Bullfrogging…Life is Good

I start this particular blog having just yesterday (28 July 2024) turned another of my life’s corners….I am now 75 years of age – “old,” by most standards and for the most part, I feel no different inside than I did at any other age. For some weeks, I have left the draft of this blog with only its exact title that I wanted but I have been unready to write the text. Right now, I know how I want this blog to feel and it’s time to let it unfold, five or six months after posting my last blog. It has not been procrastination. Instead, I have been drawn to re-read all of my previously posted blogs right from my very first one in 2018 – At Stake. I have not done that before now – re-read them – although I have inserted an image or addendum occasionally. My sense was that I write these blogs, vignettes to tomes (some say) just to write, to express  for my Self – as a kind of method to metabolize my own life – so why not read them just for me. Thus, having re-read and played around and edited all of my blogs, I have gathered my self’s expressive Self and am now drafting this blog from a place of taking stock of where I am and how I feel and be in the ‘world’ in this moment in time.

Annually, in late July, local corn crop growth is the proverbial ‘as high as an elephant’s eye‘ (what an incredibly perfect simile), as Gordon MacRae gently crooned in the song Oh What a Beautiful Morning in the 1955 movie, Oklahoma! It was that time of year when I started this blog, mid-Summer 2024. We are living in very strange, turmoiled times as the world reels seemingly endlessly from wars and their atrocities in Russia/Ukraine, the Middle East, and North Africa to name the most prominent. Climate changes wrought by humankind (our reliance on fossil fuels and their concomitant pollution, for example) escalate worldwide as evidenced by rising global temperatures and so many other indicators such as dramatic changes in elements like excessive rains, flooding, mud- and land-slides, severe storms (tornadoes, cyclones, tsunamis) forest fires, and the list goes on ad infinitum. In short, Gaia – a personification of the earth or Earth Mother – is pissed!

In Canada, we are saturated and deeply disturbed with the specter of Donald Trump being re-elected to the American presidency. And his election has come to pass; he will be inaugurated on 20 January 2024, ironically Martin Luther King Day – symbolically such a representation of freedom annually – in the US. Trump is a narcissistic sociopath, a liar, a misogynist, a convicted criminal and yet so sadly a genius in verbally manipulating his legion of followers, mostly die-hard or right wing Republicans in the United States as well as ultra-conservatives in other areas of the world including Canada. How could a population be so blinded (willful blindness ? contrived ignorance? conscious avoidance) to Trump? There are no simple answers although there continue to be a multiplicity of theories. Relatedly, perhaps, in a 2022 study, some 10 per cent of Americans have adopted the pseudo-scientific propaganda that the earth is flat and that, to me, is nothing short of stunning and sad in all of its implications.

And it’s not just Americans who drink the Kool-Aid of neoconservative, non-scientific perspectives. For example, daily, we see pick-up truck windows and/or vehicle bumper stickers with the slogan, “Fuck Trudeau.” Justin Trudeau is our current Prime Minister and an easy scapegoat for perceived economic and political problems in our country.  I wonder how many of the fucktrudeau folks know, actually know what his policies are and/or what he has really done to deserve such denigration; it seems like it’s the “in” thing to do, to fault Trudeau for perceived economic and other woes. Pressure mounts currently for Trudeau to step down as Liberal leader and on 7 January 2024, Trudeau announced his resignation. Albertans recently elected Danielle Smith as premier and leader of the United Conservative party in that province. Smith often threatens her province’s separation from Canadian federation and wobbles between conservative and ultra conservative views on many political perspectives. As a journalist, she once offered that smoking cigarettes can reduce the risk of disease, a signal to me of her proclivity to ignore actual evidence and truth and propagate completely unfounded nonsense that feeds the most insidious social virus, the dispersion of misinformation. As premier, she teeters on espousing conspiracy theories re Covid-19, especially related to the safety of vaccinations and providing amnesty for those who violated COVID public health restrictions.

The foregoing are perhaps the most predominant examples of these troubled times, at least in Canada. For this blog, I want to pick up Premier Smith’s wobbling Covid baton and try to describe what it has been like, from one person’s perspective, to live during the ongoing Pandemic for the past 4+ years. In our home, we have several Alexa devices – the cloud-based voice service implemented by Amazon. Recently, I have asked Alexa to play the song, Bang the Drum Slowly by Emmylou Harris. It is an almost funereal dirge about what specific things the singer meant to ask a presumed deceased person but apparently never did inquire. The lines that reverberate for me and have inspired, in part, this blog are these ones from the first verse:

I always meant to ask you about the war
And what you saw across a bridge too far
Did it leave a scar…

And I think of the metaphorical implications of the very poignant and Covid-apropos 2021 movie, Don’t Look Up. The film concerns two scientists who discover a huge, extinction-threatening meteor or comet heading toward earth. The scientists try everything, seemingly in vain, to wake humanity up to the potential catastrophe but people will not look up! To me it was such a huge, virtual mirror for the global response both to the imminent prospects of Covid-19 and to human-induced ravages of climate change.

Don’t look up to inconvenient truths!

My father could never speak about his experiences as an RCAF pilot during the second World War and I stopped asking him. And I have no idea what it was like for millions of people all over the world who lived during that war (1939-1945) – or any other war, current or past – although I have read many articles and books and novels about those times. What I do know is what it has been like for me to live in Covid-19 times and I wish to metaphorically walk around and reflect on my experiences, my thoughts, my way of being and doing during this ongoing Pandemic.

I fully acknowledge that my views on Pandemic life come from a place of a White, middle class, male, and very privileged perspective. Part of that privilege is a biological inheritance – I chose my parents wisely and neither my sex or my race was determined by me. Another part of my ‘privilege’ was attained by sheer hard work as an active and long-time contributor (summer jobs, 42-year professorial career) to the labour force. My point is I do not dismiss or apologize or ignore my privileged place in Canadian society; I am fully aware of it. Like everyone, no matter what their Pandemic point of view, I assume we all do the best we can even though that optimistic assumption continues to be tested, warped, and a constant source of frustrated observation and curiosity on my part. Moreover, I regard myself as a realist and an optimist. Many years ago, Dori, a good friend with whom I co-coach and have done so for more than 20 years. sent me a Life Is Good t-shirt. I loved the feel of it and I now own about 25 of them, mostly short-sleeved, some long-sleeved, and recently in sweatshirt style. For the uninitiated, they are coloured Tees with some saying – mostly the ‘Life is Good’ adage – and/or image on them, like this one:

For me, they just fit well and have a short sleeve length that is comfortable on my upper arms. What I am aware of now is that I have been symbolically and literally sporting the slogan emblazoned on my person in a three word epithet that pretty much sums up how I feel about my life and life itself. I am reminded of the currently popular adage, “gratitude helps you fall in love with the life you already have.” To me, life is good and I still live each day from that gr/attitude or way of being that is my truth regardless of what is happening on/at/to our planet. In no way do I believe my perspective to be either a limitation to being able to fathom real world issues or one of wearing proverbial rose-coloured-glasses. Bad and atrocious things have happened and continue to happen and I am not immune to those abominations. Still, I travel within and experience my world and our world in my LDM (my initials) ’75 body and soul – life is good.

Two of my blogs in the past were devoted to my experiences with the pandemic. In mid-March 2020, I published The Ides of Corona March  At the time, the planet was enveloped in the horrific early stages of the Covid-19 pandemic. In the blog, I decried our ‘antibiotic culture;’ our over-reliance on ill-health care; and our expectations of instant relief when any aspect of our health is threatened. We reacted to the pandemic crisis in stunning ways…like hoarding toilet paper

where Death, fittingly the 4th horsemen of the Apocalypse, carried the treasured tissue. At the same time, medical authorities and politicians were swift (a word that bursts with new meanings in our Taylor Swiftie-obsessed media) response to the World Heath Organization-declared pandemic. My personal response to the first news was shock and disbelief even though the commander of a Canadian forces base near Montreal woke me up to the serious reality of the virulence enveloping the globe. We were scheduled to do an in-person Motivational Interviewing workshop with the personnel on that base; in the midst of finalizing our travel and accommodation plans, the base commander contacted me to tell me to suspend our preparations and informed me the military was being summoned to move the country into restrictions, perhaps lock-down. Jen came to my office just after that conversation. I was to scheduled to play pickleball indoors that evening. Having some information of her own learning about the virus, she asked me to reconsider. Resistant at first, my response a few minutes later was to cancel my event and also to commit to her, as the resident health expert in our family, that I would follow her lead in anything regarding pandemic behaviour and precautions. That commitment has never wavered over the past 4+ years.

Flatten the curve and social-physical distancing became the watch-words early in the global crisis:

And quarantining and lock-downs became essential measures sans, at the time, vaccines to slow the rate of infections, illnesses, and death. Countries like Italy and Spain were decimated by the Covid-19 contagion; as I illustrated in that “ides of Corona” blog, we were warned by Europeans of the rapidly escalating cases of illnesses and death on that continent. The one measure we could take as the most efficacious one to combat the viral spread was physical (and social) distancing summed up rudely and accurately by the buzzwords for that measure:

It was a stark literal and metaphorical dictate that ended up very quickly in provincially mandated lock-downs and soon thereafter in compulsory vaccinations (the first vaccine available in Canada was in December of 2020, if memory serves) particularly with respect to cross-border travel to and from Canada. Stay at home was not easy and had a huge impact on the economy and on mental stability. Schools were shuttered, hospitals were swamped, and wave after wave of Covid-19 affected everyone in some fashion ranging from perceived inconvenience to serious illness to death. One stark reminder and comparison to war-time restrictions was this one, posted in my mid-March 2020 blog:

In my blog, I said, “We, the poster caption states, are being asked to sit in our homes, not literally, but to stay home, wash our hands regularly, go out only when we need to do so, wear masks responsibly for the sake of everyone, and use common sense from a fully informed perspective – our ‘war’ is with the COVID-19 virus and that deadly virus will ‘March’ on every day. Our medical system cannot ‘fix’ this and it cannot handle the volume of patients that will absolutely need care if we don’t vigilantly and consistently continue to socially distance and take every precaution we can. The responsibility for our well-being and health is each individual’s responsibility.”

By mid-May 2020, I was inspired to craft another Covid-reflective blog, Mid-May Covid-19. World-wide, governments pondered the wisdom of “re-opening” from lock-down and other restrictions. My view then and it remains so now is that it was way too soon. Adjusting to the new-normal of living with a deadly virus was very difficult for everyone. In my own case, I wrote this in May 2020, “We, my wife and I have practiced very strict social-physical distancing for the last nine weeks, conforming to the ‘stay home’ dictum so prevalent in our society. We click-and-collect our groceries or piggyback on the generosity of friends who have offered to pick up specialty staple-items for us. We sanitize everything that comes to our house, stay at least 2 meters away from anyone but each other, wash our hands often and thoroughly – do anything and everything we can to fend off or be responsible for viral transmission. Fear? Perhaps. Respect, in my view. Yet we believe it is the best way to manage ourselves during this time of so much uncertainty; our behaviour and choices, we feel, respects us, others, and the potency of this virus. Are we right? We are for us and our values. Are we privileged? Of course. Are we impacted economically? Yes, though not nearly as severely as so many millions of people.” We, everyone was affected and thousands and thousands infected globally. Sadly, polarization of opinions outstripped scientific evidence as conspiracy theories that questioned the reality of the pandemic, decried perceived freedoms that had been taken away (stay home) etc. I remember one posting in our local Facebook group re masking. The person said, ‘I won’t mask, you do you and I’ll do me.’ That remark was a microscopic encapsulation of a growing movement that mistook Covid-induced restrictions as freedoms being abrogated by governments. In my view, this mistaken perception was that of equating ‘freedom’ with the vast privileges of living in non-pandemic times . It was a cauldron of brewing and stewing opinions run rampant.

I am not trying to do a history of the pandemic; instead I endeavour herein to be both intro- and self-aware extrospective in my Covid experiences and adaptations. There are many, many sources and resources that do the work of historically situating the pandemic. Two 2020 Covid blogs were my early pandemic ruminations. In the May 2020 blog, most of it was devoted to posting stark images about the first 100 days of the pandemic and I don’t wish to replicate them here (click here to see them) with the exception of one that kind of encapsulates the mid-May 2020 Covid situation:

How apropos and in many ways, what a harbinger of things to come over the ensuing 4 years.

Vaccines developed in first world countries to combat Covid-19 became widely available by 2021. In our corner of the world, the population initially flocked to get vaccinated as MRNA technologies made Pfizer and Moderna household names. By 2022, it was estimated that 85% of Canadians had at least one round of a vaccine. And the virus mutated and continues to do so producing new variants and concomitant new iterations of vaccine boosters. In my generation, vaccines in general were and remain scientifically-proven, accepted, important, and vital health practices in light of their value as counter-measures in controlling and minimizing very serious infections/diseases like smallpox, rabies, whooping cough, measles, mumps , rubella, tuberculosis, diptheria, and polio, to name only a few.

Since and including April 2021 when the MRNA vaccines first became available, I have been vaccinated against Covid-19 and its variants nine times – my vaccination record or proof is here and is offered only as an example of my ongoing commitment to scientific, evidence-based practice and to responsible personal and population health. Sadly, the pandemic has underscored a vast number of anti-vaxxers; these are persons opposed to vaccinations for any number of reasons from fear of needles to opinion-based beliefs in the presumed ability of the body to heal/regulate itself to misinformation about harmful ingredients – even widespread touting of unfounded and untrue genetic-altering properties – in vaccines. It is well established that only a very, very small percentage of people are allergic to vaccines. It is very difficult to estimate how many or what proportion of people have maintained Covid-19 vaccination updates; best optimistic calculations are less than a fifth of the North American population. A potent reminder about vaccine effectiveness in a picture worth the proverbial thousand words:

Personally, I have lost friends – a sobering experience and sad fact – over misinformation about Covid-19 vaccination protocols/safety/importance and struggled to have conversations even with some family members about the need for vaccines. Over the whole 4+ and continuing years of the pandemic, what has astounded me and continues to amaze and perplex me is the range of human behaviour with respect to pandemic responses. Updated vaccinations, air purifiers, masking, and hand-sanitation (the latter to a minimal effect re Covid-19 because the virus is primarily airborne in its transmission) remain the best preventive measures against Covid infection. Although common during the first two years of the pandemic, consistent masking in public places is practiced by very few people. Similarly, improvements in air quality, air purifiers, and/or the use of and/or upgrading to high quality air filters such as HEPA (high efficiency particulate air) filters is not common in spite of solid evidence about their effectiveness in mitigating all manner of viral infections including Covid ones.

My own resistance to completing this blog is rooted in my uncertainty and to some extent hesitancy is writing about living rationally and safely during this ongoing pandemic. While the WHO has rescinded the ’emergency’ status attached to the pandemic, that body is unequivocal in that the pandemic status of Covid-19 continues. It seems from my observations locally, opinions expressed in the media, and even in information distributed from public health authorities and from all levels of government that most people believe that – and live as though – the pandemic is over. We see the misused expression “post-pandemic” so often. I get that people want to return to ‘normal,’ to the halcyon and bygone days of 2019-yore pre-pandemic. Who among us does not wish this were true and it just isn’t.

And so I arrive at describing what it has been like living from an evidence-based, personally- and socially-responsible place during the ongoing pandemic. First on my list has to be masking:

I mask everywhere and have done so for more than 4 years. The only time I don’t mask is when I walk our dogs within our own neighbourhood – I do always carrry a mask on those walks – and maintain a good distance from other people/dogs/neighbours I encounter on those walks. Often, I think of revising a conundrum I used to use in teaching creative thinking:

A person leaves home, makes three left turns and arrives back home only to be greeted by a person wearing a mask. What has happened or what does this event describe?

The response I sought as a professor was a home run in baseball. Often I would substitute a woman leaves home to reinforce stereotypes and gender bias in our thinking. Regardless, my thought process now is that the fitting response would be the person making the journey is living during the pandemic. Would that the person leaving home and making the turns were wearing a mask too! The mask I wear 90% of the time is an N95 respirator mask, like this 3M one:

There is a pliable piece of metal that is fitted with a gentle pinch over my nose bridge and the bottom fits under my chin and I try my best to seal all its edges around my face. Jen and I had a professional come to our home about 18 months ago; they did a mask fit-test of various mask-types using a plastic hood and vented spray kind of like the process shown in this video although the respirator-style mask in this video is more elaborate than an N95 mask. Ironically, the expert was bearded and wore a common medical mask with a very poor seal whilst showing us best-fit masks! So-called medical masks, baby-blues as we call them, commonly used by medical personnel in hospitals are better than no mask at all, but not by much. Rarely have I been asked about wearing a mask although currently, I would estimate 99% of people I see going into or out of stores or any other venue are not masked. At Greenhills, the indoor pickleball facility where I play, I am the only person who wears a mask from the time I get out of the car, enter the facility, play, and leave the facility. However, I am very grateful that all the persons with whom I play have agreed to mask when playing with me and they have been just terrific and respectful in remembering to extend that courtesy. If we have to have a service person come into our home – plumber, repair person etc – we ask them in advance to mask and we supply them with masks, usually a high quality (N99 respirator equivalent) earloop mask – easier to fit than the strap-equipped 3M one above – like this one

Because the Covid-19 virus in airborne, we upgraded our furnace filter from MERV 11 to a MERV 14

An air filtration company says, “MERV stands for minimum efficiency reporting value. MERV ratings are an air filter industry standard. The higher the MERV rating, the more particles are captured as well as the ability to filter smaller and smaller particles.” I check the filter at least every 2 months and replace it if it’s at all dirty/discoloured. To the same end, we installed a Lifebreath-brand HRV or Heat Recovery Ventilator:

The HRV acts as the lungs of our home, exchanging and balancing heat and moisture between outside and inside air. Newer homes, by code must have HRVs (or ERVs, energy recovery ventilators) installed, a pre-Covid requirement that assists in making homes more comfortable, cleaner, and healthier.

We have felt that any measure to improve and ensure high air quality in any environment is a best counter measure in living with the viral threat of Covid-19 and any other viral transmissions like the contagious RSV (Respiratory syncytial virus). In the same vein, we own some 6 HEPA filters, 5 like this one:

This air purifier we put in rooms whenever we have anyone, service people as well as friends who take the same Covid precautions as we do etc. For our bedroom, we have a larger HEPA air purifier, this one:

With 2 dogs and 2 people sleeping in that room, having a more powerful air purifier just seemed prudent. We also have a couple of Honeywell “true” HEPA, charcoal-based air purifiers:

When we do have anyone in our home, we set up the HEPA filters wherever people will be and we also open windows and use electric fans to help with air exchange. Cleaning and/or replacing the actual, internal filters in the air purifiers is one of my regular responsibilities. In both of our vehicles, we upgraded the internal air filter to HEPA quality and in the car we use for longer distances, installed this German-manufactured Atem car portable HEPA air purifier that is controlled by a phone app as shown below:

For medical appointments, such as semi-annual dental appointments, we ask for first-of-the-day appointments (our dental office is cleaned every evening – presumably the air quality will be at its peak before the busyness of many, likely unmasked ‘breathers’); wear our masks as long as we can; ask that all dental staff who work on our mouths wear N95 masks; and, along with the very high quality HEPA filters that dental offices were mandated to install during the first years of the pandemic, we set a small portable filter on our chest – all measures taken because dental staff are working literally in our airways. The mini portable air purifier is a cordless “true” HEPA filter and it looks like this:

Within our home, we have come to rely on a indoor air quality measuring device, an “Aranet 4” portable monitor:

The device is a stand-alone, battery-powered wireless sensor for monitoring CO₂, relative humidity, temperature, and atmospheric pressure. Our view was that it was all well and good to have the air quality devices with a built-in assumption they were effective and we wanted to be able to monitor the actual air quality. Since installing our HRV (see the image above), the Aranet monitor reveals very good air quality values. For a more accurate device to test air quality when we do have to go inside, we use an Atmotube Pro professional air quality monitoring apparatus to obtain real-time measurements of Particulate Matter (PMs) PM1.0 PM2.5, and PM10 pollutants, including dust, smoke, pollen, and soot. It also detects common household chemical pollutants called Total Volatile Organic Compounds (TVOCs) that are gases emitted from products like personal care products, paints etc. Similar to the Atem car HEPA instrument, the Atmo Pro has its own app as well:

We also are diligent after any outing or after any in-house visitors (always masked) that we hand-sanitize immediately after and then take some extra precautions to protect our airways. We use two nasal sprays, Betadine, a cold-defence spray

and Viraleze, a cold- and respiratory infection- barrier spray:

We then gargle with a chlorine-based mouthwash like this one:

Finally, we do a saline in warm water nasal rinse with a neti-pot…

And if we do have or anticipate having contact with anyone, masked or not, we do a rapid test (and ask persons coming in contact with us to do the same, where feasible) using a Covid-19 antigen test kit like this one:

And more recently, as rapid test kits became more difficult to acquire, we also use a PlusLife nucleic acid testing device, a more comprehensive, sophisticated, and accurate testing instrument:

I am fully aware that some folks, perhaps many people reading the foregoing airway and air quality measures might view them as extreme, over-the-top and/or unnecessary. We use and rely on masks, air filters, and airway care products because of scientific evidence re our pandemic climate and because we want to preserve our own health and the health of others, any and all others. And we are fortunate that we can afford to purchase and maintain all of our respiratory health equipment and products.

I am a “Covid-virgin,” proudly so – I have not contracted Covid-19 nor has Jen. Getting or succumbing to the virus is part and parcel of my and our concern. However, the greater reality/truth/concern for both Jen and me personally and for our concern for friends and loved ones (for anyone, truthfully) is the attendant specter of once-contracted, the viral infection could result in long-Covid with all of its health debilitating and life-threatening aspects; with each repeated infection, the likelihood of contracting long-Covid increases. The following is the abstract-summary from an August 2024 review article, Long COVID Science, Research and Policy published in the highly respected journal, Nature Medicine; it is perhaps the most succinct current expression of long Covid as a very, very serious health issue:

“Long COVID represents the constellation of post-acute and long-term health effects caused by SARS-CoV-2 infection; it is a complex, multisystem disorder that can affect nearly every organ system and can be severely disabling. The cumulative global incidence of long COVID is around 400 million individuals, which is estimated to have an annual economic impact of approximately $1 trillion—equivalent to about 1% of the global economy. Several mechanistic pathways are implicated in long COVID, including viral persistence, immune dysregulation, mitochondrial dysfunction, complement dysregulation, endothelial inflammation and microbiome dysbiosis. Long COVID can have devastating impacts on individual lives and, due to its complexity and prevalence, it also has major ramifications for health systems and economies, even threatening progress toward achieving the Sustainable Development Goals. Addressing the challenge of long COVID requires an ambitious and coordinated—but so far absent—global research and policy response strategy. In this interdisciplinary review, we provide a synthesis of the state of scientific evidence on long COVID, assess the impacts of long COVID on human health, health systems, the economy and global health metrics, and provide a forward-looking research and policy roadmap.”

This ‘cartoon’ image depicts some of the more common post- or long-Covid symptoms:

The mutating Covid-19 virus has the potential capacity to attack vital organs and body systems (not just respiratory but cardiovascular, immune systems etc) and remain dormant until triggered by various issues. There has been and remains a large-scale willful blindness about unusual, persistent coughs/colds/flu etc etc symptoms that keep getting labelled as ‘strange’ or long-lasting and yet curiously unconnected, by most people, to Covid. I blame public health and like-minded agencies for not being transparent in providing full information about long Covid. In Ontario, government cancelled the Scientific Table originally and importantly tasked with keeping the public up-to-date with accurate information about Covid. Recently, the same government stopped funding waste-water testing for Covid incidence and prevalence. Rapid tests for diagnosing Covid are now expensive and hard to get in Canada though easily obtained in the United States I believe. Perhaps the most accurate and revealing and ongoing depiction of current Covid rates in Canada comes from Dr Tara Moriarty’s infectious diseases research laboratory at the University of Toronto. Here is her most recent Canadian Covid-19 forecast table:

The table is a sobering representation of Covid-mortality ‘threats’ based on a variety of parameters and it is real, substantive, and accurate in portraying the impact of the ongoing Pandemic in our country.

It is as though we/society have drawn some kind of giant, opaque veil over the reality of the pandemic in all of its manifestations. In thinking about the Covid-19 content for this blog, I have struggled with how to express my thoughts given that I have strong feelings about what I perceive to be widespread personal and professional whitewashing and complete dismissal of the ongoing pandemic threats. My longstanding expression to Jen is that vast numbers of people and institutional entities like governments and public health and education, in effect are playing Russian Roulette with the pandemic, wittingly and unwittingly. That analogy is apt; I perceive it to be the greatest collective ostrich-posturing of this pandemic era. Recently and coincidentally, I have come across two interviews re Covid-19 and society’s responses to the pandemic and both have bolstered my resolve and my knowledge and beliefs about safe and unsafe Covid pandemic behaviours and facts. Both interviews are buttressed with scientific evidence, the latter serves as the gold standard by which we/everyone should be making all decisions regarding the pandemic.

The first one is an interview with Dr Arijit Chakravarty who is the CEO of Fractal Therapeutics, a Cambridge, Massachusetts based company that focuses on on applying mathematical modeling to drug discovery and development. Entitled Five Years of the Covid-19 Pandemic (I underscore the ongoing implications inherent in the title), the interview was published on the World Socialist Website (wsws.org) and the link is here. Links often get “broken” as years pass so I have downloaded the piece as a pdf here – Covid-19 Pandemic at 5 years interview 30 Dec 2024. Only the web-based version has clickable links to evidence for Chakravarty’s claims and opinions. The interview is long so I have summarized what I consider to be salient points to consider. I do this because of the “calm mongering” on the part of public health and politicians re Covid. Living “with” the virus is a losing proposition and the data supporting that fact is suppressed, ignored, and/or countered with the misinformation and conspiracy theories that abound and are given so much media attention. Here are the main points:

• one can assume that the majority of the world’s population has been infected with COVID on average at least three times
• public health should have been out there saying, “These are the risks of getting COVID. These are the repeated risks of COVID,”
• both public health and politicians have served as cheerleaders for an infectious disease that has clear-cut long-term consequences
• COVID eventually weakens people’s immune systems repeatedly through repeated infections
• the virus faces no intrinsic penalty for becoming deadlier
• people are topping up their antibody levels through repeat infections, at a frequent enough basis that they’re not ending up in hospital acutely – The problem with that strategy is that you’re still infected all the time. It has been well-documented that the virus can make its way into pretty much every tissue
• we are kicking the can down the road with all these delayed consequences like cancers, cardiovascular issues, DNA strand breaks without an ability to repair those critical strands
• essentially the first obstacle we must deal with is the idea of pandemic denialism. We are like lemmings at this point. There is no real appreciation at the public level for the scale of threat we are facing
• our public health leadership has been complicit, actively participated in making people believe [Covid] is just another run-of-the-mill respiratory virus
• if you keep playing roulette—allowing repeated waves of COVID infections to occur—the [viral] house will eventually win
• we should identify people with long-term infections that are capable of infecting others. We should find ways to limit spread from them, and we should give them treatments that are specifically designed to bring the viral load down
• If you really want to bring the global viral load down, of course, then the most obvious way is to improve indoor air quality
• Deploying HEPA filters, you could probably up the indoor air quality in every building in the US for the cost of an aircraft carrier
• This whole idea that learning to live with the disease means permitting and encouraging its rampant spread and rapid evolution is just so many levels of stupidity that I don’t have a word for it
• The bottom line is that if public health had stopped lying years ago and had been honest about the costs, and if public health had realized what the correct approach is, which is to slow viral evolution down, then we would have been in a situation today where public health was treating COVID as a disease that needs to be suppressed

What I so very much admire in the foregoing is the unmitigated expression of pandemic issues’ and mismanagement truths

The second superb article I want to highlight and share is The Lone Ranger in Covid Town by Dr Aspa Paltoglou a chartered psychologist and senior lecturer in Psychology at Manchester Metropolitan University in the UK. Her article is published in The Psychologist, the research organ of the British Psychological Society and is part of that organization’s “ever-growing Covid-19 collection” of papers and reviews. In this piece she shares her views and experiences on continuing to take pandemic precautions – decrying the pervasive expression “post-Covid” – when she feels like the ‘lone ranger‘ or one of the few people to do so. She writes succinctly and accurately re the pandemic:

As far as I can tell from the scientific papers and data, we are still in a pandemic. And so I still hold Covid-19 mitigations: I mask with FFP3 respirators, I carry a small air purifier, I don’t eat in restaurants, and generally I tend to avoid busy indoor places if I can help it. I also use a nose spray and a mouthwash that appear to reduce viral load. Covid-19 is caused by the SARS-CoV-2 virus; it is a highly contagious, airborne virus, that can be suspended for hours in the air like smoke. Handwashing, although a good thing to do for a variety of reasons, is not the most relevant precaution as some suggest. Obviously I vaccinate against Covid-19 whenever possible, but as far as I know the vaccine on its own does not yet protect you from getting Covid-19 or from Long Covid (although it seems to reduce the severity of the acute disease), so the strategy needs to be ‘vaccine plus’; the vaccine only as part of a suite of measures. Because most people around me seem to consider Covid-19 a thing of the past, I am usually a lone masker everywhere I go. As a Psychologist, how do I explain that? And how can I live that way?

To say I empathize is an understatement; both Jen and I feel consistently lone-rangered and ‘othered’ because of our preventive, evidence-based measures and behaviours re Covid. All of the links in Paltoglou’s piece in the pdf link above are live links and the online version is here. Her article is an easy read and is prefaced by a very apt adage from T.S. Eliot’s The Four Quartets, “Human kind cannot bear very much reality.” It is a cogent and kind word-mirror re our global society’s cloaked proclivity not to bear the pandemic reality – what Paltoglou labels as avoidance or collective trauma (though that trauma is buried in pandemic denial, in my view). Her plea and the main focus of her article is masking and hence the Lone Ranger – the eye-masked fictional former Texas Ranger who fought outlaws in the American west – referral in her title. Covid-preventive, science-savvy persons ‘fight’ the outlaws of anti-maskers, anti-vaxxers, misinformation amplifiers, and conspiracy theorists.What I really enjoyed about her writing was not just the kinship (mask-ship?) of like-minded and like-behaviour but even more her suggestions about how to be Covid-cautious, how to be a masked lone ranger, that is how to adapt to the pandemic reality and be part of the solution in its suppression:

• find allies by joining Covid-19 related groups
• seek and garner support for mask-wearing, air purifier use etc in work environments
• model mask-wearing as she does in masking while teaching her students
• stay informed – live by the science we espouse

She ends her piece with her experiential wisdom and personal commitment:

“For my part, I will continue wishing there was [I’m sure she meant ‘were’] no pandemic, and that I could engage with the world as before. At the same time, I will do everything I can, in my small way, to get us out of the pandemic. There is a personal cost, certainly, but there is also a lot of support. We need collaboration between honest, compassionate and well-informed scientists, leaders, and individuals, if we are to ever end this pandemic. Stay safe and follow the science – better antivirals and vaccines are on the way. We shall overcome – in the meantime, support those Lone Rangers, and try to protect each other.”

We are what we believe, as one of my good friends often opines. And I come back to the Great Magnifying Glass of the past almost 5 years of pandemic life, the gargantuan dispersion and propagation of right-wing, me-first social behaviours opposing safe and rational pandemic responses. For example, incredulously and disgustedly, I have watched people attending the so-called Freedom Convoy, now described as the 2022 series of protests and blockades across Canada; they were organized, ostensibly to protest public health and government-imposed vaccine mandates, lockdowns, and other perceived restrictions to their advocates’ personal freedoms. The most well known example of this was the ‘truckers’ convoy/invasion of Ottawa:

In my view, it was a collective, almost-mob-like set of protest behaviours whose manifestations were irresponsible, at best, and invasive of other people’s actual freedoms – the disruption of and disrespect for Ottawa residents and businesses, blockaded border crossings into/from the United States and so forth. In an absolute sense, pre- or non-pandemic ‘freedoms’ were restricted; however, those restrictions were emergency-based and less restrictions than measures enacted for public health and safety in the face of managing the horrific impacts of the Covid-19 virus. Free speech and the right to protest are unquestionable human rights; however, these “Freedom” exhibitions were misinformed, driven by right-wing zealots, and imposed illegally. The greater good, the collective well-being of the nation, in this case, were ignored in a misguided and selfish quest for ‘freedom.’ To me, it was akin to an infant throwing a temper-tantrum rather than adult, reasoned, and responsible behaviour.

What has fed me during the whole pandemic is a friendship and deepening intimacy with my best friend, my wife, Jen. We have been totally aligned from Day 1 of our pandemic response. And we are together most days 24/7 because I am retired and Jen’s full time job at Western is fulfilled 100% virtually. Many couples’ relationships have been severed because of each person’s differing beliefs about pandemic life responses and behaviours. We are steadfast in our commitment first to each other and then to science, to evidence-based practice, to our health, society’s health, and global health. Jen has played a far-greater role in public, social media-based advocacy for best practices in suppressing the pandemic. To extend Dr Paltoglou’s lonely mask metaphor from the article cited above, then Jen is the ‘lone ranger’ of our household and I am our resolute ‘tonto’ (the Lone Ranger’s fictional, Native American companion). As a trained health scientist, she has both a personal and concomitant professional commitment to promoting healthy living. For the most part, I have elected to live my life practicing safe and healthy living in the new-normal of the pandemic and have only played minor roles in advocating for equity and equitable treatment in certain situations. For example, in the latter regard, I spent over a year trying to convince the organizers of Western’s Senior Alumni Lecture Series to offer the lectures in hybrid fashion, that is, in person for those who elected to attend that way and via Zoom for those who, for whatever reasons, elected for that option. My reasoning was the lectures attract 300+ people and by definition (“senior”), those people were/are in the most vulnerable category re Covid. Coming onto a campus of 40,000+ student population and then sitting in a relatively small lecture theatre in close proximity to each other sans any overt masking and/or vaccination reminders seemed surreal to me. Obstinately, in my perception, the program administrators clung to the “we prefer” the in-person stance and virtual was “too expensive, too unwieldy” etc. It took appealing to the university’s Equity Office to get the coordinators to see it was very much an equity issue and adopt the hybrid offerings in the Fall of 2024. In that process, I was mindful – and remain so – of the wonderful cartoon exemplifying and capturing the difference between equality and equity:

Would that we be more aware of this important difference in all human endeavours.

My life-is-good daily life has been multi-faceted. In effect, I have learned to ‘stir the oatmeal’ of everyday life in simple and for me, enriching ways mindful always of living completely aware of and safely during the pandemic. Pickleball has become a passion – see my Pickler, Pickled blog from the Spring of 2023.  During lockdown and when I underwent full hip replacement surgery in 2021, I engaged in my pickleball-drilling bodily monologue on outdoor tennis courts, practicing serves and using a ball-machine to work on stroke mechanics and repetitions. Once I felt safe to do so, I found partners who would drill outside with me wearing a mask. I maintained my pre-Covid membership at Greenhills, the indoor facility where I play. In the last 2 years, I started playing and drilling at Greenhills, always, as noted above wearing a mask, and then playing on outdoor courts in warmer months. The paddle-game serves my life-long interest in racket/court sports of any kind; it has been a kind of physical life-line during the pandemic. In the same vein, the ‘teacher’ in me needed to foster and express that part of myself so we transitioned our small business Monarch System Motivational Interviewing workshops and presentations to virtual [Zoom] format:

The yellow-bolded ‘Note’ remains in effect and we have found the Zoom format to be a very effective, efficient, and worthwhile format in its own right and subsuming our need not to be in or to promote gatherings of any kind. Unexpectedly, the virtual delivery style lead us to reconfigure our workshops from full-day events to 2 half-days, separated by a week or more, in efforts to avoid screen fatigue among participants. Not only was that intent realized but we found the workshop split gave folks opportunities to practice Motivational Interviewing skills and bring their learnings to the 2nd half of each workshop.

I have willfully immersed myself in doing things to care for our home environment, from daily ‘chores’ to taking on new tasks as challenges. In many respects, I am a human doer, an active expression of my human being-ness. I have always loved house-painting; it’s an introverted activity that I feed with music (rock, folk, up-beat musicals mostly) and I can get quite lost in painting rooms. In 2021, I spent 4 and a half months, start-to-finish painting every room, every square centimeter of paint-able walls, ceilings, trim, and doors (we have 24 of them, both sides to paint). Once in the paint-groove, I averaged one room per day, moving and covering furniture and floors, temporarily removing wall-hangings/pictures and electrical outlet and light-switches’ plates. I rarely use painter’s tape; instead I find great pleasure in ‘cutting-in’ straight lines of paint at the ceiling-to-wall or wall-to-ceiling junctions and keeping the white trim paint on the actual trim without spilling onto the walls or floors. There is a deep satisfaction for me, within me for completing room paintings with a Promethean (in the creative sense) perfection I crave. Even cleaning the brushes and rollers every day became a devotion to the whole-house ‘masterpiece.’

We opted to learn to trim our dogs, Jazzi and Tiso at-home to avoid going into dog grooming facilities. In 2018, we had invested in a custom-made stainless steel dog-bathing facility and installed it between our washer and dryer in the laundry room…

And it has become indispensable in keeping them clean. In order to trim them, I ventured into the quasi-carpenter quagmire of building a wooden table, this one:

The morass aspect to the table was the classic dilemma of leveling the 5 legs (the 5th was a centre-leg for dog weight-bearing) each one cut from 4 X 4 pressure-treated lumber. Proudly I can say it worked; it is and remains level and stable (buttressed by leg-support pieces of wood at the top-inside of each leg under the table top) inclusive of its 3/4-inch, sanded plywood top and vinyl covering anchored by a non-slip liner. On the advice of our pre-Covid groomer, we bought Wahl clippers and their blade-length attachments, something like this set:

Jen is our groomer; my ‘tonto’ services are only required when our dogs need some distraction near the end of a 90-minute clipping session. In passing, the same clippers and table are used by Jen to cut and trim my hair, a task at which she has become as formidable as dog-trimming. Behind the dog-table is our Covid-induced pantry. Since the inception of the pandemic, we do all grocery shopping either by click-and-collect grocery outdoor pickup at Superstore or by ordering products online for home delivery from Walmart or Costco. The click-and-collect process is very efficient; we can order groceries online, pick a delivery date and time and during actual pick-up, stay in the car and have groceries loaded into the trunk. It means we don’t have to risk going into Superstore or any other grocery venue when most folks don’t mask. I am the principal grocery pick-up person and once home, I wear gloves, sanitize all groceries and put them away (the sanitizing more with respect to H1N1 (swine flu) and Norwalk or norovirus threats than Covid transmission). Deliveries to our home means groceries are ‘shopped’ by staff, packaged, and delivered at a pre-arranged date/time to our front porch. In some ways, I feel guilty relying on store staff to be indoors with other people; my hope would be that staff take measures to protect themselves.

Household maintenance that involves plumbing is well beyond my expertise. Similarly, I don’t dabble in appliance repairs, just cleaning and maintenance of that equipment. Two electrical elements I have tackled are bathroom exhaust fans and our stand-alone generator. The 3 exhaust fans each have a plastic grille or vent cover and I’d always assumed the rest of the mechanisms, the ducting, the motor, and the fan blades – were somehow self-regulating. I had vacuumed the grille-vents occasionally but never opened the housing. The grille is affixed to the metal housing by clips and the fan assembly looks like this:

Basically, you turn off the power at the junction box then unplug the motor to the fan and to clean or replace the unit, it is easy to un-clip the housing to get at the fan blades or remove the fan altogether and replace it. I chose cleaning at first and then realized how caked-on was the humidified dust so I replaced all 3 fans. For some reason, the completion of this process gave me immense satisfaction. All fans now run smoothly, quietly, and they’re clean with an annual scouring now scheduled in my calendar.

Late in 2021, fully aware of climate changes and escalating power outages, we elected to buy a Generac 22 KW (kilowatt) standby generator. Turns out, because of the pandemic-disrupted supply-chain, the generator model we wanted was hard to get and back-ordered. Through an electrician-friend in Georgetown, we made arrangements for its installation. That meant contacting a local contractor to build a cement pad; transport the generator to London from Georgetown; run thick electrical cables from the south side of the house through the lower levels’ ceilings to the north side of the house ending at the main power line to our home. The electrical cable looks like this:

The cables are the two black ones bracketed to the joists and their thickness can be compared to normal household electrical wires above them. We also had to get a gas company to install a line to the generator

Installation was completed in mid- to late- May 2022. We had a major storm late that same month and our new generator operated for almost 10 hours. All of this is background to brandishing my success in learning how to do basic maintenance on the Generac. To me, this was and remains a scary project. Opening up and putting my hands into a powerful electric engine was/is not a comfortable prospect for me. Just as I did with the bathrooms’ exhaust fans, I consulted Youtube to watch videos on the maintenance process. Here is what I have done as shown on the Generac Mobile Link

In this fashion did I learn to shut down the generator, remove its small fuse, and then do the basic maintenance items like changing the oil and spark plugs, replacing the air filter and the oil filter and its warming cover and testing the battery with a voltmeter. Generac provides a maintenance kit but doing the actual maintenance was a major accomplishment for me.

At some time last year, we had a leak in our lower foundation wall of our tv/rec room. I noticed some of the hardwood floor boards adjacent to the wall becoming warped and discoloured and I reasoned that the only way for that to happen was from water underneath the floor. I bought a cheap water-detecting device and checked the wall and floor to see if the instrument’s readings along that wall and floor section were higher than elsewhere and they were. We consulted with and hired a drainage company to dig down and repair the crack externally on the foundation wall. Having had a similar issue on the other side of the house, in my office about 8 or 9 years ago, I knew sealing the crack on the inside was a smart preventive repair measure as well. I consulted with our home insurance company and found that we had a water-damage clause in our coverage; the company would cover the damage caused by the leak but not the actual cause of the leak – the foundation crack. So we opted to hire a floor installation contractor to rip out the lovely bamboo floor and install a new floor in the room. I decided to take on the task of opening up the wall, having the crack sealed and then re-insulating and re-dry-walling the wall. The finished new floor and the opened wall are shown below:

The crack was sealed internally and professionally (by Advanced Basement personnel) with a special sealant-product called flexi-span, the grey-substance covering the crack in the image below

Once the sealant cured, repairing the wall was a challenge to which I committed my planning mind. Prior to the floor installation, I had cut out the drywall section depicted mindful of using the vertical studs as cutting guidelines for affixing the new drywall. The tricky part involved working around the outlet, following code re installing a vapour barrier around the outlet box and then a full vapour barrier over the insulation:

The plastic barrier was easy to acquire at Home Hardware along with R14 insulation. I made a pocket for the outlet, visible above and then put blue tuck tape – “code” colour, who knew – along the inside perimeter of the existing drywall, sticky side facing out. Then I installed all of the rest of the insulation and applied the full, rectangular vapour barrier adhesed to the existing tape and then fully sealed the area with more blue tape making sure the outlet box was sealed:

I purchased a 4 X 8 piece of drywall and cut to size three sections to screw into the studs fitting one piece around the outlet and then drywall-taping all edges:

Finally, I applied three coats of drywall compound, sanded after each coat dryed

and then painted the area, replaced the outlet plate and plugged in its normal CO2 monitor:

While not directly Covid or pandemic related, the job and my satisfaction in figuring out all of the repairs, getting the right contractors, buying the new floor, supervising the floor installation and then doing the wall myself (insurance would have covered doing it professionally and they did pay me for my time) does reflect my passion for and sense of achievement and fulfillment in doing home maintenance jobs during the pandemic.

In early Spring 2024, we made decisions about upgrading our backyard, replacing the chain-link with a wooden fence. In large part, it had to do with gaining more privacy especially with respect to our neighbours whose dog for 3-4 years was aggressive in constant barking, often early in the morning, and ‘attacking’ the north fence every time we and/or Jazzi and Tiso ventured into our backyard. Jazzi especially avoided that side of the yard and would not stay in the yard when the aggressive dog was out and barking at her along the fence-line. Fore-fronted by our two beautiful furry friends, Tiso and Jazzi, is a northwest-facing view of our old chain-link fence:

For a few years, we had some measure of privacy on the west fence with plastic, vertical inserts into the cross-wires of the back portion of the fence. We hired a local fence company to do the wood fence installation mindful of the issue of our rock-filled, clay soil from its former gravel pit days. From our deck, plastic-owl invigilated, this is an image of the posts inserted into 4-foot post-holes and then cemented therein:

And the finished fence, nearly the same view…

And a completed fence, north side, gate included, same two furry friends on first being allowed into their backyard in about 10 days of restrictions:

We absolutely love the privacy and wish we had done this sooner. A second and complementary part of our privacy plan was to create an oasis, of sorts, adjacent to the sanctuary of our back-deck. For years, Jen has wanted a swimming pool; however, the extreme slope of our backyard – clearly visible in the owl-fence images above – prohibited any in-ground or above-ground normal sized pool. At Jen’s urging we looked into replacing our 21-year old hot tub…

with a swim-spa. We measured the cement patio and then researched swim-spa dealers, sought information about these tubs and very quickly selected a London company (Porky’s) from which to purchase the tub, remove the old one

…carefully and plan-fully timing its removal before the new fence posts and gate were installed on the north side of our home:

and install the new one, a Bullfrog S200, 17-foot swim spa. In place, and surrounded by a rubberized cement-coating called rubber-krete, it looks like this:

Getting the tub, weighing some 1500 pounds empty, into place was a feat of modern engineering. It arrived on 15 May 2024 wrapped on a flatbed and we hired a crane to lift it into place. The crane can be seen being stabilized below:

With what seemed like too little strapping, the crane lifted the spa from the truck, high enough to be transported between our home and our neighbours’ house and set down on our cement deck:

It was a harrowing experience for us; we anticipated the crane having to lift the tub over our home. What if it fell? In fairness, the crane operator was very kind, reassuring, and extremely skilled. We did video the process

And the video is quite long – the link is here if it’s easier to view in this fashion. We had a fresh water tanker truck fill the tub; it took 15 minutes with its firefighter-like filling-hose. Opened and viewed from above, the pool/spa looks like this:

The entry stairs are visible in the image. For some reason, I am enamoured with the bullfrog emblem/logo…the little 8-dotted-circles with the kind of happy-face line underneath, visible on the base of the tub in the image above. The tub bottom is a non-slip surface with spa jets in the two bottom corners and two more jets top left. There are ports on the sides and top for inserting hammock poles with the hammock immersed in the water and for a tether pole with attached cord that Jen uses to swim against the powerful swim jets that propel from the bottom of the pool. Two fold-over covers are mounted on tub-side pivots and are relatively easy to manoeuvre. For sun protection, we use the umbrella below. Note that its base or the whole unit is mounted on a wheeled structure that yours truly adapted and configured in order to move the umbrella relative to the sun’s position at time of day and season: 

Quite simply and most elegantly and succinctly, we love it. Jen swam in it almost every day all Spring, Summer, and part of the Fall. We set the swim temperature at a comfortable 86 degrees Fahrenheit and learned the machinations of chemically balancing the water for Chlorine, pH, hardness etc levels. Came November, we increased the temperature setting to 103 degrees and since then, with few exceptions, I enjoy the spa qua spa every evening. The built-in sound system is exquisite and we both enjoy playing music while using the swim-spa. Clearing snow off the covers is a bit of a task but manageable.

I suspect there is something very symbolic about fencing our yard and investing in the swim-spa that is related to our attachment to our home during the pandemic – our ‘staycation’ domicile. I have sought in this blog to contemplate and express what it has been and continues to be like for me to live during the ongoing pandemic. I am heartened by the existence of the Canadian Covid Society though simultaneously dis-heartened by the fact that it has to solicit its own funding. Recently, I joined a Still Coviding Ontario facebook group, this one:

Although occasionally reading its posts, my greatest comfort during the pandemic is living fully in our home in the safest and healthiest manner I and we can. Like the amphibian bullfrog itself, we are territorial, I suppose and so it is fitting that we chose a bullfrog swim-spa. In addition to the reverberations of the song Bang the Drum Slowly mentioned at the front end of this blog, the ear worm lyric spinning in my head over the months of composing and editing this blog is the line “I can hear the bullfrog callin’ me home” from John Fogerty and Creedence Clearwater (no irony there) Revival’s Green River song. There are so many other elements about our pandemic life that I could describe and highlight. We – Jen, me, Jazzi, and Tiso – are our own enclave, a unique group within our larger, global one. I relish and celebrate our committed, growing, and loving togetherness, companionship and I reiterate the deep, deep friendship that Jen and I have fostered. I so wish the world were different, that the vested interest groups, wars, racial hatreds, climate destructions, right-wing overlays on society, the pandemic Covid-19 virus and the Great Inconvenient Truth of its ongoing existence…the ad infinitum-ness of today’s troubled world were different, not as potent and overwhelming…that the love of power were transformed to the power of love, to be trite but deftly so. And still, still…Life is Good at 75 in 2025.