Artifact of 2021: Social Justice Convening

I post this here as an artifact of the year America went mad. 

Imagining Society if the Covid 19 Pandemic Happened in the 90's

 Understanding Covid 19 as a Social Construct

Thoughts on Bari Weiss Interview with Dr. Vinay Prasad

"Social construct" is a term that I hear often but have not bothered to examine. I guess, in a way, that qualifies it as a cliché. Something you hear often, think you knew what it means, and then move on. 

In fact, I didn't quite know what it meant, so I looked it up. 

Warning: deep research dive ahead.

Here's a dictionary definition (Merriam-Webster) and a little explanation (yourdictionary.com): 

Social construct is an idea that has been created and accepted by the people in a society.

Social constructs develop within a society or group. They don't represent objective reality but instead are meaningful only because people within the society or group accept that they have meaning. Simply put, social constructs do not have inherent meaning. The only meaning they have is the meaning given to them by people.

So I'm thinking about this term because it came up in a Bari Weiss podcast interview with Dr. Vinay Prasad (link below). During the interview. Dr. Prasad referred to the pandemic as a social construct. 

One thing I like about Bari Weiss is she does bother to examine things. Her interviews are often sprinkled with things like, "What do you mean by that?" or, "Here's what I hear you saying." 

True to form, Bari asked him to explain what he mean. After listening to the podcast twice, I think I get his point. Here's how I understood what he said.

Dr. Prasad said that we should try to imagine the exact same scenario happening in the 1990's. In the 90's, there could not have been an option of shutting down the economy in order to stay safe. There was no Zoom. There was barely an Internet. We would have had to figure out a way to carry on, keep going to work, regardless of what kind of occupation we had. White collar, blue collar—what was true for one was true for the other.

In 2021, technology has permitted the kind of class division we’re seeing. I think that’s what he means by a “social construct.” Not the virus itself, but the societal reaction, the class division, us. vs. them. Us—those of us who can still bring in a paycheck while working from home, can order food or groceries to be delivered to our doorstep. Them—those who work in the kitchens (wearing masks!), or deliver the food to the rest of us, who stock the shelves, take our money at the grocery store. Us—we can shelter in place, recover from the virus if we get it (and still get paid). Them—what happens if they get sick? Or small business owners whose businesses had to close?

I think this is what Dr. Prasad means when he talks about the virus being a “social construct.” In both cases, the (hypothetical) 90’s and the 2020’s—the actual virus is the same. It infects us individually exactly the same way. But it infects society differently: because we have different survival options (economically speaking), it creates a class schism. So when he refers to "the poor” and the role of the government helping them, I don’t think he’s talking about the idea of giving handouts. Rather, I think he's wondering what more could have been done to protect those who didn’t benefit from the advances in technology that shielded the white-collar worker during a time of pandemic and shut down.

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Vaccine Hesitant? A Doctor Responds 

September 22, 2021

 

Masks are not Healthy (for children and other living things)

Masks are not Healthy . . . 

for children and other living things 

I agree with this article (below), which appeared in the Wall Street Journal (August 9, 2021).

I've actually been creating my own case against masks for children (not to mention vaccinated adults) which I'll copy after the article.

___________________

My Case Against Masks for Children

Reasons why kids (especially) and the rest of us
shouldn’t wear masks (regularly)

Oral Health (“Mask Mouth”)

Bad breath

Gum disease

Dehydrated (drink less)

Reference: "The Truth Behind Mask Mouth," by Jessica Fagan, RDH, BS, MA (Dimensions of Dental Hygiene, August 17, 2020).

Unsanitary Masks (especially at school)

No guarantee parents are obsessing over cleanliness

Teachers won’t be able to monitor this

Playground

Bathrooms

In class (taking on and off)

Where's the Data?

Remains Uncertain

Reference: "The Science of Masking Kids at School Remains Uncertain," by David Zweig (New York Magazine/Intelligencer)

Language Learning

We learn language by watching mouths shape the sounds

Masks muffle speech

Nonverbal communication deprivation

Small children especially need nonverbal cues

Reference: "Masking Emotions: Face Masks Impair How We Read Emotions" (Frontiers in Psychology May 25, 2021)  

Weakens immunity to normal pathogens

Children growing up masked may be less likely to develop strong immune systems if they’re not exposed to viruses/bacteria

Dirt is Good: Why Kids Need Exposure to Germs, by Jack Gilbert and Rob Knight 

Here's a link to an NPR interview with co-author Jack Gilbert.  

Emotional/Psychological

Emphasis on “safety” and hyper cleanliness creates children who are fearful, unwilling to take risks, less likely to touch and be touched.

School Supervision

Teachers should not be expected to have to monitor compliance

Noncompliance/resistance to masking may result in behavior problems, kids sent home, etc.

_______________

Agree?

Please feel free to send reasons, links, research studies.

There's more that could be added, particularly in the Emotional/Psychological section.

Disagree?

I'm interested in your reasons.

The Time for Panic is Behind Us

A response to the CDC's recommendation that fully vaccinated individuals now wear masks indoors.

I posted the following on Facebook: 

People who think we need to get down to 0% infections are the ones who will continue to advocate for masking and other types of social-isolation. But 0% is never going to happen. Like it or not, this virus is here to stay. The word I’m hearing now is “endemic,” which describes a disease that is "prevalent in or restricted to a particular location, region, or population."

Covid and all its variants is now endemic. It's not going away. It will be here in the fall, it will be here next year, and the years thereafter. The time for panic is behind us. Now we learn to co-exist. People who can get vaccinated should get vaccinated; doing so will lessen the likelihood of them being hospitalized or dying. People who have been vaccinated may also get the virus but apparently are less likely to end up in the hospital.

Some are now referring to Covid-19 as “the pandemic of the unvaccinated.” This, apparently, is a fact. Nearly all of the hospitalizations and deaths now seem to be among those who have not been vaccinated. This is a tragedy. But telling the vaccinated to wear masks to protect the unvaccinated, and to somehow prevent hospitals from being overwhelmed, is, as John Podheretz of Commentary Magazine put it recently, a gut-punch. Businesses and restaurants and stores are just getting back to some kind of normal. Telling them to go back to a type of shut down is a body blow. As is telling those of us who “believed the science” and got the vaccine to put the masks back on two months after we were told they were no longer necessary.

We who took the time to get the vaccine (and it was a hassle, at least for me), who took the risk (this vaccine hasn't been approved officially), who "trusted the science," were finally "allowed" to get back to normal....are now being shunted back to our rooms like little kids.

There are those out there, mostly, I suspect, on the political left, who may be fine with this idea, but I smell a rat. Someone wants to keep us in a constant state of fear and dependence, but I’m not buying it.

Most of us willingly complied when this thing started back in 2020. 

Most of us are sensible and responsible. 

But there comes a point where we say, enough. 

We're adults. 

Leave us alone.

A response to one of my Facebook friends

I shared the above thoughts on Facebook, and one of my friends wrote, "Why is this virus any less serious than polio or smallpox? What substantiates a panic? How many deaths do we endure as a society before we make drastic efforts to eradicate a disease?" 

Here’s how I responded to these questions.

I think you could probably answer the first question yourself, particularly since, thanks to amazing progress in medical research, there is a vaccine for this particular coronavirus that seems to be effective.

Covid-19 seems to have mercifully spared children. It’s the older among us who are more likely to suffer more severe cases of Covid. And though tragic ("every man's death diminishes me"), we're more likely, as a society, to react viscerally to anything (like polio, like smallpox) that puts children at greatest risk. Drastic measures in those cases seem justified. Anyone who is a parent instinctively knows this.

Shutting down the economy was drastic. Some are arguing that the shutdown probably did more harm than the virus itself in terms of economic, social, emotional costs.

Universal masking didn’t seem “drastic” at first since we didn’t know what we were dealing with, and we didn’t have a vaccine. Masking a year and a half later, now that there’s a vaccine is drastic, primarily because I get the sense that we’ve stopped talking about Covid and seem to be talking more about “safety” in general. One argument that I’m hearing about schoolchildren being masked has to do with the fact that—surprise, surprise—there were fewer cases of regular seasonal flu due to shut downs and masking. Maybe masking is a good thing, period.

I predicted this would happen way back in March 2020, and everyone sort of laughed (“that will never happen, Elaine--you're overreacting"). Yet here we are talking about vaccinated people being masked. I have strong opinions about masking, but none so strong as the willingness of some people—especially parents—to put face masks on children for 8 hours a day in school. This is drastic, and here is where panic will do the most harm.

To be honest, I’m afraid for the current cohort of 5-year-olds. Small children adapt easily to pretty much anything. Masking to them will soon be second nature, maybe already is. But they’ll be subconsciously suspicious of the air they breathe, the pencils they touch, the teachers or classmates they interact with at school. Give these children five years of masking and they’ll be socially and emotionally crippled.

How many deaths do we endure as a society before we make drastic efforts to eradicate a disease? I don’t think this is a question that can be answered. We're living during a time of amazing medical advances, a time when people live longer than they did 100 years ago. But we'll never "eradicate" disease. Not in our lifetime, not in our children’s lifetime, maybe never. To think “eradication” is possible is to relegate ourselves to a lifetime of fear, of isolation, of suspicion.

What substantiates a panic? I guess my answer is forgetting that we’re mortal, forgetting that “all flesh is grass, and all its glory like the flowers in the field. The grass withers, and the flowers fall…” Forgetting to teach these things to our children. I don’t know if the next generation thinks like this, and I suspect even we ourselves tend to forget how to think like this. We get so caught up in “solving” problems or looking to government to solve our problems.

But we’d be remiss if we didn’t at least try to help our children navigate difficulties and not cower before them. If we’re unbelievers, we might teach them that there is no utopia on earth, that there are pitfalls and dangers and struggles, and that someday this life will end. If we’re believers, we might offer hope that there is life after death. Either way, we can teach them, and ourselves, to make the most out of this life in spite of the dangers.

“A ship in harbor is safe, but that is not what ships are built for.” 

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CDC Interim Public Health Recommendations for Fully Vaccinated People

Updated July 27, 2021

Conversation with a Facebook Friend on Biden's Economy

Conversation with a Facebook Friend

Topic: Joe Biden's Economy (Part I)

Preface

Every now and again, valuable interactions with real friends take place in public spaces like social media that turn out to be interesting and possibly productive. The following is one such conversation. 

The friend will remain anonymous until and unless that person gives me permission to identify them. (Note deliberate use of gender neutral plural pronoun).

I'll post the conversation in sequential installments since both of us tend to be rather long-winded. 

Below: Part I