Crime and no punishment: Public Health

When Leigh kindly invited me to write crime/mystery articles from a medical viewpoint, he certainly wasn’t expecting me to colour wildly, and enthusiastically, outside the lines of my mandate. Both he and Rob have been infinitely patient with me and I owe them an apology, because here I go again.

In my defence, crime can be seen through many lens: breaking the law, injustice and even awful things that happen.

I’ve been thinking a lot about awful things that are happening. They’re not a crimes in the sense of breaking a law. They do, however, result in death and, from a certain point of view, can be seen as murder. Mass murder.

What are these awful things?

Lousy Public Health decisions.

Public health is defined as the organized effort to keep people healthy and prevent injury, illness and premature death. This field was once relegated to textbooks, articles and conferences enthusiastically attended by nerds in the field.

What is this Public Health thing that most of us happily ignored for so long and why is it messing with our lives?

The reality is that Public Health has always messed with our lives. From the 1800s, the sanitary reform movement, spurred on by new understanding of disease transmission, helped create sewage treatment infrastructure alongside water filtration systems to provide clean drinking water. This sounds very technical, but imagine drinking water filled with feces and urine— it’s a great way to spread disease and, seriously, totally gross as well.

From food safety standards to policies for disease mitigation, from mass vaccination to public education, Public Health has been there for us. Before mass vaccination programs, diseases like smallpox, polio and diphtheria were rampant. Before changes in hygiene standards, your surgeon would operate with bare, unwashed hands and your food was prepared and served without hand washing too. Again – gross.

What seems self-evident now, was not always so. In fact, when the Canadian Public Health Association was created in 1910, the early founders were determined to bring about change, “come hell or high water.”

Sounds like fighting words to me and suggest that, even then, the pushback they faced was serious.

Fast forward to 2022 and we see many Public Health decisions move from the ‘hell or high water’ fight to a ‘paddling in leaky canoe and ignoring the tidal waves’ approach.

Harsh?

Hardly.

In my home province of Ontario, we have a surge in the new omicron variant, BA.5 and yet, public health has removed masks mandates, even for hospitals, allowing our most vulnerable patients to get infected. We have vaccines but anyone under 60 is being denied their fourth dose, despite the fact that third doses have long since waned for most people. Allowing BA.5 to infect our citizens by refusing to institute even the minimum of mask mandates or updating much needed vaccines is harsh and unethical. People will die. My statements are mild in comparison.

During COVID-19, decisions that endanger and kill people are being made not just in my backyard - they are being made all over the world.

Some will ask, “Isn’t this politics?” Yes. Of course it is. But here’s the rub: all of these decisions are presented to us by a M.D. who is the Chief Medical Officer. His M.D. gives him credibility – imagine how many would listen to him if he had a botany degree? So, these are Public Health decisions presented by a M.D. and this makes all the difference. If a doctor makes a decision knowing this will endanger or kill a patient, they can and should lose their licence. If a doctor makes a decision that endangers or kills many - give them a title of ‘medical officer of health’ and they have impunity.

Even a non-MD who makes a decision knowing others can be harmed or killed is held accountable - think of a driver who is drunk, drives a car and hits a pedestrian. We hold them accountable for the harm and death they cause. Crimes that can be legally prosecuted apparently are very different than awful things that happen to people. Mass harm and mass murder are O.K. if they are a ‘policy’ decision.

In 2020, I was concerned but optimistic. In 2021, I was worn out and somewhat discouraged. Now, I’ve reached the level of being sad and furious.

Awful things knowingly dumped upon us by Public Health should be crimes.

They are not.

And that is a crime.

COVID-19 Mystery: Based on a True Story

The mystery: ten friends gathered for a weekend pre-wedding party. After spending the weekend together, only five of them got COVID-19.

Why did only half of the people get infected?

?

It is highly likely they were infected with the omicron variant – the dominant variant at this time – which is very contagious.

“The Omicron coronavirus variant was likely the fastest-spreading virus in human history. One person with the measles virus – a standout among infectious microbes – might infect 15 others within twelve days. But when Omicron suddenly arrived this past winter, it jumped from person to person so quickly that a single case could give rise to six cases after four days, 36 cases after eight days, and 216 cases after twelve days.”

So asked another way, how did five party goers avoid getting omicron?

Let’s set the stage with what we know of protections against omicron

First, all those at the party had three doses of the COVID-19 vaccine – so there was no difference in vaccinations between those who got infected wth COVID-19 and those who didn’t. However, they were all about 5 months past their third dose of vaccine and vaccines wane, making them vulnerable to be infected at this point in time. 

None were eligible for their fourth doses because they were all in their twenties – too young for fourth dose eligibility.  

However, they took a very important precaution: understanding they were vulnerable to infection they all did rapid antigen tests on Friday morning before meeting on Friday afternoon. All of them tested negative.

Did the rapid antigen tests miss an infection? How reliable are rapid antigen tests? Research suggests they aren't entirely accurate, “Medical experts continue to warn that a negative result on a rapid test doesn't necessarily mean you don't have COVID-19." New Swiss research, which is yet to be peer-reviewed, suggests some rapid tests have "significantly lower sensitivity" to Omicron than to the Delta variant.

So, could this have been a problem with one or more people being infected with COVID-19 but not testing positive on the rapid antigen test? Unlikely, because they all spent a weekend together, not wearing masks and doing what young people do – hugging, laughing, occasionally bursting into song and sharing bedrooms. Is it possible that half the people avoided infection given all this?

COVID19 is airborne, so a person gets infected “when infectious particles that pass through the air are inhaled at short range”, a process otherwise known as “short-range aerosol or short-range airborne transmission”… transmission can [also] occur through “long-range airborne transmission” in poorly ventilated or crowded indoor settings “because aerosols can remain suspended in the air or travel farther than conversational distance.”

If 10 young people share space with one or more infected persons, sharing the same air for an entire weekend, wouldn’t it be likely that more than half get infected? 

To answer this mystery, it’s helpful to fast forward to the end of the weekend. As all ten people were leaving, there were unmasked hugs, chats and laugher. Then 5 of the people piled into one car and 5 into the other. This is where the mystery becomes less baffling: all the people in one car got infected and none in the other car got infected.

Again – the question is why? What was in one car but not the other? What was in one car but not present all weekend long that infected everyone in the car only?

There are two important concepts to break down: the duration of safety with rapid antigen tests and the incubation period of omicron.

Rapid antigen tests, even if they accurately detect infections, are only useful for that moment in time. So, one can be accurately negative today and accurately positive tomorrow.

How?

Here we need to look at the incubation period of omicron. An incubation period – for this mystery – is best seen as the time from the moment a person is infected to the time they are infectious. That time varies from three to five days.

So lets’s backtrack to the week before the get together. Someone got infected with omicron that previous week. They were asymptomatic when the weekend began and – very importantly – it was too early in the infection for the rapid antigen test to detect this early infection. As the weekend wore on, this person still remained infected but not infectious.

However, on the 2 hour long car ride home, this person went from infected to infectious and – with COVID19 being airborne and no one wearing masks – everyone in that car became infected.

We often say in medicine, timing is everything. It turns out, with rapid antigen tests and COVID-19, this still remains true.

Writing Mysteries in the Age of COVID-19

As always, I’m curious on how to plot a murder mystery and have been peeking at how death investigations have changed.

Since COVID-19, mystery writers attempting to hide a murder have a different landscape to deal with. If a person is COVID-19 positive, even if they wouldn’t die from the disease - this is far more possible with the Omicron variant - a murder via poison at home would be easier to conceal.

Recently, our jurisdiction changed the rules stating, “Autopsies will no longer be performed on someone who is suspected to have died from COVID-19 unless there is another factor of great significance, such as a homicide.”

So, without evidence of blunt force trauma or anything obviously untoward, a murder via poison in a COVID-19 positive person can be more easily hidden.

Is this true in other jurisdictions?

“During the pandemic, many sick people have stayed at home and died there rather than seeking help at hospitals overwhelmed with coronavirus patients.

“In April in New York City, for example, a reported 200 residents died at home each day, compared with 20 such deaths before the pandemic…If family or friends say the person had symptoms consistent with COVID-19, the coroner's office will typically do a nasal swab to test for the virus, he says. If the test is positive and the office can determine the cause of death without an autopsy, one will generally not be performed.”

A review of the literature shows, “The literature is dominated by appeals for more autopsies to be performed…The main reason for the great reluctance worldwide to perform autopsies seems to be concerns about infectivity emanating from deceased persons.”

In the United States, there’s the added problem of cost, availability of specialists and the vast number COVID-19 deaths.

“Hospitals are not required to provide autopsy services, and in those that do perform them, the procedure’s costs are not directly covered by most private insurance or by Medicare…Added into the mix: The number of experts who can actually perform autopsies is critically low. Estimates suggest the U.S. has only a few hundred forensic pathologists but could use several thousand — and less than one in 100 graduating medical school students enters the profession each year.”

Add to this the fact that there are almost 860k COVID-19 deaths to date, the volume of detailed death investigations, let alone autopsies, of those who die out of hospital would overwhelm the system. So they are not done.

In hospital deaths are also not autopsied but with COVID-19 restrictions on visitors it would be hard to write a plausible mystery involving a murder in hospital.

So if autopsies aren’t done for most COVID-19 deaths, is toxicology conducted?

“How are forensic toxicology tests done? At the time of the autopsy, collection of blood, urine, and tissue samples is done in preparation for the toxicology tests, says Barbarajean Magnani, PhD, MD, chairwoman of the Toxicology Resource committee for the College of American Pathologists.”

So, given the concerns about infection from COVID-19 would collection of samples occur? I have not found evidence to suggest it is done.

While this certainly makes for intriguing options for writing mysteries, it’s a huge loss to science. Fulsome and numerous autopsies are the one crucial way to obtain information about a disease. For scientific purposes, more rather than fewer autopsies should be conducted. However, the limitations of time, personnel, well-ventilated facilities and PPE have limited autopsies and we have lost a great deal of data. Because of this, there’s been a pushback from many to perform more autopsies.

“The results from the analyzed studies show that autopsies are essential in the COVID-19 pandemic. They enable a more differentiated assessment of mortality. More important than the determination of the cause of death, however, is the fact that only the autopsy (including histological and virological examinations) opens up the possibility of investigating the spread of the virus in the body, the involvement of various organ systems, but also the late effects of the disease…

There are few valid reasons not to perform autopsies in COVID-19 deceased if the technical equipment meets certain minimum standards. It is easy to protect oneself against infection during the autopsy. Both clinical and forensic pathologists – preferably in cooperation – play an important role in gaining knowledge about the new disease as a basis for therapeutic measures and global pandemic control.”

I do wonder how mysteries written in the age of COVID-19 will be different because of the new landscape of death investigations.

Maps

Mark Thielman

     When my wife and I got married 30+ years ago, our friend Kathy gave us the Complete Atlas of the World as a wedding present. The book is an oversized coffee table volume with a jet-black cover. The blue marble of the world as seen from space adorns the front. It was intended as a metaphor for our new life. Kathy challenged us to explore and to dream of the places we'd go. We thought it was a cool gift at the time. We still do.

    What's interesting about pulling out that old atlas now is to see the changes written across the pages. The book seems heavy, fixed, and permanent. But there on page 50 is the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, one solid band of unified color spanning a huge piece of Eurasia. Or on page 98, the Africa map with its hard, unchanging boundaries for Ethiopia and Sudan. I could go on but you get the idea.

    I've been thinking a great deal about travel lately. This was supposed to be my first SleuthSayers blog after Bouchercon. I had assumed I'd jot down some observations about the conference, congratulate the winners, reference the people I'd been able to meet in person, and intersperse those thoughts with the smells, tastes, sights, and sounds of New Orleans. That blog will have to be postponed until after the 2022 conference in Minneapolis. (I anticipate different tastes and smells.)

    I've been looking forward to traveling. I've missed waking up someplace different, knocking about exploring and discovering. I've missed seeing sights and trying foods. A couple of weeks ago in this blog, Robert Lopresti mentioned a bit of a conversation he overheard at a previous Bouchercon. Those lines made their way into a story. Let me add that to the list. I've missed collecting dialogue souvenirs. Not only have I missed going away, but I've also missed returning home to my familiar, and the simple joy of knowing where the things I use to construct my daily life are located.

    Although my wife and I haven't been hermits since the COVID onset, we have limited our venturing out to new places. The question, "where should we go?" as often as not has been replaced by "should we go?" Although the answer has sometimes been yes, spontaneity has seen an additional hurdle placed in its path.

    The September/October issue of Alfred Hitchcock Mystery Magazine includes my story, "The Map Dot Murder." The tale is set in a small west Texas town. The high school's social studies teacher is murdered. His classroom is map festooned. Yet, most of the town's inhabitants are people who haven't gone anywhere. They've lived their lives within the town's boundaries. Some residents like it that way. Others resent it. A few have never bothered to think that they might have options.

    Just as I should have been finalizing my plans for Bouchercon– circling topics on the schedule of events, composing snappy answers to questions for my panel, and sending final emails to arrange get-togethers– comes my story about staying put. You know the timeline for stories. Tapping out the story on your keyboard takes a while. Rewrites, edits, and polishing add some more time. Then you send it off, drumming your fingers while waiting for an acceptance email. Finally, the movement to publication requires another chunk of time.

    The story should have come out as I was preparing to travel. Instead, it was published as I was sitting at home, folding my map from the journey I didn't take. Like the Complete Atlas of the World, perhaps it serves as a reminder about the illusion of fixedness.

    I hope you enjoy the story. And, whether you're at home or on the road, stay safe.

    Until next time.

COVID-19: Lessons learned and justice are not the same

The World Health Organization declared a pandemic on March 11, 2020 and by March 11, 2021, 2.6 million people have died from Covid-19.

On the news and social media on March 11th, 2021, passing the year mark of this pandemic was the subject of numerous discussions. There were many honouring those who died. Many pointed to the tsunami of grief, the bravery of our frontline healthcare workers, the generosity of neighbourhoods, friends and family.

As I was falling asleep that evening my thoughts went to crime and justice. 

When people die or are harmed by the actions of others, they want justice.

Elderly parents have died in Long Term Care Homes where families felt they were not cared for or protected. Doctors, nurses, personal support workers, paramedics and other have been infected because they did not have adequate personal protective equipment – some have died and others are still suffering from Post-Acute Covid Syndrome. Many others have been infected and died because they were told that they didn’t need masks to protect them from COVID-19, until they were finally told to wear masks. Many are now waiting for available Covid vaccines but some are getting infected and dying while they wait. 

Who is brought to justice when it is clear that deaths are clearly cause by the actions of others? 

There will be commissions on how we care for and protect the elderly. There will be analysis on why aerosol and asymptotic spread were not identified earlier. There will be some form of reckoning on the lack of PPE for healthcare workers who were forced to work without proper protections. These will all be filed under lessons learned to maybe influence how we move forward. And maybe is the operative word.

What I worry about most is whether those who lost loved ones, those who still remain ill from post-acute COVID will feel that justice is served? Lessons learned serve those who come after us, but what about those who bear the scars of this year? What do they need to move forward?

Here I came to my worst conclusion in this line of thought: those responsible for true harm, whether they be politicians, organizations that said they would care for our elderly or those who made decisions that killed our health care workers-will not be held to account. They will be responsible for a large number of deaths through their actions and nothing will come of it. There will be no justice.

Let’s roll back to the beginning: if someone harms another, we demand justice. How does it work if many people make decisions and take actions that harm hundreds if not thousands of people. Under the cover of group work, apparently nothing.

Crimes are punished in part as a deterrent for future crimes. I hope we don’t learn that mistakes that cost lives can be done with impunity if they are done by governments, organizations like Long Term Care Homes and those who are responsible for safely equipping healthcare workers. 

So, at the end of a painful year full of death and suffering, of course my mind turned to crime. The worst kind: those that are not punished. 

As I fell asleep, I thought about how, in a pandemic, we can discuss the bad things that happened. We cannot really get justice. No one is really responsible. We will simply have some large files on lessons learned that may simply be ignored anyway. 

Now, late night thoughts are sometimes morbid. I hope I’m wrong.

The Pandemic: Babies and Stories

With so much time together with our lovers, many expected a pandemic baby boom, but it is looking more like a bust.

I get it.

My writing fantasy is to have stories - the ones that reveal the places we live and breathe, the dark places, the places of joy - and also the time to write them. 

I now have the time but the onslaught of stories is just too much. The edits on my book are not a boom but a bust. A total bust.

Normally, when I work I shut out the world. Ignore it. However, this is a time in history when absorbing what is going on in the world is needed.

When I sit down to write, my head swirls from the page outward. Perhaps my characters are talking on the phone - I think of all the people isolated by #COVID19 who can only talk to those they love by phone. When my characters sit for coffee, I think of all the lonely people unable to gather and the small coffee shops struggling to survive in this pandemic.

Then there are the elderly in long term care homes, isolated and at times suffering with dementia - how do they make sense of the long days when no familiar faces come? Do they forget them? Do they remember them in their dreams?

The children who once rushed up to playgrounds to do what we have forgotten to do - play with abandon with children they have just met. Now, they are masked and are asked to keep their distance. Will they play with abandon when the virus is gone or will they grow up too soon into the far more distanced adults that surround them? Hell, we are asking them to keep their distance so it would be a small wonder if they don’t.

The lovers, the ones that had planned romantic trips, weddings and parties - what happens when none of that is possible? Do they put that spontaneous side - the most romantic moments - on hold. Can they return?

And then there are those who don’t return at all.  Their families watch them disappear into the bowels of an ambulance or hospital and then can’t see them, hold them before they die. 

I’m bombarded by stories of my colleagues in the #COVID ICUs. They have so many tools to save people but now, their tools are often useless against Covid-19. Death after death. It's everything they've been trained to fight and yet they lose the battle constantly. They are tired and demoralized when one patient dies, the numerous deaths are just too much for them.

And, perhaps a few blocks from these ICUs, people are gathering without masks, perhaps in homes, to have a drink, laugh and spread this damn virus around another room.

Will all the pandemic stories raging around demanding attention finally settle when the worst of this pandemic is over? Will we have time to write them when life returns to normal?

My hope is that these stories will be written and we will take the time to pay tribute to each person we can. There have never in my lifetime been so many stories crying out to be told. There are also so many people who are now no longer with us to tell their story and we need to honour them by telling it.

I have practiced medicine. I have written. Both involve a similar process.

In medicine, the key to a diagnosis is always the story - the more fulsome the story, the more likely the diagnosis will be accurate. And after diagnosis, following the story allows us to assess the treatment and, more importantly, how the patient is doing. 

With writing, the key is always the story and the more fulsome, the more accurate. 

With the pandemic stories that will be written, I hope that that they will be about how we recover, or don’t, from this terrible time in our history. Like a medical story, we need to follow this up. 

At this point in time I have no idea how the story ends for us all.

Oh, and babies. We need to see more babies please. We need a new generation to whom we pass on our stories, because this has been a time of such important stories. But until we pass on our stories, we need the joy of a new beginning.

Protect your eyes from COVID19 infection.

There’s a saying: if you’re the smartest person in the room, you’re in the wrong room. I recently found myself in the right room—a masked, backyard get-together with close friends.

My husband mentioned he’d added a face shield to his mask in indoor public places, to protect his eyes during the second wave of COVID-19. One of our friends, Brian Foody, said that using a face shield with a mask wouldn’t protect eyes from airborne COVID-19 but goggles would.

This statement was very surprising. Public health experts have been clear, given the airborne transmission of COVID-19, that face shields and goggles protect the eyes equally.

For the public, Dr. Anthony Fauci said in an interview, “. . . you should protect all of the mucosal surfaces, so if you have goggles or an eye shield, you should use it.”

In healthcare settings, face shields are irreplaceable to protect against splatter during procedures, but face shields and goggles are recommended by public health as interchangeable eye protection.

For protection during aerosol-generating medical procedures, Canadian Public Health recommends, “eye, nose and mouth protection (mask and eye protection, or mask and face shield, or mask with attached shield) that fully covers the eyes, nose and mouth and ensures that no part of the face is exposed.”

The CDC states, “The PPE recommended when caring for a patient with suspected or confirmed COVID-19 includes the following . . . Put on eye protection (i.e., goggles or a face shield that covers the front and sides of the face) upon entry to the patient room or care area.”

If face shields don’t protect the eyes from airborne COVID-19, the definition of “adequate PPE” changes and this may save lives. A large study of healthcare workers showed that they accounted for 10% to 20% of COVID-19 infections and, even more worryingly, “even among frontline healthcare workers reporting adequate PPE, the risk for COVID-19 was increased . . ..”

Given the importance of this issue for the public and for healthcare workers, I interviewed Brian Foody, president and chief executive officer of Iogen Corporation and an MIT-educated mechanical engineer, who specializes in fluid motion.

The movement of COVID-19 infected air is at the heart of this issue.

“Imagine two people wearing face masks, one has on a face shield and the other is wearing goggles, walking into a closed room where the ambient air contains COVID-19 infected aerosols,” Foody explained. “Whose eyes are better protected? For our wearer of the face shield, with every breath, the clean air behind her face shield is ventilated and exchanged with the contaminated ambient air. Because of this ventilation, the air behind the face shield will have the same concentration of aerosols as the rest of the room within a matter of minutes. On the other hand, for our goggle wearer, the clean air behind her goggles is sealed off from the ambient air.”

The mixing of air behind a face shield is based on the basic scientific principles of fluid dynamics: if there are COVID-19 particles, they’ll be drawn into the face shield and up to the eyes.

This behaviour of aerosols is supported by a 2014 study. “Face shields can substantially reduce the short-term exposure of health care workers to large infectious aerosol particles, but smaller particles can remain airborne longer and flow around the face shield more easily to be inhaled,” it noted.

A review of the literature in March, 2020 stated that, “There is a lack of research on the effectiveness of different forms of eye protection.”

And yet, certainly the public health recommendations consider goggles and face shields as equivalent.

I am reminded of the early days when many of us recognized the pattern of airborne transmission of COVID-19 infections and advocated for masks, contradicting public health recommendations. Now the widespread use of masks is recognized as an important tool to limit COVID-19. This information on face shields is just as important: face shields protect from splatter but do not offer eye protection and public health recommendations for the public and healthcare workers must change.

Then Brian asked a crucial question: “What are the chances of getting infected through your eyes?”

To begin to find my way through this issue, I had to enter the right room, so I unabashedly called my friend, Dr. Sherif El-Defrawy, at his cottage on Thanksgiving.

Dr. Sherif El-Defrawy is an ophthalmologist who’s chair of the Department of Ophthalmology at the University of Toronto, before which he held a similar position at Queen’s University. He’s also president of the Canadian Ophthalmological Society and of the Association of Canadian University Professors of Ophthalmology.

In short, Dr. El-Defrawy knows eyes.

“If COVID-19 infects the conjunctiva of the eye, it could travel to the nose via the nasolacrimal duct and colonize the nose or throat,” he explained. “However, we would expect to see conjunctivitis. I find it highly unlikely that there would be enough COVID-19 to cause illness without seeing conjunctivitis.”

He explained that the number of COVID-19 infected patients with conjunctivitis wasn’t that large but it was unclear how many patients were checked for this. Finally, he expressed surprise that goggles were not universally recommended in healthcare settings along with face shields.

So, first things first, I’m not a fan of primate studies but there was one that answered many questions about COVID-19 infection via the eyes, so with great regret I present it here.

Three rhesus macaques were infected with COVID, two via their conjunctiva and one via intratracheal route. The conjunctival swabs were positive for the first day only, “indicating that the inoculated virus may transfer from conjunctiva to respiratory tract and other tissues . . . specific IgG antibodies against SARS-CoV-2 were detected in the rhesus macaques, indicating that the animal was indeed infected with SARS-CoV-2 [showing] that conjunctiva is a route of SARS-CoV-2 transmission.”

A literature review concluded, “The overall prevalence of ocular symptoms in patients with COVID-19 was 11.2%, which is not a common finding. Nevertheless, this reported prevalence might be an underestimation because patients with COVID-19 present with life-threatening clinical scenarios, which may preclude a detailed ocular examination or relevant history.”

Speaking of ophthalmologists, we should acknowledge with deep gratitude that it was the ophthalmologist, Li Wenliang, who was one of the first people who warned the world about the new disease we now call COVID-19. He later succumbed to the disease after contracting the virus seemingly from an asymptomatic glaucoma patient in his clinic.

So, how does eye protection play out on the ground in healthcare settings? Here I turned to information from Dr. Rick MacDonald, a community paediatrician on staff at Halton Healthcare hospitals where he takes call seeing paediatric patients and works in the NICU.

When many other physicians’ offices were largely doing virtual visits, “we decided early on that if we were going to be a useful resource for our paediatric population. . . .We needed to see patients [and] to provide this service, PPE is the most important first step without which it could not be done.”

Dr. MacDonald spent hours sourcing PPE for his office, opting for an N95 and a face shield but now also wears goggles as well. “To [keep our office open] we need full protection. No skimping, no cheating, full attention to detail. . . . Overkill is better and no government official or cloistered ID staff will convince me otherwise.”

He’s correct: protection, including eye protection, is crucial. Doctors are often in closed examining rooms, crowded emergency departments or intensive care units, with potentially large volumes of COVID-19 aerosols. So are nurses, paramedics, respiratory therapists and many others.

Certainly, we could benefit from research on the fluid dynamics of COVID19 aerosols with people wearing face shields and masks. However, we are in the second wave of this pandemic and there are a frightening number of infections in the public and healthcare workers.

I’m asking public health, in light of the basic science of fluid dynamics of aerosols, to change their recommendations:

The public should wear eye protection if they are indoors with others.

Healthcare workers working with patients that are potentially COVID-19 positive, should use face shields for splatter alone. Goggles are the only safe eye protection for aerosols.

Wearing Masks During COVID19: How Neuroscience Can Help Us.

Never have lives depended so much on getting a buy in from the public to wear masks. The evidence that masks protect us from COVID-19 is clear and unequivocal. In terms of scientific evidence, that is. Where it all falls apart is when emotional arguments are made against wearing masks.

Many argue that we should avoid the emotional aspect of COVID and simply concentrate on the rational arguments for mask use. 

However, this argument falls apart too, because all decisions involve emotions and we can’t keep people safe without appealing to them. Why? Because that’s how our brain works.



In the 1990s, the neuroscientist and physician Antonio Damasio wrote a groundbreaking book, Descartes’ Error: Emotion Reason and the Human Brain. Through studying people with brain lesions he demonstrated how decision making necessitates emotional input: decisions cannot be made without emotional input. 



Much research has supported these findings and this has been taken into the political arena by authors like Westen and Lakoff. The basic conversation in both these books is how all political decisions involve emotional input. 



Some may feel that decision-making that necessitates emotional input is not a good thing. They will side with Descartes and claim that purely rational decision-making exists. Like everything in the human body, from kidney to heart function, one doesn’t get to chose how organs work. The vast amount of evidence from lesion studies proves this to be the way the brain works.

I understand the concern with the idea that decisions are emotionally based - I grew up with scientists who felt emotions should never enter decisions. Emotions were seen as out of control and in need of control. 



Perhaps it would be reassuring to look at the areas of the brain that are involved in emotions - there is a complex, interconnected system that is utterly beautiful. A glance at some of the players may inspire you: these areas respond directly and indirectly to bodily and sensory inputs and coordinate, like a symphony: orbitofrontal cortex, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, anterior temporal lobe, ventrolateral prefrontal cortex, dorsomedial prefrontal cortex, anterior mid-cingulate cortex , amygdala, anterior insula, anterior cingulate cortex, dorsomedial/dorsolateral prefrontal cortex, medial temporal lobe, retrosplenial cortex/posterior cingulate cortex and periaqueductal gray.

So, although emotions are often viewed as the basest form of human reaction, they involve complex cascades of brain activity that are crucial for synthesizing social, empathetic and protective aspects of a decision.

This impacts mask wearing because different countries have different emotional narratives to which they generally respond.

All governments are using narratives to explain the spread of COVID-19. In Canada, the narratives of the federal and provincial governments are largely in line with each other and all appeal to a sense of helping others. This narrative has high emotional salience in Canada, where helping others, working together as a country to help each other is the basis of everything from our universal healthcare system to our investment in schooling. It is a core value. Not for everyone, of course, because no country has a homogenous set of values. However, most countries do have some values that are widely shared. 

Even some of the anti-maskers in Canada protest under the banner of “Hugs not masks”. Appealing to a sense of community well-being while spreading the virus may be odd, but it encapsulates the emotional weight of community in Canada. 



South of our border, COVID-19 infections and deaths are mounting, and masks would help limit the spread of this virus. There are many factors involved in this but one factor is the conflicting messaging coming from the federal government and the states. Another factor may well be the emotional weight given to the idea of individual decisions - much of the messaging has actually been against the community well-being by arguing that individuals can’t be forced to do things by others, particularly governments. We have some of that in Canada, but not in such large numbers because the narrative in Canada is that taking care of others is valuable and putting yourself above the health of others is generally frowned upon.

I have thought long and hard about how to encourage people to wear masks south of the border. Many of my colleagues in the United States spend their days and nights caring for COVID patients and then spend their free time on twitter encouraging people to wear masks. 

When I think of appeals that have been made to Americans, this comes to mind:

Or this as a mantra for today:

So many fine and civic minded Americans have called upon Americans to follow their better angels. These appeals are emotional - heck, I’m Canadian and they move me to the core.

Some of my American friends have argued that the population of America has changed and that appealing to better angels will not work because many are driven by anger and fear. The division of people into those who are angry and scared verses those who are rationally following public health measures is a fallacy. We are all scared and we are all angry. These are difficult times and we would be completely detached from reality if our responses to this drastic situation were not intense: remember our emotional systems are nuanced, coordinated and work with reality because they are dependent on input from our senses.

Directing our fear towards its source - this virus - drives many of us to wear masks, wash our hands, keep our distance from people and allows us to stay safe. Anger? That's a great energizer for fear and enables us to fight paralysis by driving us to action. We are seeing governments and others trying to direct anger when infections increase towards those who are infected and, these days, this is often young people who are painted with the narrative that they are selfish and irresponsible. When we direct anger towards our own, it's rarely productive and always divisive. When young people have heard inaccurate information that they are largely unaffected by this virus, we should look to the source of their behaviour and perhaps correct the information they were given, using that anger to drive us, energetically, to educate them and appeal to the values of community and empathy that we have raised them with. 

History has taught us that citizens who have been complicit in terrible things can and have turned things around - think postwar Germany. Surely, we can give our young and our fellow citizens the benefit of the doubt and appeal to their better angels - to their more noble emotions such as empathy. 

One of the bright spots - maybe - is the response Canadians have seen to mask mandates and this might help in America. “An overwhelming 95 per cent of the survey respondents say they now wear a mask on public transit. In mid-July, those numbers were as low as 45 per cent.”  In cities all over Canada, we are seeing similar response to mask mandates. Not certain if this would work with our southern neighbours given the violence that has accompanied masks refusal and the lives that have been lost. But maybe this provides some hope. Along with an emotional appeal to civic duty grounded in empathy. 

I don’t know if this will work. I’m just hoping that we can all turn the rising infections around by standing on the shoulders of scientists, who explained how we make all decisions, including whether to wear masks or not: facts without emotional appeals will simply not work to help people make the right public health decisions. 

Man's [Dubious] Search for Meaning

Right before the 2008 election, I was present when a Southern father told his sons to go out and buy guns, right now, because if Obama got elected, there would be black people (my terminology, not his) banging down their doors to "get them". It didn't happen. Then or in 2012. I'm sure it's been a great disappointment to him ever since. And I'm sure he continues to hope.

I thought of him the other day when I read a comment on a conservative web site - and I quote:

"Whites, Traditionalists, Conservatives and small o Orthodox Christian's are being treated by the mob the same way the Nazis treated the jews in Nazi Germany, it only a matter of time they throw us in gas chambers."

And I almost felt sorry for the guy. Really. Because I could tell that deep down the commentator wants - no, NEEDS this to happen. Well, probably not to him: but to somebody, to prove how evil the other side is, and how important and righteous he and his must be, to be so savagely persecuted.

As Fred Clark, one of my favorite bloggers, wrote "You probably don’t hope that millions of your neighbors are secretly cannibalistic pedophiles who worship Satan. Because that would be bad. But some people really want that to be true."

In case you're wondering, the existence of a large number of cannibalistic pedophiles who worship Satan is one of the central tenets of the QAnon conspiracy theory, and this came up because it's being professed by a number of GOP candidates for public office. (See NPR)

Lauren Boebert, owner of the Shooters Grill, in Rifle, CO, QAnon supporter, and
Republican nominee, Colorado's 3rd District. © Lauren Boebert campaign web site

Anyway, back to Fred as to why people believe this stuff:

"If it’s not real, after all, then where will the true believers find anything else so exciting to provide meaning for their lives? If there isn’t a massive secret global network of Satan-worshipping cannibalistic pedophiles, then what’s even the point of anything? They hope that it is real. They want it to be real. They desperately need it to be real...

"But there’s the problem. Once you’ve given yourself over to a pack of lies like QAnon or any other variation of the ancient Satanic baby-killers libel, you belong to those lies. You become those lies. And having become a lie, sincerity and genuineness are no longer available to you. To be a true believer in such outrageous lies makes you incapable of truly believing. So do even the “true believers” really believe this stuff? Not quite, because they can no longer “really” anything.

"I think this also captures what it is that those Second Amendment cultists Boebert feeds at her restaurant “really believe” about all of their delirious fantasies about persecution and confiscation and imminent tyranny precariously kept at bay only by their sidearms pew-pew-pew! You can’t “really believe” such fantasies when you’re sitting there at Shooter’s Grill, eating your Swiss & Wesson burger imperturbed by the evil forces of gubmint tyranny. But you can hope that it is real, because that would be exciting and thrilling and it would mean that you mean something no matter how much you’ve begun to suspect that you don’t." (Slacktivist: "I hope that this is real") (my emphasis)

To put it more simply, as Toby Keith wrote, "Let's Get Drunk and Be Somebody."

This, my friends, is why people join cults and/or believe in conspiracy theories (although all cults are founded on conspiracy theories, imho), and why it's so damned hard to get them out of them. They let people, who believe deep down that they're nothing, be somebody important enough to be wanted. Even if it is only by the law.

One of the many reasons I love Spike Lee's BlacKKKlansman is the KKK guys. Felix, Walter, and Ivanhoe are true believers in the "Lost Cause", "whites are more persecuted than anyone else", "they're comin' after us!" fantasy that apparently started right after Lee's surrender at Appomattox. In between drinks, they blab, shoot pool, whine, shoot guns, and plan to blow up a dorm of black women for being mouthy and black. They think they're mysterious and powerful and deeply important, but in reality, like Sally Bowles, they're about "as fatale as an after dinner mint." (Or, in their case, a Tic Tac.) But they are, also like Sally, dangerous to themselves and to others.

There really was a time when people didn't seem to need to find meaning in cults and conspiracy theories or much of anything because they were engaged in an existential struggle to stay alive for another year. Or month. Or day. Some of it was that a 95% preindustrial agricultural society has too much work to do to stay up late at night wondering if the Illuminati are real. And they knew they were important - they had families to take care of, crops to raise, clothing to make, food to cook, etc. For that matter, Ma and Pa Ingalls weren't sitting around DeSmet, South Dakota, discussing how many people in President Grover Cleveland's cabinet were Reptilians.

So why did things change? Maybe it's because we have more time. Maybe it's because in industrial societies humans have to work according to machines instead of seasons. Maybe it's because we're a celebrity consumer culture nowadays, and there's too many of us for everyone to be a celebrity, and we're drowning in stuff, and we have no idea what's going on.

Anyway, cults / conspiracy theories provide temporary Meaning:

• The Inner Knowledge: There is a secret cabal of entities who are manipulating everything around us because they're evil and want to. Which means, of course, that all the bad stuff happening around us and to us? None of it is our fault. (Otherwise known as "magical thinking", very addictive, and the center of most racist ideologies.) Anyway, the Inner Knowledge gives us
• The Inner Certainty: By knowing this we are in the "inner circle", a specially chosen person to know the truth which everyone else has distorted or denied. (At last! At last!)
• The Inner Excitement: By knowing it we've you have made an enemy of evil powers - mighty, earth shaking / earth gobbling powers. And the stranger, weirder, more perverted, more horrific, more completely impossibly evil the enemy/enemies is/are the better. You know: Satan-worshipping cannibal pedophiles. Or the Reptilians. Or… Cthulhu.

BTW - the puzzling thing about Jim Jones, Cthulhu, and other death cults is that in the long run all they offer their cult-members is a quicker death than the rest of the world, and that apparently is enough. (Head shaking emoji.)

But most cults offer a constant frisson of fear, anxiety, apprehension, but with

• The Inner Assurance: We will survive and trumph! We will go into spiritual and physical warfare against these demonic alien powers and get to do an awful lot of slaughtering. And probably not suffer at all, because we've all seen the movies, and only the extras get killed. And we're no longer extras, we're among the chosen. One of us might even be the lead! Like me! No, me! No, me!

(And this is how the Pisgah Church becomes the Reformed Pisgah Church becomes the First Reformed Pisgah Church becomes the First United Reformed Pisgah Church becomes the Redeemed First United Reformed Pisgah Church...)

Another aspect of cults / conspiracy theories, etc., is, of course, that they aren't always religious. They can be political, dietary, economic - whatever takes you away from the present and wafts you to an often earthly paradise, like the Marxist "dictatorship of the proletariat." (Stalin, Pol Pot, and Mao should have put the kibosh on that dream.)

Or the idea that if you just cut your calorie intake low enough, you will live hundreds of years. (But who wants to live hungry forever?)

Or high colonics (if you haven't seen it, go out and rent, right now, The Road to Wellville, and find out how much of a crackpot John Harvey Kellogg really was). (Oh, and bicycle smiles, everyone!)

Here in America the primary economic cult is a combination of

• Unfettered Capitalism (as opposed to capitalism with checks and balances, i.e., regulations) and
• Grover Norquist's "drown government in the bathtub" and
• Trickle-down economics (which started way before Reagan**)
• The American Work Ethic: 1 week sick leave, 1 week vacation, and a bonus for those who don't use either, and why do you need a weekend off anyway?

Which is why, in the middle of battling a pandemic with no cure, treatment, or vaccine, and statistics like these staring us in the face:

COVID-19 cases in America

It took 97 days to reach 1,000,000 cases

                 (January 21-April 27)

41 days to reach 2,000,000 cases

                 (April 28-June 7)

29 days to reach 3,000,000 cases

                 (June 8-July 6)

14 days to reach 4,000,000 cases

                (July 7-July 21)

the current message from many politicians and pundits is "We must save The Economy at all costs!"

Back to work, back to school, and rewrite the CDC guidelines to match the need to get everyone back to work. And if it costs some lives (the old, weak, disabled, and now children), well, you have to break a few eggs to make an omelet, and they were probably gonna die anyway, but now they'll have died in a good cause. For the good of The Economy.

• The Economy needs us.
• The Economy will save us.
• The Economy lives forever.

And the survivors are going to live in a booming economic paradise! It'll all be worth it! You'll see.

Or not.

**From WJB and Will Rogers:

"There are two ideas of government. There are those who believe that if you just legislate to make the well-to-do prosperous, that their prosperity will leak through on those below. The Democratic idea has been that if you legislate to make the masses prosperous their prosperity will find its way up and through every class that rests upon it." - William Jennings Bryan, "Cross of Gold" speech, 1896

"This election was lost four and six years ago, not this year. They didn’t start thinking of the old common fellow till just as they started out on the election tour. The money was all appropriated for the top in the hopes that it would trickle down to the needy. Mr. Hoover was an engineer. He knew that water trickles down. Put it uphill and let it go and it will reach the driest little spot. But he didn’t know that money trickled up. Give it to the people at the bottom and the people at the top will have it before night, anyhow. But it will at least have passed through the poor fellow's hands. They saved the big banks, but the little ones went up the flue." - Will Rogers, 1932

MY NOTE: Now this is an idea that really should be drowned in a bathtub. Hasn't worked almost 100 years, and it's still being proclaimed as if it's the magic cure to everything.

Florida… Oh No, Not Again!

Florida’s bizarre politicians overshadow our usual weird news. But let’s take a stab at the strange.

Gator Cater

West Palm Beach, Florida.  No, I am NOT the guy who reads and sings to calm alligators not receiving their share of tourists. Everyone knows I can’t sing.

Marathon, Florida.  I also deny knowledge of the iguana that wrestled a guy and his bicycle to the ground. A spokesman for the bicycle said…

Tampa, Florida.  Nor do I have anything to do with neighbors preventing access to a landlocked bird sanctuary. (I have sympathy in this case. Orange County politicians turned over a county road to a private cattle company, preventing property owners access to their land.)

Head Honcho

St. Petersburg, Florida.  A jogger found a human head on a grassy knoll. Police confirm it is not that of Governor DeSantis, who is known for having lost his mind but not his head. Yet.

Softball Questioning

Jacksonville, Florida.  A hard-hitting woman batted eyelashes at her police detective boyfriend, who gave her a pass during a murder investigation. They made it beyond third base but not quite home when they were called out.

The Mother of All Gifts

Clearwater, Florida.  We missed reporting on Mother’s Day that a spitting, angry Pinellas County wife beat her husband for remembering and giving her flowers. Uh wait. I’m guessing she didn’t want flowers.

Clearwater, Florida.  Another woman attacked her man with a candy cane. And a brick. And a pen. Somehow after a brick and a yard-size candy cane, a pen doesn’t seem all that much.

Micanopy, Florida.  So her boyfriend, see, well, she was on her phone, actually, and her boyfriend, just sorta, kinda, tripped on air and fell on a knife, twisted it in maybe, and writhed and stabbed himself umpteen times or not and raccoons attacked… No flowers for her Mother’s Day.

Sanford, Florida.  Lest ye think it only women who’ve gone corona-mad, there’s the crazed man who stabbed a roommate then turned on police, screaming something about Satan and worms and… You see? Some normal Florida things still happen.

Deltona, Florida.  We mustn’t forget another man who attacked a roommate who’d kindly made him breakfast. Oh wait. The breakfast chef woke him at 5am. That’s like the middle of the night. Last time someone woke me at 5am, police found me sharpening my teeth.

Another Reason to Close the Bars

Indialantic, Florida.  She just spread the love or a message or coronavirus. Just because she kissed strangers without a mask, was that any reason to stop a sunny welcome?

Try as I might, I can’t seem to get away from COVID-19 stories.

Taking the Cure

Bradenton, Florida.  The Genesis II Church of Health and Healing continued selling their Miracle COVID Cure after a judge ordered them to stop selling industrial bleach for human consumption. This is the same chemical their leader wrote about to President Trump who subsequently claimed this wonderful detox would knock out the coronavirus in one minute. Side effects include heartburn, death…

Fort Myers, Florida.  That guy in Costco, you know, the dude who felt threatened by a 60-some year old lady who asked him to wear a mask… from Florida, of course. He’s a star insurance salesman; you’d think he’d want everyone to masque up.

Holly Hill, Florida.  The Costco guy wasn’t as nasty as the woman who spit into Walmart’s fruit and vegetable bins ruining $350 or so of foods. Because of the corona hoax, of course.

Homestead, Florida.  A couple wanted soooo bad to visit the Florida Keys, but those stupid Keys officials didn’t want to spread that hoaxy COVID and like all illegally tyrant-like keep non-residents out, which is soooo Naziish. Anyway, this freedom-loving couple took a teenager prisoner and forced her to drive through the checkpoint. They struck such a blow for freedom, not the terrified girl’s, of course, but theirs. Except they’re locked up.

Hernando, Florida.  Local drivers might not be as bad as Boston’s, but how do you drive backwards and park atop other cars? And we don’t even get snow?

Reedy Creek Control District, Florida.  One guy decided to self-quarantine in Walt Disney World. He shacked up on Discovery Island, Disney’s former zoo of sorts before Animal Kingdom.

Gainesville, Florida.  If you live in Florida and someone removes your testicles, you might be a politician. Or an adopted kitten. Who knew a stuffed dragon might not protect you?

Full Blown Politics

Tallahassee, Florida.  At the same time the White House blames poor coronavirus response on the media for too much coronavirus reporting, Florida’s governor blasts the media for too little reporting. Indeed, Governor DeSantis says the press reported nothing about COVID-19 until April, so he assumed all was okay. Which is weird, because like a kidnap hostage, I can hold up copies of the Orlando Sentinel and Miami Herald dated back in January. Doesn’t he know the Keys have been off limits to visitors since 22 March?

© Tampa Bay Times and Shorty Awards

Florida is famous for costumed characters and since February, the Grim Reaper has patrolled Florida’s beaches warning visitors about the virus. In March, that Grim Reaper, revealed as Daniel Uhfelder, Esq, sued the Governor’s office to require face masks. So apparently our Governor doesn’t check the news, he also pays no attention to lawsuits.

Earlier this month when I wrote about Florida landing the sad position of Nº 1 and setting new pandemic records every day, I hadn’t expected the Sunshine State to continue setting new records. As one observer put it, if Florida was a separate nation, it would rank among the worst countries on the planet for infections.

Governor DeSantis calls that ‘a blip’. Because, you know, the Black Plague was ‘a bump’ and reporters ‘a bleep’. Such ingrates! Florida has done soooo much to keep the numbers down. Like firing our heroine, Rebekah Jones, the state’s database administrator who revealed Florida’s government was grossly under-reporting cases. And sheriff offices complain that as infection hotspots soared, the state cut off critical information to police agencies including addresses of known outbreaks. And the state ordered medical examiners not to release autopsy data. Because no info, no problems.

Milledgeville, Georgia.  Above our border, Georgia’s Brian “Screw ’em” Kemp is posing a challenge to Florida’s Ron ‘Who Me?’ DeSantis for dumbest governor, but I’m afraid Georgia will have to settle for Miss Uncongeniality. Kemp is suing cities that require masks in public. Because no masks, no problems.

Oh God, the clowns! We’re all gonna die! But keep shaking your head and laughing.

Adventures in Logic

At the entrance of the Temple to Apollo at Delphi were three maxims:

1. Know thyself.
2. Nothing to excess.
3. Surety brings ruin.

All very logical, and God knows every philosopher from Cleobolus (c. 6 BC) to Aristotle (384-322 BC) hammered home the maxim "Moderation in all things." Along with the primacy of Man's Reason, and how that made Man superior to the beasts of the field, not to mention foreigners (all of them barbarians to the Greeks), slaves and, of course, women.  (Except the hetairai.)^†

But the Greeks also worshiped Dionysus, the god of wine, fertility, ritual madness, religious ecstasy, festivity and theater.  Their symposia were all male affairs (except for the high-class hetairai and the low-class musicians) at which they recited poetry, discussed philosophy, sing songs, give speeches, and get thoroughly drunk.  (Please, read Plato's Symposium HERE for one of the great discussions of love anywhere - interrupted by a very drunk Alcibiades and his buddies.)  

Decent women - wives and daughters - were kept at home, uneducated and working, in the women's quarters, where they were to never be seen or heard by any other man.  Except at weddings.  And their coming of age.  And the Dionysian Mysteries when all those well-hidden wives and daughters turned into Maenads, Bacchantes, and raced out into the hills, where they drank and danced and sang all night long, in the religious frenzy of Dionysus, tearing animals apart with their bare hands.  (And the occasional man who dared to look into their rituals.  See Euripedes' The Bacchae.)

That's the Greeks for you.  Logic, logic, logic, and the next thing you know they're screaming wild in the mountains.  Well, at least they had the gods to blame.  

So much for logic.  

"If we stop testing right now, we'd have very few cases, if any."  President Trump, 6/15/2020.  

In the world of Logical Fallacies, this is known as a False Equivalence - if THIS, then THAT - which always sound logical, and can work, but only if both parts are completely true.  

BTW:  Twitter has been full of other examples of such thinking:

"Yes, and if I stop weighing myself, I'll never gain any weight."

"If we stopped being poor, we'd all be rich."

"If I quit recognizing birthdays, I won't get any older."

Make your own:  ______________________ 

But God knows, that's not the first time that Presidents have said dicey things:

"When a great number of people are out of work, unemployment results."  Calvin Coolidge  

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed the worst and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover." - Herbert Hoover, May 1, 1930

"Rarely is the question asked: Is our children learning?" —George W. Bush, Jan. 11, 2000
"I am not worried about the deficit. It is big enough to take care of itself." - Ronald Reagan
"I was under medication when I made the decision to burn the tapes."—Richard Nixon

Meanwhile, there is no system of logic in any universe that will allow you to be both the Party of Lincoln and carry a Confederate flag.  The history is plain:  Lincoln and the Confederacy were on opposite sides of the Civil War.  

BUT the Appeal to Ignorance (argumentum ad ignoratiam)  can work a treat if people are determined enough to remain ignorant.

(https://www.comicskingdom.com/darrin-bell)

And let's not forget the classic misshapen logic of criminals, all of which - and more! - I've heard on the job at the pen:  

"Look, if they didn't want to be robbed, they shouldn't have had such nice stuff."  

"I don't have to follow the rules.  Rules only apply to losers." 

"No one has ever been mistreated the way I've been mistreated.  I'm amazed that I'm even alive."

"No one has ever done anything for me.  Everything I've got I've had to take."

"No matter where I am, I always know I'm the smartest person in the room."

"It's not my fault I got arrested:  my baby mama turned me in to the cops for dealing because I was cheating on her."  

"I've never done a thing wrong in my entire life.  It's just that people always have it in for me."

"I'm the messenger of God.  If you hadn't been such sinners, God wouldn't have sent me to punish you."

     (All right, all right, the last one's Genghis Khan.)

Also, see the wonderful Top Ten Criminal Thinking Errors HERE.

If the numbers don't fit, change things!

Back on May 13, two weeks after reopening, the Atlanta Journal Constitution reported that the State of Georgia made it look like its COVID-19 cases were going down by putting the dates out of order - April 26th after May 2nd, and two Sundays in one week - on its published chart of COVID-19 cases, in order to prove that "new confirmed cases in the counties with the most infections had dropped every single day for the past two weeks."  (Link)  And to prove that the reopening was going great!  Huzzah!  Except it wasn't.  

What's that about All Lives Matter?

"A resurgent economy is seen as critical to boosting President Donald Trump’s reelection hopes and has become a growing focus of the White House coronavirus task force led by Vice President Mike Pence."  (AP)  

Which begs the question, why isn't preventing a second, third, or fourth deadly wave of COVID-19 seen as critical to boosting President Trump's reelection hopes?  Especially since the stock market that increased at the reopening dropped like a hot rock through ice cream - almost 2,000 points - on June 12, as COVID-19 spiked around the country.  Oh, and currently COVID-19 cases are increasing around 10,000 a day in the United States.  Doesn't look like we flattened the curve.

I know he says terrible things, but look at all the conservative judges...  Especially Neil Gorsuch...

One of the accomplishments ascribed to President Trump is the appointment of conservative judges and Supreme Court Justices.  Meanwhile, two days ago, SCOTUS refused to hear review a ruling on California sanctuary laws, as well as a several Second Amendment Cases.  And then Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch wrote the majority opinion in the above ruling.  “An employer who fires an individual merely for being gay or transgender defies the law,” Justice Neil M. Gorsuch.  As one might expect, many conservatives who now praised him as the country's moral salvation are now calling him "Deep State".  (And far more unprintable things.)

BTW, two things to remember:

(1) Judges don't always vote their party.  I grew up seeing "Impeach Earl Warren Signs" on trees because as Supreme Court Chief Justice, ultra-conservative Earl Warren decided that segregation, suppression of free speech (whether for Communists or protesters), and mandatory official school prayer were all unconstitutional.  

(2) Those who assume that Justices will vote their party (i.e., "dance with them what brung 'em"), are always going to be SOL somewhere along the line.  In fact, this is a damn good thing to remember as a general rule in life.  Otherwise, you're gonna end up crying over The Tennessee Waltz way too many times.

I'm not a doctor, but I play one in my mind

Among many other current arguments in what I like to think is the fringe (but is rapidly becoming the back and sides as well):

"It's no worse than the flu."  

Tell that to the people who, after 60 days, are still sick with COVID-19, the ones who have had major organs compromised (apparently for life), and what about the guy who got a 1.1 million dollar hospital bill?  Oh, and since we have neither treatment nor vaccine, the current mortality rate is averaging about 6%.  It's 0.1% for the flu.  (I know, percentages are hard... look it up.  There are websites that will explain it to you.)

"I don't wear a mask because masks make you sick!  You breathe all that CO2 and you're gonna die!  You've got to have as much fresh air as possible!"  

My dears, if masks make you sick, then every surgeon, physician, nurse, and lab technician must die extremely young.  And they should all, obviously, be in ICU right now, as patients.  BTW, you don't have to wear masks in your own home, or in your car, or when you're taking a (socially distanced) walk outside.  

"If masks were so good for you, why didn't they tell us to wear them from the beginning?  Huh?  How can you trust the doctors if they keep changing their minds?"

So, if the antibiotic isn't working on your gangrene, you shouldn't listen to your doctor when she changes your medication in search of something that might work?  

If you think I'm exaggerating, check out this video of Orange County residents protesting against a requirement to wear masks.  Notice the reference to "I am a sovereign citizen" (and read my 2012 blogpost - https://www.sleuthsayers.org/2012/08/sovereign-citizens.html - about this unmerry loose rubberband of hoaxers and victims).   

The gist of the anti-mask crowd is: "It's so inconvenient etc. for me to wear a mask, so rather than protect the elderly, or those with pre-existing conditions, or even my own family & friends, EVERYONE ELSE STAY HOME FOR MY CONVENIENCE!"  (At least they're easy to avoid - they're the ones not wearing a mask.)

And when they say, "I'd rather die of COVID-19 than live in fear and wear a mask all the time", all I can say is (1) death is far more inconvenient, and (2) if you're scared of dying of CO2 poisoning from wearing a mask, I think you're going to be terrified when your lungs and kidneys collapse from COVID-19.  

Also, scientists change their minds after experiments and research have proved that their hypothesis was faulty.  They don't keep doing the same damn thing over and over again, even when it's proved ineffective, expecting different results.  That's why the call it science, instead of magic.  

A Great Number of Logical Fallacies Revolve Around Bulls&8t.

Ad Hominem - or the Personal Attack.  From Crooked Hillary to Racist Clementine, Sleepy Joe to Moscow Mitch, we've heard a ton of them.  Most of us will have been on the receiving end of them, especially in junior high.  The key is to ignore them all.  

A subgroup of this is Guilt by Association - where a person is vilified for "associating" with someone else.  Thus the 75 year-old protester Martin Gugino (peace activist with Dorothy Day's Catholic Worker Organization) was called "Antifa" by our President.

Another subgroup of this is Guilt by the Past.  Example: After Tamir Rice, the 12 year old black boy was shot by a Cleveland cop for playing in a park with a toy gun, "The Northeast Ohio Media Group investigated the backgrounds of the parents and found the mother and father both have violent pasts." Which has nothing to do, of course, with a little boy playing in a park.

Strawman Argument - where one attacks a position the other doesn't really hold.  

“You're against the death penalty. You want to set murderers loose to kill again.” (Instead of arguing what punishment murder should get, this accuses you of wanting murderers to be allowed to run amok in society.)  

Pars Pro Toto, or "The Part Taken for the Whole" - Used - often extremely successfully, to divert attention away from, and even to ridicule, a particular case.

"We must save the children in Yemen."  "No, first we must stop all abortion."

“We must save the whales.” “No, we must save all the creatures in the sea.”

“Black lives matter.” “No, all lives matter.”

(My favorite response to the last one was when a conservative acquaintance announced his birthday on Facebook only to have someone - not me, sadly - respond #AllBirthdaysMatter.  Really pissed the guy off.)  

Slippery Slope - This is used over and over and over again.  Among the most popular in the US are:

"Same-sex marriage leads to bestiality."  (Louie Gohmert, Rick Santorum, and Ben Carson, among others, have all used this argument.  - HERE)
"If marijuana is legal, everyone will become heroin addicts."  (Classic, going all the way back to Richard Nixon.)
"If you give the poor money, they won't work because they are feckless and lazy, and that's why they're poor in the first place, so you should never just give the poor money because it won't help them, it will just make them lazy." (This one is a double decker of Logical Fallacies, because it combines the Slippery Slope with Circular Reasoning.  Used frequently to gut SNAP, etc.)

"Give teenagers birth control and all they'll do is have sex and get pregnant." (Actually, the opposite is true - see HERE)

False Dilemma - You're given two options, black or white, which do you choose?  Except that there is probably at least a third option, if not a lot more.  

“Either we go to war, or we appear weak.”  (Ever hear of diplomacy?)

"The only economic options are unfettered capitalism or communism." (There used to be a wide range of economic theories and practices - remember mercantilism? - but that was back in the 18th & 19th centuries when, apparently, people had time to think about such things.)  

"Either we open the country to restart our economy or we keep everything shut down."  (How about if we increase our testing and contact tracing abilities first?  How about if we mandate certain rules for how we open and what we have people do?)  

Meanwhile, all of these, and many more can be found at the following websites:

https://thebestschools.org/magazine/15-logical-fallacies-know/

https://owlcation.com/humanities/Some-Common-Logical-Fallacies-and-How-They-Corrupt-Reasoned-Debate

Good reads. After all, it's always good to know what kind of bulls&&t's being handed to you, and how to refute it.

† "We have courtesans [hetairai] for pleasure, concubines for the daily tending of the body, and wives in order to beget legitimate children and have a trustworthy guardian of what is at home." Appolodorus, Speech Against Neaera (Link HERE)