Women of the Pandemic

by Lauren McKeon

  It had, by then, appeared in more than sixty-five thousand tweets and references to the higher mortality rate among older people infected with COVID-19: Andrew Whalen, “What is ‘Boomer Remover’ and why is it making people so angry?” Newsweek, March 13, 2020, https://www.newsweek.com/boomer-remover-meme-trends-virus-coronavirus-social-media-covid-19-baby-boomers-1492190.

  Around that same time, WHO director-general Tedros Adhanom Ghebreyesus slammed countries that were responding slowly, or poorly, to the virus: “WHO emergencies coronavirus press conference,” World Health Organization, March 9, 2020, https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/transcripts/who-audio-emergencies-coronavirus-press-conference-full-09mar2020-(1).pdf?sfvrsn=d2684d61_2.

  “Covid-19 didn’t matter much if it was a scourge only among the old”: Louise Aronson, “ ‘Covid-19 kills only old people.’ Only?” New York Times, March 22, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/03/22/opinion/coronavirus-elderly.html.

  Days into his country’s lockdown, the lieutenant governor of Texas even suggested grandparents would be willing to sacrifice themselves for the country’s economic future: Adrianna Rodriguez, “Texas’ lieutenant governor suggests grandparents are willing to die for US economy,” USA Today, March 24, 2020, https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/03/24/covid-19-texas-official-suggests-elderly-willing-die-economy/2905990001.

  “If grandma dies in a nursing home at age 81, that’s tragic and that’s terrible, also the life expectancy in the United States is 80”: David Wallace-Wells, “COVID-19 targets the elderly. Why don’t our prevention efforts?” New York Magazine, May 13, 2020, https://nymag.com/intelligencer/2020/05/covid-targets-the-elderly-why-dont-our-prevention-efforts.html.

  Ukraine’s ex–health minister said those over aged sixty-five were already “corpses”: Paul Nash and Phillip W. Schnarrs, “Coronavirus shows how ageism is harmful to health of older adults,” The Conversation, June 15, 2020, https://theconversation.com/coronavirus-shows-how-ageism-is-harmful-to-health-of-older-adults-138249.

  “It is revealing that the younger adults who have died from complications of COVID-19 throughout the world have often generated long and in-depth media reports,” wrote the authors: Sarah Fraser, et al., “Ageism and COVID-19: What does our society’s response say about us?” Age and Ageing 49 (May 2020): 692–95, doi.org/10.1093/ageing/afaa097.

  What’s more, unlike in other countries, where men account for a greater portion of COVID-19 deaths, the sheer number of long-term care deaths here has tipped the gender balance: David Seglins, Andreas Wesley, and Roberto Rocha, “We looked at every confirmed COVID-19 case in Canada. Here’s what we found,” CBC News, September 23, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/public-health-agency-of-canada-covid-19-statistics-1.5733069.

  By the next month, long-term care deaths would encompass 97 per cent of all deaths in Nova Scotia: “CIHI snapshot: Pandemic experience in the long-term care sector,” Canadian Institute for Health Information, 2020, https://www.cihi.ca/sites/default/files/document/covid-19-rapid-response-long-term-care-snapshot-en.pdf.

  And by June, fifty-three residents at Northwood had died from the virus: Shaina Luck, “Inside the Halifax high-rise at the centre of a Canadian COVID-19 tragedy,” CBC News, June 4, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/northwood-halifax-covid-19-what-happened-1.5596220.

  And for twenty years, until she was diagnosed with dementia, she sang with the Nova Scotia Mass Choir: Elizabeth Chiu, “Nova Scotia cabinet minister reflects on losing his trailblazing mom to COVID-19,” CBC News, May 7, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/northwood-halifax-covid-19-what-happened-1.5596220.

  By fall, cases began to reappear in long-term care centres—including in some that had previously quelled their outbreaks: Simon Little, “New COVID-19 outbreak at Vancouver care home where 13 died,” Global News, September 30, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7370279/new-haro-park-centre-coronavirus-outbreak.

  By October, resident cases in Ontario long-term care homes were approaching April numbers at 159 virus-positive patients; at 199, staff cases had already surpassed their April tallies: Kenyon Wallace, “It’s April all over again. A look at the numbers shows Ontario could be on the brink of another long-term-care catastrophe,” Toronto Star, October 16, 2020, https://www.thestar.com/news/canada/2020/10/16/its-april-all-over-again-a-look-at-the-numbers-shows-ontario-could-be-on-the-brink-of-another-long-term-care-catastrophe.html.

  The province asked the Red Cross to help in several homes, just as the disaster relief organization had done over the summer in Quebec: Paola Loriggio, “Ontario deciding which long-term care homes to get Red Cross support,” Toronto Star, October 13, 2020, https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/10/13/ontario-deciding-which-long-term-care-homes-to-get-red-cross-support.html.

  The reported rate of false negatives ranges between 2 and 37 per cent: Robert H. Schmerling, “Which test is best for COVID-19?” Harvard Health Publishing, August 10, 2020, https://www.health.harvard.edu/blog/which-test-is-best-for-covid-19-2020081020734.

  A later antibody test, which uses a person’s blood and can show whether they had the virus in the past, came back positive: May Warren, “Here’s who’s eligible for a COVID-19 antibody test in Ontario,” Toronto Star, September 11, 2020, https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/2020/09/11/heres-whos-eligible-for-a-covid-19-antibody-test-in-ontario.html.

  Nine: Recovery

  Live attenuated vaccines have been used to fend off everything from the rotavirus to measles, mumps, and rubella: “Vaccine types,” U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, https://www.vaccines.gov/basics/types.

  “However,” as a July 2020 article in Nature Materials noted, “certain limitations are associated with several of these platforms that make them less amenable to fast vaccine production in a pandemic”: Debby van Riel and Emmir de Wit, “Next generation vaccine platforms for COVID-19,” Nature Materials 19 (2020): 810–12, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41563-020-0746-0.

  that is, if the world keeps producing possible global pandemics, which it sadly seems likely to: Susanne Rauch, Edith Jasny, Kim E. Schmidt, Benjamin Petsch, “New vaccine technologies to combat outbreak situations,” Frontiers in Immunology 19 (September 2018), https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2018.01963.

  One such next-gen platform is called a viral vector-based vaccine, which is based off the same platform as the Canadian-made Ebola vaccine: “Safety of Ebola virus vaccines,” World Health Organization (2019), https://www.who.int/vaccine_safety/committee/topics/ebola/Jul_2019/en/.

  “It doesn’t have any disinfectant in it, does it?”: Cecie Elnicki, interviewed by John Moore, Newstalk 1010, April 30, 2020, https://omny.fm/shows/newstalk1010/cecie-elnicki-with-john-moore#description.

  Complicating it all further, most of the next-generation platforms have never been licensed for any pathogen: Nicole Lurie, Melanie Saville, Richard Hatchett, and Jane Halton, “Developing Covid-19 vaccines at pandemic speed,” New England Journal of Medicine 382 (2020): 1969–73, https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2005630.

  In 1717, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, the wife of the British ambassador to Turkey, witnessed her first variolation in Constantinople: Alexandra Flemming, “The origins of vaccination,” Nature Research (September 2020), https://www.nature.com/articles/d42859-020-00006-7.

  A precursor to vaccination, the process involved inserting a thread into the pustule of a person infected with a mild case of smallpox: Frank M. Snowden, Epidemics and Society: From the Black Death to the Present (Yale University Press, 2019), 105.

  In October 2020, for example, Nature Medicine released: Joanne Laucius, “Vaccine hesitancy and Covid-19: how many will stay on the fence?,” Ottawa Citizen, December 18, 2020, https://ottawacitizen.com/news/local-news/vaccine-hesitancy-and-covid-19-how-many-will-stay-on-the-fence; Angus Reid Institute, December 14, 2020, http://angusreid.org/canada-covid-vaccine-december/; Jeffrey V. Lazarus et a
l., “A global survey of potential acceptance of a COVID-19 vaccine,” Nature Medicine, October 20, 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/s41591-020-1124-9.

  In fact, after the discovery of penicillin in 1945, it took nearly another forty years fore the first antiviral drug to be licensed: Dorothy H. Crawford, Viruses: A Very Short Introduction (Oxford University Press, 2011), 121.

  Remdesivir is an antiviral that can cut recovery times by five days: Marilynn Marchione, “FDA approves first COVID-19 drug: the antiviral remdesivir,” CTV News, October 2020, https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/fda-approves-first-covid-19-drug-the-antiviral-remdesivir-1.5156780.

  Canada recorded its first case on April 26, 2009: “The H1N1 Flu in Ontario: A report by Ontario’s Chief Medical Officer of Health,” Ministry of Health and Long-Term Care, September 2009, http://www.health.gov.on.ca/en/ccom/flu/h1n1/pro/docs/oh9100_report.pdf.

  and its first aseltamivir-resistant case scant weeks later on July 21: “First Tamiflu-resistant H1N1 case found in Canada,” CTV News, July 22, 2009, https://www.ctvnews.ca/first-tamiflu-resistant-h1n1-case-found-in-canada-1.419146.

  In other words, interferons won’t kill a virus directly, but they will trigger a defence response in other cells, preventing the virus from replicating within them: Marco De Andrea, Raffaella Ravera, Daniela Gioia, Marisa Gariglio, and Santo Landolfo, “The interferon system: An overview,” European Journal of Paediatric Neurology 6 (2002): A41–A46, https://doi.org/10.1053/ejpn.2002.0573.

  who immediately set up an exploratory study using interferons to treat virus patients at a hospital in Wuhan: Qiong Zhou et al., “Interferon-a2b treatment for COVID-19,” Frontiers in Immunology (May 2020), https://doi.org/10.3389/fimmu.2020.01061.

  She has been asked, and has sometimes agreed, to join the scientific advisory boards of several pharmaceutical companies: “BetterLife Pharma announces apointment of Dr. Eleanor Fish, a leading expert on interferon activity against Covid-19, to its advisory board,” Cision, May 2020, https://www.newswire.ca/news-releases/betterlife-pharma-announces-appointment-of-dr-eleanor-fish-a-leading-expert-on-interferon-activity-against-covid-19-to-its-advisory-board-888781569.html.

  The study was so successful, she’s now helping local health authorities develop an interferon clinic: “U of T’s immunologist’s new drug shows promise in treating Ebola,” U of T News, March 2017, https://www.utoronto.ca/news/u-t-immunologist-s-new-drug-shows-promise-treating-ebola.

  For example, Senior’s former organization, YWCA Canada, and the Institute for Gender and the Economy at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management jointly released a feminist economic recovery plan in July 2020: Anjum Saltana and Carmina Ravanera, “A feminist economic recovery plan for Canada,” YWCA Canada, July 2020, https://www.feministrecovery.ca.

  And in June, the Vancouver Police Department said there had been a 600 per cent increase: Robin Gill, “Asian communities across Canada report rising racist behaviour during COVID-19 crisis,” Global News, June 7, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7033253/coronavirus-asian-racism-crisis-canada.

  Epilogue

  That day, Ontario, my home province, recorded the highest number of new COVID-19 cases in a single day since the beginning of the pandemic: “Tracking Ontario’s 102,378 cases of COVID-19,” CTV News, March 2, 2020, https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/tracking-ontario-s-105-501-cases-of-covid-19-1.4834821.

  Around that time, Canada itself passed a grim milestone of two hundred thousand total cases: “Canada kicked off EU’s safe country list due to high number of coronavirus cases,” Global News, October 21, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7410196/eu-safe-country-list-canada-kicked-off-coronavirus; “EU removes Canadians from a list of approved travellers because of COVID-19,” CBC News, October 21, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/eu-travel-canada-1.5770782.

  By the end of the month, the virus had killed over ten thousand people in Canada: David Lao and Hannah Jackson, “Over 10,000 people in Canada have died from coronavirus,” Global News, October 27, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7421380/canada-coronavirus-10k-death-toll; “Statement from the Chief Public Health Officer of Canada,” Public Health Agency of Canada, October 29, 2020, https://www.canada.ca/en/public-health/news/2020/10/statement-from-the-chief-public-health-officer-of-canada-on-october-29-2020.html.

  People cancelled Thanksgiving plans, then Halloween trick-or-treating: Emerald Bensadoun, “Fewer Canadians to hand out Halloween candy, trick or treat this year, poll says,” Global News, October 29, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/7427356/ipsos-poll-halloween-canada.

  Winter holidays seemed up in the air, and even Trudeau suggested Christmas might be cancelled: Ryan Tumilty, “The COVID-19 pandemic ‘really sucks,’ and also Christmas is now in jeopardy, Trudeau warns,” National Post, October 27, 2020, https://nationalpost.com/news/politics/the-covid-19-pandemic-really-sucks-and-christmas-is-now-in-jeopardy-trudeau-warns.

  In Canada, cases among twentysomethings have surged, surpassing the number of cases of those in the eighty-plus age range near the end of August: Dave Seglins, Andreas Wesley, and Roberto Rocha, “We looked at every confirmed COVID case in Canada. Here’s what we found,” CBC News, September 23, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/public-health-agency-of-canada-covid-19-statistics-1.5733069.

  In England, it found, a person aged fifty-five to sixty-four “who gets infected with SARS-CoV-2 faces a fatality risk that is more than 200 times higher than the annual risk of dying in a fatal car accident”: Stuart Thomson, “Study confirms massive age differences in COVID-19 death rates, middle-aged hit harder than thought,” National Post, July 30, 2020, https://nationalpost.com/health/study-confirms-massive-age-differences-in-covid-19-death-rates-middle-aged-hit-harder-than-thought.

  “Fortunately, your government has already shown us what needs to be done”: Bryce Hoye, “Lock down Manitoba because ‘it’s too late’ for targeted restrictions, doctors urge government,” CBC News, October 30, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/manitoba/manitoba-doctors-call-for-provincewide-shutdown-covid19-1.5783335; “Doctors call for province-wide lockdown: An open letter,” Winnipeg Free Press, October 30. 2020, https://www.winnipegfreepress.com/opinion/analysis/doctors-call-for-provincewide-lockdown-572920561.html.

  At the end of October, Theresa Tam released her annual report on the state of public health in Canada: “Chief public health officer of Canada’s report on the state of public health in Canada in 2020,” October 2020.

  It’s a flip on the “we’re all in it together” line and one that feels not only more honest but more helpful. At a later press conference: Rachel Aiello, “Canada’s top doctor calls for ‘structural change’ to address COVID-19 inequities,” CTV News, October 28, 2020, https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-s-top-doctor-calls-for-structural-change-to-address-covid-19-inequities-1.5164415.

  “Why can’t we have those governance structures beyond the crisis and into recovery?”: Theresa Tam as quoted by Rachel Aiello, “Canada’s top doctor calls for ‘structural change’ to address COVID-19 inequities,” CTV News, October 28, 2020, https://www.ctvnews.ca/health/coronavirus/canada-s-top-doctor-calls-for-structural-change-to-address-covid-19-inequities-1.5164415.

  Acknowledgements

  Though it may often feel like it, writing a book is anything but a solitary endeavour. With Women of the Pandemic, I was lucky to have a brilliant, creative, and endlessly supportive team. To everyone at McClelland & Stewart who helped bring this book into being, thank you. An especially big thank you to my editor, Jenny Bradshaw, who graciously took many scattered phone calls as I worked through the ideas, structure, and scope of this book, and offered patient, considered insight in return—not to mention her deft and thoughtful editing of everything that eventually landed on the page. Thank you to publisher Jared Bland for trusting me with this vital, fascinating project. Thank you to Kristin Cochrane for seeing the necessity of a project like this.

&
nbsp; I’m also incredibly grateful to designer Andrew Roberts for a vivid, eye-catching cover; to copy-editor Tara Tovell for her much-needed fine-tooth comb and sharp questions; to proofreader Erin Kern for her close read of every word and keen ability to vanquish typos; to editorial intern Trudy Fegan for helping to wrangle the many, many footnotes; and to publicity manager Ruta Liormonas, whose enthusiasm for the project built the platform for these women’s stories to be shared. I could not ask for a smarter, more encouraging team and I feel very fortunate to have worked on Women of the Pandemic with all of you.

  To my agent, Hilary McMahon, thank you for being both such a steadfast cheerleader and reality check, and for always finding the perfect home for my words. And to my family and friends—there’s no way I would have made it through 2020 without your phone calls and texts, handmade care packages, Zoom craft sessions and card nights, socially distanced park boxing workouts, and many walks through both Toronto’s tree-lined trails and most bougie neighbourhoods. Add writing a book to that unprecedented year and, well, I don’t think I can thank you all enough for all the love you sent my way. I’m grateful for your check-ins, your laughter, your kindness, and your persistent reminders to leave my desk once in a while. It was a tough year in so many ways, and I’m grateful I journeyed through it with so many extraordinary people, apart but together.

  But, most of all, thank you to everybody who shared their stories for this book. I appreciate your generosity, your vulnerability, and your openness. You carried us all through this sometimes-terrible, sometimes-inspiring, always-transformative time. You led and you sacrificed, and did everything you could to keep us all safe, even when it meant putting yourself in danger. To all the women of the pandemic: thank you. I wish that I could tell all of your stories; we need to hear them. Though I’ve tried the best I can to put your experiences into words, I believe the truth is that we owe you all more than we can express. May we begin to move forward with hope, kindness, compassion, and community—in a way that can honour what you gave us.