Women of the Pandemic

by Lauren McKeon

  This book covers a moment in time—a small, but I think important, part of the pandemic. I wrote Women of the Pandemic because I believe it is essential that we remember these women and this point in history. Their bravery, their losses, their creativity, their activism, and their resilience will help lead us forward as we recover this year, and the next, and all the years after. We don’t know what will happen to the world as we try to define a new normal. But we do know that, if we forget again, whatever we build next will be poorer for it. At the end of October, Theresa Tam released her annual report on the state of public health in Canada. Needless to say, it was unlike any annual health report before it. More than that, the report acknowledged, in writing, that we were not quite “all in it together”; many populations and groups suffered more than others. Tam also offered a new perspective on certain often-quoted statistics—for example, the fact that the overwhelming majority of those who were hospitalized, or died in hospital, had underlying conditions. Tam reframed the weird reassurance that only the previously unhealthy are at risk for what it was: a failure in the health system to care for those pre-existing conditions. Many of those people were sick because they were already at risk, doubly neglected.

  The nod was refreshing. So too was the rest of the report, which stressed the interconnected nature of the pandemic and the necessarily interconnected nature of any proposed recovery plan. “The bottom line,” she wrote in the report, is that “no one is protected until everyone is protected.” 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, Tam expanded on the sentiment, adding that she sees COVID-19 as a catalyst for collaboration among health, social, and economic sectors, as well as different levels of governance. She went on to echo something many of the women I interviewed also asked me: “Why can’t we have those governance structures beyond the crisis and into recovery?” It’s questions like this from those in power that give me hope for our future, in pandemic times and beyond.

  Notes

  Introduction

  Science was still unable to definitively explain: World Health Organization, “Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) situation report –94,” April 23, 2020, https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200423-sitrep-94-covid-19.pdf?sfvrsn=b8304bf0_2; Smriti Mallpaty, “Animal source of the coronavirus continues to elude scientists,” Nature, May 18, 2020, https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-01449-8.

  including at least a dozen others who suddenly arrived in the city’s hospitals: Chaolin Huang, et al., “Clinical features of patients infected with 2019 novel coronavirus in Wuhan, China,” The Lancet 395, no. 10223 (February 15, 2020): 497–506, https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lancet/article/PIIS0140-6736(20)30183-5/fulltext.

  In less than a week, the number of cases climbed from forty-one to fifty-nine: Sui-Wee Lee and Donald G. McNeil Jr., “China identifies new virus causing pneumonialike illness,” New York Times, January 8, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/08/health/china-pneumonia-outbreak-virus.html.

  By January 19, both the Chinese government and the World Health Organization (WHO) had estimated: “Timeline of WHO’s response to COVID-19,” World Health Organization, September 9, 2020, https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/29-06-2020-covidtimeline.

  Four days later, China abruptly closed Wuhan’s borders: Amy Qin and Vivian Wang, “Wuhan, center of coronavirus outbreak, is being cut off by Chinese authorities,” New York Times, January 24, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/01/22/world/asia/china-coronavirus-travel.html.

  which has not been eradicated and which had, by the end of 2019, killed over 850 people: “Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS CoV),” World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/emergencies/mers-cov/en/.

  “There are things that should frighten you about this coronavirus,” she added: Tristan Bronca, “The 2019 coronavirus is not like SARS,” Canadian Healthcare Network, January 31, 2020, https://www.canadianhealthcarenetwork.ca/the-2019-coronavirus-is-not-like-sars.

  In Canada, women comprise 81 per cent of healthcare workers: “Employment by class of worker, annual,” Statistics Canada, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/cv.action?pid=1410002701.

  during nationwide shutdowns, and that racialized women, specifically, held more essential jobs than anybody else: Campbell Robertson and Robert Gebelof, “How millions of women became the most essential workers in America,” New York Times, April 18, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/18/us/coronavirus-women-essential-workers.html.

  Women between the ages of twenty-five and fifty-four, in particular: Matt Lundy, “Women, younger workers bear brunt of one million job losses in March,” Globe and Mail, April 9, 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/business/economy/article-canada-loses-record-1-million-jobs-as-coronavirus-fallout-slams/.

  Economists began calling the chilling economic nosedive in North America the “she-cession”: Erica Alini, “Welcome to the ‘she-session.’ Why this recession is different,” Global News, May 9, 2020, https://globalnews.ca/news/6907589/canada-coronavirus-she-session/.

  as COVID-19 swept through long-term care (LTC) homes in Canada at twice the rate: Cassandra Szklarski, “Canada’s proportion of COVID-19 deaths in long-term care double the average of other countries, study shows,” CBC News, June 25, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/health/coronavirus-canada-long-term-care-deaths-study-1.5626751; “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?emktg_lang=en&emktg_order=1.

  only places in the world where more women than men: Les Perreaux, “Women make up over half of COVID-19 deaths in Canada, counter to trends in most of world,” Globe and Mail, May 21, 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/canada/article-women-make-up-over-half-of-covid-19-deaths-in-canada-counter-to/.

  B.C.’s Henry, easily the most popular of the bunch, even got her own fan club: https://www.fluevog.com/shop/6155-dr-henry-pink-burgundy.

  In June, the New York Times ran a profile of her under the headline “The Top Doctor Who Aced the Coronavirus Test”: Catherine Porter, “The top doctor who aced the coronavirus test,” New York Times, June 5, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/world/canada/bonnie-henry-british-columbia-coronavirus.html.

  Trenches opened on New York’s Hart Island, packed with unadorned wood boxes: “In pictures: The novel coronavirus outbreak,” CNN, November 19, 2020, https://www.cnn.com/2020/03/19/world/gallery/novel-coronavirus-outbreak/index.html.

  In Brooklyn, bodies in garish orange bags hemmed hospital hallways and loading bays: Miriam Elder, “Nurse shared a harrowing photo of COVID-19 victims to show how horrifying the Outbreak is,” Buzzfeed News, March 29, 2020, https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/miriamelder/coronavirus-new-york-city-hospital-nurse-covid-19-deaths; Jackie Salo, “Disturbing photos show body bags fill hallways of Brooklyn hospital amid coronavirus,” New York Post, April 5, 2020, https://nypost.com/2020/04/05/disturbing-photos-show-body-bags-in-hallways-of-nyc-hospital-amid-coronavirus/.

  “By this point it’s become clear that the pandemic is not the ‘great equalizer’ ”: Yue Qian and Sylvia Fuller, “COVID-19 and the gender employment gap among parents of young children,” University of Toronto Press Journals 46, no. S2 (August 2020): S89–S101, https://utpjournals.press/doi/pdf/10.3138/cpp.2020-077.

  Already we’ve seen a widening gender pay gap, an uneven return to work: “COVID-19: A gender lens,” UNFPA technical brief, March 2020, https://www.unfpa.org/sites/default/files/resource-pdf/COVID-19_A_Gender_Lens_Guidance_Note.pdf; Kendra Mangione, “When it comes to going back to work, COVID-19 is impacting Canadian mothers more than fathers: Study,” CTV News, July 7, 2020, https://bc.ctvnews.ca/when-it-comes-to-going-back-to-work-covid-19-is-impacting-canadian-mothers-more-than-fathers-study-1.50142
44?fbclid=IwAR2yHAcNN6BxOLVWzQxNsdKfzwYKA1z1YmQwFlZUcFUfluhwloCMefCChOg.

  One: The Pandemic Arrives

  Every year, her team also screens returning travellers: “Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus (MERS-CoV),” World Health Organization, https://www.who.int/emergencies/mers-cov/en/.

  A fifty-six-year-old man who had been travelling: “First imported case of 2019 novel coronavirus in Canada, presenting as mild pneumonia,” The Lancet 395 (February 13, 2020): 734, https://doi.org/10.1016/.

  Launched in 2008, PHO is a direct result, as the organization’s first annual report puts it, of “Ontario’s wake-up call from a series of outbreaks”: Public Health Ontario, Annual Report 2008–9, https://www.publichealthontario.ca/-/media/documents/a/2008/annual-report-2008-09.pdf?la=en.

  the province was in the midst of a listeriosis outbreak linked to contaminated cold cuts from Maple Leaf Foods: “Report of the independent investigator into the 2008 listeriosis outbreak,” https://www.canada.ca/en/news/archive/2009/07/report-independent-investigator-into-2008-listeriosis-outbreak.html.

  About a week later, on Saturday, January 11, Chinese health authorities released the full sequence for SARS-CoV-2: Institut Pasteur, “Whole genome of novel coronavirus, 2019-nCoV, sequenced,” ScienceDaily, January 31, 2020, https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2020/01/200131114748.htm.

  the Program for Monitoring Emerging Diseases, or ProMED-mail, a free email service with over eighty thousand subscribers—the same service from which Allen received her January 3 alert: ProMED, https://promedmail.org/about-promed/.

  The estimated case count was “apparently” twenty-seven: ProMED, December 30, 2019, https://promedmail.org/promed-post/?id=6864153.

  January 23: 570. January 30: 7,818. January 31: 9,800: Derrick Bryson Taylor, “A timeline of the coronavirus pandemic,” New York Times, August 6, 2020, https://www.nytimes.com/article/coronavirus-timeline.html; https://www.who.int/docs/default-source/coronaviruse/situation-reports/20200130-sitrep-10-ncov.pdf?sfvrsn=d0b2e480_2.

  Not only was SARS-CoV-2 new, but science had only recognized the wider coronavirus family: “Understanding SARS-CoV-2 and the drugs that might lessen its power,” The Economist, March 12, 2020, https://www.economist.com/briefing/2020/03/12/understanding-sars-cov-2-and-the-drugs-that-might-lessen-its-power.

  Even then, when the close biological copy of SARS-CoV-2 struck, many virologists in Canada were still focused on other, more lethal things—Zika, West Nile, HIV: Samira Mubareka, TheFutureEconomy, “Covid-19 research: Genomics, rapid execution & funding,” April 27, 2020, https://thefutureeconomy.ca/interviews/samira-mubareka/.

  The coronavirus will then hijack the cell’s machinery, creating endless doppelgangers: Meredith Wadman, Jennifer Couzin-Frankel, Jocelyn Kaiser, and Catherine Matacic, “A rampage through the body,” Science, April 24, 2020, https://science.sciencemag.org/content/368/6489/356?fbclid=IwAR2WoMUA4nImPFU5YNqkEibIj5QMFeWoxYdGuOxheLN1aUEZzXfqBncqSQc.

  Within their core, coronaviruses all have a strand of RNA, similar to DNA in that it contains the genetic information of the virus: “What are the parts of a coronavirus?”, Scripps.edu, https://www.scripps.edu/covid-19/faqs/parts-of-a-coronavirus/.

  In 1933, scientists isolated the influenza A virus using ferrets: “Epidemiology and prevention of vaccine-preventable diseases: Influenza,” https://www.cdc.gov/vaccines/pubs/pinkbook/flu.html; Claude Hannoun, “The evolving history of influenza viruses and influenza vaccines,” Expert Review of Vaccines 12, no. 9 (2013): 1085–94, https://www.medscape.com/viewarticle/812621.

  Known as Vero cells, and first derived in 1962 from a dissected monkey in Japan: “Cell line profile: Vero,” Public Health England, https://www.phe-culturecollections.org.uk/media/122249/vero-cell-line-profile.pdf; Roxanne Khamsi, “Scientists may be using the wrong cells to study Covid-19,” Wired, August 6, 2020, https://www.wired.com/story/scientists-may-be-using-the-wrong-cells-to-study-covid-19/.

  A human cell is about 10,000 nanometres; a coronavirus is 90 nanometres: “Lesson 2: Scale of objects,” NanoSense, https://nanosense.sri.com/activities/sizematters/sizeandscale/SM_Lesson2Student.pdf.

  The first worldwide case was reported in Mexico on March 18, 2009: “2009 H1N1 Pandemic Resources,” Infection Prevention and Control Canada, https://ipac-canada.org/pandemic-h1n1-resources.php.

  During the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic, mortality rates were particularly high for children under age five: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “1918 pandemic (H1N1 virus), https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/1918-pandemic-h1n1.html.

  Children also suffered more during swine flu: Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, “2009 H1N1 pandemic (H1N1pdm09 virus),” https://www.cdc.gov/flu/pandemic-resources/2009-h1n1-pandemic.html.

  “This produced unnecessary delays and created confusion in populations who often were getting mixed messages”: Joshua Loomis, Epidemics: The Impact of Germs and Their Power over Humanity (Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2018).

  “The challenge in all of this is it’s unprecedented”: Sharon Kirkey, “Stopping Covid-19 could require eight months of ‘aggressive social distancing,’ outbreak modelling shows,” National Post, March 21, 2020, https://nationalpost.com/health/could-the-covid-19-crisis-mean-well-be-social-distancing-for-eight-months-or-more.

  A century after that, a plague caused an under-attack Britain to seek help: “Pandemics that changed history,” April 1, 2020, History.com, https://www.history.com/topics/middle-ages/pandemics-timeline.

  By then, it had caused the deaths of some fifty million people: “How pandemics change society,” TheWeek.com, May 24, 2020, https://theweek.com/articles/915738/how-pandemics-change-society; Elizabeth Kolbert, “Pandemics and the shape of human history,” The New Yorker, April 6, 2020, https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/04/06/pandemics-and-the-shape-of-human-history.

  Smallpox, or the “speckled monster”: Christopher J. Rutty, “A pox on our history,” CanadasHistory.ca, April 7, 2020, https://www.canadashistory.ca/explore/science-technology/a-pox-on-our-nation#:~:text=Smallpox%20began%20to%20shape%20Canada’s,North%20American%20fur%2Dtrading%20post.

  both facilitated colonialism and decimated a way of life—likely deliberately: Joshua Ostroff, “How a smallpox epidemic forged modern British Columbia,” Maclean’s, August 1, 2017, https://www.macleans.ca/news/canada/how-a-smallpox-epidemic-forged-modern-british-columbia/; Sarah Pruitt, “How colonization’s death toll may have affected Earth’s climate,” History.com, January 31, 2019, https://www.history.com/news/climate-change-study-colonization-death-farming-collapse.

  It killed fifty million people and prevented the Americans from striking German reparations from the Treaty of Versailles, arguably paving the way for the Second World War: “How pandemics change society,” TheWeek.com, May 24, 2020, https://theweek.com/articles/915738/how-pandemics-change-society.

  Two: Feeding a Country

  Stress-baking alone drove flour sales up 200 per cent: “Canadian consumers adapt to Covid-19: A look at Canadian grocery sales up to April 11,” Statistics Canada, May 11, 2020, https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/n1/pub/62f0014m/62f0014m2020005-eng.htm.

  These ambitious farmers ushered in an era of better treatment, a fledgling middle class, and a new economic model—a turning point now referred to as the birth of agrarian capitalism: Adam McBride, “The Black Death led to the demise of feudalism. Could this pandemic have a similar effect?” Salon, April 26, 2020, https://www.salon.com/2020/04/26/the-black-death-led-to-the-demise-of-feudalism-could-this-pandemic-have-a-similar-effect/.

  As one union president put it, “Who in their right mind would risk contracting COVID…for $11.32 an hour?”: Steven Chase, “Grocery executives defend decision to cut $2-per hour ‘hero’ pay for workers,” Globe and Mail, July 10, 2020, https://www.theglobeandmail.com/politics/article-grocery-executives-defend-decision-to-cut-covid-19-pay-premiums-for/?utm_medium=Referrer:+Social+Net
work+/+Media&utm_campaign=Shared+Web+Article+Links.

  in late March that such raises, along with other support programs, were “simply the right things to do”: Haley Ryan, “4 major Canadian grocers give front-line workers a raise during COVID-19 pandemic,” CBC News, March 23, 2020, https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/nova-scotia/sobeys-grocery-loblaw-metro-wages-pay-raise-covid-19-1.5506935.

  Then you’d hear about the Oshawa department manager who died: Bryan Passifiume, “Oshawa grocery store worker, 48, Ontario’s youngest COVID-19 death,” CBC News, March 27, 2020, https://torontosun.com/news/local-news/oshawa-grocery-store-worker-48-ontarios-youngest-covid-19-death.

  the Vaughan distribution centre worker: Bryann Aguilar, “Worker at Ontario distribution plant dies after contracting COVID-19,” CTV News, May 8, 2020, https://toronto.ctvnews.ca/worker-at-ontario-distribution-plant-dies-after-contracting-covid-19-1.4932054?cache=.

  the Walmart employee: Tom Blackwell, “Hundreds infected, several dead: How COVID-19 has affected the unsung essential workers in retail,” National Post, May 23, 2020, https://nationalpost.com/news/canada/hundreds-infected-several-dead-how-covid-19-has-affected-the-unsung-essential-workers-in-retail.