Tag: SARS-CoV-2

Pandemic Diary: November 14th, 2020

I saw this on my Twitter feed; so funny and so, SO true! (image source)

Today is official Day 244 since I began working from home in self-isolation for the University of Manitoba Libraries. I have attended a lot of virtual meetings in that time (mostly in Microsoft Teams, but also in Zoom and Cisco Webex) and I just howled with laughter at the image above, which appeared on my Twitter feed a couple of days ago. I need all the belly laughs I can get lately.

The latest news update from the province is grim: Another 15 Manitobans died today, a new record. The current five-day COVID-19 test positivity rate is 12.4 per cent provincially and 13.1 per cent in Winnipeg—the highest level yet. At Victoria General Hospital, just a stone’s throw from where I live, the outbreak has expanded to a new section of the hospital, and as of today, 42 patients and 38 staff there have tested positive for COVID-19.

And yet, unbelievably, there are still covidiots out there, who feel that their personal freedoms (and their rights to go shopping and to church) are being infringed upon with the current restrictions being placed upon Manitobans.

Yes, we have out anti-maskers here in Manitoba; in fact, there is an anti-mask rally taking place today in the Mennonite Bible Belt town of Steinbach, south-east of Winnipeg, where the local hospital is already so overwhelmed with COVID-19 patients that it is treating patients in their cars. The Winnipeg Free Press reports:

As anti-maskers were preparing to rally in Steinbach, the community’s hospital was reportedly being overrun with COVID-19 patients.

It became so hectic Friday, some patients were being triaged in their own private vehicles, because of a lack of space in the Bethesda Regional Health Centre emergency department, the Manitoba Nurses Union said.

CTV News reported on the anti-mask rally:

Hundreds of Manitobans gathered in Steinbach, Man. to protest COVID-19 restrictions implemented across the province, which led to at least one of the rally’s speakers being handed a $1,200 ticket for violating the very orders they were protesting.

On Saturday afternoon, an estimated 500 people gathered for a ‘Hugs over Masks’ car rally in Steinbach, a city that is currently experiencing a surge in COVID-19 cases. According to provincial data, the Southern Manitoba city has 263 active cases and has reported 14 deaths – the highest number of any area in the Southern Health region.

Anti-mask rally held in the Mennonite Bible Belt town of Steinbach today (Source: CTV News/Danton Unger): no social distancing and not a face mask in sight
Another shot of the protesters at the anti-mask rally in Steinbach (source: Austin Grabish/CBC)

The situation here is starting to become surreal.

Oh yeah, and in the middle of all this, did I mention that I might be going on strike? The University of Manitoba Faculty Association (which represents 1,200 professors, instructors, and librarians) recently voted 80% in favour of strike action in an online poll.

Nigaan Sinclair, a First Nations professor at the University of Manitoba and the head of the Department of Native Studies, writes in an editorial in today’s Winnipeg Free Press:

Unless an agreement is reached between the University of Manitoba and its faculty association this weekend, the institution will face its third strike in history, on Monday.

As of Friday, negotiations were continuing with the help of a mediator: a hopeful sign. If talks break down, rotating picket lines, socially distanced rallies, honk-a-thons and online campaigns will begin Monday. It will be a strike like no other in Manitoba history.

Yet, faculty association members — instructors, librarians, and professors like me — don’t want a strike. Students definitely don’t want it, either. By all accounts, U of M administrators don’t want a strike.

No one wants this work stoppage, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic.

So why might it happen?

In the U of M’s 143-year history, strikes have happened twice — in 1995 and 2016. If it happens, this will be the second strike under Brian Pallister’s Progressive Conservative government. So, this is all on Pallister.

Four years ago, the 23-day strike was held despite faculty and administration agreeing to a small pay increase and commitments to address workload and protect jobs. While the agreement was not perfect, it was enough to get the university running again.

But Pallister sabotaged the negotiations. He commanded the university to mislead the faculty association and withdraw salary increases. This resulted in the university negotiating in bad faith, originally offering a seven per cent pay increase over four years and then – almost overnight – offering two years of zero per cent, a 0.75 per cent increase and a one per cent increase over the last two. Without this, there would likely have been no strike.

Later, after Pallister’s interference came to light, the Manitoba Labour Board forced the university to pay faculty members $2.4 million in compensation.

…

So here we are, on the cusp of a strike no one wants, at the behest of a premier who seems dead set against the public sector.

…

Pallister wants to cut public-sector jobs, salaries, and working conditions, period. He’s using the pandemic as an excuse.

I was on sick leave/long term disability for the treatment of a serious clinical depression during the 2016 strike, but I vividly remember walking the picket lines for three weeks during the 1995 strike, at one of the entrances to the Fort Garry campus, in the middle of a bitterly cold Canadian prairie winter.

I am significantly overweight, and have asthma, type II diabetes, and hypertension, all of which put me at a high risk of a severe, possibly even fatal, reaction if I were to become infected with the SARS-CoV-2 virus that causes COVID-19. I support a strike, but I will not be doing ANYTHING that will puts me at risk, and that includes walking on the picket line. If that means I do not receive strike pay, then so be it; I have sufficient savings to live off of for a month or two, if it comes to that.

We should know by Sunday night whether or not we are going on strike, so I just have to sit and wait.

Jesus Tapdancing Christ, what an absolute fucking mess.

COVID Feel Good: A Free Self-Help Virtual Reality App to Treat the Psychological Stress Caused by the Coronavirus Pandemic

The homepage of the COVID Feel Good website

A new, free virtual reality app aims to help those struggling with pandemic-related stress to get their symptoms under control. VRScout reports:

There’s no question about it. The current COVID-19 pandemic has us going through a roller coaster of feelings right now. Not only have we been cut off from normal social gatherings such as family gatherings, concerts and after work hangouts, but it’s preventing us from traveling, putting a damper on many holiday travel plans. 

Thankfully, we have now have access to an extensive array of VR technology that allows us to escape our dreary reality. A recently published research paper shows that using VR to hang out with friends through socialVR platforms, go to concerts, play games, or “visit” other parts of the world actually has a positive impact on your level of happiness.

Italian researchers worked with 400 participants over a three month period as part of this in depth study. Users were encouraged to view 360 photos and videos of other countries, visit virtual gardens and beaches, spend time with other VR users in platforms such as VRChat or Mozilla Hubs, and isolate themselves in a virtual location referred to as the “Secret Garden” to reflect privately.  

Here’s a link to the research paper mentioned in the VRScout article, written by Dr. Giuseppe Riva, a professor of general psychology at Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore in Milan, Italy, and titled How Cyberpsychology and Virtual Reality Can Help Us to Overcome the Psychological Burden of Coronavirus (which was published in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, volume 23, issue 5, 2020).

The paper states:

To help our readers to discover the well-being potential of VR, we suggest the use of a freely available VR tool: ‘‘The Secret Garden.’’ It is a 10-minute 3D 360-degree video (4K resolution supported) that can be found here (https://www.covidfeelgood.com/), designed to combat stress and counter the disappearance of places and communities generated by the coronavirus.

Recently developed in Lombardy, the Italian region at the center of Italy’s coronavirus outbreak by a group of Italian psychologists (https://become-hub.com/en/), it has been designed keeping in mind that providing psychological relief to so many (Lombardy population is >8 million inhabitants) over such a large geographical area would be complex. In fact, to experience it, any smartphone or tablet/PC will work. However, to fully experience the psychological benefits of being in a digital place, a cardboard headset is also necessary, including those sold for 15–30 USD in different digital marketplaces.

Here’s a three-minute YouTube that outlines the process and the app:

The app comes with a detailed, 19-page protocol; instructions are available in a variety of languages, including English:

To start the self-help experience you need:

For more info about the rationale of using VR and the science behind the protocol, you can check the different links provided.

The app is unfortunately only available via cellphone-based VR, not the Oculus Quest or any other VR headsets. For further information, please refer to the COVID Feel Good website.

This project is yet another example of how virtual reality can be used as a way to treat people who are struggling with mental health issues. an area where more and more research is being conducted every day at universities around the world. If you are interested in Dr. Riva’s work, he has also written the following research article:

Riva, G., Mantovani, F., & Wiederhold, B. K. (2020). Positive technology and COVID-19. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, 23(9), 581–587.

Image by Pexels from Pixabay

Pandemic Diary, November 12th, 2020: Manitoba Lockdown

Shoppers lined up outside the Garden City Walmart on Remembrance Day to purchase goods prior to the enactment of new restrictions in Manitoba. (source: CBC)

The CBC reports:

When you look at the latest pandemic indicators, Manitoba is struggling to contain the spread of COVID-19.

On Wednesday, the province reported a record number of daily COVID deaths (nine), a record number of people in hospital with the disease (218) and a record percentage of tests coming back positive (10.7 per cent).

The total number of COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba has doubled since Oct. 26 — a mere 16 days ago.

Intensive care unit capacity is almost maxed out. Health-care workers are getting infected with COVID-19 and two have died.

Contact tracing is backed up anywhere from days to weeks. Provincial epidemiology can no longer pinpoint how and where COVID-19 is spreading.

Timeline of Manitoba’s COVID-19 cases (source: CBC)
Monthly COVID-19 deaths in Manitoba (source: CBC)

Meanwhile, my employer, the University of Manitoba, has imposed its strongest set of on-campus restrictions yet, including the use of three-layer facemasks and eye protection when unable to practice social distancing (there have been a total of 29 positive COVID-19 cases at the University since the beginning of the academic year):

ON-CAMPUS ACTIVITIES: 

  • The wearing of 3-ply, disposable masks is mandatory on all UM campuses for all academic and research activities. Masks will be distributed in the situations for which they are required; a mask should be worn at all times on UM grounds. Further, unit supervisors will communicate directly with employees regarding the need for these masks to be worn, and will provide these masks if required. 
  • All work that may done remotely must be done remotely.  
  • Employees accessing UM campus(es) must be reduced as much as possible – only essential activities should take place on campus.  
  • Employees accessing UM campus(es) to be reduced to a maximum of 20 per cent. 
  • Individuals are encouraged to limit their time on campus(es) as much as possible. 
  • Cancellation or postponement of all in-person discretionary activities (either being contemplated or previously approved) until at least January 2021. 
  • Closure of all but absolutely essential common spaces and lunch spaces; all other UM spaces will be closed. A reduced number of study spaces will remain open. 
  • Eye-protection (shields or goggles) are recommended for all laboratory work or in situations in which 2-metre physical distancing is not possible. 
  • All UM sport and recreation facilities will be closed. 
  • The University Centre Pharmacy and the Fort Garry Bookstore will be reduced to 25% of normal capacity. 


RESEARCH: 

  • Suspension of all research involving human participants. 

The University of Manitoba has already announced that the upcoming winter term (January-April 2021) will be conducted almost entirely online and remotely, the same as the current fall term.

While things are certainly bad here in Manitoba, they are still nowhere near as bad, compared to the grim numbers of COVID-19 infected and dead in the United States. The situation in North Dakota and South Dakota, immediately to the south of us, is particularly grave (and yet, neither Republican-governed state has issued a facemask mandate). North Dakota nurses have rejected a recent government decision to allow hospital staff who test positive for COVID-19 to stay on the job.

All the major news media are rebuking Donald Trump for his stunning abdication of leadership as he and his craven team of flunkies fight against a clear election loss to Joe Biden, or assisting in any way in a respectful, orderly transition:

President Donald Trump had predicted in almost every campaign rally that the media would stop talking about the coronavirus pandemic the day after the election. But as it turns out, no one is ignoring the worsening tragedy more than the President himself.

Instead of taking charge as the country plunges deeper into the worst domestic crisis since World War II, Trump has disappeared inside the White House, saying nothing on camera since he baselessly claimed a week ago that the election was being stolen from him by President-elect Joe Biden.

He’s spending time with advisers, not strategizing on how to tame the out-of-control health emergency but seeking a path to win an election already declared lost. He’s also found time to purge the top leadership of the Pentagon, and with few appointments on his public schedule appears to spend his days watching news coverage and tweeting misinformation about voter fraud.

In essence, Trump, his family and his advisers are spending all their energy desperately trying to save a job — the presidency — that he appears to have no intention of doing in any meaningful sense.

History will damn Donald Trump and his administration for their mistakes, misdeeds, and inaction during what will be the worst surge of the coronavirus pandemic crisis yet in the United States, leading to untold suffering, misery, and death among Americans.

I’ve posted this image before, but it bears repeating…

Meanwhile, I am escaping messy, painful reality again today (the first official day of Manitoba’s emergency code-red pandemic lockdown), by spending most of my time in various social VR and virtual worlds (and, of course, writing about them on this blog).

My little hobby provides me with an outlet for socializing while stuck in my apartment during lockdown, when we are all urged to stay home by various levels of government in an effort to flatten the curve and avoid overwhelming our hospitals and healthcare system. Creating and styling new avatar looks as inexpensively as possible puts me in a state of positive mental flow, and it gives me a feeling of pride and accomplishment (no matter how small).

Shopping for fabulous free fashion finds for my small army of Second Life alts also helps me pass the time when I am bored (I often do it before I turn in for the night). I still firmly intend to bequeath as many of them as possible to other people via my will when I pass on, so I figure, why not add to their inventories? 😉

Before the pandemic hit, I used to visit places like Second Life to experience the unusual, the exotic, and the fantastic: those places which could never exist in the real world. Fairyland forests. Space stations. The Old West. Victorian steampunk. Blade Runner-esque urban noir environments, where the rain comes pouring down.

But nowadays, instead of teleporting to impossible worlds, I am using Second Life to visit virtual recreations of mundane places in which I have not set foot since the pandemic started. Places like the inside of supermarkets, for example:

Nostalgic visit to a SL supermarket
The produce section: I haven’t been in one since March!

I have not set foot in any retail establishment since I began working from home in self-isolation in my apartment for my university library system on March 16th, 2020 (except for two trips to my local drug store, one to get my flu shot and a second one to stock up on my favourite brand of shampoo). Today is officially Day 242.

All my grocery shopping is done online through the Walmart website, where are I schedule a date and time for grocery pickup. I drive to my nearest Walmart, I park in one of the designated parking spots for grocery pickup service, and someone wearing a facemask loads my groceries into my car while I stand a fair distance away, wearing a facemask myself. The pharmacy delivers all my prescriptions to my home. And I have no need or desire to visit any shopping malls (in fact, I gave my mother and stepfather, who are both in their eighties, a very stern lecture when I learned that they had gone for a walk through Polo Park Shopping Centre earlier this summer, just to get out of the house).

I am remaining focused on maintaining my mental health, which means that I am doing things that make me happy, like writing for this blog or visiting Sansar, Sinespace, or Second Life (I am spending a lot of time lately at Bray’s Place). Every so often I write up a cranky blogpost when I am a bad mood, like yesterday’s rant about the Futurist Conference taking place “in” Decentraland (for which I have since apologized). I still have lots of books to read (paper and digital), and I still have lots of cleaning to do around my apartment, among other chores.

And I am still spending a lot of time, especially in the evenings, watching Netflix on my iPad, either perched in front of my Windows desktop, sitting at my kitchen table, or lying on my sofa. I have moved on from gorging on the post-apocalyptic, science fiction, and zombie apocalypse fare, and I am now watching a lot of crime dramas.

I just finished binge watching Broadchurch over the past week, and I can recommend the TV series highly. It was some of the best TV I’ve seen this year: a gripping crime drama featuring two bickering detectives, taking place in a seaside U.K. village, with a rich cast of well fleshed-out characters that you genuinely grow to care about over the three seasons of the show’s run (from BBC, on Netflix).

And, having finished Broadchurch, I am now watching another British crime drama, Retribution, about the investigation of a murder of a newlywed couple in Scotland.

I have to say that I am definitely getting my money’s worth from my Netflix subscription! Netflix just has so much more content to choose from than rival services such as Amazon Prime, Crave, and Apple TV.

I had a subscription to Amazon Prime last year, but I cancelled it because I didn’t find the breadth of content I was expecting (although I may renew just so I can catch up on The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel). I joined Crave (a Canadian streaming service) just so I could watch the final seasons of Game of Thrones (since G.R.R. is apparently never going to finish the series of novels upon which they are based, and I wanted to know how it all ends). But after that, I didn’t find much else I wanted to watch, so I unsubscribed earlier this year.

And I got a free one-year Apple TV subscription when I bought my iPhone earlier this year. Again, after watching The Morning Show and the alternative-history space drama For All Mankind, there wasn’t a lot of other content I was interested in, so I plan to let my subscription lapse rather than renew it.

For my LGBTQ content, I rely on two relatively inexpensive subscriptions to OUTtvGo (a Canadian service) and Wow Presents Plus (for their RuPaul’s Drag Race shows, including the recently concluded Drag Race Holland). I cannot get enough drag TV! As I have said before, RuPaul’s Drag Race is one of the things keeping me sane in this dumpster-fire year. (And yes, I am still doing digital drag in Second Life.)

Stay healthy and stay sane!

Photo by Tai’s Captures on Unsplash

Pandemic Diary, November 10th, 2020: Feeling Absolutely F.U.C.Q.E.D.

I slept very badly last night, once again, and when I tested my blood sugar first thing this morning, it had been low, so I fixed myself some oatmeal with sugar and cinnamon, and made a pot of coffee. Yesterday and today I have been feeling vaguely unwell, with an upset stomach, and I actually Googled “COVID-19 gastrointestinal” to see if that was a symptom of infection with the SARS-CoV-2 virus (yes, in some people).

Last Friday, while I was pulling a stack of vintage cranberry Corning ware pots from a top shelf of my kitchen cupboards, I dropped one and it shattered into a million tiny pieces. In the process of trying to sweep up the mess, I cut one of my toes on a sharp shard and tracked blood all over the carpeting in my apartment. I then spent an hour scrubbing away at bloodstains on my carpet with Dove liquid detergent, leaving blue stains where before I had had red ones.

I am in a resolutely foul and cranky mood. (Yes, I should know better than to blog when I am feeling this way, but I am feeling depressed and isolated, and I need to use this blog to vent.)

It is now Day 240 since I first began working from home in self-isolation in my apartment for my university library system (March 16th, 2020).

Or, if you want to count it another way, 292 days since January 24th, 2020*, when I wrote my first blogpost† which mentioned what I then called “the Wuhan coronavirus”, where I said:

Throughout my life, I have had a somewhat lamentable tendency to go off on weird tangents.

And, back around 2006, my tangent was bird flu. I became obsessed with following and discussing the latest information about the H5N1 avian flu virus with other flu preppers (a.k.a. “flubies”), which for a time looked as though it would develop into a global pandemic. (I just checked, and I still remember my username and password from the FluTrackers.com discussion forum!)

Me and my fellow flubies were constantly worrying, analyzing, and obsessing over the latest case data and news reports. So, in an effort to inject some levity into what was a grave and potentially life-threatening situation, I began using my rudimentary Photoshop skills to create funny pictures to share with my fellow flubies.

Among those funny images I created about the H5N1 flu scare was the following (fictitious) government program:

Well, I am not laughing anymore. (And I no, I am no longer using my rudimentary PhotoShop skills to create funny images anymore. In fact, I recently cancelled my very expensive monthly subscription to PhotoShop and other Adobe products.)

I am feeling absolutely F.U.C.Q.E.D.: isolated, depressed, anxious, irritable, worrying about my friends and family, and wondering when this will all end, and our lives will go back to some semblance of normalcy.

And I am quite sure that many of you, reading this blogpost, are feeling much the same way, right about now. We are already seeing a tsunami of mental health issues affecting millions of people worldwide, who are beleaguered and bereft of hope.

What can I say that you don’t already know? Anybody can open their newsfeeds and spend hours doomscrolling the litany of bad news: spikes in COVID-19 infections all around the world, even here in Canada. The situation south of the border, in the United States, has never been more grave. Even worse, the next two-and-a-half months are *the* worst possible time for a lack of leadership in the United States, as the Trump administration focuses on spreading baseless claims of voter fraud, instead of dealing with the ongoing public health crisis. STAT reports:

From a public health standpoint, the presidential election could not have come at a worse time. Health officials have long warned of a devastating winter, and case totals and deaths have spiked just as millions of Americans are set to congregate with their families over the holidays. President Trump’s persistent downplaying of the crisis, experts say, will continue to have deadly consequences — and as a result, leave Biden to inherit a country experiencing its worst Covid-19 crisis since the first recorded U.S. cases in late January.

“So many of us are worried that now that Biden has won, the Trump administration is going to take a scorched-earth approach,” said Saskia Popescu, a University of Arizona epidemiology professor and biodefense expert. “It’s going to be very, very scary.”

And yet, many people are still downplaying, sidestepping, and belittling this crisis. Refusing to practice social distancing, stay home, or wear facemasks. Or subscribing to crazy conspiracy theories, many spread much more easily by social networks such as Facebook, either ignorantly or deliberately. All of us—but all levels of government, especially—must keep fighting to counteract this toxic cesspool of misinformation, rumours, and disinformation.

But it’s so hard to fight back when you’re feeling so beaten down.

One bright spot of hope is that one of the very first vaccine trial results (by Pfizer) seems to be 90% effective. But experts warn that there is still a long road ahead:

Pharmaceutical giant Pfizer says early results from its coronavirus vaccine trial suggest a 90 per cent efficacy rate at preventing COVID-19, a number that has Canadian infectious disease experts cautiously optimistic that a viable shot can be rolled out by spring of 2021.

Jean-Paul Soucy, an epidemiologist at the University of Toronto, called Pfizer’s announcement “fantastic news (and) very encouraging,” but there are still questions to be answered.

And there are many steps between a vaccine’s approval and its actual rollout.

The only thing we know for certain is that Pfizer, and many multinational pharmaceutical corporations are going to get very, very rich.

God, I am so fucking tired of this shitshow.

UPDATE 11:43 a.m.: Minutes after I had published this blogpost, Manitoba announced that it was imposing an emergency, code-red lockdown on the entire province:

Widespread shutdowns are coming as Manitoba’s premier and top doctor order the entire province into the red, or critical, level of the provincial pandemic response plan.

Among the “short, sharp set of restrictions” is a ban on social gatherings of any kind starting Thursday that could last into December. Social contact must be reduced to members of your household only.

Brian Pallister made the announcement Tuesday morning alongside Chief Provincial Public Health Officer Dr. Brent Roussin. 

Non-essential retail stores, gyms, movie theatres, salons and churches will close. All recreational facilities and sports activities will be shut down, said Roussin, but schools and child-care centres will remain open.

Here’s a summary of all the latest changes:

  • Social contacts reduced to your household only. Social gatherings are not permitted.
  • Travel to and from northern Manitoba is restricted and non-essential travel is discouraged.
  • Retail businesses listed as critical services, such as grocery stores and pharmacies, can remain open at 25 per cent capacity.
  • Retail businesses not on the list are able to provide e-service, curbside pickup or delivery services.
  • All personal service businesses, including hair salons, barbers and sites offering manicures, pedicures and other esthetic services, must close.
  • Gyms and fitness centres must close.
  • Religious and cultural gatherings must close or be provided virtually only.
  • Restaurants must close to the public and may be open for delivery, drive-thru or takeout only.
  • All recreational activities, sports facilities, casinos, museums, galleries, libraries, movie theatres and concert halls must close.

Well, it’s official. We are all well and truly F.U.C.Q.E.D…

* Yes, I suspected strongly that we were going to have a pandemic on our hands, as far back as January 24th, 2020, based on my previous experience with Flu Trackers discussion group. Several people have since thanked me for using this blog to alert them to the possible danger, but I feel absolutely zero sense of pride over being among one of the first to predict a pandemic. On the very same day, I had also made a $50 bet with my best friend John that we were going to have a pandemic (which, of course, I won, although ironically, he wasn’t able to actually pay me until many months later because of the spring pandemic lockdown here in Manitoba).

† I cannot stress this any more strongly:

ALL OF THE IMAGES IN THIS BLOGPOST WERE CREATED FIFTEEN YEARS AGO, ABOUT THE H5N1 BIRD FLU SCARE WHICH TURNED OUT NOT TO BE A PANDEMIC. Absolutely NONE of these images pertain to the current Wuhan coronavirus / 2019-nCoV / SARS-CoV-2 / COVID-19 situation.

As of today, over 50 million people around the world have been infected with COVID-19, and over 1,200,000 have died. And yet there are still people out there who have chosen to belittle the most serious public health crisis in over a century. The current situation is absolutely nothing to laugh at!

50 million COVID-19 infections, and over 1,200,000 deaths worldwide (source)