Δαφνη Ευτυχια Αρθουρος

"The article from The Wall Street Journal suggests that nations like Australia, China, and New Zealand-countries that have embraced a policy of eliminating COVID-19 completely-are being 'unrealistic.' The right answer, according to The WSJ, is to hustle COVID-19 into the endemic phase, and learn to live with it.

"This, and this is a carefully considered response, is not just a formula for millions of deaths, but an absolute ticket to the end of the line for America, and likely for what we currently think of as modern society. We simply cannot live with endemic COVID-19.

[...]

"It would look like a world where businesses and schools frequently have to close for days or weeks because too many people were simply too ill to carry on. On a purely economic basis, the CDC estimates that outages due to the flu cost American business over $10 billion a year; COVID-19's impact would be many times that amount, and far more disruptive.

[...]

"Endemic COVID-19 doesn't mean it boils at a low level everywhere, filling a predictable 10% of hospital beds and generating lots of opportunities to send bedside balloons that could be appreciated by patients in between visits from comfort dogs. Endemic COVID-19 would behave exactly the same as epidemic COVID-19: in surges, waves, or spikes-pick your descriptor. Every single locality in the nation would be subject to a possible overrun of the local healthcare system at any time.

"The scenes that have appeared so many times over the last year-tents being erected in parking lots, exhausted nurses wandering hallways choked with patients-would recur again and again, unless the healthcare system is expanded to deal with a world where not only is median hospital bed and ICU occupancy considerably higher, but both are subject to a maximum rate that far exceeds capacity.

[...]

"Those opening their arms to endemic COVID-19 are forgetting what might be the most important factors of this whole discussion: Social distancing measures have been wildly effective. Masks work. Limitations on social gatherings work. Required testing and checks for vaccination work.

"Drop all that for 'normal,' and what will come won't be 'like the pandemic, but manageable.' It will be 'like the pandemic, and quite a bit worse.'

[...]

"Going back to our watercooler, when Cecelia comes back to the office after two weeks of flu, she may be wiped out from body aches and dehydration. But she doesn't come back with hearing loss, brain fog, and a fresh case of diabetes. Thus the cost of COVID-19 can't be compared to that of the flu, because in addition to the greater number of deaths, COVID-19 causes enormously more long-term illness than any current endemic disease."

-- Mark Sumner (Devilstower), "COVID-19 must be eliminated, not become endemic, if America is to survive", 2021-10-02 [go read the whole thing, for numbers and reasoning and just how horrible it'd be]

The Master said, "I have not seen a firm and unbending man." Some one replied, "There is Shan Ch'ang." "Ch'ang," said the Master, "is under the influence of his passions; how can he be pronounced firm and unbending?" -- from Confucian Analects, traditionally attributed to students of Confucius (b. 551 BCE, d. 479 BCE), translated by James Legge (b. 1815-12-20, d. 1897-11-29), Book V, chapter X

"The problem with testing cat behavior is that cats are easily annoyed and also notoriously unforgiving, so it's hard to get them to do much of anything, especially if it's something they didn't want to do in the first place. Cats will prioritize spite over comfort." -- Lilah Sturges (LilahSturges), 2021-10-01

[Long article, quoted passages are from different sections. Emphasis in original.]

"Resilience is a forced response to distress. Projecting it as just another 'skill' for workers glosses over the systemic failures that create so much of our distress to begin with.

[...]

"Here's what we tend to gloss over: Resilience is a forced response to distress, not another nifty workplace skill. Instead of expecting resilience from workers, employers and society at large need to confront their own role in creating the very reasons of distress that demand resilience-inequality, discrimination, modern work's productivity obsession.

[...]

"Organisational psychologist and coach Meg Mateer, a former Big Four consultant, says a 'skills only' approach becomes dangerous when people believe that they are suffering solely because they are not skilled enough in healthy strategies, and organisations believe their part is done after introducing these skills to workers."

-- Tanmoy Goswami, "Resilience is dead. Long live resilience", 2021-07-20

[Happy 97th birthday to President Jimmy Carter!]

From "These quotes from residential school Survivors can help kids (and parents) understand their experiences" by Arisa Valyear, 2021-06-08:

Typically as soon as Indigenous children arrived at residential schools their names were replaced and they were assigned numbers.

Wilbur Abrahams attended a residential school in Alert Bay, B.C., and remembers how important it was for students to remember their numbers, as this is usually how staff referred to children.

"They told us to remember our number, instead of calling my name, they'd call my number, and if you don't remember your number, you, you know you get yelled at. And I, I think we did extra chores, so you had to really keep memorizing your number. Mine was 989."

Lydia Ross, who attended Manitoba's Cross Lake Indian Residential School, recalls the different numbers she was assigned throughout her residential school experience.

"My name was Lydia, but in the school I was, I didn't have a name, I had numbers. I had number 51, number 44, number 32, number 16, number 11, and then finally number one when I was just about coming to high school. So, I wasn't, I didn't have a name, I had numbers. You were called 32, that's me, and all our clothes were, had 32 on them. All our clothes and footwear, they all had number 32, number 16, whatever number they gave me."

[Today is the first annual National Day for Truth and Reconciliation, honouring children, survivors, families and communities affected by residential schools in Canada. It's Orange Shirt Day, elevated to a federal statutory holiday but not yet observed as a provincial statutory holiday in all provinces -- it's official at the provincial level in British Columbia, Manitoba, Nova Scotia, Prince Edward Island, and the Northwest Territories, but not in Alberta, Saskatchewan, New Brunswick, Quebec and Ontario.]

"I acually don't believe in the concept of the mid-life crisis, 'cause [...] it's just guys [...] get to a point where they can afford to buy stuff they've wanted for a long time." -- Craig Ferguson, in the opening monologue of The Late Late Show With Craig Ferguson (CBS), 2007-05-17

"Simcha [joy] in the Torah is never about individuals. It is always about something we share. A newly married man does not serve in the army for a year, says the Torah, so that he can stay at home 'and bring joy to the wife he has married' (Deut. 24:5). You shall bring all your offerings to the central sanctuary, says Moses, so that 'There, in the presence of the Lord your God, you and your families shall eat and rejoice in all you have put your hand to, because the Lord your God has blessed you.' (Deut. 12:7). The festivals as described in Deuteronomy are days of joy, precisely because they are occasions of collective celebration: 'you, your sons and daughters, your male and female servants, the Levites in your towns, and the strangers, the fatherless and the widows living among you' (16:11). Simcha is joy shared. It is not something we experience in solitude.

"Happiness is an attitude to life as a whole, while joy lives in the moment. As J. D. Salinger once said: 'Happiness is a solid, joy is a liquid.' Happiness is something you pursue. But joy is not. It discovers you. It has to do with a sense of connection to other people or to God. It comes from a different realm than happiness. It is a social emotion. It is the exhilaration we feel when we merge with others. It is the redemption of solitude."

-- Rabbi Lord Jonathan Sacks (b. 1948-03-08, d. 2020-11-07), "The Pursuit of Joy"

[A good Shmini Atzeret and a joyous Simchhat Torah to everyone celebrating those holidays today and tomorrow!]

"One of the problems with how politics is covered is many have forgotten that the purpose of politics is policy, as in solving problems. It's not about scoring points in a game of inside baseball. To cover it as such undermines the health and safety of our nation and the planet." -- Dan Rather (DanRather), 2021-09-26

"'Stand back and let people be successful' advice generally misses the 'create a context in which people can be successful without your intervention' bit, which is by far the hardest part.

"Also this focus on intervening on people (e.g., behaviorist approaches) is a management dead-end. Managers act on the system as a whole."

-- Senior Oops Engineer (ReinH), 2021-09-22

"broke: pituitary gland
 woke: gland central station"
  -- puts on flower crown, falls into a faerie circle (Klezmerstyle), 2021-09-23

[The Unix calendar program reminds me that on this day forty years ago, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman on the US Supreme Court.]

"Of the eight news values (proximity, timeliness, prominence, magnitude, conflict, oddity, impact, and emotion), emotion too often rises to the top when telling stories about disability communities." -- Wendy Lu, "What journalists can do better to cover the disability beat", Columbia Journalism Review, 2017-09-05

"In Texas, we do not hold high expectations for the [governor's] office; it's mostly been occupied by crooks, dorks and the comatose." -- Molly Ivins (via Jone Johnson Lewis' collection of quotations on about.com)

"The 'trans women in sports' conversation really misses out on the fact that only an elite few participate in paid, televised, or professional sport. Women's sport, especially for youth, is primarily a vehicle to develop a public life and become involved in your community." -- Leah Tigers (9BillionTigers), 2021-09-20 [FWIW, I have seen other people mention this, especially in the context of why bans are harmful to trans girls. But it does get overlooked a lot.]

A blessed Mabon to folks celebrating that, and a happy equinox to everyone else who cares. At 19:16 UT (15:21 Eastern Time), astronomical autumn begins.

"[...] So when I say that it's horrific to see people supporting the police, anywhere injuring the media, anywhere

"That is absolutely the utter least I could say, and I thought about how to make it softer, and that's not it's because it's what I think.

"It's what I can advisably say.

[...]

"When an internationally award-winning photographer who's been a witness for Congress about police overreach says "that's bad"

"Listen.

"Because you know what I've been pepper sprayed by cops while covering protests for nearly a decade, I have reported from actual armed rebellions, and I am telling you from behind my litigant's circumspection

"The press is pepper sprayed before people lose eyes.

"Which is to say: no state repression starts by shooting the media. The creep is incremental, it's well documented across the world, and how it starts is 'we merely pepper sprayed some folks who clearly weren't protesters for crowd control, totally legitimate'

"I am silly and I talk about absurd things and it is because I live an absurd life where some days you just go to work and lose an eye and the public says 'well what were you doing, out there doing that public service'

"But I'm highly qualified and completely serious.

"The rights of the people are sacrosanct but they first restrict the press

"Because without the press how would the people even know they were having their rights restricted"

-- Linda Tirado (KillerMartinis), 2021-09-20

"We were put on this magical planet, not to dominate and consume her, but to care for her and love her. To harrow gently. To harvest gratefully. To build reasonably." -- David Paul Kirkpatrick, The Dog

[Chag sameach to everyone celebrating Sukkot for the next week, starting tonight! May you be blessed with great weather for dining in the sukkah!]

"You can't build a bridge between something that isn't separate. So even when you say things like LGBTQ Christians are a bridge between the church and the LGBTQ community you are still insinuating that queerness/transness is separate from Christian identity. That when we are in church we are Christians and when we are in our queer/trans community that we are queer/trans but the reality is that when we are in church we are queer/trans Christians and when we are in our queer/trans community we are STILL queer/trans Christians. We are not a bridge to anywhere because we are whole in all of our identities.

"Bridge language is harmful because it others queer/trans Christians. It continues to isolate us. To make us feel as if we are not integral to Christian community."

-- Fr. Shannon Kearns (shannontlkearns, also one half of QTheology), "You Can’t Build A Bridge Between LGBTQ+ People And The Church" (full essay gives more reasons/explanation)

"I just had a dude at work ask me if I was a good girl or a bad girl. I told him I was a chaotic neutral half orc Druid and called him a rank amateur.

"He did not buy a dance."

-- Killer Bee TOP 0.97% ON ONLYFANS (overlairbee), 2021-09-03

"'ignore bigots until they aren't relevant' is the adult version of 'ignore your bully and they'll leave you alone'

[...]

"they don't become irrelevant because you and a few friends ignore them. they still have their cronies and positions of power.

"de-platforming is an active process. it requires speaking out against them. but if the bullied kid stands alone, they are putting themself in danger.

"if their non-bullied peers stand with them, if those with authority and power over the bully stand with them -- if teachers kick them out of clubs and refuse to write recommendation letters, if the bully's parents take away their allowance -- that chips away at the bully's power.

"but when those allies stand and act once -- when that support is a one-time performance -- not only does the bullied kid go right back to being in danger, but that danger is worse now that the bully has suffered consequences and is not only hateful, but angry and spiteful.

[...]

"allyship in all its forms is not a one-and-done. it's fighting just as hard as the kid being bullied, if not harder. it's standing with them, and it's standing between them and the bully.

"bullies and bigots become irrelevant when allies make them irrelevant by taking away their power, never giving them a platform (in life or in death), putting permanent shields in place, and maintaining those shields over time."

-- zan (ze/zem/zir) fully vaxed, staying masked (tripleAqueer), 2021-09-10 [worth clicking through to read the whole thread]

"So much of our pain and suffering comes from our inability to understand our place in the universe.

"And until we understand that, we can never be who we really are.

"Our potential is bigger. Our impact can be even more so. And has been.

"We are but little agents. :)

[...]

"And if you are impatient, then, stop complaining.

"Start fixing things. If you can't fix big, fix small. If you can't fix small, help someone else do something even smaller.

"And if there is nothing left to do, then pray. I see y'all make miracles happen all the time."

-- bin Adamah (JShahryar), 2021-09-15 (long Twitter thread -- if you want to skip to the tweets I quoted: first, second)

[Wishing a meaningingful Yom Kippur observance to all my friends observing it, but also figuring y'all won't see this until the holy day ends this evening. G'mar chatima tovah.]

"We read Jonah during the service because we are Jonah at this point in the day. We have been functioning in the realm of belief that our prayers will lead to certain outcomes; that is, after all, the purpose of Yom Kippur. And yet, deep within us, in the desire to return home to sleep in our beds, there is the doubt, the anger, the knowledge that we can never understand how this world works, and what is the point in trying? We read Jonah to be reminded that this tumultuous, contradictory, difficult space is, in fact, the space of prayer and possibility." -- Maya Bernstein, "Jonah and Yom Kippur"

[To my Jewish friends who are observing Yom Kippur tonight and tomorrow, g'mar chatima tova. And to those healthy enough to fast safely, may you have a meaningful fast.]