#and i hope our immune systems are not so ravaged by the covid we had a year ago that we cannot build a more robust immunity to rhinoviruses

[naamahdarling]

.

[sunbentshadows]

you post about covid a lot lol

Hey anon.

Wasn't sure how to answer this. Yes, I do!

In March 2020 I got sick. We didn't know with what, and we'll never know. All I know is I had no fever but my lungs were fucked. Tests for Covid didn't exist then - I went to the ER about a week before lockdown, they sent me on my way. Back and forth with video visits, trying to get follow-up care. As long as I had no fever and my blood oxygen was normal, doctors could, would, do literally nothing. Only option was the ER again - which was also, of course, full of Covid patients, and at that point they wouldn't accept you if you weren't, frankly, actively dying.

It took me a year to breathe normally. A full year, using an inhaler every four hours. There were days I thought I'd never get better, and at least a few when I thought I wouldn't make it because my lungs were so sick. We didn't have vaccines at that point. We didn't have masks, actual masks available - N95 masks, respirators, for much of that first year.

I got off lightly. I'm still not sure if I prefer it were Covid or not - that I haven't had it and whatever else I had was that bad, or I have had it, and it was that bad. (Lungs are fragile like that - they don't recover well, they leave you susceptible to worse things and worse recoveries even years down the line.)

I never want to be that sick again. My health has been kind of fucked since. Maybe it's related, maybe it isn't. I'm waiting for a surgery right now actually - amidst the second-worst wave of Covid we've ever had. But I need the surgery, and I can't wait it out til cases drop. Imagine trying to heal from surgery with a disease that ravages your immune system. Imagine getting the disease that makes you cough with several abdominal incisions. Imagine it's because even doctors decided they didn't give a shit.

I should not have to make that choice. I'm fucking furious the world is like this. I want to scream at everyone who has decided this is over, at everyone who has decided our lives aren't even worth the inconvenience of wearing a fucking mask. I am astounded at the profound ignorance and selfishness of people I once considered intelligent and kind. I am aghast at the collective amnesia. This disease killed more people in four years than every war in the US's existence. It is still the third leading cause of death. And yet people find it odd to care about.

Yes, at some point, I hope and believe it will become less virulent. But it isn't yet. We're only just beginning to understand the ramifications of the disease on our biology, but everything we uncover is bad. Extremely bad.

There are a million essays here. They've been written. The failure of policy. The failure of healthcare. The failure of community. The failure of scientific communication. The failure of every single individual choice that every single person is actively making, right now -- it sounds like, including you -- all of which mean people get permanently sick. People fucking die. The collective decision to absolve yourself of your responsibility, to decide there is an acceptable percentage of the population to sacrifice for your convenience. The "individual choice" to not mask or vaccinate weighed against someone's fucking life.

So yeah. Yes. I guess I do post about Covid a lot, relative to some other folks. Because jesus fucking christ.

[ladykeane]

hi! i just read the fic 'clausura' on ao3 and i really liked the premise so could i request something with reg helping bertie through a panic attack in the bertie's blog verse? i've been having quite a few recently and i wish i had someone like reg to help me through them. thank you!!

Prompt (finally) filled! I hope you don’t mind Nonny, but I switched the script and had Bertie help Reg instead.

I try not to put too much real world strife into this series, but I think COVID-19 is too invasive to ignore. Wash your hands, follow medical advice, and keep calm and carry on. Also practice good mental self-care if you don’t have a household Wooster to do it for you!

‘Who was that Scottish chappie, Reg?’‘Bertram?’‘You know, the one who always banged on about schemes and gangs and aglets, or something.’It took me a moment to detangle the meaning of my beloved’s question.‘You may be referring to the poet Burns, and the oft-quoted excerpt of his poem “To A Mouse”:“The best laid schemes o’ mice an’ men gang aft agley,an’ lea’e us nought but grief an’ pain, for promis’d joy!”’‘That’s it. Someone ought give him an editorial spot with The Independent.’‘I fear it would be a posthumous one, Bertram.’‘Oh. Shame, that.’

I suspect that Bertram was musing on the peculiar times that we curently find ourselves in: a land of toilet paper scarcity, face masks, and widespread uncertainty. He had just come home from a foraging trip through the local supermarkets. Though he looked somewhat the worse for wear, had scored a few bags of root vegetables, some bulk wet wipes, and a good four kilograms of cat litter. His Code of the Woosters had driven him to volunteer for the onerous task. I quickly moved to prepare a pot of his favoured Darjeeling.

My own onerous task for the day had been an earlier phone call to my mother, informing her that the intricate and expensive planning that we’d gone through for my wedding to Bertram would, for now, amount to naught. The immediate future was a grey fog, and no-one could say for sure when it would be safe to re-schedule the ceremony.‘Was Rani alright when you phoned?’ Bertram asked, casting an errant shred of packing foam from his hair, before scrubbing his hands raw under the kitchen tap.‘She bore up. She wishes to give the catering company a very stern phone call for their refusal to refund our deposit. But as she is currently so busy at the medical centre, I doubt she will find the time or energy.’'I imagine the old girl has her hands full with panicking tabloid readers, eh?’'Quite so, Bertram. She told me that more of her time has been spent counselling healthy young people with the sniffles, than administering to her truly vulnerable patients.’'Blackguards. May they all run out of loo roll!’'Indeed.’We then passed a more sedate afternoon over our laptops. Bertram meticulously tended to his famous blog, while I prepared some documents for a fastidious client, keen to protect her assets against the variable economic climate. The cats, who were quite pleased with our increased presence in the flat, snoozed together on the tabletop between us.As I rose for a second cup of tea, I considered their purring, languid forms. Not for the first time, I urged myself to maintain my my sangfroid. It was in unsettled times like this that my reputedly cool demeanour was truly put to the test. While I would not confess to being a total control freak, I do appreciate order and consistency a great deal. It is the environment in which I best flourish, and I confess that the mounting chaos around us had been persistenly pricking at my nerves.

As I poured the remaining tea, I recieved a phone call from an unknown number.'Hello, this is Reginald Jeeves.’'Good afternoon, Mr Jeeves, I’m calling from Bethnal Green Medical Centre. I understand that you are a co-worker of a Mrs Beatrice Akinyemi?’'Yes, she is a paralegal at my firm.’ I felt my insides begin to clench.'Have you been in contact with Mrs Akinyemi within the last fourteen days, sir?’'I saw her at the office just a few days ago.’'I am obliged to inform you that she has recently tested positive for COVID-19. Given your recent contact, you and your household will be obliged to self isolate for a minimum of fourteen days, and monitor the onset of any symptoms. Have you or any of your houshold members experienced a high fever or persistent coughing?’My words stuck in my throat, and my heartbeat accelerated.'Sir?’'Is Bea alright?’'She last reported some mild flu-like symptoms, but she is not currently in a critical condition. As she is not in a high-risk category, her prospects of a full recovery are good. Can you please confirm if you or any of your household have been experiencing related symptoms?’’…No.’'Are any of your household members over the age of sixty, or do they have a pre-existing autoimmune condition?’'Paul… he’s not in my household, he is my co-worker. He and his husband are-’'We will be contacting Mr Seppings, to advise him of this development.’'Thank you.’'Should you develop any symptoms, your household will need to remain in self-isolation for a further fourteen days. Please refer to the NHS website to keep up to date with any developments. And do try not to worry too much. These are necessary precautions, which are in place to minimise the spread of the virus. You and your colleagues will likely be fine, long-term.’I nodded tightly, unable to find further words.After an uneasy pause, 'Have yourself a good day, Mr Jeeves.’ The line went dead.

The last I had seen of Bea had been last Friday, shuffling listlessly out of the office doors, laden down with a loot of groceries. She had two loud, hungry teenage sons at home.I thought of Paul and Anatole. Both were ex-smokers, their lungs still in the process of repairing decades of damage. I thought of my mother, swamped with desperate patients, a face mask clamped over her mouth.

I was suddenly unable to get enough air into my own lungs. My throbbing hearbeat seemed to overtake everything, pounding in my throat and my ears. I gripped at the kitchen counter with trembling clawed fingers. What was worst was the blank terror in my mind, my inability to think my way out of the paralysis. This godawful panic had saturated its way through my whole body.

The kitchen door opened behind me, Bertram bearing his own empty teacup.'Reg…?’ His voice was delicate.I tried not to sob as I felt tears escape my eyes.

After a few moments, his slow, slippered footsteps approached, and he softly draped his slender form upon my back. His arms slipped around my waist, and he rested his head on my shoulder. With my sharp, jagged inhales, his curls began to tickle my face.I could feel his own breaths, deep, even, tender. His body was a reassuring weight, and his hands began stroking up and down my arms.

'Come with meAnd you’ll beIn a world of pure imaginationTake a look and you’ll seeInto your imagination…’

We’ll beginWith a spinTravelling in the world of my creationWhat we’ll see will defy explanation…’

As he sang, my heartbeat gradually slowed, falling in time with the unhurried tempo he had set. The tear tracks dried on my face.I found my words once more. 'Willy Wonka, Bertram?’'Well… you look like you could use some chocolate.’

He sat me down, and presented me with a family block of Cadbury’s along with my refreshed tea.'That was Bea’s GP. She has tested positive, so we must isolate for the next two weeks.’'Ah, well.’ He broke off a large piece and popped it in his mouth. 'It was bound to happen to one of us, sooner or later. Knowing Bea, her immune system’s already got the dratted thing running scared. Have you called her?’Tightness constricted my throat again, and Bertram was surprisingly astute. He rested his hand on mine. 'She’ll be alright, I promise you. So will the others. Anatole’s arsenal of garlic-heavy dishes will will be a formidable first defence, for one thing.’

I exhaled heavily. ’…I haven’t had such an episode of panic since secondary school.’ I felt a layer of shame now pressing upon my ravaged core.Bertram tsked. 'Oh, I got panic attacks all the time at Eton. Must have been all the stress from constantly dodging my house master’s fury. It always helped to cocoon myself in bed. I hope that the spindly Wooster corpus provided a passable impromptu shock blanket for you!’He laughed lightly, then his gaze settled on mine. I was pulled into a lengthy embrace. He spoke no more, instead imparting all that I needed through his sweet, balmy presence.

***

'You wouldn’t believe what a help my Simon has been,’ Bea told me, her congested voice even more distorted through the phone. 'Made a pea and ham soup last night that was actually edible. He even found a carton of my favourite ice-cream at the back of the Tesco freezer!’'So your appetite is still sound?’ I questioned.'Yeah, just have to deal with this bloody cough. Otherwise, staying in my PJs and binge-watching telly all day has been quite the holiday. The doc told me I’ll likely recover just fine.’'I am relieved to hear it.’'You just make sure you’re looking after yourself, Reg.’ Her tone had turned stern and auntly. 'Though I’m sure that that Bertram of yours is nursing you well proper. Do as he says, alright?’'I will be sure to.’'I’m gonna start on season 3 of “The Crown”, now. I promise I’ll keep spoilers to myself. Talk soon, love.’'Take care, Bea.’

I hung up, turning my attention to Vasily, warm and pliant in my lap. I scratched his ears and he purred deeply.'Dinner will be ready in about five, Reg,’ Bertram announced from the kitchen. 'Is beans on spelt toast with sauted red onions alright?’I chuckled to myself. 'That will be superlative, my shaman.’

[sciencespies]

Ask Ethan: How Can A Non-Expert Evaluate Conflicting Claims By Actual Experts?

https://sciencespies.com/news/ask-ethan-how-can-a-non-expert-evaluate-conflicting-claims-by-actual-experts/

Ask Ethan: How Can A Non-Expert Evaluate Conflicting Claims By Actual Experts?

If this past year has shown us anything, it’s how thoroughly we rely on high-quality expertise. As the COVID-19 pandemic swept the globe, it wasn’t the voice of science that stood out above the fracas, but rather the machinations of politicians, only a small fraction of whom followed the best scientific recommendation available at the time. It put into context a number of related issues — vaccines, climate change, and fluoridated drinking water among them — where society’s policies don’t align with what science indisputably indicates. Even worse, you can often find people with expert credentials who advocate for either sides of an issue, further muddying the waters. If you yourself aren’t an expert not only in a particular field but in the relevant sub-fields to the issue at play, how can you know whom to trust? That’s what Dr. Larry Moran wants to know, writing in to ask:

“I assume that you are not an expert on fluoridated drinking water, climate change, or COVID-19 and yet you feel confident that you can identify the correct scientific position on each of these topics. How do you do that and is it something that the average intelligent person can do as well? Isn’t that the real question?”

The answer to the second question is yes, but it takes a lot of hard work for each and every issue you want to evaluate. Here’s how we do it to the best of our ability.

While there are a number of science-and-society issues where the general populace and scientists … [+] have differing opinions, there are many such issues where their viewpoints align extremely closely. The hope is that, by better equipping the general public to make informed decisions, they’ll make decisions that better align with the best recommendations of science.

Pew Research Center

There’s some “pre-work” that goes into any sort of investigation like this, where you have to first identify what you think you know about the issue at play. What are the different things that you’ve heard various people say, and how credible do you think each of those statements are? Before you even begin to evaluate the credibility of the claims at play, you have to identify what the various claims are, as well as your preconceptions about them.

Are vaccines safe and effective? How safe, quantitatively, are they, and how effective are they? What are the side effects and who is at risk of them? Will they alter your DNA, and if so, in what way?

What about the science of wearing masks? How effective are they, and what is the role that surfaces, droplets, and aerosols play in the transmission of the novel coronavirus and its variants?

What about fluoridated drinking water? Or GMO crops? Or climate change?

Identifying the relevant issues — the ones that need to be addressed in order to reach an informed conclusion — has to be your starting point.

Plant Biotechnologist Dr. Swapan Datta inspects a genetically modified ‘Golden Rice’ plant at the … [+] International Rice Research Institute (IRRI), which is a genetically modified variant of rice that could end Vitamin A deficiency and protect hundreds of thousands of children from blindness annually, and many more from death.

David Greedy/Getty Images

Once you’ve identified the various facets of a complex but important issue, you’ll want to identify all the areas of universal agreement. Vaccines have, quite obviously, been a fantastic public health advance. Diseases that once ravaged populations across the world — measles, polio, diphtheria, pertussis, etc. — have been brought to the brink of eradication, largely due to vaccination efforts.

Vaccine side effects are rare, but they do exist, largely in the form of allergic reactions. However, a number of vaccine trials fail because of potentially deadly side effects; the blood clots associated with the Johnson & Johnson and AstraZeneca are prominent examples, while the CDC has catalogued a number of well-documented historical incidents.

If practically all legitimate professionals on all sides of an issue can agree on a set of facts, you can safely take those as a starting point where you’re unlikely to get anything wrong.

If you decide to argue against the scientific consensus, you’ll have a very large suite of evidence … [+] to overturn, explain, and supersede. If you yourself are not an expert in the specific sub-field of science that you’re seeking to overturn, the odds are very much against your success.

MacLeod / Union of Concerned Scientists

Then you come to the next step: identifying false claims that are either completely unsupported or directly contradicted by the science. This is a step that you must take, or you’ll forever be bogged down by disingenuous arguments that are designed to distract you from the actual hard work of figuring out what is true and what is false.

However, not every issue is as easy to resolve as “person #1 says the sky is green and the grass is blue, while person #2 says the sky is blue and the grass is green.” Some issues take a lot of research to unpack, particularly when there are a number of voices — especially if at least one of those voices comes from a source you generally respect and trust — that are actively working to spread misinformation.

And yet, a good non-expert can cut through a large amount of that misinformation simply by either talking to or listening to the conversations that a number of credible experts have had in various public forums.

A Somali boy receives a polio vaccination in 1993. Although there are many contrarians out there who … [+] deride the safety and efficacy of vaccines, the consensus position is that they are humanity’s greatest defense against preventable infectious diseases.

PV2 Andrew W. McGalliard, U.S. Military

For example, consider the following questions:

Do vaccines cause autism?

Is the Earth’s temperature warming?

Is fluoride a waste by-product of the aluminum industry?

Are organic, non-GMO crops healthier for you than non-organic, GMO crops?

Will an mRNA vaccine alter your DNA?

Of course, there are many other examples, but these are ones where the information should be particularly easy to obtain simply by sifting through the internet. Vaccines definitively do not cause autism, and there are no large-scale, non-fraudulent studies that show that. Earth’s temperature is not only warming, but the warming is accelerating and is now at the 5-sigma level: where there’s less than a 1-in-7,000,000 chance that this is a fluke of the data.

And we can go on.

The global surface average temperature for the years where such records reliably and directly exist: … [+] 1880-2019 (at present). The zero line represents the long-term average temperature for the whole planet; blue and red bars show the difference above or below average for each year. The warming, on average, is by 0.07 C per decade, but has accelerated, warming at an average of 0.18 C since 1981.

NOAA / climate.gov

Fluoride is used in the aluminum smelting process as a catalyst, and it is true that the aluminum industry is the largest consumer of fluoride compounds. Once upon a time, America’s largest aluminum company (ALCOA) did acquire a sodium fluoride production plant, and sold sodium fluoride. However, their last sale occurred back in 1952, because it became cheaper for ALCOA to buy fluoride compounds elsewhere than it was to manufacture it themselves. None of the fluoride in municipal water supplies has ever participated in the aluminum manufacturing process for the past 59 years.

While there may be environmental differences in the impacts between organic and non-organic farming, there is no nutritional difference, and that has been studied at length and in-depth. Fascinatingly, GMO crops are often far more nutritious than their non-GMO counterparts, with golden rice and vitamin A (and its ability to prevent hundreds of thousands of cases of blindness annually) a stunning counterexample to the non-factual claim.

And when it comes to mRNA vaccines, they only instruct your cells to produce a protein, which your immune system then attacks; your DNA is never altered. In an ironic twist, contracting COVID-19 and suffering its ill effects can, and perhaps often does, alter your DNA.

The novel coronavirus COVID-19, as illustrated here against a backdrop of a DNA molecule, contains … [+] only approximately 30,000 base pairs in its entire sequence, yet is capable of infecting and killing millions of people across the globe. Our best defense, at this point in time, lies in our own behavior and compliance with vaccinations, physical distancing, mask wearing, not touching our faces, hand washing, and other similar interventions.

GETTY Images

But that’s simply the low-hanging fruit. There are plenty of issues where you yourself lack the necessary expertise to discern between various viewpoints, even after doing your homework and fact-finding to the best of your abilities.

In those instances — and this is where, in my personal experience, many science writers go wrong — it’s vital to find the correct, relevant experts. It’s very easy to find a number of scientists who support positions that, even if they haven’t quite reached full-blown crackpot territory, are certainly contrarian positions that are well out of the scientific mainstream.

Could the dinosaurs have been wiped out by a comet, instead of an asteroid?

Could today’s temperature increase on Earth be a temporary effect, to be followed by a cooling period?

Could masks actually increase the transmission of certain viruses, rather than reducing the spread?

A comet or asteroid that struck Earth because it wasn’t detected quickly enough is one of humanity’s … [+] greatest natural threats, and could potentially be even worse than the extinction event of 65 million years ago. Whether these extinction events are periodic or not has long been a point of contention. But new analysis may have finally laid this speculative area of science to rest: it is not, and it was an asteroid, not a comet.

NASA / Don Davis

Even though studies supporting each of these positions have been published by prominent scientists, passing peer review in the process, the answer is a resounding “no” in every one of these instances. The reason isn’t because I trust “expert B” and not “expert A,” nor is it because I myself know enough to evaluate the claims on their own merits for myself, even though I do, in fact, earnestly attempt to understand these issues as deeply as I can.

Instead, it’s because I know — and contact — a number of experts that I trust in a variety of general fields: physics, astronomy, biology, chemistry, geology, climate science, etc. When there’s a contentious issue I don’t fully understand, or a novel claim that appears to conflict with what I know, I:

ask them about it,

listen to what they say,

ask follow-up questions to better understand the claims and the different lines of evidence pointing towards the conclusions,

ask about errors, uncertainties, and conflicting interpretations of the data,

ask about different methodologies and what the drawback or omissions are in each case,

and to learn about where the boundary is between what’s established, what’s suggestive, what’s speculative, and what is untenable nonsense.

An unmasked individual doing something as simple as exhaling (top) can send droplet particles large … [+] distances, with a high potential for spreading the novel SARS-CoV-2 coronavirus. Wearing a mask (bottom) significantly reduces the distance that droplets travel, offering some measure of protection to others as well as, to a lesser extent, the wearer.

MATTHEW E. STAYMATES / NIST

In all of these three aforementioned cases, the claim in question, despite a copious amount of reporting suggesting that it’s plausible, is robustly ruled out.

The combination of Chicxulub crater’s magnitude in size, the energy required to create it, and the high abundance of elements like iridium found in the ash layer that blankets the Earth from 65 million years ago thoroughly rule out a cometary nature for the ancient impactor.

The stadium wave hypothesis, which noted oscillations (rises and falls) in the temperature at various places, like in the Atlantic Ocean, hypothesized that these oscillations were driving the apparent temperature rises seen around the globe. By hypothesizing that temperatures would fall and sea ice would regrow throughout the 2010s, and with the data clearly showing that not only was the hypothesis itself ill-founded but that both global and oceanic temperatures rose and accelerated during the past decade, the claim has been definitively falsified.

And the idea that cloth masks could increase virus transmission was from a 2015 study that compared cloth masks with medical grade masks, not with an unmasked population. That claim never had any teeth to it, but you wouldn’t know it unless you had dug deep enough into the literature (and understood the context of the study) to pick that information out.

If you have the bright idea to explain how a certain specialized field works to an expert working in … [+] the field, follow this helpful flowchart to determine the proper course of action.

E. Siegel

The unfortunate fact of the matter is this: there are a lot of people — scientists, science writers, reporters, and laypersons alike — who think they’re doing a good job of separating fact from fiction, proving “the experts” wrong when, in fact, they are not. There are a number of reasons for this, and they include:

hubris, where they think they know more than they do,

succumbing to shortcuts, where they don’t do a sufficient amount of the necessary background research to put these new claims in their proper context,

falling for the fallacy of “telling both sides” to a story, even when the scientific weight of the evidence is firmly on one side and not the other,

or, to promote a favored conclusion, they simply lie.

There are red flags that you can look out for, of course. Someone who tells you to “do your own research” is almost always deliberately attempting to undermine established science. A claim that “evidence for [this new position] is increasing all the time” is almost always advocating for something that the weight of the evidence doesn’t, in fact, support. People who use a single, personal experience as a counterexample to a scientific consensus are following anecdotes, not data. And if someone has to appeal to a conspiracy theory, that “the truth is being suppressed,” you can fairly safely conclude that no amount of scientific data will convince them.

You may not ever be able to reason someone else out of a position they didn’t reason themselves into, but you can reason yourself into a more accurate position anytime you choose simply by doing the necessary work. Hopefully, if you’re so inclined, you now have the necessary tools — and humility — to go and do so for yourself.

Send in your Ask Ethan questions to startswithabang at gmail dot com!

#News

[gordonwilliamsweb]

Colleges and Universities Plan for Normal-ish Campus Life in the Fall

Dr. Sarah Van Orman treads carefully around the word “normal” when she describes what the fall 2021 term will look like at the University of Southern California in Los Angeles and other colleges nationwide.

This story also ran on U.S. News & World Report. It can be republished for free.

In the era of covid, the word conjures up images of campus life that university administrators know won’t exist again for quite some time. As much as they want to move in that direction, Van Orman said, these first steps may be halting.

“We believe that higher education generally will be able to resume a kind of normal activity in the fall of ’21, and by that I mean students in classrooms and in the residence halls, others on campus, and things generally open,” said Van Orman, USC’s chief health officer. “But it will not look like the fall of 2019, before the pandemic. That will take a while.”

Interviews with campus officials and health administrators around the country reveal similar thinking. Almost every official who spoke with KHN said universities will open their classrooms and their dorms this fall. In many cases, they no longer can afford not to. But controlling those environments and limiting viral spread loom among the largest challenges in many schools’ histories — and the notion of what constitutes normalcy is again being adjusted in real time.

The university officials predicted significantly increased on-campus activity, but with limits. Most of the schools expect to have students living on campus but attending only some classes in person or attending only on selected days — one way to stagger the head count and to limit classroom exposure. And all plan to have vaccines and plenty of testing available.

“We’re going to be using face coverings,” Van Orman said. “We’re going to be lowering densities of people in certain areas. We’re going to be offering vaccinations on campus, and we need tracking mechanisms so that we can perform contact tracing when it’s called for.”

With three vaccines being administered nationally so far, the chances that college faculty and staff members could be partially or fully inoculated against covid by fall are improving. Students generally fall well down on the priority list to receive covid vaccines, so schools are left to hope that vaccination of adults will keep covid rates too low to cause major campus outbreaks. It may take months to test that assumption, depending on vaccination and disease rates, the duration of vaccine-induced immunity and the X-factor of variants and their resistance to existing vaccines.

And most colleges are interpreting federal law as prohibiting them from requiring staffers or students to be vaccinated, because the shots have been granted only emergency use authorization and are not yet licensed by the Food and Drug Administration.

Regardless, many schools are powering forward. The University of Houston recently announced it would return to full pre-pandemic levels of campus activity, as did the University of Minnesota. Boston University president Robert Brown said students will return this fall to classrooms, studios and laboratories “without the social distancing protocols that have been in place since last September.” No hybrid classes will be offered, he said, nor will “workplace adjustments” be made for faculty and staff.

The University of South Carolina plans to return residence halls to normal occupancy, with face-to-face classes and the resumption of other operations at the 35,000-student main campus, Debbie Beck, the school’s chief health officer, announced last month.

At some of the largest state institutions, however, it’s clear that a campus-by-campus decision-making process remains in play. In December, the California State University system, a behemoth that enrolls nearly half a million students, announced plans for “primarily in-person” instruction this fall, only to be contradicted by officials at one of its 23 campuses.

The 17,000-student Chico State campus plans to offer about a quarter of its fall course sections either fully in person or blended, president Gayle Hutchinson wrote to the campus community in February. “There is no easy explanation of what this means for students,” she said. “It could mean a fully online schedule, or one that is both in-person and online.”

The 285,000-student University of California system in January declared a return to primarily in-person instruction for fall, but said specific plans and protocols would be announced by each of its 10 campuses. Places like UCLA, in Los Angeles County, which was ravaged by sky-high infection rates for months, could wind up with far fewer in-person classes than UC campuses in Merced or Santa Cruz.

There’s no getting around the financial component of schools’ decisions for the fall. After most of the more than 4,000 colleges and universities in the U.S. went into full or nearly full physical shutdown late last spring, overall enrollment fell 2.5% and freshman enrollment decreased by more than 13%. And the real pain was felt in empty dormitories and cafeterias. For many schools, room and board make up the profit margin for the year.

According to research by the College Board, room and board costs rose faster than tuition and fees at public two- and four-year institutions over the past five years. In 2017, the Urban Institute found that room and board costs had more than doubled since 1980 in inflation-adjusted dollars. When those dollars dry up, as they have during the pandemic, budgets can be severely strained.

In mid-March, Mills College, a 169-year-old women’s liberal arts school in Oakland, announced it would no longer admit first-year undergrads and would instead become an institute promoting women’s leadership. Mills is among a number of schools in financial distress that the pandemic pushed over the edge.

In an October letter to Congress seeking enhanced financial support, the American Council on Education estimated a collective $120 billion in pandemic-related losses by the nation’s colleges and universities. The Chronicle of Higher Education in February revised that estimate to a staggering $183 billion, “the biggest losses our financial sector has ever faced.”

There are no easy solutions. The hybrid class model, with professors simultaneously teaching some students in person and others online, “is a heavy lift for both institutions and faculty,” said Sue Lorenson, vice dean for undergraduate education at Georgetown University. But although instructors generally loathe it, that model almost certainly will be in place at most schools this fall to keep enrollments as high as possible.

Clearly, the preference at any school is to have those students back on campus. And university health officials would rather see them living in dorms. As long as infection rates are low in communities around campus, “the schools really have a great ability to keep those kids in the residential halls very safe,” Van Orman said. “We’ve got the ability to test them regularly and mitigate with mask-wearing, distancing, disinfecting and other things.”

One of USC’s biggest viral outbreaks, in fact, occurred off campus last summer, when more than 40 people became infected in the “fraternity row” area, a couple of blocks away from the university.

On campuses across the country, officials say, the fall term will again be marked by adjustments all around. And as for the return to a true normal?

“I don’t think, reasonably, that this will happen before September of ’22, and I truly believe we’ll probably be looking at ’23,” Antonio Calcado, chief operating officer at Rutgers, New Jersey’s 70,000-student state university, said during a campus presentation. “It was easy bringing the university to a standstill. It’ll be difficult bringing it back up to where we need to be.”

This story was produced by KHN, which publishes California Healthline, an editorially independent service of the California Health Care Foundation.

KHN (Kaiser Health News) is a national newsroom that produces in-depth journalism about health issues. Together with Policy Analysis and Polling, KHN is one of the three major operating programs at KFF (Kaiser Family Foundation). KFF is an endowed nonprofit organization providing information on health issues to the nation.

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Colleges and Universities Plan for Normal-ish Campus Life in the Fall published first on https://nootropicspowdersupplier.tumblr.com/

[westletter]

January 2021

Dear Friends,  One of Albrecht Durer’s most enduring images is this 1498 woodcut depicting The Four Horsemen of the Apocalyse. It is based on the Bible’s Book of Revelation and can be interpreted variously. But the essentials are fairly basic: as punishment for our sins, mankind will be visited by Pestilence, War and Famine, followed by the ragged cleanup hitter down in the left hand corner, Death. In short, the End of Days is coming!  With resurgent COVID, bloody insurrection in Washington, hunger, hardship and death ravaging the land -- and why not throw in climate change for good measure -- one could be forgiven for concluding that the Apocalypse has arrived. Take away the religious element, and I am nearly there.  Yes, ultimately and somehow we shall overcome these travails, but this is a bleeping depressing mess we are in.  Why do so many seemingly intelligent people selfishly equate wearing a life-saving mask to taking away their freedom?  Why do so many flout the travel and social gathering rules?   Why are there millions who distrust the vaccines and say they won’t take them?  Can this really be happening?  Sadly, yes, and those four horsemen show no signs of slowing down.  Now we have seared in our brains forever the image of Confederate flag-waving “patriots”, egged on by the putative “leader of the free world”,  storming the Capitol in Washington in a violent attempt to subvert the presidential election.   My Great Grandpa Allen Sherman West who fought under Lincoln at Gettysburg is roaring from his grave.  This is not what he fought for.  Nor my father Allen Sherman West III who served in WWII.   My generation, the Boomers, has enjoyed for the most part, life without war.  That has been a blessing in many ways, at least materially.  No generation in history has lived so high off the hog, enjoyed such an expansion of human rights (but not responsibilities) and seen the average lifespan increase so dramatically.    But as the body politic has fattened, has our spirit become flabby?  Where are the social sinews that hold us together and give us the strength to face adversity collectively?  We had them in previous wars.  Are they gone forever, or can we get them back?  I am not sure.   Sometimes it takes a truly epic catastrophe, an Apocalypse if you will, to bring people to their senses.  Let us hope that is not the direction we are headed in now.   Apologies for posing so many questions without answers.  I leave it to the next generation, including Allen Sherman West IV, to guide us to enlightenment.  Watch out for those horsemen and stay well, CW 

                                             §

You probably recognise this fine fellow.  He is Mark Carney, the brilliant former Governor of the Bank of Canada who was a key figure in reforming the global financial system after the collapse in 2008.  He then went on to the governorship of the Bank of England and deftly stickhandled his way through the thickets of Boris Johnson and Brexit. What you may not recognise is that Mr. Carney has long been a champion of “impact investing”; i.e., investing that takes into account social, environmental and governance factors, so-called ESG investing.  In particular, for years he has been advocating the need to take what he has termed “the climate emergency” into account on private enterprises’ balance sheets.  He has argued on the one hand that there are enormous shareholder liabilities for companies that do not include environmental costs in the liabilities column.  On the other hand, he has proclaimed from the rooftops that there is a massive opportunity for shareholder gains in companies that are prepared to put capital to work in addressing climate change and reducing carbon output. Last August the elite banker found a new home where he is putting his philosophy  to work.  Brookfield Asset Management has appointed Mark Carney Vice Chair and Head of ESG and Impact Fund Investing.     Canadian-based Brookfield has over $550 billion in long-life assets under management and its subsidiary, Brookfield Renewables is home to a growing portfolio of hydro, solar and wind investments around the globe.  Said the visionary CEO of Brookfield, Bruce Flatt: “Over time we see ESG and impact funds matching the size of our existing platforms.”  “We are not going to solve climate change without the private sector,” said Mr. Carney in the Globe and Mail.  “We are in the early innings of a very long game.”   He is not talking small potatoes.  According to the industry publication Pensions and Investments: “The value of global assets applying environmental, social and governance data to drive investment decisions has almost doubled over four years, and more than tripled over eight years, to $40.5 trillion in 2020.”                                            §    CLASS OF 2021 MID-YEAR REPORT CARD  Sparkling returns mock the Apocalypse Apocalypses come and go, as do wannabe fascist autocrats.  The markets don’t care.  As the Headmaster has often remarked, he has no insight into where the markets are going in the short term.  All he knows is that a basket of well-managed companies with competitive advantages in promising sectors will rise nicely over time.   To wit: since the beginning of the school year, July 1st, 2020, the Class of 2021 turned in an average investment performance of 20.3% vs. 21.1%, 17.4% and 12.3% for the S&P 500, the Dow and the TSX respectively.  “Bravo Class!” declared the Headmaster.  “You stared the four horsemen down and matched or bested your benchmarks.  Keep up the good work.” Class results for the calendar year (January 1, 2020 - December 31st, 2020), that included the stomach-turning contraction last March, were similarly impressive.  The Class returned 13.6% vs. 15.5%, 6.5% and 2.8% for the S&P, the Dow and the TSX.   Here are the sector by sector results. Financials - A  Each of these blue chips -- TD Bank, ScotiaBank, RBC and BlackRock -- bore out its pedigree, with an average return of 21.8%.  BlackRock was the leader of the pack with a sterling 32.6% gain.  Remember, as previously reported, BlackRock is the largest investment fund company ($7.8 trillion under management at the end of September) in the world and CEO Larry Fink, echoing Mark Carney, has been an industry leader in demanding that companies do a better job of incorporating ESG into their strategic planning and financial reporting.  All promoted.  Resources - A plus The lone Class member in this highly cyclical category is Nutrien, the Calgary-based fertilizers and agricultural supplies retailer.  As the owner of the world’s largest, and lowest cost, potash reserves, the company enjoys the advantages of scale.  Adds the Headmaster: “When commodity prices are on an upswing, as they are now, Nutrien can do very well.”  Hard-working Nutrien’s return was 40.4%.  Promoted.  Energy - B  Quoth the Headmaster: “Enbridge has been a loyal, blue chip pipeline performer almost since this Class was formed 13 years ago.  It is with regret that I had to let him go this past October.  There was no pivotal event. Rather, the advantages of being a dominant conveyor of fossil fuels, in my humble view, came to be out-weighed by the disadvantages of same.”  “My timing may not be perfect, but it is inarguable that the production of fossil fuel, and businesses tied to it like Enbridge, are approaching or in decline.  It may be a long decline, but in the meantime, we need to give our precious Class space to an energy candidate with the winds of change behind it.  Last October I replaced Enbridge with Brookfield Renewables.”  From July 1st to October 10th, Enbridge  returned minus 5.5%.  From October 10th to December 31st, Brookfield Renewables returned 16.5%.  Promoted. Classmate Algonquin Energy, with investments in solar, wind and hydro, didn’t miss a beat during these pandemical times, with rising revenues and profits.  Its stock appreciated 19.3%.  Promoted.  Infrastructure - B Once again, Brookfield Infrastructure proved the value of its business model, investing in long-term assets like rail, toll roads and cell phone towers, with regulated cash flows largely immune to the vicissitudes of the markets.  The company’s stock price advanced 12.7% over the past six months.   Adds the Headmaster: “I am delighted that CEO Sam Pollock has reiterated his commitment to recycling assets, selling mature businesses when prices are high, and buying new ones that are out of favour when prices are low.  No one plays the game better than Brookfield.”

The company is forecasting $2 billion in new investments annually for the next three to five years, all financed without issuing new shares.  Promoted. Retail - C Classmates Alimentation Couche Tard (convenience stores) and Metro (groceries), as one might expect, benefited from being deemed “essential” in the pandemic and to date have been largely unscathed.  Their share prices, however, don’t reflect this achievement, up a very modest 1.6%.   Adds the Headmaster: “There’s excellent value there.  Metro, in particular, reaped large gains in revenue and profits at the expense of the locked down restaurant sector.  It will be interesting to see how much of those gains they can hang onto.”  Both promoted.   Industry - A plus Workhorses CCL (containers and labels), CNR and John Deere showed the Headmaster their mettle with an average return over the past six months of 39.8%.  He says: “That average masks the spectacular performance of Deere, which had a gain of 71% fuelled by rising farm crop prices and the promise of major infrastructure stimulus spending on the heels of the US election.”  All promoted. Healthcare - C plus “I must remind myself that patience is a virtue,” gripes the Headmaster.  Yet again, the markets have failed to ignite under the Class healthcare trio, Johnson & Johnson, Amgen and Merck.  “Not to worry,” he quickly adds.  “While an average gain of 4.1% is nothing to write home about, each of these wonderful businesses is riding the pandemical wave with ease.  In fact, both J&J and Merck are in the thick of the vaccine race, although they don’t need a winner there to do well.  That would be icing on the cake." Final comment: “I have no doubt the market will better appreciate the value in these companies in the months ahead.”  All promoted. Telecom - B “Class member Telus,” says the Headmaster, “is nothing if not a model of consistency, once again boasting the lowest “churn rate” (customer turnover) in the industry.”  Telus also owns PC Magazine’s “Fastest Canadian Mobile Network” title.  These, and other virtues, underlie the company’s more than respectable return of 10.7%.  Little known fact: Telus derives about 15% of its revenues from Telus International, a global outsourcing and digital solutions company.  According to the the Headmaster: “There’s a possibility Telus will spin out International.  If they do, I would expect a nice bump in shareholder value.”  Promoted. Information Technology - A Classmates Visa, Apple, Microsoft and Open Text combined for an average return of 17.1%.  It must be noted, though, that Apple did more than its share of the heavy lifting, with a return of 45.5%.  “Of this foursome,” says the Headmaster, “only Visa has failed to grow its revenues and profits through the pandemic.  It’s almost perverse how well Apple and Microsoft have done.  Granted, luck has something to do with it, but good businesses make their luck.  Both these companies have spent years and billions making it easier for people to work, and learn, and be entertained remotely.  COVID-19 has only accelerated the trend they were already on.”  All promoted.  Entertainment - A plus  “I sometimes get asked,” says the Headmaster, “why I don’t invest in so-called ‘disruptive technology’ companies, the ones grabbing the headlines like Tesla and Square and Shopify with their sky high stock prices and stratospheric valuations to match. Too risky, I answer.  And I don’t need to be greedy.” “There are a number of companies in the Class of 2021 that give us plenty of exposure to innovation and disruption, without the nosebleed valuations and the attendant risk.  Look at good old Disney.  The growth in their streaming business is screaming, but I don’t have to pay an arm and a leg for it.”     Disney expects its streaming subscriber base to triple to about 250 million by 2024.  The stock is up 62.5% since last July 1st.  Promoted. If you would like further information on any of the investing ideas raised in this issue, or a complimentary consultation, please call or email.  CW     

[educatoraspatient]

Personal Insights on Cancer, Chronic Illness, and this COVID Quarantine

This thought popped into my head back in late April/early May (who knows, time is so weird these days)... 

I was noticing how easily I had fallen into this whole quarantining thing… little angst, little loneliness, and few concerns about not going out… upon reflection, I realized I had slid back into the same mindset I had when I was going through cancer treatment… Care packages have been replaced by grocery delivery, but everything else is largely the same… 

You stay home to stay healthy. You nap, you read, you check in with friends, you binge watch television, but you stay home to stay safe and occasionally to avoid the odd looks at your bald head, or the dark circles under your eyes, but primarily to stay safe. 

It wasn’t until I heard about the death of Chadwick Boseman that I felt compelled to share this…

The cabin fever, the anxiety, the stress of not knowing it is safe to go out that has been brought on by COVID… this is what individuals with cancer and many other chronic illnesses feel everyday. 

I hope that quarantining may have given Mr. Boseman, his first chance to lay low… to spend time with family, laughing, trying to stay healthy and trying to overcome the insidious disease that was ravaging his body for four long years. 

But as we continue to adapt and reenter the world… I want you to remember the feelings of uncertainty, dread, and occasional hopelessness and know that there are those feeling those feelings every day even when the world isn’t on fire. 

So please think twice as you complain on social media how much it sucks to be home… sometimes we have no choice… Practice compassion with those you know who are going through treatments or conditions that compromise their immune systems…Send them care packages or texts or silly cards for absolutely no reason. 

We rarely know what goes on behind closed doors… Now that the majority of our doors have been closed for a while, maybe we can know ourselves a little bit more…