As frustration with the unvaccinated rises, experts admit that uncertainty is part of COVID-19 life
As health officials warn it could be spring 2022 — after six to eight more months of rolling waves — before COVID is tamed, and only then if 90 per cent of the population is vaccinated, animosity towards the wilfully unvaccinated is growing.
A new poll finds that a majority of Canadians believe that the unvaccinated are selfish, irresponsible and putting others at risk, a view the unvaccinated take strong issue with.
But do strong-arm tactics like vaccine mandates and passports work, or just entrench resistance and feed conspiratorial thinking? Some have argued that dividing people into the “risky” and “safe” underplays that vaccination may not fully stop transmission of the Delta variant.
Vaccines protect against serious disease, Harvard epidemiologist Michael Mina tweeted this week. “Vaccines may slow spread — yes,” he said. “But many policies across (the) US & elsewhere assume vaccines totally prevent spread. This leads to outbreaks among vax’d — which ultimately erodes trust in the whole vaccine effort unless the expectations are set properly.”
A preprint by a Canadian research network estimates that, by late summer, 60 to 80 per cent of the Canadian population will have some immunity to COVID, but that’s still insufficient to stave off a fall resurgence. How severe a rebound depends on the rate of waning immunity, the transmissibility of the hyper-contagious Delta, relaxing of distancing and other public health measures, and how well the vaccines hold up against infection and severe disease, they said. “To prevent large-scale resurgence, booster vaccination and/or re-introduction of public health mitigation may be needed,” the authors wrote.
A year and a half into COVID and there’s still so much unpredictability. Still, “uncertainty is part of COVID,” Toronto infectious diseases specialist Dr. Andrew Morris wrote in his weekly COVID emails.
To recap this past week alone: Quebec advised employers that it would be “prudent” not to bring office workers back just yet, given a rise in confirmed COVID cases and schools reopening, and that it would be left to employers to decide whether to require employees present vaccination passports for those wishing for a physical return to the office. Air Canada introduced a mandatory vaccination policy for all employees and new hires. No, testing won’t be an alternative, the company said in a release, and, except for those with a valid exemption, failure to be fully vaccinated by Oct. 30 will carry consequences “up to and including unpaid leave or termination.”
After rejecting a vaccine certificate system, B.C.’s Dr. Bonnie Henry introduced just that, Alberta announced plans to make proof of vaccination cards available (though a province-wide vaccine passport like Quebec’s remains a no-fly zone) and Ontario medical officers of health, weary of Ontario’s dithering, agreed to create their own vaccine certificates as the number of businesses and organizations requiring proof of vaccination swells.
Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau has vowed to make COVID shots mandatory for boarding planes or trains.
There’s a high level of tension and polarization between the vaccinated, a growing majority, and the unvaccinated, said Jack Jedwab, president of the Association for Canadian Studies. “It’s very difficult to have a conversation, because people have become very entrenched in that position — at this juncture, if they’ve not gotten vaccinated, they’re very entrenched in their position.”
Polling by Leger for the association suggests a majority of the vaccinated don’t think there’s a rights or civil liberties issue. “They’re not giving that argument any credibility whatsoever,” Jedwab said. “In a public health emergency, your purported rights are violating my desire to protect my health, which is superseding what you describe as rights.” The sticking point may be if a mandate threatens a person’s livelihood, and Jedwab expects the discord and tension will only grow as more people get vaccinated and as the unvaccinated feel more “squeezed.”
But it gets messy and murky. While there’s a core contingent of anti-vaccine groups trying to sow disinformation and distrust, “we can’t think of all of these people (the vaccine hesitant or reluctant) as being people who just read something on the Internet and they have decided the virus isn’t real,” said University of Manitoba virologist Jason Kindrachuk. “In a lot of cases there may be a vast, historical context behind all these feelings and reasoning.” Some of the frustration among the pro-vaccine, he said, is the realization that perhaps there was a more appreciable percentage of the reluctant than people realized.
Some concerns may not be totally irrational. Some women have reported unusual menstrual cycles, however studies so far have found no evidence COVID-19 vaccines affect fertility and the ability to have children. A huge new study from Israel appearing in this week’s issue of the New England Journal of Medicine found that while the Pfizer vaccine increases the risk of heart inflammation (about three events per 100,000 people vaccinated) the risk is several-fold higher among people infected with the SARS-Cov-2 virus (11 cases per 100,000). Infection with COVID was also associated with a substantially increased risk of other seriously bad things, like heart attack, blood clots and bleeding inside the skull or brain.
While a preprint paper published this week suggests immunity, including protection against a breakthrough infection with Delta, lasts longer after a natural infection than immunity after two doses of Pfizer, no one is suggesting COVID parties. “What we don’t want people to say is: ‘All right, I should go out and get infected, I should have an infection party,’” Michel Nussenzweig, an immunologist at Rockefeller University told Science magazine. “Because somebody could die.”
“When we look at the risks that come with being infected, all the data say getting vaccinated is your safest way to combatting the virus,” Kindrachuk said. “I think it’s tough to argue right now at all against vaccination.”
Dithering with COVID “would be a fool’s game,” Morris agreed this week. The virus has moved through the global population, it has continued to change with variants of concern and with increased transmission.
At the same time, a study published this week by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control found that the effectiveness of mRNA vaccines (Pfizer and Moderna) in preventing infections in frontline workers decreased from 91 per cent to 66 per cent after Delta became the dominant strain. The trend should be interpreted with caution, the CDC said — protection might also be declining “as time since vaccination increases.” And the vaccines remain very effective against bad outcomes, like hospitalization and death.
But reports of dwindling immunity and breakthrough cases are now driving debate over the need for boosters. In Israel, of 680 people hospitalized with COVID on Thursday, 331 were fully vaccinated. As Reuters reports, most severe breakthrough cases involve people over 60 who also have heart disease, lung problems or other underlying health issues. And despite alarming posts on social media about breakthrough cases in highly vaccinated populations, some context is missing: As an increasing percentage of the population is vaccinated, it follows that the proportion of vaccinated among the infected will also increase, because the shots don’t promise 100 per cent protection. Still, though severe cases are rare, Mina believes breakthrough infections aren’t as rare as they are being made out to be. “The continued message that breakthroughs are rare ultimately shoots us in the foot. They aren’t rare & public is seeing this,” he tweeted.
It’s important to monitor for waning immunity, Kindrachuk said. “We don’t have that one specific marker that says, ‘OK, you have X amount of this antibody so that gives you Y amount of years or months of protection.’”
And while the vaccinated can still spread the virus, they appear to be less infectious and clear COVID faster than the unvaxxed. Their infections also tend to be milder. “The only people that are really at risk are the unvaccinated,” said Eric Arts, a professor of microbiology and immunology at Western University.
“And, in certain provinces, we’re taking very serious steps to protect the unvaccinated by preventing their exposure to the virus and the vaccinated population,” he said. “It’s sad that we have to go to the extent to do that, to protect the unvaccinated. But that is what is necessary in this situation, until we get them vaccinated.” B.C., like Quebec before it, saw a jump in vaccination bookings after announcing its passport program.
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LONDON (AP) — Most people have accumulated a pile of data — selfies, emails, videos and more — on their social media and digital accounts over their lifetimes. What happens to it when we die?
It’s wise to draft a will spelling out who inherits your physical assets after you’re gone, but don’t forget to take care of your digital estate too. Friends and family might treasure files and posts you’ve left behind, but they could get lost in digital purgatory after you pass away unless you take some simple steps.
Here’s how you can prepare your digital life for your survivors:
Apple
The iPhone maker lets you nominate a “ legacy contact ” who can access your Apple account’s data after you die. The company says it’s a secure way to give trusted people access to photos, files and messages. To set it up you’ll need an Apple device with a fairly recent operating system — iPhones and iPads need iOS or iPadOS 15.2 and MacBooks needs macOS Monterey 12.1.
For iPhones, go to settings, tap Sign-in & Security and then Legacy Contact. You can name one or more people, and they don’t need an Apple ID or device.
You’ll have to share an access key with your contact. It can be a digital version sent electronically, or you can print a copy or save it as a screenshot or PDF.
Take note that there are some types of files you won’t be able to pass on — including digital rights-protected music, movies and passwords stored in Apple’s password manager. Legacy contacts can only access a deceased user’s account for three years before Apple deletes the account.
Google takes a different approach with its Inactive Account Manager, which allows you to share your data with someone if it notices that you’ve stopped using your account.
When setting it up, you need to decide how long Google should wait — from three to 18 months — before considering your account inactive. Once that time is up, Google can notify up to 10 people.
You can write a message informing them you’ve stopped using the account, and, optionally, include a link to download your data. You can choose what types of data they can access — including emails, photos, calendar entries and YouTube videos.
There’s also an option to automatically delete your account after three months of inactivity, so your contacts will have to download any data before that deadline.
Facebook and Instagram
Some social media platforms can preserve accounts for people who have died so that friends and family can honor their memories.
When users of Facebook or Instagram die, parent company Meta says it can memorialize the account if it gets a “valid request” from a friend or family member. Requests can be submitted through an online form.
The social media company strongly recommends Facebook users add a legacy contact to look after their memorial accounts. Legacy contacts can do things like respond to new friend requests and update pinned posts, but they can’t read private messages or remove or alter previous posts. You can only choose one person, who also has to have a Facebook account.
You can also ask Facebook or Instagram to delete a deceased user’s account if you’re a close family member or an executor. You’ll need to send in documents like a death certificate.
TikTok
The video-sharing platform says that if a user has died, people can submit a request to memorialize the account through the settings menu. Go to the Report a Problem section, then Account and profile, then Manage account, where you can report a deceased user.
Once an account has been memorialized, it will be labeled “Remembering.” No one will be able to log into the account, which prevents anyone from editing the profile or using the account to post new content or send messages.
X
It’s not possible to nominate a legacy contact on Elon Musk’s social media site. But family members or an authorized person can submit a request to deactivate a deceased user’s account.
Passwords
Besides the major online services, you’ll probably have dozens if not hundreds of other digital accounts that your survivors might need to access. You could just write all your login credentials down in a notebook and put it somewhere safe. But making a physical copy presents its own vulnerabilities. What if you lose track of it? What if someone finds it?
Instead, consider a password manager that has an emergency access feature. Password managers are digital vaults that you can use to store all your credentials. Some, like Keeper,Bitwarden and NordPass, allow users to nominate one or more trusted contacts who can access their keys in case of an emergency such as a death.
But there are a few catches: Those contacts also need to use the same password manager and you might have to pay for the service.
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Is there a tech challenge you need help figuring out? Write to us at onetechtip@ap.org with your questions.
The Canadian Paediatric Society says doctors should regularly screen children for reading difficulties and dyslexia, calling low literacy a “serious public health concern” that can increase the risk of other problems including anxiety, low self-esteem and behavioural issues, with lifelong consequences.
New guidance issued Wednesday says family doctors, nurses, pediatricians and other medical professionals who care for school-aged kids are in a unique position to help struggling readers access educational and specialty supports, noting that identifying problems early couldhelp kids sooner — when it’s more effective — as well as reveal other possible learning or developmental issues.
The 10 recommendations include regular screening for kids aged four to seven, especially if they belong to groups at higher risk of low literacy, including newcomers to Canada, racialized Canadians and Indigenous Peoples. The society says this can be done in a two-to-three-minute office-based assessment.
Other tips encourage doctors to look for conditions often seen among poor readers such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder; to advocate for early literacy training for pediatric and family medicine residents; to liaise with schools on behalf of families seeking help; and to push provincial and territorial education ministries to integrate evidence-based phonics instruction into curriculums, starting in kindergarten.
Dr. Scott McLeod, one of the authors and chair of the society’s mental health and developmental disabilities committee, said a key goal is to catch kids who may be falling through the cracks and to better connect families to resources, including quicker targeted help from schools.
“Collaboration in this area is so key because we need to move away from the silos of: everything educational must exist within the educational portfolio,” McLeod said in an interview from Calgary, where he is a developmental pediatrician at Alberta Children’s Hospital.
“Reading, yes, it’s education, but it’s also health because we know that literacy impacts health. So I think that a statement like this opens the window to say: Yes, parents can come to their health-care provider to get advice, get recommendations, hopefully start a collaboration with school teachers.”
McLeod noted that pediatricians already look for signs of low literacy in young children by way of a commonly used tool known as the Rourke Baby Record, which offers a checklist of key topics, such as nutrition and developmental benchmarks, to cover in a well-child appointment.
But he said questions about reading could be “a standing item” in checkups and he hoped the society’s statement to medical professionals who care for children “enhances their confidence in being a strong advocate for the child” while spurring partnerships with others involved in a child’s life such as teachers and psychologists.
The guidance said pediatricians also play a key role in detecting and monitoring conditions that often coexist with difficulty reading such as attention-deficit hyperactivity disorder, but McLeod noted that getting such specific diagnoses typically involves a referral to a specialist, during which time a child continues to struggle.
He also acknowledged that some schools can be slow to act without a specific diagnosis from a specialist, and even then a child may end up on a wait list for school interventions.
“Evidence-based reading instruction shouldn’t have to wait for some of that access to specialized assessments to occur,” he said.
“My hope is that (by) having an existing statement or document written by the Canadian Paediatric Society … we’re able to skip a few steps or have some of the early interventions present,” he said.
McLeod added that obtaining specific assessments from medical specialists is “definitely beneficial and advantageous” to know where a child is at, “but having that sort of clear, thorough assessment shouldn’t be a barrier to intervention starting.”
McLeod said the society was partly spurred to act by 2022’s “Right to Read Inquiry Report” from the Ontario Human Rights Commission, which made 157 recommendations to address inequities related to reading instruction in that province.
He called the new guidelines “a big reminder” to pediatric providers, family doctors, school teachers and psychologists of the importance of literacy.
“Early identification of reading difficulty can truly change the trajectory of a child’s life.”
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Oct. 23, 2024.
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