KINSELLA: If Sandy Hook massacre failed to change U.S. attitude on guns, nothing will

Warren Kinsella - Saturday, June 11,2022
Toronto Sun

Dear America:

For starters, let me say this: I love Americans, and I love America.

Mostly. Sometimes.

There’s lots to love. Your people are open and gregarious and irrepressible. Your country is bountiful and diverse and full of promise.

And some of us Canadians become Americans, or have family and friends in your country. Personally, I lived there, in Dallas, Texas. Can still recite the Pledge of Allegiance. Can still remember my family’s Dallas phone number (FL1-6325). In no small measure, we are part of you, and you us.

For us Canadians, in the big drafty room above yours, we are immensely grateful that you shield us from the despots and monsters found in other places, with increasing regularity these days. You protect us. We know that.

But when it comes to protecting yourselves? You’re not so good at that.

And I don’t just mean the insurrection provoked by Donald Trump, now being documented at the House of Representatives’ House Select Committee investigation of the violent Jan. 6 attack on the U.S. Capitol. Or the cleavage in your politics, wherein Left and Right are orbiting ever-further apart. Or your class wars, which are happening all the time, about everything.

Because we Canadians, if we are being honest with ourselves — and we often are not — have had violent attacks on our places of governance, too. We had one in 2014, when a madman killed Corporal Nathan Cirillo, and stormed Parliament, and shot the place up. And we have a cleavage in our politics, too — with a Liberal Prime Minister who has crafted a crypto-socialist Axis of Weasels deal on one side and, on the other side, a Conservative Party in a headlong rush to the outer reaches of the fringe Right, where conspiracy theories, anti-vaxxers and Pierre Poilievre congregate.

And class wars? We have those too. We fight about stupid, inconsequential stuff, too, and we miss out on the big picture. Guilty.

But in one thing, America, you have us beat. In one thing, you are the undisputed world champions. And that thing, of course, is ritual suicide by firearm. In that category, you are Number One — with a bullet, you might say.

Reciting the grim statistics to you is a waste of time. It hasn’t stopped or even slowed down your descent into the slaughterhouse. Appealing to your better nature hasn’t worked, either: forests have been felled in the United States, to print up well-meaning and heart-rending pleas for sanity.

And you keep doing what you do. Which is kill each other.

Ask Jesse Lewis.

Jesse Lewis had wanted to be in the army. He was tough, but with a gentle side. Whenever he could, he favoured ripped jeans and a T-shirt — nothing fancy. He was raised on a farm, after all, with horses, dogs, and chickens. He was brave, too.

When the shooting started, on Dec. 14, 2012, Jesse Lewis saw the killer pause to reload. He yelled at those around him — nine of them — to “run.” They did.

The killer saw, reloaded, and shot Jesse Lewis in the head, killing him.

Jesse Lewis’ name should be familiar to you — because Jesse Lewis was just six years old. He was a student at Sandy Hook Elementary School, in Newtown, Connecticut. On the day Jesse was murdered, 19 other first-graders were slaughtered. Six women, too.

Here’s the thing, America: you cannot claim to be the leader of the free world – you cannot claim to be “the land of the free, and the home of the brave” – when something like the Sandy Hook massacre happens, and you do precisely nothing about it. You can’t.

The rest of us mostly admire you and like you. We do. But if you didn’t change after Sandy Hook?

If you didn’t change after that — you never, ever will.

Yours sincerely,

Etc.

Bird flu outbreak continues to spread in UK, North America

By TZVI JOFFRE

The Jerusalem Post

 Saturday, June 11,2022

© (photo credit: EDUARD KORNIYENKO/REUTERS)

Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza (HPAI) is continuing to spread among birds in Europe and North America, with thousands of birds killed by both the virus and preventative measures.

Ducklings at the Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool in Washington were found to be infected with the bird flu, the National Park Service announced on Wednesday.

On Thursday, the Utah Division of Wildlife Resources announced that two foxes have been confirmed as having been infected with the bird flu. Both foxes were tested after being found dead in two cities in Utah.

Arizona reported its first cases of avian influenza on Wednesday after three nestling neotropical cormorants were found to be infected with the H5N1 strain of the virus.

According to the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 1,400 wild birds and nearly 40 million domesticated birds have been confirmed as infected with HPAI.


A sign warns about the avian influenza in an area of Randers, Denmark November 17, 2020

 (credit: VIA REUTERS)

Other outbreaks

"[A] highly mutable and deadly new form of avian influenza, which originated in poultry, is killing our wild seabirds in large numbers."Dr. Paul Walton, head of species and habitats, RSPB Scotland

Thousands of birds have been dying on Quebec's Magdalen Islands due to the virus, according to The Canadian Press. "Nobody had to tell me that this was happening. It's obvious — we're talking about thousands of dead birds,'' said Magdalen Islands Mayor Jonathan Lapierre.

Over two million birds have been affected by the bird flu outbreak in Canada, according to the Canadian Food Inspection Agency.

In the United Kingdom, large numbers of seabirds have been dying due to the virus in Scotland in recent weeks.

Dr. Paul Walton, head of species and habitats for the Royal Society for the Protection of Birds Scotland, told the BBC that "a highly mutable and deadly new form of avian influenza, which originated in poultry, is killing our wild seabirds in large numbers."

The RSPB called on the Scottish government to develop a response plan to the outbreak.

Two humans have been infected with the H5N1 virus amid the outbreak — one in the United Kingdom and another in the US. Both suffered only mild symptoms and fully recovered.


Related video: Bird flu is taking a toll on eagles, wild birds

US Census wants to know how to ask about sexuality and gender

Saturday, June 11,2022



ORLANDO, Fla. (AP) — The 2020 census questionnaire drove Scout crazy. With no direct questions about sexual orientation and gender identity, it made him feel left out of the U.S. head count.

Among LGBTQ people, the census only asked about same-sex couples living together, and Scout didn’t live with his partner. So to compensate, he hounded his gay, cohabiting neighbors in Providence, Rhode Island to respond and provide at least some visibility for the community.

“I was stalking them to fill out the census form because mine didn’t make a difference,” said Scout, a transgender man who uses one name. “There’s no question I’m absolutely made invisible by the census.”

This could change soon. Recognizing the difficulty of persuading people to reveal information many find sensitive, the U.S. Census Bureau is requesting millions of dollars to study how best to ask about sexual orientation and gender identity. The results could provide much better data about the LGBTQ population nationwide at a time when views about sexual orientation and gender identity are evolving.

“Change is in the air,” said Kerith Conron, research director at the UCLA School of Law's Williams Institute, which researches these issues. “It's exciting."

The Census Bureau's request comes as President Joe Biden declared June as LGBTQ “Pride Month," and as U.S. passports now offer an “X” in addition to “M” or “F”, for non-binary or intersex individuals. It is taking place as some Republican-dominated state legislatures restrict what can be discussed about sexual orientation and gender identity in schools and banned transgender girls from competing in girls' sports.

“We are seeing that numbers matter when politicians are demeaning and conducting culture wars against people,” said Gina Duncan, a transgender woman who advocates in Orlando with Equality Florida.

As the nation's largest statistical agency, the bureau sets an example for how other agencies and businesses ask these questions, she noted.

The most common terms used for sexual orientation are lesbian, gay, bisexual or straight. Gender norms are typically understood as male, female, both or neither.

The $10 million would be spent over several years to fund Census Bureau field tests of different wording and placement of questions that would appear on its annual American Community Survey.

The bureau is particularly interested in examining how answers are provided by “proxies” such as a parent, spouse or someone else in a household who isn't the person about whom the question is being asked.


Other federal agencies already ask about sexual orientation, primarily in health surveys conducted by trained interviewers with respondents answering for themselves. The much more widely circulated Census Bureau surveys tend to rely on proxies more.

Wording and design matter since they can affect accuracy.

A confusing layout on the 2010 census form led some census takers to misreport the genders of opposite-sex couples, falsely inflating the number of same-sex households. Studies also have shown that some transgender people are more likely to leave gender questions blank or check both “male" and “female."

Some respondents might not want to share such personal information, or may be unsure of how to answer. And some proxies might not know the sexual orientation and gender identity of everyone in their household. In places like New Zealand and the United Kingdom, surveys don't allow proxy reporting for sexual orientation questions because of concerns about accuracy and confidentiality.

The federal statistical system currently is unable to provide high-quality information about sexual and gender minorities without improving and expanding data gathering on this topic, the Census Bureau said in its 2023 budget submission.

“This research can help us measure the growing and diverse LGBTQ population in the United States," a Census Bureau statement said.

Next week, the House Committee on Oversight and Reform is discussing legislation that would require data on sexual orientation and gender identity to be collected voluntarily in federal surveys.

Federal data collection traditionally has treated sexual orientation and gender identity as binary — gay or straight, male or female — but this can mask greater complexities and wide-ranging identities, according to a report the National Academies of Sciences, Medicine and Engineering released this spring.

The once-a-decade census, the yearly American Community Survey and the annual Current Population Survey now allow same-sex couples a chance to answer if they are in a marriage or domestic partnership. But that omits LGBTQ people who are single or not living in the same household with their partner, and for the gender question, “male" and “female" are the only options.

Because the same-sex response is limited to individuals living together, it captures only a fifth of the nation's LGBTQ population, Conron said.

Only the bureau's online Household Pulse Survey, created at the start of the coronavirus pandemic, includes “transgender" and “none of these" alongside the “male" and “female" options. It also allows respondents to identify as gay, straight, bisexual, “something else” and “I don't know." However, the Household Pulse Survey is categorized as experimental and may not meet some of the bureau's statistical quality standards.

Other nations that already ask about sexual orientation in their data collection include Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the countries of the United Kingdom.

A report from a working group of U.S. agencies recommends that sexual orientation be asked separately from gender identity and that language used for older adults be tweaked when asking teens questions, since their preferred terminologies, like “queer,” may be different. Cultural, regional and language differences also must be considered. Some Native Americans may identify as “two-spirit” rather than gay or bisexual, and in Spanish, “heterosexual” was found to reduce confusion over “straight, that is, not gay” which doesn’t translate directly, the report said.

“Each new generation is more diverse in its sexuality and gender,” Duncan said. “The Census Bureau should stay up to date with that evolution.”

___

Follow Mike Schneider on Twitter at https://twitter.com/MikeSchneiderAP

Mike Schneider, The Associated Press

New Mexico residents sue for information on massive wildfire

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — Dozens of residents in a small New Mexico community impacted by massive wildfires that merged in April are suing the U.S. Forest Service over what they called a failure to provide information about the government's role in starting the blazes.



The Forest Service has acknowledged that two prescribed burns it set to clear out brush and small trees that can serve as wildfire fuel sparked two blazes that came together as the largest in New Mexico's recorded history and the biggest burning in the U.S. right now.

The wildfire has charred 500 square miles (1,295 square kilometers) in the Sangre de Cristo mountain range, which sits at the southern edge of the Rocky Mountains. Several hundred homes have been destroyed.

The lawsuit was filed Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Albuquerque on behalf of 50 Mora County residents, the Santa Fe New Mexican reported.

It asks the court to declare that the Forest Service improperly withheld planning documents for the burns, agreements or contracts with anyone who helped carry out the burns and information on the rules and regulations that govern the prescribed burns.

Without the information, the lawsuit alleges, the residents “cannot determine the Forest Service's responsibility — other than media accounts — for starting the fire."

The Forest Service told the Santa Fe New Mexican that it does not comment on pending litigation. The agency has said unexpected, erratic winds during one prescribed burn carried embers outside the targeted area. The other wildfire emerged from a burn set on a pile of dead vegetation in January that smoldered for weeks, even under snow.


The agency has put a hold on prescribed burns nationwide pending its own investigation.

President Joe Biden is scheduled to visit New Mexico on Saturday for a briefing about the wildfires and recovery efforts.

Another wildfire in southwestern New Mexico has burned 466 square miles (1,206 square kilometers), prompting New Mexico Gov. Michelle Lujan Grisham to declare an emergency for Sierra County on Friday.

The declaration came as the fire grew to become the second largest wildfire in state history. The governor's office said it's now burning beyond the boundaries of the Gila National Forest, affecting communities and requiring evacuations.

Also Friday, crews of about 200 firefighters were scrambling to try and contain a small fire in northern New Mexico near El Rito that sent up a tall, dense plume of smoke. No structures were threatened, with the cause under investigation.

In northern New Mexico, Mora County residents said they requested documents from the Forest Service on May 4 about the fire in northern New Mexico, but that the agency failed to respond within 20 working days as required under the law. The lawsuit also seeks attorneys' fees.

Herman Lujan, 80, his brother and nephew are among the Mora County residents who are suing. Lujan's home was spared, but he said he has 30 hungry cattle that he might have to sell because they can't graze in a burned pasture his family has used for generations.

“Everything burned,” he said. “Timber, everything. I even had an old dozer up there to make ponds for the cows, and everything burned.”

The Associated Press

Rare wetland plant found in Arizona now listed as endangered



A rare plant that depends on wetlands for survival is now on the federal endangered species list, a designation that environmentalists say will boost efforts to protect the last free-flowing river in the desert Southwest.



JUNE 10,2022

The U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service published the decision Friday in the federal register to list the Arizona eryngo as endangered and set aside nearly 13 acres (5 hectares) in southern Arizona as critical habitat.

The decision comes years after environmentalists petitioned and then sued to gain protection for the plant with cream-colored spherical flower heads. Only two populations are known in Arizona — near Tucson and in the San Pedro Riparian National Conservation Area.

The eryngo grows in ciénegas, a type of wetland fed by natural springs that come from the deep aquifer and nourish the San Pedro River. The plant's habitat and the flow of the San Pedro River have been threatened by over-pumping of groundwater in the region, climate change and drought.

“This gives us a new ability to protect it,” Robin Silver of the Center for Biological Diversity said of the river. “Protecting plants protects the aquifer itself.”


The plant also is found in the northern Mexican states of Chihuahua and Sonora. It historically grew in southwestern New Mexico at Las Playas Springs but hasn't been documented there since 1851, the Fish and Wildlife Service said.

The critical habitat in Arizona lies in Pima and Cochise Counties and doesn't include another location where efforts have failed to reintroduce the eryngo. The agency said development still can occur in the areas, but anything that relies on federal funding or federal permits has to be analyzed to ensure it doesn't impact the eryngo's habitat.

“Partnerships will be central to addressing the threats to the Arizona eryngo and putting it on the path to recovery,” Amy Lueders, the Southwest regional director for the Fish and Wildlife Service, said in a statement.

The agency didn't immediately respond to an email Friday afternoon from The Associated Press.

The Arizona eryngo is part of the carrot family and can grow more than 5 feet (1.5 meters) tall. It relies on pollinators, such as butterflies and hummingbirds, to reproduce. Conservation efforts are underway to establish more populations of the eryngo.

Felicia Fonseca, The Associated Press

Washington Post fires reporter in center of online battle
Friday

NEW YORK (AP) — The Washington Post has fired Felicia Sonmez, who triggered a vigorous online debate this week over social media policy and public treatment of colleagues after she criticized a fellow reporter for retweeting an offensive joke.

The Post said Friday it would not comment on personnel issues. But a copy of a termination letter sent Thursday, accusing her of “insubordination, maligning your coworkers online and violating the Post's standards on workplace collegiality and inclusivity” was published on the Mediaite website and quoted in other news accounts.

The outspoken political writer, whose second stint at the Post began in 2018, declined comment Friday.

The incident began when Sonmez tweeted a screen shot of an offensive joke that a colleague, Dave Weigel, had sent out on Twitter, adding the comment: “Fantastic to work at a news outlet where retweets like this are allowed.” The Post suspended Weigel for a month for his retweet, according to published reports.

That prompted another reporter, Jose Del Real, to criticize Sonmez online. While saying Weigel had been wrong, Del Real called for compassion. “Rallying the Internet to attack him for a mistake he made doesn't actually solve anything,” he wrote.

That led to a contentious back-and-forth, with Sonmez accusing Del Real of attacking her.

As an online debate widened and drew in more people, Post executive editor Sally Buzbee sent out two memos calling on staff members to show respect for each other. The second, on Tuesday, was more stern: Buzbee wrote that “we do not tolerate colleagues attacking colleagues either face to face or online.”


As it consumed more attention, a handful of Post employees tweeted their support of the newspaper as a good place to work. Sonmez noted that those people were among the newspaper's best-paid stars, and suggested there has been a longstanding double standard in how social media policy is applied to them.

She also retweeted a screen shot that said Del Real had blocked her on Twitter, adding the comment, “So I hear the Washington Post is a collegial workplace.”

While it was consuming attention, another Post reporter, Lisa Rein, tweeted to Sonmez: “please stop.”

Sonmez, who worked at the Post in the early 2010s, left and rejoined, sued the Post and its top editors last year, charging discrimination in barring her from covering stories related to sexual assault after she had previously gone public as an assault victim herself.

In the termination letter, signed by Human Resources Officer Wayne Connell, the Post said that in questioning the motives of colleagues, Sonmez was undermining the Post's reputation for journalistic integrity and fairness.

“The same is true of your baseless derision directed to our policies and practices, and our commitment to a safe and supportive work environment,” he wrote.

Sonmez's union, the Washington-Baltimore News Guild, said it is committed to ensuring that workers are only disciplined with just cause, but that it did not comment on individual personnel issues.

One Post columnist, Karen Attiah, tweeted on Friday that Sonmez had “always been incredibly kind and supportive” of her, and had reached out when Attiah had been the target of online abuse.

David Bauder, The Associated Press

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/petr-kropotkin-ethics-origin-and-development

COMING SOON; MASKING AND FLU SHOTS

Australia’s flu season is off to a wild start.    Is it a ‘precursor’ for Canada?

Aaron D'Andrea - Friday, June 10,2022

Influenza activity in Canada is declining following an unusual late-spring surge in the respiratory virus that has seen little spread during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Around this time of year, influenza cases in Canada usually are in steady decline following the fall and winter seasons, but a resurgence in early April when numerous COVID-19 measures lifted created an anomaly in that trend.

Read more:

As COVID-19 begins to diminish, more Canadians are getting sick with the flu

Flu cases have been low since the onset of COVID-19 in 2020, but with the pandemic easing in certain parts of the world, other respiratory viruses are beginning to reemerge and Canadians should be prepared, especially considering what’s happening in Australia.

“Their numbers of (flu) cases are higher than the five-year average for that sort of time of year. … So they're seeing quite a few cases of influenza-like illness and confirmed influenza,” said Dr. Susy Hota, an infectious diseases specialist with the University Health Network in Toronto.

“It's a precursor to what we could face.”

Read more:

Coronavirus prevention crushed Australia’s flu season. Can Canada expect the same?

Australia’s flu season, which typically runs from May to October, has long been looked at by Canadian health experts in preparation for flu season here, which usually begins anywhere between late October and early January.

In Australia, influenza cases have been on the rise since early March, and have exploded in recent weeks.

Between May 9 and May 22, there were 26,193 laboratory-confirmed influenza cases in Australia, which is more than three times higher than the previous reporting period between April 25 and May 8, the government said in its latest report. The country has logged 38,743 cases so far this year.

Video: AHS data shows recent spike in Alberta flu numbers

In Queensland, the regional government has made flu shots free with cases doubling every week in the area.

“We would expect cases to peak in August during a normal flu season, however statewide flu notifications have been doubling each week and continue to rise sharply with 4,230 new cases in the past week,” said Queensland Health Minister Yvette D’Ath in a May 31 news release.

“The current data trend indicates we may surpass the peaks experienced in 2017 and 2019 flu seasons, but also that we may reach these numbers much earlier in this season.”

Read more:

Hardly any Canadians caught the flu last year. What can we expect this fall?

When Canada’s flu cases began to spike in the spring, COVID-19 measures designed to protect the community from the novel virus started to lift across the country as disease levels began to decline.

Those measures helped protect against other respiratory infections like influenza, which has been nearly non-existent in Canada since the onset of the pandemic, experts said.

So far this reporting season, which Ottawa indicates as starting on Aug. 29, Canada has logged 12,693 influenza cases as of May 28, it said in its June 3 report. On average, the country sees 46,539 cases recorded by this time of year.

When Global News reported on the spread of influenza at the beginning of May, Canada had logged 1,842 cases of influenza to date.

Read more:

Flu cases hit record lows during pandemic: researcher

Ottawa recorded 69 influenza detections in the 2020-21 flu season. Normally, around 52,000 cases are detected each year.

Aside from the easement of COVID-19 restrictions, part of the reason Canadians saw an increase in influenza cases was due to an uptick in testing, said Dr. Gerald Evans, an infectious disease specialist at Queen’s University in Kingston, Ont.

A total of 16,031 tests for influenza were performed in Canada between May 22 and May 28, the government said in its June 3 report, which was above the weekly pre-pandemic average of 3,197 tests.

Doctors warn flu season could return with a vengeance

Australia is doing more influenza testing this season as well with COVID-19 circulating alongside other respiratory illnesses, Evans said.

“By the time spring rolls around, typically in any other given year, the number of influenza tests we do is actually a lot smaller than what we were doing before the influenza season hit and during the early period (of the season),” he told Global News.

“What was happening this year is we were still doing a lot of COVID testing but … a lot of that involved testing for influenza, so the result of which we were doing a lot more tests this spring, which allowed us to see these influenza cases as they appeared.”

Read more:

COVID-19 will be with us for ‘foreseeable future’ PHAC says, warning of future waves

With an expected COVID-19 resurgence in the fall, it’s important for Canadians to stay up-to-date with their vaccinations as well as practise protections like masking and good hygiene designed to stop the spread of the coronavirus, Hota and Evans said.

“This summer we’ll probably get through without it being too much of a problem with influenza and hopefully COVID, unless something really shifts in terms of different variants, but both of these things are still active and we have to be aware about what could happen when we hit the cooler seasons,” Hota said.

“If you're using measures to prevent COVID-19, they’re probably going to be effective against influenza,” Evans said.

"If people can use those methods, even if they're not mandated, that's really going to help us keep those influenza numbers down.”

Another Manitoba First Nation finds anomalies near former residential school

Dave Baxter Local Journalism Initiative reporter - Thursday, June 9,2022

A Manitoba First Nation says they have discovered anomalies they believe could be unmarked graves of children who attended a residential school, and the news comes just days after another community said they planned to investigate almost 200 anomalies that have been discovered in that community.


© Provided by Winnipeg SunPine Creek First Nation (PCFN) Chief Derek Nepinak and PCFN council have confirmed that six anomalies in the ground have been discovered near the site of the former Pine Creek Residential School.

The Minegoziibe Nation, also commonly referred to as the Pine Creek First Nation (PCFN), announced on Wednesday a ground-penetrating radar search conducted by AltoMaxx which began in early May has now revealed six anomalies in the ground in PCFN.

The First Nation community, which sits approximately 110 kilometres north of the city of Dauphin, was formerly the home of the Pine Creek Residential School, which operated for close to 80 years between 1890 and 1969, and was torn down in 1972.

Discoveries of what is believed to be unmarked graves near former residential schools last year in both B.C. and Saskatchewan prompted many First Nations communities in Canada including PCFN to conduct ground searches, and PCFN said their searches have now uncovered the anomalies.

Sagkeeng First Nation finds 190 radar anomalies at residential school site

They now plan to continue investigating to see if they can figure out for sure what has happened beneath the ground and if there may be unmarked graves in the community, of children who attended the Pine Creek Residential School.

“Leadership has requested that AltoMaxx return for a more comprehensive search of the area in the hopes of confirming the data in more detail,” they said.

Additional searches in the community are now expected to get underway later this month, according to PCFN.

The announcement of the anomalies in PCFN comes just days after Sagkeeng First Nation Chief Derrick Henderson confirmed that 190 anomalies in the ground in Sagkeeng were recently discovered by searchers, also with Altomaxx, near the sight of the former Fort Alexander Residential School.

Henderson said on Tuesday that Sagkeeng officials are now looking into what their next steps will be to confirm the reasons for those anomalies.

The Winnipeg Sun reached out to PCFN Chief Derek Nepinak on Thursday for further comment, but did not hear back before Thursday’s press deadline.

— Dave Baxter is a Local Journalism Initiative reporter who works out of the Winnipeg Sun. The Local Journalism Initiative is funded by the Government of Canada.

Targeted wastewater surveillance has a history of social and ethical concerns


Carolyn Prouse, Assistant Professor of Human Geography, Queen's University, Ontario, 

Mohammed Rafi Arefin, Assistant Professor, Geography, University of British Columbia,

Christopher Reimer, PhD Candidate, Geography, University of British Columbia -

The Conversation

 Thursday, June 9,2022

Wastewater surveillance involves testing sewage to obtain data about a population’s health. While the technique is decades old, it has gained recent international prominence for its ability to predict pandemic surges, detect new SARS-CoV-2 variants and provide useful data when traditional testing methods reach capacity. With its success, the field is expanding.

Wastewater surveillance increasingly plays a vital role, as governments around the world are abandoning communal and state-based modes of care, such as masking and clinical PCR testing. The United States recently established a National Wastewater Surveillance System, while the G7 health ministers pledged support for surveillance systems.

As applications of wastewater surveillance have grown, so have academic and public discussions about the ethics of using wastewater for surveillance.

Read more: Wastewater monitoring took off during the COVID-19 pandemic – and here's how it could help head off future outbreaks

Targeted surveillance

Ethical, social and political concerns over wastewater surveillance are not new.

But with the emergence of SARS-CoV-2, and the rapid adoption of wastewater-based epidemiology, these concerns take on renewed urgency, particularly as sewage is surveilled at increasingly smaller scales.

Wastewater surveillance is often celebrated for its unbiased, anonymous and non-intrusive nature. In the majority of today’s programs, surveillance is conducted at wastewater treatment plants or in sewersheds, where samples are aggregated to a point that many scientists, officials and research oversight committees argue pose minimal ethical risks or threats to privacy.

But in the past decade, wastewater surveillance has been increasingly deployed at smaller scales. This is referred to as targeted surveillance, or near-source tracking, and has occurred in a variety of settings.

These include college dormitories, long-term care facilities and workplaces across North America; law enforcement-targeted areas in China and Australia; correctional facilities throughout the U.S., including Oklahoma, Kentucky and Ohio; and migrant worker housing facilities in Singapore.

As human geographers studying sanitation, environmental surveillance and biological data, we are concerned that discussions surrounding wastewater surveillance ethics have paid little attention to the geography and history of near-source wastewater surveillance.

Surveillance history

In 2015, researchers outlined concerns about targeted wastewater surveillance in prisons, schools, workplaces and hospitals. Targeted surveillance of opioids in prisons’ sewage, according to the researchers, could hypothetically justify overly harsh measures such as banning visitations.

While today’s number of targeted applications are historically unprecedented, concerns related to their applications are not new. Preliminary findings from our historical research on wastewater surveillance show that early influential near-source studies caused researcher anxieties or revealed ethical oversights.

Related video: Wastewater surveillance to track COVID

In 1946, in a British resort town in North Devon, a scientist sought to locate the source of a typhoid outbreak. Tracking the source was urgent as it threatened not only the town’s health, but also its tourism-based economy.

Using sewage testing, the source of the outbreak was traced to the wife of a popular beachside ice-cream vendor. The published study referred to the town as “X,” fearing that findings would negatively impact tourism. Due to privacy concerns, the study warned that: “Except in the presence of an outbreak, it is probably unwise to pursue infection right back to the individual carrier.”

In 1962, a Yale scientist used similar near-source methods to study the efficacy of polio vaccination campaigns in Connecticut. Sewage from incarcerated youth held at a delinquent girls’ prison was one of five sites strategically selected for testing before and after vaccine administration. This study intimately linked the development of near-source tracking with experimentation on marginalized populations.

Later, in 1967, researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison ran another vaccine efficacy sewage study to target a graduate student housing complex. They wrote that “by appropriate sampling one might be able to monitor a housing project, an apartment building, or perhaps even a single household.”

By 1973, the method was applied to migrant labour settings. The South African government set up a cholera surveillance system for the country’s gold mining industry. This system relied on the monitoring of sewage at barracks, followed by targeted, invasive rectal swabs. Wastewater surveillance therefore ensured that South African mining companies could continue to access cheap foreign labour.

These early cases demonstrate that the threats near-source tracking poses to individual and group privacy, as well as research ethics, date back decades. Wastewater surveillance is not apolitical or neutral. It has been developed, expanded and normalized in ways that have the potential to increase class, racial and gendered inequality.


© (Shutterstock)Historical case studies show that near-source testing of wastewater can target marginalized and vulnerable populations.

Ethics of wastewater surveillance

Those involved with wastewater surveillance are aware of these issues.

Experts in the field are especially concerned about the kinds of human-identifying genetic data that are found in wastewater. They are also concerned about what could be done with archived samples as analysis techniques rapidly advance.

Efforts underway to develop guidelines to address these concerns. The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention provides guidelines for targeted wastewater surveillance. The WHO’s interim guidance argues that guidelines are needed, especially “when sampling relatively small and well-defined buildings or confined areas such as prisons, refugee camps or schools.”

Researchers at the Canadian Water Network argue that, when it comes to near-source wastewater surveillance, existing WHO public health guidelines must be considered and adapted to address a distinct set of bioethical concerns. These include the minimization or disclosure of risk, clear justification for the use of identifiable data, and commitments to not share data with agencies outside public health.

As private sector companies increasingly offer wastewater testing, the need for guidance and regulation becomes more urgent. The recent private sector involvement in wastewater surveillance may create or exacerbate ethical, legal and political issues.
Considered applications

We are not arguing against the use of wastewater surveillance. However, given the potential of harm from near-source tracking at sites with existing inequalities, it is crucial to consider the challenges, histories and long-standing concerns that arise from this method.

We should be having public conversations about what information is collected through wastewater surveillance, how and where it is gathered, who it identifies and who has control over its use and, potentially, its sale.

It is also imperative to question what other modes of care this kind of technology could displace, including state-funded testing, precautionary infection prevention and masking.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
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Mohammed Rafi Arefin receives funding from the Urban Studies Foundation, the Peter Wall Institute for Advanced Studies, and the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada.

Carolyn Prouse receives funding from the Social Sciences and Humanities Council of Canada and the Urban Studies Foundation.

Christopher Reimer does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

DISARM, DEFUND, DISBAND

Thin-skinned blue line: Police fight against defunding, showing their true colours

Kevin Walby, Associate Professor of Criminal Justice, University of Winnipeg 

Shiri Pasternak, Assistant Professor of Criminology, Toronto Metropolitan University  

The Conversation

Thursday, June 9,2022

Since the police killing of George Floyd in May 2020 and the subsequent mass mobilizations for police defunding and abolition, the defund movement has continued to organize.

Has this work had an impact in Canada? Have there been successful challenges to reducing Canadian police budgets?

The answer is complicated and depends on how you define success.
Raised awareness

Some argue the mobilization and movement-building that has transpired — people brought together in campaigns for police abolition that reimagine community safety — is a huge success in and of itself.

  Abolition has entered the public consciousness like never before.

Dozens of books have been published by academics, lawyers and activists, building on the work of Black feminists in the United States and Canada who have long argued police perpetuate rather than reduce violence in our society.

There have been some modest successes in defunding police.

In Edmonton, city council voted to cut the 2022 police budget increase by $10.9 million and reallocate the money to social services.

In Halifax, a subcommittee of the Halifax Board of Police Commissioners has tabled a detailed and carefully researched report to city council on how the local police force could be gradually detasked and defunded.

When one looks further, however, what becomes apparent is a serious and growing counter-campaign. It’s perhaps the strongest indication of the movement’s success at undermining the sanctity of police budgets until now.


© (AP Photo/Rick Bowmer)

A young boy shows his support for police during a rally in Utah in September 2020.

Counter-tactics

Police have fought vigorously against the defund movement through threats and false conceits of impending violence if budgets are cut. They are co-opting calls for community safety, branding themselves as protectors in need of continuing or increased resources. They position themselves as innocent heroes under attack, and discredit those who critique them.

One strategy police use is an offensive and personal tactic of removing people from positions of influence if they support police defunding.

When Winnipeg City Coun. Sherri Rollins critiqued police racism in March 2020, an informal complaint was lodged against her by the police board alleging she lacked compliance with the city’s respectful workplace policies.

Similarly, in July 2020, another Winnipeg city councillor, Vivian Santos, discussed defunding and was ousted from the police board. Police removed her on alleged security grounds when background checks turned up a friend with a criminal record.

Fear-mongering

Scare tactics are another strategy.

According to their own data, only eight to 10 per cent of calls to police involve violence. Despite acknowledging that a large proportion of the calls they receive might be better managed by other kinds of workers, police maintain that reducing officers would be “naïve” and undermine community safety.

But which community is the police keeping safe? Instead of diverting funding to organizations with expertise in gender-based violence, anti-racism measures and mental health, police are demanding and receiving record funds to triage these programs themselves.

The Waterloo Region Police recently got a $12.3-million boost to run mental-health interventions while community organizations are starved through austerity and struggle to keep their doors open.

In Hamilton, Ont., activists from the Defund the Police Hamilton Coalition supported homeless people who were harassed daily by police and eventually violently evicted from their encampments.

The coalition demanded city council reallocate resources from police towards permanent housing, prioritizing the needs of the community over criminalizing homeless people. The organization’s antidote to scare tactics is to focus on prevention and the fight to protect people over property.

Police culture as social problem

Police suggest ostensible reforms, such as unconscious bias training and body cameras, as a promise to change the “culture of policing.” As criminologists have noted, such reforms increase police funding without demonstrable change, sidestepping the reality that policing is inherently violent.

With growing attention to their record of extra-judicial killings, systemic racism and harassment in their own forces and their failure to address gender-based violence, police are on the defence.

Take, for example, the aggressive response to criticism from police unions. The police brass may have to mince their words when responding to politicians and the public, but police unions often reveal their true colours.

In June 2020, the Regina Police Association defended a tweet suggesting that its cultural unit, which works with Indigenous people, would be the first to go should the police be defunded. “Choose wisely,” it threatened.

Also in June 2020, the Edmonton police chief similarly stated that defunding would harm diversity initiatives within policing. This threat to the employment of Black and Indigenous officers positioned the police as a benevolent force in the struggle for racial justice, obfuscating the colonial foundation and systemic racism of policing.

Yet the charge in Canada to defund the police is being led by Black and Indigenous leaders and is explicitly focused on racial injustice in the criminal justice system.


© THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nathan Denette

Thousands of people protest to defund the police in support of Black Lives Matter and social injustice in Toronto in June 2020.

What decreases harm?

The lack of “success” in police defunding is a sign of how vigorously police are fighting back, not a sign of a waning movement.

Over the past two years, police chiefs, police representatives and police unions have mobilized the public resources they have to fight against the defund movement. But an Ipsos poll found 50 per cent of Canadians under the age of 38 are interested in police defunding and abolition.

Defunding the police is not radical or irrational, contrary to what police might have the public believe.

What is radical and irrational is continuing to spend 15 to 30 per cent of municipal budgets on public policing. What is radical and irrational is continuing to use criminalization and criminal law to deal with social issues and interpersonal harms when we know that a punitive, carceral approach does not decrease harm or lead to more safety in our neighbourhhoods.

Instead, citizens need to think openly about ways to address harms in our communities and neighbourhoods and to reallocate funds from bloated police budgets to housing, mental health, addiction, employment, counselling, anti-violence education and more. Then we might truly live in a healthier, safer world.

At a time when many people are struggling to make ends meet, we must not let police tantrums get in the way of real safety and a fair share of resources for community and social development. Nor can we accept the criminalization of poverty and inequality, which is the current alibi for how public police and the whole penal system stays in business.

This article is republished from The Conversation, a nonprofit news site dedicated to sharing ideas from academic experts.

Read more:
Public police are a greedy institution

Defunding the police is a move towards community safety

Shiri Pasternak receives funding from Social Science and Humanities Research Council.

Kevin Walby does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

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