Yearly Archives: 2020

Day 31 – April 16, 2020

The B.C. number was published minutes after I posted this at 5pm, so I’ve just updated it… and it’s a good one, only 14 new cases. Great to see after yesterday’s spike… and although one day doesn’t make or break anything, that’s the direction we love to see.

Ontario’s growth continues to remain consistent, around 6% — which is a TTD of 12 days. Quebec is probably in a similar range, maybe less (ie better) — but is more volatile. They had a bit of a jump in today’s new cases, but that could be for many reasons. I’ll have a lot more to say about B.C. tomorrow after the modelling presentation… which you should watch, if you can… at 11am.

A couple of shoutouts while I’m here — to the staff and residents at the South Granville Park Lodge… my grandfather, who passed away many years ago… lived his last few years at that residence, and it was a peaceful and happy time, after a 94-year life full of extreme highs and lows. The staff was exemplary, and they unfortunately now find themselves a cluster of COVID-19 cases. I wish them all well.

And… a family friend in Montreal — who I’ve known my entire life… in fact, our families go back close to 80 years of knowing each other… 4 generations now… had been struggling in the ICU with COVID-19, on a ventilator for two weeks with a high fever that would come and go but never go away… well, as of this morning, I’m incredibly happy to report… no more fever and no more ventilator. He’s going to be ok, after a hellish 2-week nightmare. He is my age, my demographic, and at least as healthy as me. That struck very close to home… this thing is serious and this thing can hit anyone. But in this particular case, I probably can’t find the right words to express my relief. Whatever else, it’s been a great day.

And to radically shift gears, the rest of this post will serve as a bit of a public service announcement… these days, scammers, who may also be locked up in isolation, also need to make a living and are trying all sorts of new things, one of which is scary enough that a few people have reached out to me to ask if it’s for real.

You may have received an email where the subject line contains your password… and when I say your password, I mean some password you used somewhere, at some point in the past. And if it happens to be your current online banking password, that can indeed be really scary. I really hope that it’s not a password you use everywhere, because while things aren’t as scary as you think, you do have a bit of a hassle on your hands. But let’s break this down into little bits, and solve each piece of it.

  • how did they get my password and/or name and/or email address?
    – what else do they have?
    – how real is the threat?
    – what do I do?
    – what do I not do?First thing, relax. No matter how bad you think it is, it’s not.

    The email has your actual password, which is certainly enough to get your attention… and it then goes on to say that they’ve seized control of your computer and camera, have a complete log of you sitting in front of your computer doing whatever you do there, and a list of all the sites you’ve visited and all of your contacts. And unless you send them some amount of Bitcoin, they will send that video and list of websites to all of your contacts.

    Rest assured, nobody has taken control of your computer or your camera or your contacts or anything else. There is no video. It’s all complete bullshit. The scary aspect of your password sitting on the subject line means that somewhere, some site where you used that password got compromised… and if you use that password anywhere else, you really should change it… though I will point out that if it’s your “junk” password, it barely matters. I can assure you, some Bulgarian hacker has no interest in fiddling with your subscription preferences to “Turnip Harvester Weekly”. That being said, it’s always suggested you have unique passwords for everything, specifically for this reason — if some database gets hacked (which unfortunately happens more often than it should), that’s the only site and password-reset you have to worry about.

    Huge lists (with millions of names) exist for purchase on the DarkWeb where your name, email address and that associated hacked password are available. These lists sell for cheap, and anyone with some time and a bit of knowledge on how to merge a database with an email template can put together an email like the one you got, and send it to a million people. It is like casting a million little fishing lines into the ocean, and seeing what bites. Usually the email address it came from isn’t even valid, and the email will say — don’t bother trying to contact me. Or reply for proof that I have your contact lists. On that note, if it is valid, do not reply… because that might actually get you onto a list of “live ones”, which only means you’ll now be getting 10x the number of those scam emails in the future. And if you replied and if they did have a list of your contacts, again… relax… it didn’t come from your computer. At the end of all that, the scammer wants you to send some Bitcoin, and if you do, he’ll delete the video and leave you alone forever.

    So… they got your password from a hacked site. If you use that password anywhere important, go change it now. If they sent you a list of contacts to prove they know who you know… they probably got it from Facebook, which has an option that lets people find you via your email address. This is a security hole that everyone should adjust, because if they can find you on Facebook with your email address, and you have your friends list open to the world… then that’s how they know all these people you know. Fix that now… go to Facebook, under Settings, under Privacy… there is a section called “How People Find and Contact You” — settings for who can find you via your email and who can see your friends list and who can look you up via phone number. None of those should be set to “Everyone”. At worst, “Friends of Friends”. Just “Friends” is better. “Only me” might be best. That’s up to you, but lock it up so that random strangers can’t find you or your friends.

    The scammer wants you to send Bitcoin because it’s anonymous. Incidentally, if you need any further proof that this is all nonsense, consider that he’s sending the same Bitcoin wallet address to everyone. If you send him money, he actually has no way of knowing the money came from you. He’s hoping some of those one million little fishing lines will bite, and the Bitcoin wallet will just magically fill up from victims around the world.

    It’s always occurred to me that anyone who’s intelligent enough to be able to figure out how to purchase Bitcoin and then send it — probably wouldn’t fall for this in the first place. But that password thing is a little scary… so maybe it got you thinking in that direction. No worries.

    Summary of action items:
    – if you use that password anywhere, change it
    – review your Facebook settings as per above and adjust as needed
    – google your email address and see if that pops up any information you wouldn’t want out there
    – delete the email

… and stop worrying.

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:41:04-07:00April 16th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Follower Favourites, Life in Vancouver, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |25 Comments
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Day 30 – April 15, 2020

The textbook definition of the word “optics” has to to do with light, and its interaction with the physical world. The most familiar adaptations we’re familiar with have to do with light interacting with our own eyes… optician, optometrist, ophthalmologist.

If you’re a professional photographer, this extends to different lenses and fields of vision and lighting and focal lengths and so on.

When it comes to business or politics, “the optics” refers to how it looks… to the general public. “What are the optics?” is the buzzword-question asked of advisors and consultants and marketers and branding experts and spokespeople and press secretaries — by the people behind the scenes who’ll care about the answer. How will the public take it?

Over this last long weekend, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau decided to join his family, who’ve been living in the Harrington Lake cottage for the last few weeks, for Easter. The cottage is in Gatineau Park, which is in Quebec.

That visit violated the social distancing orders that the federal government and every provincial government has imposed on its residents — the same ones Trudeau himself repeats every time he’s at the podium. That visit also violated the order with respect to crossing the provincial border which at the moment is supposed to be open only to essential travel.

And just to shove it a bit more in all of our collective faces — us, most of whom who stayed home all weekend, many of us who have cabins and cottages and places to where we’d love to have gone to get away from it all… and if not, especially in this beautiful weather, just pack up the SUV and go camping somewhere — he posted a selfie of himself and his family.

The picture shows a beautiful, smiling family of five, clear blue skies with a few light, scattered clouds in the background. Everyone dressed appropriately for the crisp, fresh air. A few wispy trees. The lake itself in the distant background. From a photographical optics point-of-view, excellent. From a political optics point-of-view, awful. Just awful.

Forced to explain himself, the PM gave a somewhat meandering and deflective comment. Within his statement was the sentence, “We continue to follow all the instructions of the authorities.” You’re supposed to be the top of that authority, Mr. PM.

Meanwhile, on the other side of the country, not to be outdone, Conservative leader Andrew Scheer stepped onto a government jet in Regina with his entire family, completely destroying any semblance of social distancing a 9-seater plane may have been able to offer its present two occupants. Why would his family, who one would think should be isolating at home in Regina, need to be heading to Ottawa. In a normal world, that last sentence would have a question mark after it, but these rhetorical questions don’t need them because the answers are self-evident.

We seem to have been dealt a fortunate hand here in B.C. — our provincial leaders convey a calm, consistent message with logic and transparency. They walk the walk, not just talk it. The plan is collective; you hear the word “we” a lot, and that “we” includes them. One wonders what that might look like at a national level. Like, how would it look if there were an entire country being guided by the calm, clear plan and intelligent reassurance we hear almost daily from Dr. Henry? What would it look like if B.C. were its own country and had control of its borders and could independently navigate this entire ordeal?

That particular rhetorical question actually has an answer: New Zealand… which coincidentally has a very similar population of around 5 million people. But the similarities don’t end there.

Their Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has a lot in common with our own Dr. Henry. She stands up in front of her people, she speaks calmly and intelligently and pulls no punches when expressing the seriousness of the situation… but at the same time, is reassuring and inclusive and transparent. She is very much one of them, and she knows how to talk to them, and they listen.

On March 14th, when there were only 8 confirmed cases in the entire country of New Zealand (B.C. was at 73, Canada at 252), PM Ardern clamped down hard and implemented all sorts of measures that have now become familiar to all of us; 14-day isolation upon returning from out of the country, canceling cruise ships, cancelling big events and festivals. She went on TV and said a lot of things, many of which will sound familiar… “We will get through this together”. “Be strong”. “Be kind”.

Eight cases might sound early, but the results have been better than anywhere else on the planet. She saw what was happening around the world, she realized that time was of the essence and that even the slightest variation of the initial conditions (see yesterday’s post) can make a big difference. If she erred, it was to the side of caution, which these days might be the only right way to be wrong.

One of the sound bites of that TV address was her plea: “We must go hard and we must go early”. It has been said that this is the same sort of rallying cry that the coach of the New Zealand All Blacks might give his players before a game. My personal experience playing a rugby team from NZ would agree. They proceeded to go hard and go early and destroy us. Great bunch — this was in high school, so there were no after-match drinks, just handshakes, but I would’ve enjoyed a pint with those guys. Their game was disciplined, cohesive and well-executed. It was all business, from start to finish.… much like New Zealand’s response has been so far. And that’s why they’re winning; they can all relate, and there is tremendous trust in their leadership and the plan. It looks and sounds good, and it’s working. Good Optics.

Justin… Andrew… come on guys, you can do better, and the country deserves better. We need better. You’re both “one of us” too. Lead by example. Don’t just tell us what to do; do it yourself as well. Lead by example, because mixed signals and a “the rules don’t apply to us” attitude — Bad Optics.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:55-07:00April 15th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |13 Comments
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Day 29 – April 14, 2020

In simple terms, there are three initial conditions to consider if you’re going to fire a cannon: the weight of the cannonball, how much gunpowder you load into the cannon, and the angle of the cannon when you fire it.

If you’re trying to figure out what effect changing those variables can have, the right way to do it is to fix two of them and then see what happens as you vary the third.

For example, set the cannon at a 30-degree angle, and use the same weight of cannonball for 5 shots. Pack each of those 5 shots with increasing amounts of gunpowder… like 10, 20, 30 pounds and so on.

After you’ve fired those five cannonballs, measure the different distances and graph them. And draw a line through those 5 points… and extend it, beyond the last one, following the shape of that line. It might be perfectly straight. It might curve a bit. This is called extrapolation, and lets you make a pretty good guess as to what would happen if you had kept adding more gunpowder.

Now, do the same… this time, use the same amount of gunpowder, but use different weights of cannonballs. Graph and extrapolate that too.

Finally, pick one of those cannonball weights and a fixed amount of gunpowder, and fire them all, changing the cannon’s angle by 5 degrees each time. Graph and extrapolate.

Given those three graphs and their extrapolated lines, you now have a pretty good idea of how to fire this cannon, depending on what you desire. There may be many ways of hitting a target 500 yards away, but one uses more gunpowder. Or maybe you want to hit it with a bigger cannonball. Maybe there are trees in the way, so you’ll need a steeper angle.

One thing that’s certain; the only control you have with this cannonball is what you set with these initial conditions. Once you light that fuse and the cannoball blasts its way out of there, there is nothing you can do about its trajectory. Hopefully you got it right.

It occurs to me that a more modern and relevant example would be golf. When you’re trying to hit a golfball into a hole 150 yards away, there are many variables to consider, and usually, too many for most people, all at once. Pick the right club, but after that… the wind, your tight grip (but not too tight), feet shoulder-width apart, bend your knees, lean forward, keep your waist straight, look at the ball… etc etc. There are many more, and very few people are able to maintain all of those, all at once. And one initial condition out of place affects the whole thing. And again, like the cannonball, once you hit the ball, all you can do is watch.

When you look at the graphs in this picture, it’s not hard to visualize where these lines might be going, given the trajectories shown. If you look at the TTD chart for the world, the one on the far right, you can see the red Canada line in between the black South Korea line and the green Italy line. For a long time, we were hearing thing about which trajectory Canada might be following, using those two countries as examples… ideally, South Korea… but, worryingly, looking like Italy.

Ideally, our red line would’ve bent harder and right, sooner. It didn’t, but it also didn’t follow Italy, though the shape is the same, and using extrapolation, all things being equal, we can tell where we might wind up with respect to cases, if nothing changes.

Except all things are not equal. Unlike cannonballs and golfballs, the big difference here is that we can course-correct, and we have. Our red line and the American blue line were on top of each other for a while… until around March 26th, where things diverged rapidly. Implementing changes makes a difference, and the timing of it is key. A few days sooner or later makes a big difference.

It’s important to note that there were many initial conditions, both here and around the world, that affected things greatly. A big crowd at a soccer game. A large church gathering. Staggered Spring Break dates. The Canucks were away for almost two weeks after Feb 22nd. An endless list of endless jurisdictions where at the right place/right time, some situation that may have brought together a lot of people from lots of different places — did or didn’t happen, for whatever reason.

We will be shown some modelling later this week, and some “what if” scenarios. The biggest “what if” around has to do with properly implementing the measures that have been imposed in many places (including here), and the effects they’ve had. There is some guesswork and some assumptions, but they’re intelligent guesses based on what’s been experienced elsewhere. Extrapolated graphs are part of it. And every indication is that what we’re doing has made — and continues to make — a big difference.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:55-07:00April 14th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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Day 28 – April 13, 2020

Once in a while, we have a movie night here at home…. who are we kidding, every night is movie night these days… and recently (well, before Tiger King), we saw a movie that could best be described as a combination of Groundhog Day and… Alien? Predator? War of the Worlds? If you’re not familiar with Groundhog Day — you should see it. To some extent, it feels like we’re living it these days… but to summarize (spoiler alert), in the movie, a normal guy (well, Bill Murray) is caught in a time loop where he lives the same day over and over until he’s finally lived it perfectly and then his life can go on.

Those SciFi movies I listed all have in common the good-guy-humans vs. the bad-guy-aliens. In all cases, the good-guy humans prevail, with varying degrees of importance… saving themselves, saving the world, saving the universe.

Mix the two together, and what you get is humans vs. aliens, but with an interesting twist. Typically, our hero goes from battle to battle, close call to close call… until finally, he prevails. But in this movie, our hero keeps dying… because these aliens are seriously powerful. He doesn’t last more than a few minutes the first time. But as time goes on, he gets a little further along in his quest to kill the aliens — before he’s killed, and then wakes up the next day, and starts all over again. It’s a Hollywood movie (Edge of Tomorrow) with a Hollywood A-lister (Tom Cruise), so (spoiler alert) you can guess the ending… but here’s the takeaway of the whole thing… when he finally gets it right, when he finally — after brutally and painfully dying hundreds of times — is able to extinguish the aliens and life can go on and humanity is saved… nobody knows. It’s like nothing ever happened. It’s like the aliens never even showed up. All of humanity benefitted from the suffering this guy endured, but no one will ever know.

As we starting emerging from lockdown and navigate the complicated plan of getting back to normal, more and more of the crazies will emerge. There was a protest over the weekend where some people with “Fake News” and “CON-VID-19” signs showed up. Apparently, this is all a big conspiracy to… to… well, to what? These guys typically bundle-up all of the current conspiracies, so it’s difficult to unravel a logical narrative that might even make sense. The Chinese created it and activate it with 5G and have the vaccine but won’t give it to us but killed thousands of their own people to show it’s real but Deep State and Illuminati and government power-grab and… and… well, even if that mess of insanity were true, how exactly does Canada figure into it?

Locally, Kennedy Stewart, mayor of Vancouver, is getting increasingly worried that this city is reaching insolvency… and it’s a serious concern. As this goes on, fewer and fewer people will easily be able to pay the their mortgages or rents; where and when they can, they will. That’s the priority. Property taxes, which greatly fund this city, are lower on the list, and the many people who will throw their hands in the air and say, “What exactly do you want me to do? You know I haven’t worked in 3 months” have a good point. These taxes may be deferred and eventually will probably get paid (“deferred” is very different than “forgiven”) but the city needs money now. So they asked the provincial government for $200 million. And Victoria isn’t themselves rolling in cash these days either, so they will have to ring up Ottawa with a similar request. This then gets into a more complicated discussion at the federal level regarding literally printing money vs. inflation vs. stimulus vs. many other things, none of which are great for this country in the long run… which begs the question — to what end? To what end might the Canadian (or provincial or municipal) government be involved in some giant conspiracy? Not that you can ever intelligently argue with these people, but I’d love to hear that particular answer. We have created a big massive hoax which hurts everyone… across the board, everyone is suffering, including every single one of those government workers and officials… it will take years for us all to recover… because WHY?

I’ve made the mistake of answering a few of those sorts of messages privately, and my well-reasoned arguments are simply answered with “You just don’t get it.” On that, we can certainly agree. No, I don’t get it and I never will… but what I will point out is that all of those idiots will end up benefiting from the sacrifices we’ve all made, and it sounds like they won’t even be able to recognize it. We are all Tom Cruise.

And when the pandemic doesn’t get out of hand here, because of all of the intelligent and necessary measures that were put in place and that were followed by most of us, these are the idiots that will proudly be announcing to everyone, “See? There was nothing to worry about. This was never a concern, never a problem, and all of you bought into it. Sheeple!!”

That’s ok. You, like Tom Cruise at the end of that movie, can just sort of chuckle to yourself. You, me, we all took the hit for the greater good, and it was an expensive one… but we will recover.

And when and how exactly do we start that recovery? I’ll be happy to offer my completely-non-expert opinion in the coming days, and there are some encouraging signs to guide that. One is that the numbers really do look good. If you scan down the columns labelled “Cases Increase”, they tell an optimistic story, and not just in B.C.

Also… here in B.C., serological antibody tests are just around the corner… within the next couple weeks. This is the test that can tell you whether you’ve ever had the virus, symptoms or not. I don’t know what the rollout looks like… in a perfect world, we’d all get one instantly and we’d know our own status and that would obviously guide a lot. That’s not how the world works, but whatever way gathers the most information quickly and efficiently — that’s what we’ll see.

Until then… it’s working. Keep doing it. That light at the end of the tunnel is not a train screaming towards us.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:56-07:00April 13th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Day 27 – April 12, 2020

Today is the day we don’t get numbers in B.C. — Dr. Henry and Mr. Dix are taking a well-deserved break, so accurate numbers will have to wait till tomorrow. For now, as usual, I’ve plugged in my B.C. guess for the day — I’ll fix it tomorrow. But assuming a good day locally, it’d make it a good day nationally. Growth rate was down in Ontario for a 4th straight day, and 3 straight days in Quebec.

But while they’re resting, and the numbers people are resting… as many of you are as well… let’s look at things from a much bigger-picture point of view. Like, these days, the earth is also resting.

If you were to believe that the earth is in some way alive and/or conscious, you’d be making the interesting parallel these days that, as a living being, Gaia finally got sick and tired of the virus infesting Her and decided to vaccinate Herself. For the most part, the young people who had nothing to do with wrecking the place would be spared… but the older you are, the more responsible you are for the disregard and destruction and pollution and reckless abandon that have finally made Mother Earth say “Enough”.

Gaia doesn’t have to wipe us all out to heal Herself. She just needs to give us a bit of a wake-up-call, and not much of one as it turns out.

In the grand scheme of things, it’s interesting to note just how irrelevant humanity is to this planet. In a matter of mere weeks, there are changes occurring. The sky is more blue. The water is cleaner. The air is undoubtedly less polluted. People in Punjab can see the Himalayas. People in L.A. can see the Hollywood sign. If there was ever a sign that a little change can make a big difference, there you go. And for all of us thinking we’re wrecking the planet, we are… without a doubt. But if you think this planet can’t fix itself once humanity is gone, that’d be wrong. It can and it will, very easily. Our time on this earth is so irrelevant in Her own grand scheme of things, that… well, let’s explore it. Let’s start by talking about big numbers.

Let’s say you walk out of the bank with $1,000 in cash. It’s a collection of different bills… you’re not sure exactly how many hundreds or fifties or twenties, but it adds up. The teller counted it out in front of you. There’s a Starbucks next to the bank, so you pop in there and get that Pumpkin Spice Latte you’ve been craving. Yes, certainly by October, you’ll be doing this.

The PSL costs… whatever, you’re not paying attention. You give the barista a ten dollar bill and get back a handful of change… some Toonies and Loonies and whatever else, which you jam into your pocket. If someone at that point had asked you how much money you have on you, your answer would be “Around $1,000”. On your way out of Starbucks, there’s a homeless guy there. You fish into your pocket and give him a Toonie. How much do you have on you now? “Around $1,000” is still accurate.

You walk a block and there’s a shiny Loonie sitting on the sidewalk. Quick Karma repayment! You pick it up and put it in your pocket. How much do you have now? Yes, around $1,000… and if you hadn’t picked up that Loonie, the answer would still be the same… around $1,000. That Loonie is little more than a round-off error in your present grand scheme of things of how much you have on you. And that $1,000 is similarly related to a million dollars. If you have around a million dollars, adding or subtracting a thousand doesn’t change anything. It’s still around a million dollars.

I mention all that to create some context and scale between a number we’re all familiar with… a thousand is relatable in many ways. A million less so… we know it’s a lot bigger, but sometimes we don’t realize just how much bigger. And to keep going, when we hear about a billion, we maybe don’t quite realize how big that is. A million is pretty irrelevant when you’re taking about a billion. A million seconds is less than 12 days. A billion seconds is close to 32 years. Indeed, 3 million heartbeats is a few days. 3 billion is your entire life.

Let’s pretend we map out the age of the earth (4.5 billion years) as a long road — the Trans-Canada highway. And let’s walk it. We’ll start at Mile 0 in Victoria — a charming little park at the foot of Douglas St. There are some stairs down to the beach… those would’ve been Terry Fox’s last steps before dipping his artificial leg into the Pacific Ocean, had he completed his Marathon of Hope. Today is the 40th anniversary of the start of his heroic effort, so we’ll begin our walk down there, one foot in the water on our long journey to St. John’s. Each step to the east is one step back in time.

At this scale, each step is 5,800 years. One step out of the water and that’s pretty much all of recorded human history. In fact, by the time you hit the monument at the top of the stairs, that’s about 600,000 years. Humans haven’t been around that long. And we’re still really at Mile 0. The era of humanity is barely a rounding error, as far as the age of the earth is concerned.

Keep walking east, going back in time as you do… dinosaurs died out somewhere near Abbotsford… and only appeared somewhere near Kamloops. Mammals appeared somewhere around Cache Creek. And right around Golden, before you even set foot in Alberta, now we’re at 540 million years ago… that was the emergence of anything more complicated than single-celled life forms. And beyond that, there is a lot more time and distance. It’s all single-celled organisms until somewhere in central Quebec, and then, there ceases to be any life at all. Quite a journey. Canada is a big place. 4.5 billion years is a long time.

The point of all this… as much of a blip in the radar as humanity might be, and as much as the thought of Gaia being this living/breathing thing that Herself is sick… we fight off sickness by being healthier; by allowing our bodies to heal. By giving them the opportunity to do so. A vaccine doesn’t cure you; it allows your body to cure itself. A ventilator allows you to breathe, and it’s the processes beneath that, carrying oxygen-rich blood to your cells… which heal you. Anything that stirs your immune system into action, whether physical or just mental (placebos work for good reason).

So while the earth has temporarily kicked us all into a state of self-reflection and healing, we can see that it doesn’t take much to heal the bigger picture… and it also gives us an opportunity to find some sliver linings to this big cloud, because there are many. I’m as anxious to get back to the real world as you are, but already I can see some changes I’ll make going forward, and I’m sure many of you have as well. We’ve all been learning a lot about ourselves and our habits and what’s important and what isn’t.

I leave you with this… written by Kitty O’Meara, which will read like a prayer for those who are religious, and a like a poem for those who are not. Either way, beautiful words that make you think as you stare out at the sky on this beautiful day… whether out the window or from your balcony or porch or back yard… and yeah, the sky does look more blue, doesn’t it?

And the people stayed home.
And read books, and listened, and rested,
and exercised, and made art, and played games,
and learned new ways of being, and were still.
And listened more deeply.
Some meditated, some prayed, some danced. Some met their shadows.
And the people began to think differently.
And the people healed.
And, in the absence of people living in ignorant, dangerous, mindless, and heartless ways, the earth began to heal.
And when the danger passed, and the people joined together again, they grieved their losses, and made new choices, and dreamed new images, and created new ways to live and heal the earth fully, as they had been healed.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:56-07:00April 12th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |21 Comments
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Day 26 – April 11, 2020

For the sake this example, I’m about to virtually kill a lot of people. Please don’t feel bad — they never existed.

Let’s imagine you want to drive from Vancouver to Seattle… and let’s further imagine that there’s a winding road that follows the coastline all the way down. Sidenote — for part of it, there is… there’s a 20-mile winding road from Bellingham to Burlington called Chuckanut Drive that’s well-worth the detour. Spectacular views and much more.

So… there’s the imaginary coastline road, and there’s Highway 99/I-5 which actually exists.

And you’re a new driver, kind of nervous… the thought of the fast-moving traffic on the highway scares you a bit. But you also know the coastline road is very winding, and you’ve heard of cars losing control and going over the cliff. You do your research and quickly find a report that tells you that over the last two years, accidents killed 45 people on the highway and 24 on the coastline road. Again, I’m making this all up. Nobody was hurt in the creation of this posting.

No brainer, you think, the coastline road is twice as safe as the highway… because that’s the ultimate measure of safety, and there can’t be too much more to it…

Well, there can be… and if you keep reading down my imaginary report, you’ll find that the coastline road seems to have about one accident a month. Like clockwork, once a month, a single-occupant vehicle loses control, rolls down the 100-foot cliff and kills the driver. That accounts for the 24 deaths.

On the highway, as it turns out, some idiot last year was celebrating something… and rented out one of those monstrosity stretch Hummer limos, filled it with 43 of his closest buddies… and apparently everybody, including the driver, got drunk… and the limo, with its full tank of gas, crashed into a telephone pole, exploded into flames and killed all 45 occupants.

That changes things a bit, doesn’t it…

Those 24 single-car accidents each have a little circle around them. The HummerLimo has a single, big circle around it. Around here, the Lynn Valley Care Centre has a big circle around it too, as does the administration office of Lions Gate Hospital. The Mission Institution. The Okanagan Correctional Centre in Oliver. The Blueberry River First Nations community near Fort St. John. All of them have their own little circles.

So… let’s talk about clusters.

From an epidemiological point of view, a cluster is defined by infections that are grouped by where and when they happened. If those two things are close to each other, they’re part of the same cluster. Infections can be clustered, deaths can be clustered. Really, any statistic can (and usually should) be associated where it’s relevant.

In B.C., the Lynn Valley Care Center (where the average age of residents is 87) recorded Canada’s first COVID-19 death on March 8th. Since then, it’s accounted for an additional 17. Here in B.C., our mortality rate per resolved case is 6.0% when you count Lynn Valley, and 4.3% when you don’t. This is in no way minimizing the importance of each and every one of those people; rather, it’s just to point out where they should fit in statistically.

Treating those unfortunate 18 deaths the same as any random 18 in the city would skew things significantly; there’s clearly a lot more to learn about those 24 individuals that drove off the cliff than by analyzing the demographics of the 45 people in the limo.

This is all something to keep in mind when reading reports that tend to favour skewing data towards their intended conclusion… something I’m saying for my own benefit as much as yours, because these days I’m being bombarded with articles and reports and opinions, many of which are diametrically opposed to each other. All of them claim credible evidence. I’m trying to keep a level head, and you should too.

As for today’s numbers… well, it’s green all the way across the bottom. From a purely aesthetic point of view, that’s as good as it’ll ever get… and it’s what I consider great evidence that what we’re doing is working. Let’s keep at it, and let’s hope those people that aren’t such good listeners don’t become clusters of their own once this long-weekend is over.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:03-07:00April 11th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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Day 25 – April 10, 2020

There’s an interesting experiment going on, on the other side of the planet. Our furniture-making, meatball-eating, hockey-dazzling friends in Sweden’s approach to managing this crisis is a lot different than what’s going on around here. We’ve seen a few examples around the world how not to do things. How a few days here and there can have a drastic effect. How not taking it seriously can have big implications. The Globe & Mail wrote about Sweden last week. CNN picked up on it yesterday. Sweden, not a culture that I would associate with recklessness, is taking a huge gamble. If I were a betting man (and I assure you, by any definition of that expression, I am), even I wouldn’t rolling the dice the way they’re doing it.

I will summarize the articles, add a few comments… and something they left out.

To summarize, their schools are open, their pubs are open and there’s no lockdown. Gatherings of more than 50 people are banned, but everything else is left up to the honour system. Trust that others will do the right thing. Recommendations, not orders. Their PM calls it a “common sense” approach. Their chief epidemiologist is saying that it’s working “reasonably well” so far, and that they’ve had “not very much” spread into elderly homes and “almost no” spread into hospitals. In other words, it is, at best, working ok, but it’s in the elderly homes and it’s in hospitals. So basically, it’s everywhere.

Not everyone has bought into the plan… a letter from 2,000 doctors and public-health experts went out, urging the government to get a reality check. But for now… many Swedes get it, and are isolating and maintaining social/physical distancing. But also, many are hosting big family Easter celebrations this weekend. How will it all play out? The articles suggest we’ll know “next month”. I think we’ll know a lot sooner.

A quick look at numbers shows a sharp increase yesterday… like, double the number of new cases from the previous day… a 12% increase, implying a TTD of 6 days… so if that rate remains constant, their 9,000 cases will be 18,000 next week and 36,000 the following week. I will say that the growth rates before that were lower, and as I said yesterday, one day doesn’t make a trend. But the whole thing makes me very uneasy.

Some other numbers that are troubling and not mentioned… once you become infected and are verified by a test, you become a statistic. Your statistic will get modified as time goes on… symptoms or no symptoms, hospitalization or not, ICU or not and so on. The final statistic you will have attached to you is in the “Resolved” category, and it can go one of two ways: Recovered or Deceased. To be clear, this doesn’t include anyone who may presently have it, symptoms or no symptoms… this is exclusively those who definitely had it, and now definitely don’t. At last tally, Sweden had 1,251 resolved cases.

Here are the numbers, for comparison… for all known resolved cases, these are the percentages of those who fully recovered:

South Korea: 97.2%
Canada: 91.3%
Italy: 61.8%
USA: 59.5%

And while we’re here… BC: 94.1% — and that number would be higher were it not for the type of clusters (like long-term care homes) that we’ve experienced here.

And Sweden…? 30.5%.

Out of 10 people in Sweden who’ve had this thing and it’s run it course, 7 have died. Which seriously brings to question how deeply they have their heads buried in the sand. That is a staggering number for a first-world country that claims to have things under control. I hope they come to their senses soon.

Closer to home…

There seems to be some confusion when it comes to physical distancing. Stay home or go out in the sun but don’t get together with others and jog, but away from other people and bike, but not where others do, so bike lanes are sort of not ok, so what’s the deal…

Here’s the deal. You can go out if you pretend the following… pretend that you’re carrying this virus… you’re very fortunate that you have no symptoms, but you’re very infectious… and, if you give this to someone else, the moment you do, a lightning bolt will shoot out of the sky and strike you dead, instantly. Just like that.

So… what do you need do to avoid that? A mask or mouth covering helps… a lot. It doesn’t help you as much as it helps others, but like that parable where everyone’s arms are frozen straight out and everyone fears they’ll starve to death because they can’t feed themselves… well, duh, just feed each other. Everyone wins when you do your part.

When you cough or sneeze, you eject particles into the air…. little droplets within which the virus is carried… and those droplets can hang around, suspended in the air. Not for hours, but for several seconds. While the virus itself is small enough to penetrate most fabrics, water droplets are comparatively much bigger… so wearing a mask is like coughing or sneezing into your elbow or a handkerchief.

Assuming no masks, if you’re walking single file outside with other people (Arbutus corridor, seawall, sidewalks…), maintain a distance of 4 to 5 meters. If the guy in front of you coughs or sneezes, it’s unlikely to reach you. If you’re jogging or slow biking, 10 meters. And normal biking, 20 meters. And if you’re heading towards each other — well, you’re in the wrong place. As much as I enjoy cycling, not there, not now. Someone else just breathing hard, let alone coughing/sneezing — within 20 meters of us approaching each other — I would be breathing his exhaust. I don’t want to do that.

The numbers across the country look good. Flat, or lower… let’s keep at it… and hope that the people who decided to ignore what Dr. Henry and Mr. Dix said about 100 times this week…. “This is not the time to…”, and jammed up the ferry line-ups this morning, and swarmed Victoria and the Gulf Islands — don’t wreck things for all of us.

 

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By |2023-04-02T13:54:44-07:00April 10th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Follower Favourites, Politics, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature, Internet & Social Media|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |24 Comments
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Day 24 – April 9, 2020

Oh, Canada… our home and native land is a lot more relevant to the majority of people reading this, so I’ve made some changes. You will notice that the original graph that started this little daily update is gone. It’s served its purpose, which originally was to map an apples-to-apples comparison of Italy, the U.S. and Canada — with South Korea thrown in for reference — if you were to superimpose their trajectories from a comparable starting point. When that started, Italy was 10 days ahead of the U.S. and the U.S. was 10 days ahead of Canada. On the graph, all of those lines were on top of each other, and it was going to be interesting to watch what happens as time goes on.

To summarize what has happened since… and you can look at yesterday’s final version of that graph to see what I mean (or go back even further and see when things really started to diverge)… The U.S. was actually doing better than Italy for a while, until all hell broke loose… then they burst through that green line and have never looked back. Italy, while still in the midst of their crisis, has definitely seen its curve flattening. Canada, for a while worryingly tracking the U.S., “fell off the bottom” of that blue curve and has comparatively been doing a lot better. The B.C. line, on this scale, is indistinguishable from the X-axis. Indeed, it’s the scale of this graph (linear Y-axis) that has rendered it useless. The unfortunate blue-line numbers will just keep squashing the other lines down, so we retire this graph with full honours, though I will still track the data and update the TTD logarithmic graph of Canada vs. The World.

But there are two new graphs… one, on the bottom left, is exactly what I described above, but just for Canada… with B.C., Ontario and Quebec. You will notice with some degree of curiosity that the Quebec line is above the Canada line… how can that be? Isn’t Quebec still part of Canada? Let’s not have that particular discussion, right here, right now. Yes, of course they are, so what’s the deal?

Nos amis from la belle province, with their usual panache, were simply late to the party. Given that this graph aims to compare apples to apples, its starting point is the same for everyone. Quebec recorded its 100th case March 18th or 19th. On that day, both B.C.and Ontario were around 250 each. Canada’s total was around 800.

Forgetting when it happened, but rather how it happened, Quebec’s numbers were not great for a while; they quickly accelerated at a frightening rate. They went from 100 to 1,000 cases in 5 days… a pace that exceeds Canada’s overall trajectory. The good news for our frères and sœurs is that things have recently looked a lot better. In fact, while numbers keep growing, they are growing more slowly. The “Cases Increase” percentage columns all tell that same story. Social/physical distancing… you know.

Where are the Prairies, the Maritimes, the Territories in all of this…? Listen, you don’t want to be on my charts… I aim to chart the big, significant numbers. Hope you never get so relevant that you need your own data column and squiggly line… anyway, there are only so many colours.

Special shoutout to Nunavut… with respect to this pandemic, they are having none of it. Ha Ha!! (Sorry). But indeed, they’re the only province or territory with zero cases. How it that possible? It’s very simple… the population density of our northern compatriots is 0.02 people per square km. In other words, everyone up there gets their own 50 sq. kms. In other words, go up there and draw a square that’s 7km per side. It’s all yours. It’s also really cold. All of that combined equals automatically-imposed social/physical distancing. And check it out… zero infections. Case closed.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:04-07:00April 9th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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Day 23 – April 8, 2020

Back in 2007, a friend approached me. He’d started a company some years earlier, and it had reached a turning point. We talked about what it needed to take it to the next level, and I saw enough potential in it to get involved. He was the CEO, he had a vision, and I shared it. OK, let’s do this. As part of it, I also brought in one of my closest friends, and together we built it from a handful of people to an industry leader. In reality, those two built it with their day-to-day hard work. I just threw in my two bits when needed. Early last year, we sold it to a much larger company. A very nice success story.

Yesterday, I had a Zoom call with those two. One of them is the former CEO. The other is the former president, but still runs what used to be our company as a subdivision.

And it wasn’t a great call… just an update to let us know that our acquirer, themselves now facing top-line revenues that were 15% of original projections, had to let a lot of people go, including many of the key people who’d help build our success story. It knocked our piece right back to 2007. The worst part of it was hearing the names… these great, talented people who’d been such an integral part of building this thing… all out of a job.

Also yesterday, I had a very nice chat with a reporter who covers horse racing. She wrote a very nice article which you can see directly below this post. As much as it was a discussion about me and these posts, it also got into a much larger discussion with respect to the horse racing industry and the people it employs… including her. A sports reporter without any sports to write about… now what.

Like so many businesses and industries and people these days, very few have worst-case scenarios designed to deal with zero revenue. A pub might have a great month because the weather was good and the patio was open and jammed with people enjoying the sunshine. Or what could have been a great April and May were not, because the Canucks missed the playoffs. The guys in the offices have lots of fancy spreadsheets where they plug in numbers and run lots of different “What If” scenarios. But none of them ever plug in zero at the top, because zero at the top means you don’t have a business. Unless you’re Apple, and sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, you’re presently in completely uncharted territory.

Having had that discussion about horses yesterday, I woke up this morning really missing it. This beautiful sunny morning, exactly the sort of day where in that parallel universe — the one where the Canucks clinched a playoff spot a few days ago and are preparing for round 1 — I’d be heading off to the backstretch at Hastings Park, where I’d park myself at the gap, the rising sun behind me to the East, and watch horses, some of them mine. The smell of the barns, the hay, the horses, the mud. The sound of distant hoofbeats getting louder as the horses approach, and then fade away as they round the turn. The sight of these beautiful animals in full flight, sun glistening and steam rising off their bodies. Words don’t do it justice… but if you’ve never experienced it, that might give you some idea.

And then there’s the people, of course. I miss that crowd… the backstretch of any racetrack is its own society, and for lack of a better way of describing it, a “flat” one. Whether you’re the wealthy owner writing cheques or whether you’re the hard-working groom who’s up at 5am mucking stalls, everyone is there for the same reason, that same passion. Anyone can — and does — talk to everyone else, at the same level. An eclectic collection of peers. But there is also a big difference… for me, this is just a hobby. For them, it’s their livelihood, and in some cases, their home. There is uncertainty at every level.

Those of you who think you’re considered to be nothing more than expendable little cogs in a big machine… I assure you, you’re not. Whether you were writing software or serving beers or mucking stalls… and now, for the moment, are not… there is someone, somewhere… in a cramped little office, after a sleepless night, stressed out looking at a scary-looking spreadsheet. That spreadsheet these days has a lot of red numbers. And that guy feels bad. Really bad. Not because he’s not rolling in the cash, but because he knows you have rent to pay and mouths to feed. He wishes he could do more for you, and in many cases, he does. He wants that light at the end of the tunnel as badly as you. He wants you back at work. He wants to have work to give you.

I think if I ever had to go to prison, and were given a choice…. one option is a 10-year sentence. The other, unknown: you might get out tomorrow. Or, you might never get out. Every day, the same thing. Maybe you’re going home today. Maybe you’re not.

Given what I’m experiencing today… indeed, what we’re all experiencing… I think I might go for the 10 years. That’s a dreadfully long time to be locked away, but at least you can wrap your head around it. Set goals, set expectations, figure out how you’re going to fill that time.

I think what a lot of us are feeling these days is the despair that comes along with the uncertainty. Tell us when we can get back to normal goddammit… just tell us. I get it, and I feel it too. I don’t have the answers either, but one of these days I’ll give my version of what I think that finish line looks like… because there is one… the when and how. It’s on the horizon, but nobody is quite sure how distant… yet.

For now, we’re here today, so let’s look at some numbers…

It wasn’t a great day out East, as far as numbers go… but it’s actually not as bad as the first impression might imply. Ontario saw an increase of 550 confirmed cases, which is a jump of 11.6% from the previous day… but the average increase over the last three days there is only 9.3%… and the 3 days before that were 13.1%. And the three days before that were 17.9%. While I’m at it, let’s do the same for Quebec… their 3-day average daily increase including today is 7.9%. Three days previous, 13.2%. And the three days before that, 17.3%. As far as trends go, this is exactly what you want to see. A one-day spike doesn’t necessarily imply a sudden, drastic turn of events. Indeed, here in B.C. we saw 45 new cases… which is the highest one-day increase in 5 days. But then again, it’s only an increase of confirmed cases of 3.5% over yesterday.

Everyone — just listen to your respective chief medical officers. And if you don’t like what yours is saying, listen to ours — she’s awesome, and she’s right. We’re doing it. It’s working. It’s not magic; it’s science. But we’re not there yet. Stay at home, physically isolate, and do your part… we’re getting there.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:04-07:00April 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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