Centre For Local Research into Public Space (CELOS)


See also Site Map

Citizen-Z Cavan Young's 2004 film about the zamboni crisis

Contact

mail@celos.ca

Search


Custodians:

An editorial letter from CELOS, Christmas Day 2020

Jutta Mason

This is the twentieth year I’ve been doing a park newsletter – every month for many years and then slowing down to a trickle. I’ll probably do one for January/February, but I want to send out the editorial early, on Christmas Day.

A wonderful Kentucky farmer-writer named Wendell Berry has a poem called "Do not be ashamed." His poem seems a good fit at this time, when some of you may have decided -- perhaps even going against your own firm resolve – to spend some non-virtually-mediated time with a few people who don’t live in the same household. I’ve been hearing about people getting together with their grown son or daughter after not seeing them under one roof since last March. Or four or five good friends cooking a dinner together, or grandparents getting a big, nourishing hug and a game of Fish with their grandkids. I’ve also been hearing about some otherwise strict rule-following parents who are encouraging, even urging their teenager to visit a friend, maybe stay overnight. For the parent(s), the young person’s disturbed state of mind, after so many months of loneliness, has come to be more worrisome than the fear of infection.

The people I’ve talked to about these private transgressions against the emergency rules are afraid that they will be shamed if they’re found out. But beyond that, some of them are ashamed of themselves, feeling that by giving up even an inch in the battle against the virus, they may be contributing to making us lose that battle.

That’s a heavy thought. But I want to take another look, through the lens of CELOS. The central mandate of our little charitable organization (full name: the Centre for Local Research into Public Space) is the support of vital public social spaces. So many of these spaces were shut down last March, and made only briefly accessible in summer. When the numbers started going up again in the fall, I wanted to do something beyond wringing my hands. So I began tracking and posting daily comparisons of the first and second wave, as reported by Ontario public health and Toronto public health. I used the conventional metrics of gauging serious illness, i.e. morbidity and mortality, rather than just positive lab tests. You can find those graphs here and here. They show, for example, that the highest number of daily covid-related deaths in Ontario during the first wave (on May 2) was 94, whereas 49 is the highest number so far for this season (Dec.23). I'll keep posting every day for now.

I’ve also been posting group letters, with various points of view, here. Among them is this early-July open letter from 23 doctors and academics including two former deputy ministers of health, four former provincial or federal public health heads, and four former deans of medical schools – the Canadian elders of public health. Four months after the letter was written, it seems that their analysis remains true. Despite people’s long effort of not getting together with friends and family, despite shuttering stores and restaurants (no matter what costly anti-infection accommodations they made), despite substituting screens for schools, Covid 19 has manifested pretty well exactly as predicted early on: first a steep rise and fall, followed by a second slower but longer wave, which seems to be slightly less lethal but more widespread. And the virus is inventing a number of mutations to keep itself going. Vaccines are coming but it will probably be a long time before they can be distributed broadly.

That’s what our public health elders said was likely to happen.

Older people are supposed to be centrally important in the battle against the virus. But the focus up to now has been mainly on their basic, often solitary, survival, not their work-and-life-experience. For those of you who are feeling ashamed of even the small disobediences you’re allowing yourselves or your families in these final weeks of 2020, it may be a comfort to listen to these public health elders. They worked with epidemics for a long time before they retired, and now, instead of going silent, they’re offering their counsel. They outline the best way to proceed from here, if – at least for now – "covid zero" is not going to happen. And their prescriptions include people having the choice to get together with some close friends and family.

A gift from the elders, which I want to pass on.

P.s: here's a link to the poem: Do not be ashamed.


Content last modified on December 26, 2020, at 09:46 PM EST