Student Transportation, Wishful Thinking, and a Waste-Water Testing Solution.

I hate to burst your bubbles, but this is the greatest chink in the armour of back to school safety protocols. This lack of safety protocols on buses is extremely widespread. Not only will many buses be carrying 70 or more students ranging in age from junior kindergarten to grade 12 (the younger ones without masks); many of these buses will also be transporting students from a number of different schools at the same time --seven different schools in my case, and perhaps a daycare centre or two.This is the norm in rural areas where several school boards, seek to reduce costs and student travel time by transporting all students that live in given area on one bus. Once they get into town they are dropped off at whatever school they attend, or, in some cases, may even board a different bus at one of the schools if the one they came to town on isn't going to their school.

But none of this concerns you, because your children won't be riding the bus, right? 

WRONG! The chances are that at least one child in your child's school bubble/cohort is taking the bus --a bus that has exposed that one child to 70 other children attending several different schools. Children who will not be practising physical distancing while on the bus --a bus which sooner or later will be carrying one or more contagious but asymptomatic or pre-symptomatic students. (Studies suggest that younger people, especially children, are often asymptomatic. Asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic people can and do spread the virus.) Each rider of each bus will be penetrating a class bubble/cohort in one of several schools on a daily basis. Children may unknowingly have become infected because a contagious bus-rider penetrated their in-school bubble. The newly-infected child could bring the virus home to their own family bubbles, long before anyone in the contact chain has displayed symptoms. Contact tracing doesn't usually begin until after someone shows symptoms and has tested positive. In all likelihood that will be days later, by which time the virus could have spread far and wide.

Many family bubbles will soon be doubly exposed: Not only will children attending school risk bringing the virus home; many of their parents who couldn't afford daycare will now also be returning to work, where they too may be exposed to the virus and bring it home. The later means that children whose parents had hitherto stayed safely at home are now more likely to contract the virus at home from one of their parents. 

All this means that the re-opening of the schools will cause an exponential increase in the risks of exposure. It is wishful thinking to believe that the protocols currently in place will prevent a second wave of COVID 19 infections. So what can be done? Is there a way to safely re-open schools? No, but risks can certainly be cost-effectively managed and mitigated much better than what has been proposed to date! Daily wastewater testing at each school would cost-effectively greatly reduce the risk of a huge spike in transmissions. 

WASTEWATER TESTING: Wastewater testing does have limitations. It will not identify individuals who have contracted the virus. That said, there are three things it does very well:

1) It will identify whether or not the virus is present in a building, a neighbourhood, a community or any group of people who share a common sewage system. 

2) It can also provide solid information about whether the total number of infections is increasing, by what amount, and how quickly. and 

3) It can do this regardless of whether or not any of the infected people in that cohort are showing symptoms. It will detect asymptomatic carriers of the virus.

All this information would provide authorities with an early warning system. Once alerted to the presence of the virus, authorities can take action immediately to reduce the risk of spread.  All possible carriers could be tested, all those who test positive isolated, and contact tracing could begin. All this before anyone in the chain of infections has even begun to show symptoms!

Wastewater testing is not new technology.  It has been used successfully in previous pandemics, and is being used for this pandemic in many countries today, including Canada. The analysis of wastewater samples is similar to the process being used to analyze nose swab samples from individuals; for the same price as testing one individual an entire school, neighbourhood or community can be tested. The biggest hurdles will be finding/creating a suitable method and place from which to draw wastewater samples, and standardizing wastewater testing process, timetable, etc.

 It is my hope that parents, school boards, teachers, school bus operators and drivers, all levels of government and the general pubic will acknowledge the inadequacies of current protocols to safely re-open schools, and insist on and put in place a wastewater testing regime in all schools that will provide an early warning system that will allow us to act before this pandemic gets totally out of hand.

 

For more information on, and history of the epidemiology of  wastewater testing see:

Testing for COVID-19 in sewage could serve as 'advance warning,' help prepare for 2nd wave 

Analysis and monitoring of wastewater treatment systems for SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes COVID-19. 

National Wastewater Surveillance System (NWSS)

Calgary scientists hope to find early warning signs of pandemic's 2nd wave — in feces

Poop may tell us when the coronavirus lockdown will end (History of Wastewater epidemiology)

 Epidemiology of the silent polio outbreak in Rahat, Israel, based on modeling of environmental surveillance data (How Israel avoided a Polio outbreak using wastewater testing)

The challenges of informative wastewater sampling for SARS-CoV-2 must be met: lessons from polio eradication  

"When students come back to school at UNCC, they'll be getting welcome bags with masks, sanitizer and thermometers. But a swab up the nose or a blood sample aren't the only ways to tell if someone has COVID-19 — UNCC officials say they will be using wastewater to test for COVID-19." --Source

THE SUBTERFUGE OF USING THE GDP AS A MEASURE OF ECONOMIC WELL-BEING

Meet Mr. GDP. He claims to be the definitive measure of the health of our economy. He's not very good at subtraction, but he really excels at addition. What most citizens would consider to be catastrophic losses, according to Mr. GDP's calculations are actually really good things. Mr. GDP treats  increases in public and private debt, oil spills, tailings pond breaches, floods, forest fires and tornadoes and the like the same as he would economic activities that actually add to and increase the number of  available goods or services. He makes no distinction between replacing a burnt down house and building a new one. That little accounting trick really makes our economic growth rate look good! Our elected officials really love his way of doing math because it makes the economic growth rate look higher than it actually is. And higher economic growth rates make politicians  and their economic policies look much better than they actually are. 

 

 

This way of calculating the Gross Domesdtic Product (GDP) should never be used as the only, nor primary way of measuring a nation's economic well-being. It is in large part subterfuge. Nevertheless the GDP has become the primary, often the only, measure used by governments and financial institutions across the globe to calculate economic growth and decline. This practice masks many very serious problems. It paints the citizens of any country with a far rosier picture of reality than warranted. The image is grossly distorted because all expenditures, for whatever reason, are assumed to contribute to economic growth and the creation of wealth. Nothing could be further from the truth.

This is how GDP and economic growth rates are calculated: 

GDP = Consumer spending  + Government Spending + investments + Net Exports.

Economic growth is calculated  from  changes in the GDP over time: 

Economic growth =  ( GDP2  -  GDP1)  /   GDP1   

Here are but a few of the reasons that the use of the GDP and economic growth rate derived from the GDP give us a very distorted image of improvements or declines in the economic health of a nation:

1. GDP and Debt: The GDP makes no distinction between expenditures financed through debt (both public and private), and expenditures financed by savings and the spending or reinvestment of profits. Therefore an increase in the debt load of individuals and/or governments is misconstrued as economic growth and therefore desirable and encouraged. Governments often misleadingly portray an increase in private borrowing as an indicator of improved consumer/investor confidence. Many households are but two paychecks away from bankruptcy. Yet the GDP discounts the possibility that even a small down-turn in the economy may result in many of these borrowers unable to finance their debts. Never mind the number of devastating bankruptcies something like a global pandemic might cause! Yet the GDP puts volatile debt-financed expenditures on par with the investment of savings and the reinvestment of profits/earnings.

2. GDP and Destruction: Another major shortcoming of measuring economic growth using the GDP is that something citizens consider to be a catastrophic event –for instance a flood, a forest fire, a hurricane, an oil-spill, or a war-- registers as a positive economic boom by the GDP; such catastrophes result in major expenditures to rebuild and replace everything that was destroyed. Despite the jobs created by the clean-up and reconstruction efforts, most reasonable citizens experience all this as a net loss to the country. At best they might recoup much of what they had before, but reasonable citizens would not consider themselves or their nation to be further ahead, however much the GDP may have increased as a result.

3. GDP's Failure to Distinguish Between Wasteful and Useful Spending: Perhaps the most poignant way to illustrate this point is to use the example of the US criminal justice system. The US has one of the highest incarceration rates on the planet. Instead of spending money on providing supports for drug addicts, homeless people, education, programs to help offenders reintegrate and reduce recidivism are all eschewed in favour of investing in mega prisons. The annual cost of incarcerating a male is roughly $100,000 per year, and a female often twice that amount. Most of these prisoners on the outside would have earned and spent and contributed less than $20,000 per year to the GDP. Once incarcerated they are worth five times that much! It is in the interests of both the privately-owned mega-prison lobby and the government to spend the money on incarceration rather than social programs. The former reap the profits while the latter can boast economic growth based on the resulting increase in the GDP. The same can be said of preventative medicare vs. treating ill patients, private vs. universal healthcare, private vs. universal drug plans, etc. In all cases the former may be more cost effective and produce more desirable outcomes, but the latter contribute more to the GDP.

4. GDP's Failure to Include the Contribution of Unpaid Household Services: The GDP completely disregards unpaid work. Using strictly the GDP as an indicator, the unpaid work of stay-at-home home-makers, care-providers, garden-growers, all volunteers in whatever capacity, contribute absolutely nothing to the economic well-being of a nation. Nothing.  Zilch. Hiring a maid, or paying a daycare centre for these very same services, however, does contribute to the GDP.

5. GDP's Complete Indifference to the Distribution of Wealth Created. There is an increasing awareness that wages and income of the majority of citizens have stagnating or are in decline, despite a steady increase in the GDP. People are cluing in to the fact that national economic growth is meaningless if they don't have a share in it. Similarly an increase in the GDP will result in an increase in the per capita income even while people's incomes have stagnated or are in decline. Here we see that the errors in using GDP as a measure of economic well-being are compounded when used to calculate per capita income. The increased profits of Bill Gates, Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bazos are more than enough to offset the decline in wages of everyone else, so the GDP and per capita income continue to climb. Absurdly we are expected to celebrate and consider the increase in the already obscene profits of 1% of our fellow citizens as an improvement in our personal and national economic well-being. In fact per capita income and GDP figures tell us very little unless the are accompanied by distribution of wealth data. (The genie-coefficient is a very good tool for measuring wealth distribution.)

6. The GDP vs. the True Basis of the Economy: Every economy, regardless of ideology, has its base in the biosphere. Domestic as well as foreign products are produced by the processing of raw materials we find in nature. The GDP disregards the value of natural wealth until it is extracted, processed, and can be bought or sold. A pristine lake has no value unless you can attract tourist and fishermen to it, or convert it into a tailings pond for some mine, or allow Nestles to “buy” the water, or until an oil spill occurs in it and it has to be cleaned up. In its natural estate it contributes nothing to the GDP and is therefore, like a mother looking after children and making a home, not considered to be of any value at all. Air is of value if it can be compressed and sold; water is of value if Nestle sells it to you; land, along with everything growing on it or buried beneath it, is of value only if it can be fenced off and the resources contained in it bought or sold. For these reasons governments are reluctant to pass or enforce laws that protect our natural environment. Taking away DaBeer's tailings pond would hurt the GDP, and therefore the economy.

Decision making and government policy based on the distortions of reality resulting from the continued use of the GDP as the measure of economic well-being has caused, is still causing, and will continue to cause a lot of short-sighted, ill-conceived, often destructive policy and investment decisions that will detract from, rather than contribute to an increase in our collective and national economic and social well-being.

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For more detailed information on the the GDP and the limitations and shortcomings of using GDP as a measure of economic well-being I refer you to the MSG website “Common Sense vs. GDP”.

 

 

COVID 19: Whose bubble will be the first to burst?

"We are all in this together" we are repeatedly told. It is true that the COVID 19 virus doesn't discriminate on the basis of nationality, race, gender, or class. In the early stages it seemed that relatively wealthy business travellers, international tourists, and cruise ship passengers were more likely to be infected than those who lacked the means to travel. Snow Birds, returning from their southern winter homes, tourists and business travellers were the primary carriers responsible for the rapid global spread of the virus. A slow and sometimes reluctant response, further exacerbated  by a lack of PPE, undermined efforts by countries to trace, isolate and quarantine all likely carriers in order to prevent community spread of the virus. Healthcare systems were quickly overwhelmed, unable to cope with the large numbers of critically ill COVID 19 patients. Most governments responded with lock-downs, shutting down all but the most essential businesses and confining people to their homes in an effort to curtail the rapid spread of the virus --in an effort to flatten the curve. Economies ground to a halt. Countries with enough credit to do so, Canada included, introduced multi-billion dollar quantitative easing programs to sustain industries, businesses, and newly unemployed individuals during lock-downs.

But, although the virus itself didn't discriminate on the basis of class, the measures to control the spread certainly did! Most countries unable to finance quantitative easing, implemented and enforced lock-downs nonetheless, resulting in a dual crisis --the novel corona virus and a food security crisis for the majority of their citizens no longer able to buy food because they were prevented from going to work during the lock-downs.

Even in wealthier countries it quickly became apparent that the virus was spreading far more quickly among the most vulnerable sectors of the population --the aged, the homeless, those in long-term care facilities, those living in overcrowded substandard housing, foreign workers on farms or in the meat-packing plants. Low-income front-line workers in grocery stores, public transit, healthcare professionals and support staff, personal support workers (often forced to work at two or three part-time jobs in different long-term care facilities and/or private homes to earn a living wage) were all far more exposed and vulnerable than those able to social distance and safely work from home. While the virus itself didn't discriminate on the basis of class, wealthier individuals were certainly far more able to socially distance themselves from the high risks of exposure to which much of the workforce  employed in the essential service sector were subjected. Consequently the latter was far more frequently infected. 

But while more privileged citizens are better able to limit their exposure to the virus, they are nevertheless not immune to the economic impact of the virus. Much of the economic impact is due to a sharp decrease in global demand for the goods and services produced by formerly lucrative sectors of the economy in the pre-COVID 19 world; sectors like tourism, fossil fuel production, hospitality, air-travel, food services, etc. Even extractive industries, livestock producers, etc. have suddenly found themselves without buyers, while fabricating industries suffered interruptions in overseas supply lines. Governments portray this decline in demand as something temporary, attributing it to the lock-downs. They insist that once lock-downs are lifted, and people are free to resume their  former activities, they will once again flock to restaurants, travel to tourist destinations, book flights, burn fossil fuels, etc., and the economy will rebound. Our leaders seem inclined to see their task as building a bridge, an overpass of sorts, that will allow us to transcend this pandemic until it passes and things return to the way they were before, ostensibly complete with all its gross inequities, disregard for vulnerable populations, and climate crisis.

Here in Canada, as elsewhere, governments are now easing lock-downs. Despite low levels of testing, and the relatively recent discovery that screening people based on symptoms may miss 50% or more of contagious asymptomatic carriers, governments are confident that they can shut things down quickly enough to avoid a second wave that would once again overwhelms the healthcare system and further decimate the economy. While many business owners, alarmed by the prospect of losing their investments are eager to reopen, many of their workers are far less confident that the safety measures in place will adequately protect them. They don't want to be the expendable canaries in the coal mine, and may need a lot of persuading. Here in Canada PM Trudeau recently unveiled his plan for such persuasion.

By disqualifying people who prefer getting EI benefits or $2,000/month CERB benefits to returning to their high-risk service-sector minimum-wage jobs, they will be left with no choice but to return to work. People who somehow miraculously manage to pay their rent and buy groceries with a mere $2,000/month may be unwillingly to return to work and unnecessarily expose themselves and their families to  higher risks of COVID 19 infections. Especially if their pay-cheques wouldn't amount to much more, or in come cases even less, than what they are receiving under EI or CERB benefits. Such workers must, therefore, be subjected to the same harsh options as poor people living in poor countries --the option of staying at home and watching their families slowly starve to death; or assume the risk of going out to work in the hopes that they won't take home and pass on the virus to family members and loved ones. In most cases it is highly unlikely that any Canadian who can both buy groceries and pay rent with a mere $2,000/month can afford accommodations that allow for much social distancing anyway. It may seem unjust, but in most cases their risk of exposure in the workplace can't be that much worse than futile attempts at social distancing in cramped, often substandard and overcrowded housing --the only standard of housing that a total income of $2,000/month will afford them.

Sure, it may be a misnomer to refer to most service sector jobs as essential.  Imported goods and clothes from far away places, hair styling, manicures, restaurant  meals and coffees are things most fellow Canadians. even those from the relatively privileged work-from-home crowd, can live without. But those unaccustomed to their newly acquired work-from-home duties, what with doing their own childcare, home-schooling and all, really miss the contributions of the service sector. They don't have time to prepare their own food, and despite everything must still appear competent, presentable and in control during their work-related Zoom calls. In addition to ordering skip-the-dishes take-out food, some may even want to venture out once in a while! After all the slight risk of being exposed to one vetted waitress/waiter/hair-stylist/store clerk or whatever in a well PPE equipped facility is almost negligible when compared to the risks assumed by the service providers themselves who are exposed to dozens of customers every day! A little relaxation of social distancing rules is okay if one is careful not to unnecessarily mingle socially with the service-sector class. A visit to the hair stylist should be a brief sortie, not unlike a fleeting encounter with the native chambermaid who changes your bed sheets in a tropical island resort.

In any case, even those services provided by service sector workers that are more appropriately described as desirable rather than essential, in a country were 70% of the workforce is employed in the service sector, even non-essential service sector jobs are essential to restarting of the economy! Flattening the curve was never about eliminating the risk; it was about reducing the spread to a numbers that our healthcare system can cope with. It just so happens that it is easier to reduce the risk for the work-from-home crowd than for service sector workers. But we are all in this together! The economic futures of both service sector workers and the work-from-home crowd are at stake!

So, since we cannot reduce the level of risk for service sector workers to that of the work-from-home crowd, we must at least put in safety measures to mitigate that risk. Service sector workers reticent to return to work need to be convinced that with new safety measures in place continuing to provide them with EI and CERB benefits can no longer be justified. However, there is one remaining impediment preventing may service sector workers from going back to work: the lack of childcare. For that reason, regardless of risk, daycare services and schools must also be reopened.

It is totally unrealistic to expect children –especially very young children-- to adhere to the rules of social distancing. Children want and need to touch each other or the physical reassurance and/or help from their care-givers and teachers. While the majority of children infected with COVID 19 will not get very sick --some will remain completely asymptomatic, they can and some will nevertheless become carriers and spread the virus to more vulnerable people they come in contact with --their teachers and childcare providers, siblings, parents, grandparents and whoever else is part of their household bubble. And some children will become sick with inflammatory syndrome, usually some time after previously having contracted and developed antibodies to the COVID 19 virus. Screening for and reducing the risk of spread where children are involved is going to be far riskier than other workplaces where only mature adults who fully understand the need for and rules of social distancing are present. Nevertheless too many of our service sector workers cannot return to work if there is no one is looking after their children. Therefore restarting the economy leaves us with no choice but to put both service sector workers and childcare providers in double jeopardy. If the service sector workers themselves don't unknowingly bring the virus into their home, there is still a good chance that their children will have caught the virus from an asymptomatic classmates and bring the virus into the house! 

Be that as it may, given that 70% of Canada's workforce is employed in the service sector, they must go back to work. Lending billions of dollars to failing airline and oil industries that in all probability will go into bankruptcy long before they can repay these loans may be an extremely foolhardy investment on economic grounds, but  it is nevertheless a wise investment in the political futures of elected representatives. But that does not extend to giving free money to service sector workers minions so they can stay safely at home and sit on their duffs! An economy cannot be restored if people forget their proper place in it! Fortunately the problem of childcare too can similarly be solved by ensuring that daycare providers, school teachers, school bus drivers, etc. will also find themselves without any source of  income should they fail to take up their yoke and choose to continue safely social distancing with their own children in their own homes.

Decision-making power was never the purview of the lowly underpaid service sector workers. Much care has been taken to maintain the pecking order --to ensure in the post-COVID 19 economy it continues to be the employers, not the employees, who retain decision-making power. That's why whenever possible, instead of directly providing an income to unemployed workers, governments choose to subsidize employers in exchange for them keeping unemployed workers on the payroll. Similarly, rather than providing individuals and businesses unable to pay their rent with money, governments instead encouraged landlords to apply for subsidies with the expectation that they would pass on their savings to tenants. (Many landlords who had long wanted to get rid of their tenants so they could increase rents turned down the subsidies.) Thus it is the employers, not employees, who will determine whether or not the benefits of reopening up for business outweigh the risks. Once employers feel that they have put enough safeguards in place to keep their employees “reasonably safe" as stipulated by government guidelines, they will be allowed to re-open. Former employees who refuse to return will suddenly find themselves ineligible for EI or CERB benefits, and therefore obliged to return regardless of whether they feel it is safe to do so or not. Workers who think their working environment is unsafe can appeal. If they live long enough for their appeal to be heard, and if they and their legal team manage to convince the province that they were indeed exposed to an unreasonable amount of risk, and if after all that they are still being exposed to unacceptable level of risk, their benefits will be reinstated. Until then they and all those who share their household bubble must accept whatever level of risk their employers deem to be acceptable under the circumstances and in accordance with their interpretation of government guidelines.

"We will get through this" is refrain we often hear from our leadership. And undoubtedly most of us will. But there will be a few bubbles burst before this pandemic is over. Bubbles based on false assumptions that former levels of demand for tourism, air travel, fossil fuels, restaurant food, hotels, office space etc. will be restored; Bubbles based on the assumption that the economy will recover in time to fend off a recession and an unprecedented increase in declarations of bankruptcy; Bubbles based on assumptions that governments and society have learned their lesson and will henceforth place a higher value on the welfare of its most vulnerable citizens, and acknowledge and properly remunerate the contributions and sacrifices of their most essential workers will also deflate, succumbing  to pressure from the usual more influential decision-makers in the economy. But these won't be the only bubbles to burst. Nor will they be the first.

The first bubbles to burst will we the protective household social-distancing bubbles that for a short while protected the working poor, primarily employed in the service sector, from disproportionate risk and exposure. Their protective bubbles are about to be deliberately burst by the state in an effort to force them back to work. This group includes racial minorities, foreign workers, personal care providers, and indigenous peoples. They and their children and households, much like Greta Thunberg and her generation, will be sacrificed on the alter built to that old but omnipotent and increasingly demanding God --the God of economic growth.

It will be thus. We are all in this storm together, but we're not all in the same boat. Some of us are treading water, clutching to a plank like a refugee in the Mediterranean. Others are social-distancing in their mansions complete with swimming pools and gymnasiums.

Unless we seize this opportunity to build a new, just, sustainable and inclusive economy on the rubble left by this global pandemic; an economy that values the lives, safety, health and rights of workers no matter what their nationality or where they live on this planet; an economy rooted in the abundance provided by a healthy, appreciated, respected and well cared for planet; an economy that prioritizes our collective and universal well-being and seeks to promote our collective opportunity to thrive. An economy that rejects and has completely abandoned the unsustainable annihilating environmentally destructive perpetual pursuit of economic growth .