly, so I retrieved the bird in the box from the bathroom.
Bad news: The bird had revived somewhat and was really scared, it jumped out of the box and flew down the stairs into the basement.
Good news: The volunteer came in with a net and we found and captured the bird, who was by now quite feisty. We put the bird in a better box it couldn't get out of. Maybe its wing is not broken after all.

Not only would Hope for Wildlife try to rehabilitate the bird, they gave me a case number so I could email and find out how it was doing. I asked if they could release it here when it was better so it could rejoin its buddies, the volunteer said that's what they try to do. I am so impressed with this organization. It was founded by a woman named Hope and there are some videos about their work on Youtube.

More good news: Covid test came back negative, in under 36 hours.
Bad news: Went skating and fell on my bad knee.
Good news: Knee seems okay, I was able to skate a bit more after I fell.
Bad news: I picked up a prescription and they shorted me, label said 90 tablets but only 30 in the bottle. On the phone they said they'd check their numbers to see if they made a mistake. Whaddaya mean?!? Of course you made a mistake!
More bad news: I got a bill for a repair that was supposedly free under warranty, but they had this whole rationale for why it wasn't really covered! I argued but to no avail.
Good news: Got a shipping confirmation for my second order of garden seeds.
Bad news: What happened to the first order? I called their Customer Service number and waited a really long time, only to have them tell me that order was "back ordered". Back ordered?!? I thought they grew the seeds themselves! How can they be "back ordered"?!? 

Good/bad news: They took away the dog tree and replaced it with a bench for putting ice grippers on your boots.

Good news: They left the dog ornaments (Hapi's is on the far right).

Good news: An online birthday party for one of my sons. 
Bad news: I discovered I had gone deaf in one ear just that day! What?!? Stress maybe?!? 

Good news: I'm not deaf this morning.

Octopuses

My brother sent a link to my blog post about Covid politics to some of his friends, one of them wrote to me about his concerns in that regard. Among other things he referenced an article about how the second highest mortality rate (after seniors in long term care facilities) is among seniors over age 60 living in the community. The two groups together account for more than 95% of Covid mortality. And I just heard that some of the vaccine doses intended for my province are being diverted to the northern territories.

So, to distract myself from negative thoughts, today I am going to talk about octopuses. Have you seen the Netflix documentary "My Octopus Teacher"? It is endearing. I am a sucker for underwater cinematography so for sure I enjoyed it. However, my son wasn't quite so enamored of it, he pointed out that the narrator seemed to count himself a friend to the octopus in question and yet he filmed a horrific scene of 'his friend' nearly being killed in a fight with a shark. He did not interfere. With friends like that…?

I just finished reading Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness, by Peter Godfrey-Smith. The author is a professor of philosophy and a scuba diver. He spent quite a bit of time observing octopuses off the coast of Australia, in a location he calls Octopolis. Octopuses are normally considered to be solitary creatures, only getting together for purposes of procreation. However, Octopolis is a kind of underwater city of octopuses. Since these creatures are not really evolved to be sociable, they do a lot of fighting amongst each other. The thing that is most notable about them though is their intelligence. They are comparable to some birds and mammals in that regard. 

From an evolutionary perspective, it is highly unlikely that the common ancestor of birds, mammals and cephalopods (the animal group that octopuses belong to) was all that intelligent; the intelligence of cephalopods developed independently of that of birds and mammals. There are some common features but one interesting difference is that octopus "brains" are distributed over their bodies, an octopus tentacle is as brainy as an octopus head. Some people speculate that cephalopods are really descended from aliens, but Godfrey-Smith says that although their intelligence may seem alien, they are as much of the Earth as we are. Just different.

Another thing about them is their incredibly short life spans. We are used to intelligent species being long-lived, relatively speaking, but octopuses live two short years. In those two years they learn so much and exhibit so much craftiness and intelligence, and then they die. It seems such a waste.

In 2008 I went snorkelling in the coral reef off the coast of Belize and had my own encounter with an octopus (actually two). I won't say it was life-changing, but it was certainly one of the more amazing experiences I have had.

Snowstorm

Big snowstorm overnight Sunday into Monday, about 47 cm (16") on the ground by the end. High winds blew it into thick drifts. One of the students next door helped me shovel out my car and then my snow plough guy came and cleared out the rest of the driveway. In the process he took out half a dozen bricks I was using as a border between the garden and the driveway, and dumped them somewhere. I found one in a big pile of snow on my front lawn and two more across the street, but couldn't find the rest. The ones across the street would have been in the path of the sidewalk plough which came by later, so who knows where the rest of them are.

I think almost everybody was busy clearing snow on Monday. The student who helped me borrowed my shovels (I have 4! They all do different things!) to do her driveway, and then later a student across the street borrowed one. I told a friend about it and mentioned that the student across the street liked to throw loud parties; the next time he does that I am going to remind him ("Remember me? The Shovel Lady?"). My friend said I should take the shovel with me to his next party. Just as a reminder.

Today we went to the Reservoir for a walk, the snow was deep but the snowshoers had cleared some trails. It was blindingly beautiful: sun, blue sky, white snow, black trees. We met up with some other dogs and owners and all walked together, single file in the narrow snowshoe trails. One dog, a young tan-and-white Springer Spaniel named Jerry (Jerry Springer) was enjoying dashing through the snow, while Hapi and her buddy Owen (a Bernese Mountain Dog) plodded along behind the humans, because the trail is so much better after a few humans have stamped it down.

Unfortunately it was hard work for Hapi and her left rear leg is not great, she kept slipping off the trail into the deeper snow. At one point she gave up and just lay down in the trail. After a minute or so of rest she was able to get back up, but at that point we decided to head straight back to the car, enough was enough. I kept her in front of me so I could catch her if she fell again. Jerry the spaniel bumped her a few times racing to get by her so she switched to a parallel trail. Then we met up with a young husky who romped with Jerry. Huskies are hard to control and usually kept on leash but this one had a radio-controlled collar so the owner could let it run. Turns out the husky's name was Winter.

Newfoundland is having a Covid outbreak. First New Brunswick and now Newfoundland, it feels like the walls are closing in. Scary.

Covid politics

I've been doing a lot of reading about the Covid-19 vaccines and their development, and now that they are in the beginning stages of distribution I've been reading about that; mainly about how the distribution of initial doses is prioritized when supplies are very limited. So, the scientific literature shows that the risk of death rises dramatically with age, while the risk of contagion and spread is principally among the young and mobile. The issue is, which is more important, stopping mortality or stopping contagion? 

In general, scientists are coming down on the side of stopping mortality. This means getting the vaccine to the people whose risk of death is highest. Various studies have looked at how much comorbidities impact the risk of death and whether people who have COPD or diabetes or hypertension are more at risk than people of "advanced age". So far the research is showing that advanced age trumps all. Specifically, age beyond 70 years.

Most published studies, perhaps all, rank ages in decades: 50-59, 60-69, 70-79, 80+. I have yet to see a study that uses different age ranges (55-64, 65-74, 75-84, etc), so whether the risk of death rises dramatically between 74 and 75 is undetermined in the published literature. 75 years old is just not a critical marker of anything.

And yet. Looking at the immunization priorities across our country and also in some other countries (UK, USA), the age of 75 is frequently used as a cut-off point. My guess is that it's political. There is the original issue of whether stopping deaths or stopping spread is more important, and there are groups with some political power who want to justify going to the front of the line. Politicians are trying to compromise; if you move one group to the front then you have to move another group to the rear.

So, if you start looking at stopping the spread, who become the priority groups? Well, kids have been ruled out on this one, nobody ranks kids as being the most important group. Likewise for teenagers. Even though the most mobile groups in our modern society are probably school kids and teenagers. So healthcare workers go to the top of the list, especially if they are working with old people. Then a bun fight breaks out; if you're going to protect this healthcare group then why not that one? Who has more power to sway the case, low-paid personal care workers, better-paid and organized trained nurses, or highly trained and politically powerful doctors? And if doctors go to the front of the line, why not dentists? Pharmacists? And of course their employees the dental hygienists and pharmacy technicians…

When the vaccine distribution first started in December, the media loved to display photos of young photogenic healthcare workers getting their jab. God forbid we show an old lady's flabby arm being jabbed. Old women are better viewed masked and gowned behind the thick plate glass of nursing home windows.

Different provinces have worked out different compromises and timelines. Here in Nova Scotia, my age group 70-74, goes to the back of line. People over 75, people in nursing homes, anyone doing anything in healthcare, truckers, meat packers and host of others ("food supply security") take precedence over everyone under the age of 75 who is not in any of those special categories or not in a long term care facility.

Furthermore, looking at the rate at which vaccinations are being distributed, Nova Scotia ranks lowest of all provinces and territories. Currently the average rate is 2.4% (roughly) for the entire country and 1.3% for Nova Scotia (as of today, on the CTV News Covid vaccine tracker). Our phases of distribution (1, 2, and 3) are considerably later than any other province. I read one source that said that Phase 3 (my phase) won't happen until the fall, in spite of PM Trudeau's assurance that everyone who wants it will be vaccinated by September. [I accidentally transposed the 'r' and the first 'u' in his name and briefly considered leaving it that way ;-)]

I am pretty sure my sons living in other provinces will get vaccinated long before I do. One of my sons is an aerial fire fighter, I am pretty sure the provincial government he will be working for will make damn certain he is designated an essential worker and he will get vaccinated before his training in the spring. The other two live in Covid hot spots where vaccine is way more available than in my little province that worked damn hard to contain and keep out the virus.

It's all politics and who holds power to sway politicians.

This'n'that

Thursday nights I watch a Prime Video show with two of my sons via the Watch Party feature and afterward we chat about it and other things. They're in a different time zone and not available until early evening their time (late evening my time) so it's a bit exhausting the next day but kind of worth it. I enjoy having those regular conversations, and I don't really care about the quality of the show we are watching, I now realize, because it is just one more thing to talk about. So the fact that the show was kind of disappointing was okay, we all agreed on its shortfalls and tried to pick out a few good points in it.

For our online chat we have been using an app that one of my sons uses all the time for online video games, and we will be able to use it to watch shows streaming from other sites if we want to. My son demonstrated that by showing us a video game he has been playing.

One happy thing I learned is that my youngest son has been accepted at two different colleges for a teaching degree. He's waiting on the third which is the one he really wants to attend. Apparently the pandemic has burnt out so many teachers that governments are desperate to hire/train more. A year ago he was turned down pretty summarily when he applied for entry, now they are chasing him. In the mean time he has been tutoring, first in person and then online, so I think he can handle it. Teaching is something he really wants to do.

A day of snow followed by rain followed by double digit warm temperatures has put an end to skating for now. If we were to get a prolonged cold snap we might see more skating but I kind of doubt it. The pond rink looks like toast. On the really warm day I took Hapi out without her coat and she was fine. I passed a couple of people who muttered, "What breed of dog is that?" Nobody would guess she was a malamute. 

Yesterday we visited Muddy's, a convenience store on Main Street whose owner loves Hapi, he was dumbfounded by her new look. He couldn't keep from laughing, and he grabbed every customer in his store to show them Hapi. Good thing he gave her lots of treats. These days she's a sucker for dog treats.

A friend's dog died two days ago. Buddy was a Rottweiler, a year younger than Hapi. He was always a sick dog, Addison's I think, but she nursed him along for a very long time. Now she's a wreck. Buddy wanted to be friends with Hapi but Hapi wanted nothing to do with him. I didn't want to take a chance on it, if they got into a fight Buddy would have destroyed her. He was a sweet dog with people, but a bit iffy with other dogs, kind of like Hapi in her youth. It was hard to predict how they'd be if they ever were allowed together.

Covid test

I had to get a Covid test last weekend. The results came back negative Tuesday morning, 36 hours after the test. It was relatively quick and easy to do, any discomfort was on a par with getting a needle: unpleasant but brief.

The local university required students returning after the Christmas break to quarantine for two weeks and get a Covid test around the 7th day of quarantine. Last September they were requiring quarantining students to get three tests at the beginning, middle and end of the quarantine period but this time only one test was required. So one student in residence did as required and the first day after his quarantine period he went grocery shopping. As it happened so did I, within the same time frame. A few days later the grocery store was declared an exposure site, I checked my grocery store receipt and booked the Covid test. I didn't have to self-isolate because they said it was a low risk exposure due to everyone being required to wear masks at the store and only a certain number of people allowed in at a time. I've never found it crowded.

At the Reservoir I told a couple of people and they all said they never shop at that grocery store, they go to an out-of-town farm market instead. Students generally don't go to farm markets. All well and good so long as you don't need something that only a grocery store carries. I guess I could have ordered stuff for delivery but it's a pain and you don't always get what you want. I try to keep a grocery list but that week I went to the grocery store three times because I kept forgetting to add stuff to the list.

With the kerfuffle over vaccine production happening in Europe, vaccination rates here have come almost to a halt. Canada stopped manufacturing its own vaccines back in the day when it was deemed not cost effective to make your own when you could just order it from another country. Ha. I see that my age group will now not get vaccinated before the summer, if then. Having everyone vaccinated by September is looking overly optimistic, probably only achievable if we all get it in August. Ha.

I am starting to have some sympathy for conspiracy theory believers, reading the official news about the vaccine is starting to sound more and more like double talk. I try to keep my head down and not think about it.

I've been skating regularly but because this is an uncommonly mild winter the ice quality is poor. I am very grateful I got out on the ice when it was fresh because it was near perfect then. The fact that Hapi is not afraid to walk on it is an indicator of how bad it is, not slippery at all. I debate taking up X-country skiing instead but frankly I barely have the energy for skating, I know for sure skiing would wipe me out altogether.

Loneliness II

I'm coming back to a subject I touched on earlier: loneliness. I've been doing a lot of reading on the subject and trying to formulate this post in my head. Principally, I've been reading Loneliness (2008) by John Cacioppo and Lonely (2010) by Emily White. Cacioppo is a social neuroscientist (a field of research that he founded) who describes the results of his research on the subject; White is a Canadian writer who describes her experience of loneliness in the context of that research. I found White's book the more interesting of the two simply because of its very personal nature, but Cacioppo's book is interesting because of the objective science he brings to the subject. Both writers refer to another scientist, Robert Weiss, who wrote about loneliness in the 1970s; White calls Weiss's book the Bible on Loneliness. He overturned some prevailing opinions on loneliness through his meticulous research studies. Unfortunately, those prevailing opinions are still very much in vogue.

Humans are an 'obligatorily gregarious' species, which means we need to live in groups in order to survive. We are biologically determined by our need for others in that being alone is not only dangerous but bad for our health. Some mammals are adapted to the single life (orang-utans and bears for example) and others are not (chimpanzees and baboons). The health effects are numerous and borne out by research. You die younger. It compromises your immune system and sets you up for cardiac and neurological problems. 

Cacioppo suggests thinking of the role of loneliness in our lives this way: humans first evolved in a relatively harsh environment (the African savannah) and going it alone was simply not an option for survival. But if you belong to a tribe and for some reason you are ostracized and kicked out of that tribe, then you are in danger. So there you are, out on the vast savannah all alone, and you see on the horizon another tribe of humans approaching. At first you might think, Oh good, I can just join up with them and everything will be fine again. But then you realize that it might not be that simple, they would see you as The Competition for limited resources, and you are only one while they are many. Maybe approaching them is not such a good idea, maybe hiding is the better option. You are in a difficult position, potentially risking death by staying alone or almost certainly risking death by attempting to connect with strangers.

That is how loneliness operates. You don't really want to be alone and it is ultimately bad for your health, but there are strong forces within you cautioning you to avoid contact with others. Unlike depression, it's not something you can bootstrap yourself out of. It's also not age-dependent, it's not strictly a problem of old age, although we like to characterize it that way. And it is becoming more pervasive across all ages. Just in the past few decades statistical surveys have shown that it has and is growing immensely as a serious social problem. But the stigma attached to it makes it very difficult to deal with socially. It is far easier to admit to being depressed than to admit to being lonely.

Until relatively recently we treated depression as a personal defect too, people didn't want to admit to it because of the stigma attached. But now we see depression not as a personal shortcoming but as a kind of illness that can be treated with various therapies, whether prescribed by a doctor or psychologist or self-administered. Loneliness still very much has a stigma attached to it, lonely people are seen as somehow defective, perhaps lacking in social skills, basically unlikeable, or deliberately self-isolating for wrongheaded reasons. The lonely person herself will wonder what is wrong with her that she can't make friends, enjoy an active social life, or attract a lover or mate. There are no proven treatments for it, a doctor or therapist won't diagnose it nor recommend treatment for it, other than to get out there and socialize. See the alone-on-the-savannah story above.

Weiss was the first researcher to show that lonely people do in fact have entirely adequate social skills and are just as attractive as anyone else. Many lonely people do have lovers and mates, even active social lives. He suggested that there were two kinds of loneliness, social and emotional. Social loneliness is the lack of a satisfying or adequate social network, emotional loneliness is the lack of intimate contact with at least one other person. Cacioppo goes on to show that there is a further breakdown into longterm chronic loneliness and shortterm circumstantial loneliness. A significant majority of longterm loneliness is triggered by parental divorce or separation. A person grows up experiencing a deep insecurity about relationships of trust that they can never quite shake.

There is a genetic component as well, some people have a higher need for social interaction than others, and that appears to be genetically determined. That doesn't mean that those people are more lonely, just that they may be predisposed to loneliness if that need is not met.

White ends her book with the development of a personal loving relationship in her life. She says that her own efforts to deal with and end her loneliness did not help, it was the sheer luck of finding someone to love and be loved by. Both White and Cacioppo contend that loneliness is a big social issue and really only has social solutions, it takes other people to bring the lonely person back into social connection. White describes some organizational efforts in that direction, loneliness reduction programs that attempt to bring lonely individuals into the fold. Not simply with other lonely people, but other lonely people that they have commonalities with that will ease the development of social connectedness.

White wrote a second book Count Me In (2015) that follows up on her life after the period described in the first book. In the second book she is single again after the love relationship of the first book ended, and describes her concerted efforts to reconnect socially. I've read some but not all of it so won't comment now about her conclusions.

Given the rise of loneliness in our modern culture and the past year of pandemic isolation, I can't help but believe that social loneliness may have reached a tipping point. I see in the news that mental health and isolation are now seen as serious side effects of this pandemic. How we will address that is going to be interesting.

Sometime after I moved back to Nova Scotia someone suggested I join the local Newcomers Club (part of a national organization). At the time I wasn't really looking for ways to engage socially, I already had an existing network of old friends here. However my membership in the club has proven immensely beneficial, I now count people I have met through Newcomers as my major social network. I still have previous friends and acquaintances, but Newcomers is a way to have a constant pool of new friends to draw on and social activities to participate in. The structure of the club is almost tailor-made to address potential loneliness. You join at a monthly meeting and sign up for any 'interest groups' that look promising to you. If you don't see your particular interest represented then you can create a group. We have groups for eating together, hiking, cycling, needlecrafts, book reading, games, discussion and social outings. People who are new in town see the club as a way to kickstart a social life here. 

This year the membership fee has been waived and several of the groups are on hiatus. The outdoors groups still meet (outdoors) and a couple of other groups have gone to Zoom. Admittedly our club skews to older people, young people don't often stay when they see all the grey hair around. Newcomers Clubs in other locations are more or less successful, have more or less restrictions on membership. One club is restricted to women only, another boots you out after a specified number of years (three I think). Ours is pretty loosey-goosey, we don't even require you to be new in town or to live within the town when you join. And you can stay as long as your heart desires, no pressure.