2020-14

Saturday April 25, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Saturday April 25, 2020

Georgia Hairdessers Weigh the Order to Reopen During a Pandemic

On Monday, within hours of Governor Brian Kemp’s announcement that many Georgia businesses could reopen on Friday, Maureen, a sixty-nine-year-old retired schoolteacher, texted her hairdresser, who owns a salon in Atlanta, about an hour from Maureen’s home, in Athens. “The Gov says you can open! 🙂 My appointment is on Friday of this week. What’s your plan?” Maureen, who voted for Kemp, made the appointment eight weeks earlier, before the coronavirus pandemichad shut down much of the country, and she was hoping to keep it. Her hairdresser, a man in his early sixties who asked that I not use his name, did not vote for Kemp. He told her that he would not be reopening until the following Monday—and only in a limited way. Maureen could try one of his other hairdressers, he said, but he wouldn’t be seeing clients himself until May 12th at the earliest. And, the hairdresser told me a few days later, if “Kemp’s science project goes as expected”—by which he meant badly—“then I have no idea when.”

July 23, 2009

Nearly a thousand people in Georgia have died, so far, of complications from the coronavirus, according to the numbers that have been reported. (The actual number may be higher.) Like the Central Georgia health board and many others in the state and around the country, the hairdresser did not think it was time to shift pandemic protocols in order to reopen businesses, even with precautions like masks, gloves, and disinfectant. “I thought it was the most asinine decision any governor could have ever made,” he said, “given the science we’re presented with, what Fauci and the other guys are saying.” The hairdresser checks the daily case counts regularly, he said. “Atlanta has been spiking up and down,” he noted. “I think yesterday we had maybe twelve hundred new cases. Today, maybe seven hundred or so—but it’s not midnight yet, I don’t know.” There are more than twenty thousand confirmed cases in the state. He went on, “It’s pretty damn silly, insisting on a haircut right now. But, you have to understand, my clientele is very privileged. To them, this is a very big sacrifice, to go without a haircut. I’ve had people offer me money to come to their houses—what’s the difference that’s gonna make? I don’t know. It’s a very entitled world.”

September 11, 2007

The hairdresser’s employees are contractors, who rent booths from him at the salon. Shortly after the announcement, he sent them the Georgia State Board of Cosmetologists and Barbers’ guidelines on reopening, which he called “the craziest thing—social distancing while giving a haircut is hard.” The board recommends that barbers wear a face shield and gloves, as a start. “You need to be in a smock, too,” the salon owner went on, “and change your smock after every haircut, into another clean, sanitized smock. The client is in sanitized cape and smock and neck wrap. Then you have to sanitize your whole station and chair.” Taking each client’s temperature and having them answer a health questionnaire is also recommended. “If I were getting paid the salary of a surgeon,” the hairdresser said, “it might be worth all the scrubbing.”

Some of the contractors are willing to take risks to pay their bills. “We could wait,” the owner said, referring to reopening. “But I feel like these hairdressers chomping at the bit—if they’re willing to do it and really take it seriously, and I’m there to monitor it—I can’t say no to them. But,” he added, “I’m kind of a wimp.”

Life in a Pandemic

One of these contractors, Brittany, who’s thirty-five, has been at the salon for four years. “If Home Depot can be open and people can shop because they’re bored and want to buy houseplants, and Target can be open for people to buy yoga pants,” she told me, “I don’t see the harm in me—carefully and safely—doing a client.” Brittany said that she is a Republican but did not vote for Kemp. She charges around two hundred dollars per session. “Twelve hundred doesn’t even pay half my booth rent,” she said, referring to the stimulus check she received from the federal government. (The salon owner did not charge booth rent while the store was closed.) “So you don’t want to be unsafe, but you also don’t want to lose clients or income. It’s a rock and a hard place, you know?” (The New Yorker) 



 

Friday April 24, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Friday April 24, 2020

Federal COVID-19 testing program will determine how far coronavirus has really spread

The Trudeau government committed more than $1 billion to COVID-19 research Thursday, including a proposal for widespread testing to better understand the coronavirus that led to the pandemic and to chart a recovery course for the country.

Coronavirus cartoons

Prime Minister Justin Trudeau said Canada needs research to respond to the pandemic in the best way possible.

“The better we understand this virus, its spread and its impact on different people, the better we can fight it and eventually defeat it,” he said.

The funding includes $40 million to do viral sequencing to track the virus and its different strains, $23 million for vaccine research, $600 million for private sector trials of drug treatments and vaccines, $114 million to the Canadian Institutes of Health research for research into measures that could reduce the spread, and a host of smaller initiatives.

The government is also setting up a “immunity task force” that will do widespread blood testing to determine just how far the virus has spread.

Unlike the current testing using nose and throat swabs, this wider testing using blood samples will be able to track people who may have had the virus, but had little or no symptoms and have now recovered.

Dr. David Naylor, a former dean of medicine and president of the University of Toronto, with an extensive background in epidemiology, who also chaired the national advisory committee on SARS, is on the task force.

He said there are likely many people walking around who have fought off the virus without even knowing they had it. Those people are believed to be immune and knowing how many there are can help the government make decisions on easing restrictions following the national lockdown that’s been in effect to fight the pandemic.

“The level of background immunity gives us some sense of how fast we can move on easing some of these restrictions,” he said. “If a lot of people are immune then this will be an easier lockdown to lift. If they aren’t we have to be a lot more careful.”

Widespread blood testing will be required to determine the prevalence of the virus. While it’s expected to take months to get a full picture, early results should give a sense of the scale of the disease, Naylor said.

“I would not be surprised if there is going to be a bit of a range within Canada. We can’t test every Canadian. We can’t test everyone everywhere, but we will test a sample across the country.”

Naylor said even when the immunity testing is completed, there will still be a need to quickly test and trace people who get sick. He said once people are out of social distancing it will be harder to test outbreaks of the virus, which is why Canada has to be prepared to move quickly.

“Immunity testing alone is not the answer, you still have to have the firefighting,” he said. “As soon as we get very active intermingling again then it is going to be much harder to fight the flare-ups and we have to have our ‘A’ game in testing and tracing.”

As of Thursday, Canada had tested 620,000 people for the virus and reported more than 41,500 cases, including 2,141 deaths. (National Post) 

 

Thursday April 23, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Thursday April 23, 2020

How Trump allies have organized and promoted anti-lockdown protests

Republican politicians and individuals affiliated with President Donald Trump’s re-election campaign are organizing or promoting anti-lockdown protests across key electoral battleground states, despite the White House’s own cautious guidance on relaxing restrictions, interviews with two dozen people involved show.

April 18 2020

In Michigan, the organizers of last week’s rally against Democratic Governor Gretchen Whitmer’s stay-at-home order aimed at combating the coronavirus pandemic are involved in the Republican president’s re-election effort, a Reuters review of their profiles and interviews with them show. 

In other swing states, such as Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and North Carolina, Republican lawmakers, party leaders and Trump allies encouraged their social media followers to join the protests, often organized by conservative activists and pro-gun- rights groups, and attended the events themselves. 

Their actions contradict the Trump administration’s recommendations for a slow and phased reopening, as well as warnings from its own medical experts that opening the economy too fast risks a resurgence of the novel coronavirus that has infected almost 810,000 people in the United States and killed over 45,000 – the world’s highest number of cases and deaths. 

A bipartisan majority of Americans – 88% of Democrats and 55% of Republicans – also want to continue to shelter in place despite the impact on the economy, according to a Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday. 

Regardless, many Trump supporters saw his criticism of Democratic governors for going too far with economic restrictions, and his recent tweets calling for those states to be “liberated,” as endorsing their cause, protest organizers and Republican officials said. 

They said there had been no communication with the Trump administration or his election campaign over the protests. 

The Trump campaign declined to answer whether it had been involved with the protests, referring instead to Trump’s daily coronavirus briefings in which he has expressed sympathy for the protesters, saying he understands their frustration.

Several of the main organizers of the Lansing, Michigan, protest that police estimated drew about 4,000 people have ties to the Trump campaign, and are deeply involved in state Republican politics. (Reuters) 

 

Wednesday April 22, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Wednesday April 22, 2020

Single-use plastic is having a resurgence during the pandemic

For those seeking silver linings in the ongoing coronavirus pandemic, the notable drop-off in air pollution has been a recurring bright spot. But while theskies might be clearing up (at least temporarily) while millions of people shelter in place, humans are poisoning the planet in other ways. Increased demand for medical supplies, households stocking up on tons of goods, and fears over COVID-19 spreading across different surfaces has single-use plastics on the rise — and as Wired reports, we’re running out of places to put it.

March 12, 2019

As more plastic waste pours in, the already overwhelmed recycling system is at risk of getting completely buried. Prior to coronavirus, many recycling companies were already struggling to deal with the more than 300 million tons of plastic discarded every year — nearly 50 percent of which is single-use. According to the Earth Institute at Columbia University, only about 10 percent of all discarded plastic products in the United States actually get recycled — a fact the plastic industry knew for years while touting recycling programs that would never be viable. Nearly 75 percent ends up in landfills, where it can sit and erode for hundreds of years, releasing carbon dioxide as it degrades and often making its way into waterways and oceans. It’s likely that as the country produces more plastic waste in this time of crisis, even more will be heading to landfills, as the already inundated recycling firms slow their operations. “Many recyclers, because of health and safety concerns, are also stopping the service,” Tom Szaky, CEO of recycling company TerraCycle, told Wired. “Recycling — that’s been in sort of a crash — is now getting even worse.”

April 24, 2018

Those slowdowns are happening in tandem with a resurgence in single-use plastics. This is happening for a number of reasons, both out of necessity and potentially unfounded fears. Plastic bags have made a comeback during thecoronavirus crisis due to concerns that reusable bags may carry the virus. A number of states and cities have reversed plastic bag bans and some have even instituted restrictions on reusable totes. While it is known that coronavirus can survive longer on certain surfaces, there doesn’t appear to be any evidence that the virus is more viable on a cloth tote than a plastic bag, particularly if the bag is washed after use — though the plastic bag is likely to be discarded after one use, limiting additional exposure. With people worried that the virus can be transmitted through a number of surfaces, the demand for packaged goods is on the rise as well. According to FoodNavigator, demand for packaged goods has skyrocketed in Europe by as much as 111 percent for some items as compared to the previous year.

There is also the fact that the price of oil has dropped dramatically, which makes producing plastic goods cheaper than usual — and they aren’t all that expensive to begin with. Plastics are made from oil, and when the price of oil drops far enough, it can result in it actually being cheaper to produce new plastic products than recycle old ones. And when the demand for recycled goods disappears, more plastic ends up in landfills, slowly eroding and polluting the planet.

Plastic waste doesn’t have the same effect as something like air pollution — we don’t immediately see the damage as it occurs. But the change in our consumption habits will be immediately felt at the landfills that are already being overrun. It will be felt by oceans that are already at risk of having more pieces of plastic than fish by 2050. Even the short burst of uptick in plastic waste could cause significant disruption to the waste and recycling ecosystems. According to Waste Dive, dozens of cities and counties across the country have suspended recycling programs entirely. Rachel Meidl, a fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, told Wired, “materials that would normally find its way to recyclers are being channeled to landfills and incinerators.” So before touting that “we are the virus” meme and spouting off to your friends about how the Earth is healing while we’re all trapped indoors, remember that there are a lot of ways we can hurt the planet without ever leaving our couches. (Mic) 

 

Tuesday April 21, 2020

Editorial Cartoon by Graeme MacKay, The Hamilton Spectator – Tuesday April 21, 2020

Politicians putting partisan interests ahead of safety

Across Canada, and around the world, people are learning how to do things remotely. Things they never would have dreamed they would need to learn. Some very unlikely things — including publishing newspapers and websites. 

Coronavirus cartoons

Churches are meeting remotely. Executives at all levels are doing it. Students of all ages. Doctors, counsellors, financial advisers, planners, scientists and civil servants. Musicians are performing from their basements and home recording studios.

It can be frustrating, and there are a range of indirect problems that can result from working in isolation. But we do it, because it’s what is best from a public health perspective. And that is what the vast majority of us agree is most important right now.

But Canadian Parliamentarians cannot meet remotely, apparently. At least, Andrew Scheer and his Conservatives aren’t supporting virtual parliamentary sessions. Instead, they want a reduced number of MPs to meet in Parliament face to face. 

January 23, 2020

The governing Liberals, the NDP and the Bloc Québécois all agree that virtual parliament is doable. The lone holdouts are the Conservatives. A vote was scheduled for late yesterday afternoon that will see an unhappy compromise — MPs will meet together once a week, on Wednesdays, for in-person sittings. There will also be two virtual sessions per week that will include two-hour-and-15-minutes for questioning cabinet ministers, and another session for debating new legislation. 

The Conservatives are expected to vote against even this compromise. Instead, they want three in-person sittings per week. Scheer’s defence is that since construction work on the Centre Block can continue, so can face-to-face parliament sittings. “If they can safely renovate the building that houses our parliament then surely we can do our duty to uphold the bedrock of our democracy.”

But why can’t virtual sittings work? Scheer doesn’t have a good answer for that. His best attempt seems to be that virtual sittings aren’t possible immediately and MPs “cannot wait for the weeks and weeks that it may take the House of Commons administration” to provide necessary technology. 

But that excuse doesn’t wash either, since House Speaker Anthony Rota has written in a public letter that virtual sittings should be available by May 6.

October 31, 2019

Given Scheer doesn’t have a sensible answer, the real reason for his resistance to something all other parties can agree on is undoubtedly partisan. Scheer doesn’t want to give up the partisan bear pit that is traditional Parliament, especially Question Period. Doing so takes away his partisan soapbox, and means less face-time on TV.

It would be bad enough if this was just about MPs risking their health and spreading COVID-19. But it’s not just about them. Some support staff — pages, laundry and cafeteria staff for example — won’t need to be recalled. But others, such as broadcast technicians, clerks and interpreters will have to come to work in the West Block. When the House met on Saturday, April 11, 40 additional employees were required so that 32 MPs could do their work at the emergency sitting.

So let’s be entirely clear. Scheer is putting his own partisan interests ahead of public health. Even though the vast majority of Canadians are working hard to live by the distancing recommendations from public health leadership, Scheer is insisting on up to 100 people meeting, and at least in some cases, not being able to practice physical distancing.

There is still a chance that Scheer might relent on this terrible position, perhaps recognizing how the optics make he and his Conservative party look awful. That would be a wise reversal. (Hamilton Spectator Editorial)