July 17 is National Tattoo Day and I’ve been thinking about getting one.

Some years back I wanted to get a screaming eagle tattoo on my chest, but was advised not to by a friend.

“It might look cool now, but what about when you are older,” she said. “If you get a screaming eagle tattooed on your chest now, then when you get old and flabby it will droop and fall from its perch and land on your belly button.”

I took her advice and passed on getting inked.

Now that I’ve become old and flabby, I’m reconsidering. I mean any tattoo I get today will do little drooping and falling. That’s already happened.

So, I decided that National Tattoo Day would be a great time to show off a freshly-inked screaming eagle on my sunken chest. Display it proudly when I go to the dock for a morning swim.

I’ve been researching tattoos and where to get one. And wow, I have discovered there are more tattoo statistics than there are mosquitoes in July.

Think professional baseball statistics are overwhelming? Tattoo statistics are far more mind-numbing.

Support Tattoos And Piercings At Work (STPAW), an advocacy group, reports that as of 2018 nearly 40 per cent of Canadians and 42 per cent of Americans had tattoos. Almost one-half of the Italian population (48 per cent) is tattooed.

Other surveys show that 17 per cent of people who get tattoos regret them. The regrettable ones usually are those with the name of a boyfriend or girlfriend who dumped them.

The website Tattoo Pro says that it costs 10 times more to remove a tattoo than to put one on.

Another reports that people get a tattoo because it makes them sexy (31 per cent), or shows them as rebellious (29 per cent), or shows them to be intelligent (five per cent).

For whatever reasons, tattooing has surged in recent years. One statistic says that Americans alone spend $1.6 billion a year on tattoos.

That seems like an exaggeration, but it is believable because there are more than 20,000 tattoo parlours in the U.S.

The tattooing trend is not something new. Humans around the world have been using tattoos for centuries to make certain statements.

The 5th century Greeks used tattoos as a means of communication between spies. The Romans marked criminals and slaves with tattoos. Maya, Inca and Aztec peoples used tattoos in rituals and the Norse and Saxons proudly tattooed family crests on their bodies.

During the Crusades, soldiers tattooed crosses on their hands to indicate that if they were killed, they needed a Christian burial. Here in Canada, Inuit people sometimes created tattoos by pulling carbon-infused thread through their skins or rubbing ashes or ink into cuts in their bodies.

Recent tattoo information that really caught my attention was the news that the European Union has banned some pigments used in tattooing, deeming them a health hazard. Green and blue pigments, which ink manufacturers and tattoo artists say may be impossible to replace, will be forbidden as of next year.

North American regulatory agencies are considering similar bans on some inks. There is concern among tattoo artists that not having certain inks will make it difficult to do some tattoos, notably the increasingly popular portrait tattoos. Those are the ones where someone decides to get a full-size, blue-eyed hula girl in green skirt inked on their back instead of a plain black and white screaming eagle on their chest.

Some ink manufacturers now put heavy metals such as copper and barium into their pigments to improve colour variations. Also, some have used neurotoxic agents like cadmium, lead and arsenic that can do odd things to the central nervous system.

Concerns over those ingredients appear to be the reason for the ink bans in Europe. However, despite the increasing number of people with tattoos there have been few documented health problems attributed to tattoos. The most common complications are allergic reactions and bacterial infections.

After gathering all of this information I have decided, once again, not to get a tattoo.

My apologies to the ladies at the lake, who had been anxiously awaiting my July 17 appearance on the dock.

 The COVID-19 pandemic is over. That seems to be a consensus in a world that has succumbed to COVID fatigue.

Most people have tossed their masks. Government mandates and restrictions are mostly gone.

But the killer virus is still with us. Two to three thousand Canadians are catching it every day. Hundreds are ending up in hospital every day and several dozen are dying of it every day. In the U.S., the daily average death rate from the virus is 314.

It is a virus that keeps bringing us surprises. The latest is research showing how quickly vaccine protection against the virus wanes.

A British study has found that two doses of the highly-rated Pfizer vaccine provide only 34 percent protection after six months. Two doses of Astro-Zeneca provide zero protection after six months.

Another British study found that booster shots start losing their effectiveness after 10 weeks. 

So, more people vaccinated and boosted are catching it, although most of those cases are not severe. Many are older people whose immune systems don’t respond to vaccines as well as younger people.

“There’s still exceptionally high risk among older adults, even those with primary vaccine series,” Andrew Stokes, a Boston University assistant professor who studies COVID death age, was quoted as saying recently.

What worries me most about the coronavirus that causes COVID-19 is how little we seem to know about it, and the surprises it brings us.

For instance, since the onset of COVID-19 there has been an increase in autoimmune disorders in people and pets. I know of three people who have contracted such disorders, which can range from recurring pneumonia to arthritis, lupus and psoriasis. 

Also, I have two granddogs who have developed autoimmune disorders since the pandemic began and have heard of other cases in dogs and cats.

Now there are reports of other viruses acting in odd ways. The medical community has reported surges in common viruses that cause colds and influenza, which are seen usually in the winter months.

Researchers are trying to figure out whether these common viruses are showing up now because of the lessening of masking and social distancing, or whether the powerful coronavirus is causing changes.

This coronavirus has too many variations, too many unanswered questions and too many surprises for us to become too relaxed.

Masking is unquestionably one of the most effective ways of reducing the spread of the virus. 

That’s not to say that government orders on mask wearing are the way to go. It is impossible for governments to enforce mask wearing for tens of millions of people.

And, government mandates for wearing masks have not proven very effective, as have other political decisions made during the pandemic.

Mask wearing at this point should be an individual decision. I intend to continue to wear mine in higher risk situations such as crowds.

The coronavirus is not going away anytime soon. Even if it does, there are other viruses out there preparing to take its place.

A worrisome one is the H5N1 strain of bird flu, which already has struck 100 species of wild birds. (If you have been wondering why you are seeing fewer birds around your place, the spreading bird flu might be the reason).

The experts say there is little risk that this bird flu will affect humans, however several human cases have been reported. There always is a risk of spillover into human populations as a virus evolves. Virus spillover from animals certainly has occurred many times in the past.

We live in a world of viruses. Shrugging and forgetting just how deadly and devastating they can be is a danger to us all.

For anyone who might have forgotten, here are a few facts to keep in mind:

In the United States, one of the world’s most medically advanced societies, coronavirus now is the third leading cause of death.

COVID-19 has reduced life expectancy in 31 of 37 high-income countries.

The virus has killed 6.3 million people worldwide.

Studies show that almost one-half of people who contract COVID-19 and survive suffer health impacts four months or more after the initial diagnosis.

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Working in the news industry can be depressing. It is work that draws much criticism and little praise.

The men and women who gather and report news get blamed for all kinds of stuff.

Politicians blame them for ills that they themselves create. The general public criticizes them for publishing stories and photos that show terrible things.

Take for instance the 1972 news photo of a nude nine-year-old girl running screaming down a road in Vietnam during a napalm attack. Her clothes were on fire and she tore them off, screaming. Nóng quá, nóng quá (“too hot, too hot”).

A frontal photo of a nude young girl burned and screaming is not something any person should want to see. It was an indecent photo that caused controversy and criticism.

Many have viewed it over the years and many more are seeing it now because June 8 was the 50th anniversary of its taking by Nick Ut, a 21-year-old photographer working for The Associated Press.

Pope Francis has seen it. Ut presented him an enlarged copy of the photo during an audience last month.

Yes, the Napalm Girl is a repulsive photo, but it is one of the most important news photos ever published. It captures the senseless cruelty of war, and the suffering it brings to innocent people, especially children.

That photo, plus other photos and news reports of the horrors of Vietnam, helped to change American public opinion about the war, which led to decisions to end it.

The story of the Napalm Girl did not end with the war. Kim Phuc, the little girl, suffered many operations and years of therapy and later defected to Canada. She now lives in the Toronto area.

As an adult she helped establish the Kim Foundation International, a non-profit organization dedicated to help heal innocent child victims of war.

Today she says showing photos of violent carnage, including the children and teachers slaughtered at Uvalde, Texas, seems unbearable. However, she wrote in the New York Times last week:

“ . . . but I think that showing the world what the aftermath of a gun rampage truly looks like can deliver the awful reality. We must face this violence head-on, and the first step is to look at it.”

Fifty years after the Napalm Girl photo was published, other gruesome photos are appearing in newspapers and on television screens. One of the most gruesome shows a mother and her two children lying bloody and face-up dead in a Ukraine street.

That photo was taken by American freelance photojournalist Lynsey Addario. She was photographing people fleeing Russian attacks when a mortar exploded, killing the mother, her teenage daughter, eight-year-old son and a friend.

“I’m thinking as horrific as this is, I have to document this because I just watched a mother and her two children get hit intentionally,” she told CNN’s Anderson Cooper in an interview.

Some might say it is obscene to show a mother and two children lying dead in a street.

Or, a screaming nude girl fleeing a napalm attack. Or, a two-year-old Syrian boy washed up on a Mediterranean beach, one of thousands of refugees drowned while fleeing a life of repression in the Middle East.

The news media has a social responsibility to tell important stories that some people might not like to hear or see. It is not its job to shield readers or viewers from humanity’s ugliness.

“We all do this work in order to have an impact, in order to affect policy, in order to educate people – to show the reality on the ground,” says Addario.

News and information give life to democracy. They are like air – not always totally clean, but necessary for life.

Horst Faas, the Associated Press photo editor who approved publication of the Napalm Girl photo, once said it is necessary to publish photos of graphic violence because “pain keeps you conscious.”

There is much pain in pictures of people, especially children, suffering and dying. But they are necessary pictures that should never be put to rest.

Hopefully, the gruesome photos coming out of Ukraine continue to live in our heads, causing us enough pain to do whatever is needed to stop that inhumane war.

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The really good news about last week’s Ontario election is that its citizens remain pragmatic, rather than dogmatic.

Voters didn’t re-elect Doug Ford’s government because they absolutely love it or passionately believe in it. They voted for it because they felt that is the best they could do considering other choices.

Ontario voters always have placed pragmatism above party loyalty. When they felt Conservatives could govern better than others, they voted them in. Ditto Liberals and New Democrats. 

Ontario even elected a United Farmers Party back in 1919. They might not have really liked the party, nor its politicians, but they felt that was the best they could do at the time.

Dumping party loyalty voting for pragmatic voting is a good thing because party loyalty often breeds fanaticism. Whatever your party believes and does, you stand by it whether it is good for the citizens or not.

 
Look at the United States. Democrats and Republicans are so frozen into their parties’ opposing beliefs that the country has become ungovernable. Its citizens are suffering because the parties refuse to step off the party line.

Party tribalism in that country has made it impossible to control gun violence, despite more than 250 mass shootings this year. That’s an average of roughly 1.5 mass shootings (four or more people shot dead) every day.

Meanwhile, the really bad news about last week’s Ontario election was the low voter turnout. Only 43 per cent of eligible voters cast a ballot compared to 57 per cent in 2018.

When the math is done, that huge Progressive Conservative majority chosen to govern the province for the next four years was elected by just 18 per cent of all eligible Ontario voters.

That low vote, the lowest in the province’s history, is being attributed to voter apathy. Many potential voters did not see the Ford government as excellent. Nor did they see it as a disaster. They saw no need for a change, so were not motivated to vote.

The sad fact is not only was the majority of eligible voters not motivated to vote, they were not prepared. Most of us, whether we vote or not, are not well informed when choosing our governments.

We see a few manipulative political TV ads, follow uneducated voices on social media and listen to our friends, most of whom are no better informed than we are. We like style more than substance.

We don’t spend time seriously studying the issues or the candidates and their leaders. That’s why the world in general has so many mediocre politicians, and leaders who would have trouble running a peanut stand.

I blame our education systems. They fail to educate our children about the critical importance of selecting governments and leaders, or how to think deeply and critically in deciding who to elect.

As the American comedian Bill Maher said on TV the other night: People are so dumb (he used other words that I can’t use here) you wonder how a country can continue to exist.

We need education systems that provide strong courses in civics. Systems that teach our children the importance of quality leadership and what qualities to look for in good leaders. And, how to focus on substance instead of style when deciding who you want to lead you.

We need to elect people with the backbone to reject party policy when they think it is wrong. People who do what they think is right, not what the party wants. People who reject the party line even if it makes them outliers and costs them votes.

I’m not saying the few voters who did cast ballots last week elected the right or wrong government. I don’t have a preference. I’ve voted for each of the major parties at one time of another.

I am saying that whatever governments we do elect, must be better. 
The potential catastrophes facing our current and future world are unprecedented.

 
We have the resources and the ingenuity to fight them. What we don’t have are well-informed and engaged electorates to vote in governments and leaders who will bring fearless excellence to the fight.

 
Better education in civics can give us that.