“China eats weird animals disease”

Hannah Arendt’s The Origins of Totalitarianism sheds light on today’s socially isolated world.

Can we understand the extensive range of draconian measures designed to contain the Covid-19 pandemic as being, in some way, totalitarian?

By any historical standard, these measures were certainly hugely repressive. Although they varied from region to region, and nation to nation, in many cases they amounted to a system of mass house arrest. People were often forbidden to leave their homes, except under the most stringent conditions. And when they were allowed out, there were often strict limits on how far they could travel, what they could do and when they had to return.

Since initial reports of the coronavirus outbreak in late 2019, America has witnessed a rapid and unprecedented transformation within nearly every aspect of mainstream society. At work, many Americans settled into their new daily routines of working from home, hunched over computer screens for hours of caffeine-supported Zoom calls frequently followed by app-delivered box dinners. In elementary schools throughout the country, young children began growing accustomed to wearing masks while sitting in socially distanced cubicles to learn about the dangers of hugging, shaking hands, or breaking social distancing protocols…

Ontario is reporting 213 cases of #COVID19 and nearly 19,000 tests completed. Locally, there are 49 new cases in the Region of Waterloo, 42 in Toronto, 25 in Grey Bruce, 17 in Peel Region and 12 in Halton Region.

— Christine Elliott (@celliottability) July 4, 2021

Border restrictions to begin easing, slowly, for fully vaccinated Canadian travellers

WASHINGTON — After nearly 16 months of rigid travel restrictions, Canada is finally starting to loosen the rules — but only for a specific few.

Effective Monday, fully vaccinated Canadians and permanent residents — those who have had a full course of a COVID-19 vaccine approved for use in Canada — will be able to skip the 14-day quarantine.

Eligible air travellers will also be exempt from the requirement that they spend their first three days in Canada in government-approved hotel.

Whoop Dee Doo.

As the mainstream narrative about the origin of COVID-19 falls apart, it’s time to put other widely accepted facts about the virus—and the devastating measures they were used to justify—under the same scrutiny

On March 13, 2020, the public school district where I teach announced that all classrooms and buildings would be closed for two weeks. Then two weeks turned into two months, and two months turned into over a full year without in-person instruction. My school serves a diverse population of low-income students in the San Francisco Bay Area. It is impossible to overstate the severity of this disruption caused by school closures for these students, many of whom did not have a computer or internet at home when virtual learning began. Online, my students got only a fraction of the regular curriculum. Kids who had once loved the social aspects of school were left with only the parts of school they hated, and students with disabilities who depended on school for daily living needs were cut off from a vital service.