Monthly Archives: January 2021

January 21, 2021

Polish pianist Władysław Szpilman, subject of the award-winning fantastic movie “The Pianist”, was playing live on the radio on September 23, 1939… when the Germans opened fire on the studio, causing him to flee — and run for his life. The piece of music he was playing was Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor – a hauntingly beautiful piece of music, one that I’ve been trying to master for better part of this pandemic. I so wish I’d latched onto it 30 years ago… it would’ve been far easier to learn it… and then, playing it once a month or more, I’d know it for the rest of my life. Unfortunately, neuroplasticity degrades as we age. The ability for the brain to change and rewire fades. Neurogenesis, the ability to create new neurons and connections also suffers. To put all of the fancy words into colloquial language… you can’t teach an old dog new tricks. Or maybe you can, but it’s a lot more difficult.

Szpilman was 27 when he was so rudely interrupted, but his young brain, like any of a brilliant musician, managed to retain all of what he knew, and I don’t think I’m giving much away when I tell you he survived the war (he died in 2000, aged 88), and his ability to play the piano was not an irrelevant side-note of that survival… notwithstanding the slow descent from studio musician to holocaust survivor; it’s a hellish story and, again, if you haven’t seen the movie, you must. The first bit of music you’ll hear is the aforementioned piece.

After 6 years of surviving hell, the war ended, and life slowly returned to normal. And Szpilman returned to playing piano, and returned to the same, rebuilt studio… where he resumed playing Chopin’s Nocturne in C-sharp minor. Imagine the emotions he must have been feeling at that moment… bridging that gap. Everything that happened in those 6 years. The inward-facing question of “What was the point of all of that, if we’re right back to where we were?”

That’s the sort of question we often find ourselves asking when the universe seems to throw something negative and unexpected in our way… and after you muddle through it, you’re right back to where you started. Why? To what end?

This is the best explanation I have for what I’m feeling, watching CNN the last two days. I will stop after today because it’s somewhat intoxicating and I’m not getting much else done. I’m writing this while watching this 24-hour White House coverage, and I can’t turn it off. It’s just so freaking… normal. There have been two White House press briefings in as many days. They will continue on a daily basis. Reporters ask intelligent questions and get intelligent answers. Dr. Fauci offers his untethered, unbridled, uncensored opinion. Facts. Science. Forget policy, recent changes, and how of course there will be disagreement… above all that, there is now transparency and normalcy. An actual functioning government.

The unfortunate part of it is figuring out and dealing with the mess that was left behind… with the top of that list being no cohesive vaccination plan from the previous administration; lots of mixed messages and confusion. But… they’ll figure it out. And they’ll announce what they’re doing.

I’m switching it off after today, and will try to leave it off. But in the back of my mind, I know that if I turn it back on, it’ll be a lot like today and yesterday. And four years ago. And decades before that. There’s a lot of comfort in that, to be honest… and I’m certainly not equating Szpilman’s 6 years of hell to the last four years of… whatever you want to call it… but once you come out on the other side, there are certainly similarities. A giant exhale, and a giant, collective thought… like… ok, where were we before we were so rudely interrupted?

I know, nothing gets fixed overnight… but state of mind, even with my degraded ability to learn piano, counts for a lot. I know I’m not the only one feeling this way. Whew. Onward.

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By |2021-01-22T21:22:15-08:00January 21st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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January 20, 2021

I remember exactly how I felt four years ago, watching Donald Trump’s inauguration, and listening to his speech. A sense of foreboding. Disbelief. Fear of the unknown. That this guy is going to guide the U.S. to some dark places, and he may well take Canada and much of the rest of the world with him. Barack Obama was probably having similar thoughts when he penned his outgoing letter to Trump. In it, he wrote, “… we are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions — like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties — that our forebears fought and bled for. Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.”

In Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, there is a song called “Goodbye Blue Sky” – and if you watch the video of the song (taken from the movie), it conveys it well… you only need to watch the first 30 seconds… where things go from sunny and happy and hopeful… to darkness. The symbolism is not subtle; it’s blunt, like a sledgehammer to the gut. Trump did indeed take many things in the wrong direction, but at least he didn’t take the planet down with him. He left his country in tatters, from which it’ll certainly rebuild… and now, at least, it can begin. There was a big sigh of relief when noon EST came and went. It’s done.

Biden’s inaugural speech was the polar opposite of what was spoken four years ago; he preached unity, understanding, dignity, tolerance, respect. He faced-up to the challenges ahead. He alluded to the mess he inherits. We shall see. Talk is cheap, and his actions will speak louder than his words… but in my opinion, he offers for the U.S. something that’s been sorely lacking for the last four years… leadership.

I’d never intended to write so much about Donald Trump, but I started writing this blog exclusively because of the pandemic, and what became glaringly obvious very quickly was his brutal mishandling of it… and, along with that, his brutal mishanding of so much else.

I was asked this morning… come on, name at least a few good things Trump did in power. Sure, there are a few… he didn’t start any wars, and the middle east is on a potential path to a more lasting peace. Those who support his policies would argue that the reshaping of the federal judiciary is an achievement. Same with his tax reform. Space Force sounds like a joke, but it actually isn’t. But ultimately, whatever could be called a positive achievement is far overshadowed by the negative. There’s one other achievement, and it’s hard to label it positive or negative; his raging divisiveness served to rip off a huge, ratty band-aid that had been hiding a wound that’s been festering in the country since its inception… the deep, ugly gash of inequality. A lot of issues have been brought to light, and a lot of people (myself among them) are now far more familiar with systemic issues that have been plaguing American society for years. Decades. Centuries.

By now, you’re probably pretty sick and tired of hearing about Trump. It was engaging before he was elected, interesting early-on in his presidency… but grew tiring, repetitive and frustrating as time went on. Four years was more than enough. Four hundred thousand Covid deaths (not all – but certainly a significant amount, his fault). While we’re keeping score… 22,000 lies… about 15 per day of his presidency. 150 rounds of golf (one every 10 days). 127 days at Mar-a-Lago. Two impeachments. Two popular-vote losses. I can’t attach a number to the lawsuits that await him, but they will deservedly hound him for the rest of his life. It’s sad that his brainless followers will be the ones footing the legal bills, but the thought that he and perhaps some family members may be facing prison time… there are some sleepless nights ahead. I’m sure Mar-a-Lago has 24-hour room service; one burnt-to-a-crisp steak with ketchup coming right up, sir.

I’m looking forward to writing about other things. Trump mattered when he could actually do something: Mandate a federal mask policy. Set an example. Say something meaningful to his 70 million Twitter followers. He didn’t do any of that, and now he can’t. Now he’s just a two-time loser… silenced, and facing an unknown future… but now his problems (and lack of ability in solving them) are largely his issue; not his country’s, not this country’s… and, certainly… not mine. Moving on.

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By |2021-01-20T20:59:52-08:00January 20th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Politics, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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January 19, 2021

OK Saksatchewanites/Saskatchabusihes/Saskatchawenians… you now have your hospitalizations graph… thank you to my friend Richard for providing that data in a usable form. But today, let’s talk about the opposite of that… the opposite of needing to go to the hospital is what’ll prevent the vast majority of us from doing so… and that is… vaccines. And there is news to report.

The headline I read screamed, “Thousands of Israelis Tested Positive for Coronavirus After First Vaccine Shot!!!!!” – the exclamation points are mine, but the rest is verbatim… and while that sounds like a disastrous claim, it’s not. If the headline is meant to grab everyone’s attention, it works… but, as usual, there’s more to the story. Let’s dig into the numbers a bit.

First of all, part of the reason Israel managed to get so much vaccine ahead of everyone else is that they were willing to be, in essence, a test-bed for what it would look like to distribute the vaccine through a first-world technologically-capable infrastructure and collect as much valid real-world data as possible… straight from the source. As previously written, many other places who’ve had vaccines long before Pfizer/Moderna came around (China, Russia) have been putting out numbers… which, for numerous and valid reasons, are met with skepticism. But here we have accurate data, so what does it tell us…

Some 12,400 Israelis tested positive after being vaccinated, and, among them, 69 who’d been vaccinated twice. That first number sounds big, but that’s out of 189,000 people – which amounts to 6.6% — an efficacy of 93.4% — which for any vaccine is off-the-charts successful, and is almost bang-on with the expectations of ~95%

Digging a little deeper into the numbers… 100,000 people were tested a week after getting the vaccine; 5,438 were found to be positive… a 5.4% infection rate. A different set of 67,000 people was tested in the 8-14 days-after period, and 5,585 tested positive… 8.3%.

People were also testing positive more than two weeks after getting the first dose, but in declining numbers as time went on. Immunity is meant to start ramping up in days 15 to 21, and that’s reflected in declining positivity numbers… especially after the second dose.

It should be noted that there are other relevant factors; the majority of those who’ve received vaccinations are over 60, and it’s well-understood that people’s immune systems erode as they get older. Flu shots, for example, are less than 60% effective in those 65 and older… as compared to 80% to 90% for those younger than that.

With the Pfizer vaccine, for what it’s worth, 102 employees at one particular medical center were tested a week after immunization. It was found that 100 of them had antibody levels 6 to 20 times higher than the previous week.

In summary, the vaccine works well. Very well. It’s not perfect, because 95 does not equal 100, and its effectiveness varies on numerous factors; some people are simply far more susceptible to infection, and age is one of those contributing factors. At the end of the day, the idea is to get to herd immunity, and that’s achieved when enough people are immune that they’ll protect those who aren’t – and, possibly, who can’t be. By far, the quickest way to get there is through vaccination.

That’s the plan currently being rolled out across the planet, with varying degrees of success; get the shot into as many people as possible, while carefully following the results to make sure they’re in-line with what’s expected. With Israel leading the charge and making available all the data… from what we can see so far… so far, so good.

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By |2021-01-20T21:43:14-08:00January 19th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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January 18, 2021

You’ll have to pardon me; today was data “catch-up” day, so this is all just fact… and very little “interesting” opinion. And if you won’t pardon me, I’m sure I can convince the soon-to-be-former president… he seems poised to hand them out like candy.

So… I took the opportunity to add a whole new row of graphs (the bottom row); a visual look at hospitalizations and, included within that (overlaid at the bottom, in red), the ICU numbers as well. At a glance, B.C.’s hospitalization numbers are pretty flat over the last little while, hovering in the 350 rage. ICU cases today are at 68, which is down slightly over the recent past… as evidenced by the gradual downslope of the red ICU part of the graph. Alberta’s hospitalizations are down as well, as are their ICU cases.

On the unfortunate flipside, Ontario and Quebec are still seeing slow and steady growth on both fronts.

If you follow these graphs closely, you might notice that the Time To Double (TTD) lines are gone from the 2nd-wave graphs. I’ve been writing and describing and fiddling with TTD numbers and graphs since day 1 of this, but given the numbers, they’re not needed. That’s a good thing, from the point of view that things aren’t growing exponentially. Let’s hope the growth in cases remains, at worst, relatively linear… and then we never have to see those lines again. To be clear, case numbers are still growing in many places, but the rate of growth (at least, for the moment…) is not of the scary exponential sort.

My profuse apologies to the Saskatchewanians (Saskatchewaners?) who are looking at that big space where a graph should be; I couldn’t find the data in a usable form… but will keep looking around.

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By |2021-01-20T10:58:45-08:00January 18th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , |2 Comments
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January 17, 2021

Once in a while, the trunk of your car fills up with enough crap that it’s time to clean it all out. I usually grab a big garbage bag and dig in. Whatever is garbage goes straight into the bag. Whatever shouldn’t remain in the trunk finds its way to the floor of the garage, and eventually finds its way to where it needs to go. And the rest remains in the trunk, where it belongs. And if there wasn’t enough garbage to justify throwing the bag away, the bag itself also winds up in the trunk… for further use in the future.

Many years ago, I drove to Seattle. Then I came home, and the border guard, bored I suppose – or maybe I looked guiltier than usual – made me get out and pop the trunk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s garbage.”

“You can’t bring American garbage into Canada!”

Fair point… but I explained…

“It’s not American garbage… it’s Canadian. That bag has been in my trunk all weekend.”

“You took your garbage for a ride in the U.S.?”

I suppose I did. Not on purpose, but whatever. Who cares.

Well, he cared. Fine, confiscate it.

“I don’t want your garbage!”

Fine, I’ll throw it away. Where’s the nearest…

“You can’t throw it away here!”

What an odd stalemate. Eventually, he let me go. With my garbage.

I was reminded of this episode because something else (which I’ll get to shortly) reminded me of the opposite… the time we were returning from Seattle after a long weekend. When you do that, be prepared to wait… the border waits are brutal on those Monday nights. But this time, traffic just kept flowing… how odd. Tons of volume, but we never stopped… just slowly crawled toward the border… where all the lanes were open, and there were border guards just waving people through. Go, don’t stop, welcome home, have a nice evening. This was pre-9/11, but still. Wow.

On one hand, I was happy to not have to wait. On the other hand, two things bothered me. One was… well, you know how there are people who keep every receipt, meticulously add up what they spent, who spent it, what it was, how much it was, both in US and Canadian dollars? I’m one of those people. I was ready to answer any question the agent would ask. All that work for nothing. Annoying, but not as important as point two… which was, what a joke. What a mockery of all the times so many people have been stopped for no reason, been given the third degree for no reason, searched for nothing. And now, all the cigarettes and booze and full gas tanks and maybe drugs and guns all flowing into Canada… because I guess they were too understaffed that day, or too tired of dealing with the monotony… or were just realizing none of them would get to go home till 6am with so much traffic to handle. Sure, some stuff will get through. Whatever.

The rules that those people enforce exist for a reason, and when they decide to ignore them, as briefly as it might be, they compromise the integrity of the entire thing. What is the point? What was ever the point?

On that note, we have a rule in place at the moment. If you’re flying into Canada, you have to prove you’re C19-free. Take a test and show the test results at check-in… or you’re not getting on the plane. Very straightforward, and it applies to everyone.

Except, for some reason, not everyone. Like, not Haiti. Why not Haiti? Since the start of the year, flights from everywhere else have had this requirement. And the answer is simple: Haiti, nobody’s example of a first-world country, doesn’t have their shit together when it comes to testing. So rather than just say “No”, we, being the polite Canadians we are, say “Don’t worry about it.”

As a result, two flights from Haiti that arrived in Montreal (Jan 10th and 13th) were so infested with C19 that the post-flight alert that went out to the passengers was not the typical “rows 6 to 10 may have had an exposure”; it was “all rows”. Basically, if you were on either of those planes, you came in contact with someone who was found to be infected.

I had little sympathy for that guy from Kelowna who got stuck in Lake Tahoe, having decided his ski trip was “essential”. He got stuck when the regulations kicked in, and had no way to get a quick test… so he was stuck for three or five days. Cry me a river.

But… had he decided to go waterskiing in Haiti instead, no worries.

The issue isn’t so much with the haphazard rules that seem to appear and rule our lives; borders have always been hit and miss. When you head into the U.S. (and/or come back home), the experience will be greatly defined by what border agent you get, and what sort of day they’re having. That’s just an accepted part of it. Sometimes they’re harsh with the rules. Sometimes they couldn’t care less.

But in the middle of a raging pandemic… whether it’s a self-entitled skier from the interior, or a bunch of tourists in London… and/or pretty-much everyone else… what is the point if it doesn’t apply to everyone?

“Hey, teacher, I didn’t feel like studying for the test today. I mean, I realize everyone else is prepared. I’m just not. Is it ok if I just don’t write it?”

“Oh, of course. I’ll just give you a pass”.

That’s not how it works… we don’t live in a “everyone is equal but some people are more equal than others” society. At least, we’re not supposed to… but stuff like this causes a lot grumbling; a lot of well-justified grumbling. If politicians are going to make rules, make them so that they apply to everyone… and enforce them. Or don’t make them at all.

And/or have a very eloquent staffer ready to write some poetic excuses to the families of people who died of C19 as a direct result of those flights.

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By |2021-01-19T13:05:22-08:00January 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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January 16, 2021

If you live in London, England (or recently travelled there, and are now stuck), you’re very familiar with Trafalgar Square… the large plaza in front of the National Gallery. Also facing the square is Canada House, which houses the offices of the High Commission of Canada. If you’ve ever lost your passport in the U.K, you’ve been there. It’s also a great place to visit on July 1st… there’s usually a good party going on.

Also at Trafalgar square, right in the middle of the plaza, is an almost 200-foot pedestal, upon which stands the statue of the great British naval hero, Horatio Nelson.

The excellently-named Nelson was a true war hero, having fought in numerous battles (including the American War of Independence), but he’s most well-known for his efforts in the Napoleonic wars, and his greatest victory, the Battle of Trafalgar. In the waning minutes of that battle, having led the British to victory, he was shot by a Spanish sniper and died a few hours later.
But before being shot through the spine that day, he’d already suffered quite a beating over the years. He’d lost part of his arm in one battle, and an eye in another. As a result of that latter injury, he wore an eye-patch, looking every part the fierce warrior. In fact, with half an arm and an eye patch, he looked more like a pirate than a British naval officer.

Interesting point about eye-patches, and pirates specifically… our stereotypical view of a pirate with missing limbs… perhaps a wooden stump for a leg, perhaps a hook for hand, and always an eye-patch. Pirates wore them for another reason; not just to cover a shot-out eye.

When you’re the captain, you spend a lot of time running around the ship… on the deck and outside in the brilliant sunshine one moment, below deck and in near-darkness the next. As you know, like when you head to the movies for a matinee on a sunny summer afternoon, going from blaring sunshine to darkness takes some adjustment. When you turn off the lights in any room, it’s pitch-black for a bit… and then, things start coming into focus as the rods and cones of your eyes do their thing and adjust.

Before suitable artificial light, captains and pirates didn’t have time to wait for their eyes to adjust all the time, so they’d keep one eye “in the dark”, and switch to it when needed. That eye would always be ready for darkness. Indeed, you never see that part in the movies, where the pirate goes below deck and removes the eye patch.

There’s lots of symbolism that can be drawn out of this… like, covering up something good in the short-term for a beneficial payoff down the road. You wander around in the sunlight half-blind… but that hidden vision is ready and waiting when you need it.

Or, sometimes we cover up in ourselves what we don’t want to see. You need some pretty good eye-patches to have been part of the crowd that stormed The Capitol the other day. What exactly is an off-duty cop seeing when he runs into his buddy, who happens to be on-shift that day? What does some pro-Trump Jew think, standing next to a nazi with a T-shirt that says Camp Auschwitz, or one claiming that 6 million wasn’t enough? What do senators, hiding for their lives, think when they’re staring at their similarly-sheltered compatriots who may have been part of organizing this?

Like saving your vision from sunlight, some people need to come to terms with the patches they’ve been wearing… not over their eyes, but over their conscience. People who need to be able to rip off all the patches, and look in the mirror, and come to terms with what they see.

I wonder how much of that sort of reckoning is going on these days. The McConnells and Pences of the world are one thing, but the run-of-the-mill typical American, specifically the 70+ million who threw their votes into the darkness… what do you see now, if you remove that patch? Part of me really wants to know, but the other part of me really doesn’t… because some people wear those patches, literal and/or figurative, like a badges of honour.

True American patriot or MAGA deplorable? They can look alike. The greatest British Naval hero in history looked like a stereotypical pirate; you can’t judge a book by its cover… and actions speak louder than words.

Here’s one more cliché to add to the list: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And now it’s that time for the U.S. Now it’s time to just get on with it. They came a lot closer than they think to seeing it all disappear a week ago. Now that all of the eyes have been opened and many of those patches ripped off… now begins the hard work of fixing it all.

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By |2021-01-16T17:03:33-08:00January 16th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , |4 Comments
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January 15, 2021

Nothing too exciting to report in the U.S. today – well, other than the revelation that the insurrectionists did indeed intend to take hostages and assassinate government officials. But other than that.

So… let’s get back to vaccines…

As promised, some Canadian jurisdictions have blown through their supplies, jabbing as many arms as they can, with the vast majority of those being first doses… many people having now decided that that’s the way to go – get it into as many people as possible, stretch the time frame a bit, and catch up in due course.

The advantage of that is that it maximises the number of people who are at least a bit immune, which is obviously better than nothing at all. If not being vaccinated is a 0 and being fully vaccinated and immunized is a 9.5 (there is no 10; there are no guarantees), it’s not like the first dose gets you to 2 or 3. Depends who you ask, it’s anywhere from a 5.2 to a 9.0… and then the second dose gets you up to 9.5.

That being the case, the right strategy for the big picture is to give everyone a first dose… and counting on getting the second dose in time. But don’t pick 50 people and give them both. Or don’t do it where 33 people get two, 33 people get one, and 33 get zero.

Here in B.C., we’ve administered 98% of the vaccine we’ve received, and the plan is in place to keep doing that; that we have the infrastructure to dish it out as fast as they can serve it to us, and that the limiting factor is supply. It should be noted that 100% of that 98% are first doses.

Interestingly, Alberta has administered 112% of their vaccine. They’ve received 74,000 doses from Pfizer and have injected 84,000 arms… also all first doses. How is that possible? Notwithstanding the fact that every vial of vaccine ostensibly ships with enough for 5 doses when thawed and diluted, doctors have found you can squeeze out perhaps 5.2 or 5.3… so 5 doses per vial might turn into 6 or even 7 after a while of collecting scraps. Pfizer has not said that’s ok, but they haven’t said it’s not. We’ve all scraped the bottom of the peanut-butter jar… with a spoon, with a finger, with whatever… because we all know there’s no difference in yumminess. Hopefully the vaccine is the same.

In Quebec, though… they may be stretching things a bit far. They’ve similarly administered 110% of their vaccine… but that’s not the issue; it’s not the extra doses they’re squeezing out… it’s that they’re aiming to measure those second-dose timings in months, not weeks… and the risk is that Pfizer pulls the plug on that. The province has said that of course they’ll follow those guidelines if it comes down to not getting the vaccine at all, but for now… they will pedal-to-the-metal red-line it while they can. And for the moment, 100% of that 110% has been first doses… over 127,000 of them. Why does this sound like it might be even remotely ok? Because there’s some British science to back it.

According to Pfizer, the vaccine is only 52% effective after the first dose. But according to British scientists, who are measuring the results differently, that number is 89%.

For comparison, according to Moderna, their vaccine is 80% effective after one dose, 96% after two…. and with respect to the CoronaVac vaccine developed by Sinovac in China… none of these results have been peer-reviewed and they’re all over the place, so hardly worth comparing… but here they are. The press releases from countries using it vary widely: Turkey says 91% effective… Indonesia 66%, Brazil 50%… and all of those results are based on the full two doses.

A few days ago, I wrote about this aspect of it, and was corrected by a few people… in my case, I was uneasy about B.C. stretching the dose-gap to 35 days. As I’ve learned, that’s no big deal. In fact, even though Pfizer has recommended 21 days for their vaccine, and Moderna 28 days for theirs… Canadian guidelines, ie the Federal Public Health Advisors have OK’d up to 42 days for both.

But, Quebec… 90 days. Three months instead of three weeks. Their argument for doing that? Well, see above. Good idea? Again, as per above… it’s a definite maybe.

Meanwhile, New Brunswick has administered around 8,000 doses, but 2,000 have been second doses. That being said, New Brunswick today had 25 new cases and zero deaths. Quebec had 1,918 new cases and 60 deaths. A very different sense of urgency.

Today we hear the dire projections from models that imply things could get a lot worse if we don’t clamp down… and immunizing as many people as possible in that scenario is the right call. About the only thing that could mess this up is if not enough vaccine shows up for those first doses (let alone the second).

Since early 2021 hasn’t completely let go of the 2020 shitshow quite yet, today we hear that there will be vaccine delays. To be sure, don’t worry, we’ll be able to catch up in due course, a minor hiccup, etc… but of course, the issue is that we need them now. We’ve been assured that the timeline to get everyone vaccinated by the end of the year is not in jeopardy… and I believe it, especially given the quantity of vaccine Canada has procured… 10 doses for every person, specifically to mitigate this sort of situation. But it’s the bird-in-hand vs. birds-in-the-bush situation… I’d rather have one rickety old fire engine show up quickly… than five glistening bright-red new ones after everything has already burned down.

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By |2021-01-15T17:04:34-08:00January 15th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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January 14, 2021

Talk about too little too late.

Donald Trump yesterday released a video with a message he should’ve put out ages ago, or at least, certainly before Jan 6th. In it, he asked for peace and quiet yadda yadda, yawn. The whole thing was read monotonously off a teleprompter. It was so out of character that it had me looking for clues, the sort you see when a captured American soldier messages “torture” by blinking Morse code. Trump isn’t capable of doing something like that, but imagine if he’d blinked out “attack”…

It’ll be interesting to see what happens now, with his army of zombies who were ready to simultaneously attack all 50 state capitol buildings. Either they will stand down… or, they will claim that Trump was clearly coerced into making that video, and that its superficial message should be ignored, and that it’s game on. Or, that there is indeed some hidden message, but you have to look hard. For example, like six seconds in, there’s a big pause… and from seconds six to nine, he says, “events of the last week”. At second 20, he says, “spectrum”. 6 7 8 9 20… as letters of the alphabet, that’s F G H I T. Unscramble them and you get, “FIGHT”. So… he’s saying, “Like the events of last week, but now across the spectrum, we fight!!”

“You can’t possibly be serious” would be the logical conclusion of that sort of reasoning, but as we’ve seen, we’re not exactly dealing with rational thinkers. For the record, that’s the same sort of reasoning you attempt to use when you bet on a horse race, and you bet on a longshot only because you like the name… and it wins… and now your friends are demanding to know how the hell you came up with that. “Well, you see, last year, ten races ago, he ran from post 7 on dirt after a heavy rain… at which time he came second to a horse whose half-brother came third three days later in a race where the winner went on to place in a Grade I race where the trainer of the winner’s wife’s brother’s jockey booked off the favourite just to ride this horse’s half-sister. It was a lock.” Look deep enough, and you’ll always find answers. Especially if you already know the answer you’re hoping to find.

That latter possibility is troubling… the genie-out-of-the-bottle scenario. It’s like Mickey Mouse and all of those dancing brooms in Fantasia… once you open Pandora’s Box, it’s not so easy to stuff things back into it. And then what… a beheaded “patriotic” movement running wild. At that point, it’s really nothing more than a somewhat-organized group of domestic terrorists… thoughtfully provided as a parting gift by the outgoing president. How do you get rid of that? Perhaps you don’t. Trump, we can get rid of… like the vaccination for C19, immunity from Trump required two doses… of impeachment. But also like C19, the long-term effects can stick around forever. Aryan Nations, KKK, Alpha 66, The Order… add to that, Trump’s “Covfefe” of Covidiots.

The long-term effect of all of that? Who knows. For the short term, the national mall will be closed on January 20th for the inauguration. Trump screamed for years that his inauguration crowd was bigger than Obama’s (it wasn’t) but, sadly, Biden won’t get his moment… and notwithstanding the circumstances, you know Trump will have something to say. Sure, in the midst of a pandemic, an inauguration crowd of a million people is a bad idea… but a crowd of near-zero is also not ideal. It’s supposed to be a celebration of democracy and progress. One day again, it will be… but with what’s going on today, that day seems pretty far away.

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By |2021-01-14T17:03:51-08:00January 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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January 13, 2021

I can’t wait till the end of the week… and I don’t mean Friday, a couple of days from now… I mean a full week… because, by this point a week from now, Donald Trump will no longer be president. Perhaps, having overthrown the United States of America, he’ll be The Emperor of the newly-crowned nation of Trumperica… or, perhaps, he’ll be in the process of being mug-shotted, fingerprinted and thrown into a jail cell.

Those are two very different outcomes, and neither are too likely… but, as we’ve learned from recent events, nothing is impossible. That being said, if I had to bet on either alternative, I’d go with the latter.

It must be gut-wrenchingly difficult for some staunch Republicans (not Trump supporters, just Republicans) to see what a tattered mess they’re a part of. Those that get it, and the associated implications, have been jumping ship as fast as they can; even with no lifeboat below them, they’ll toss their fortunes into the icy waters and hope for the best… because staying on this boat now is a quick journey to the depths of the ocean… from which there is no return. Hopefully they can somehow get back to shore and start the process of rebuilding. But first, they have to survive.

And by the way, I’m talking about regular people, your run-of-the-mill American who’s finally coming to terms with what they helped create. I’m certainly not talking about the 197 House Republicans who voted earlier today to *not* impeach Donald Trump. To be sure, the vote passed, 232-197 – an excellent outcome, because now it goes to trial, and even if he gets tossed after he officially leaves office (which is what would happen, because it won’t go to the senate before at least next week), he will lose every privilege granted to former presidents. No old-president’s club, no secret service detail, no Trump 2024 and no pension. That’ll need a two-thirds majority, which is certainly not guaranteed… and I shake my head… even after all of this, after their guy led the charge to overthrow the government – the very political system they’re a part of – 197 of them are still behind him. Add those 197 names to what needs purging from the American political system.

And, it’s not just political… Trump and his organization are being abandoned. The City of New York is cancelling its contracts. Deutsche Bank and Signature Bank will no longer do business with him. His online credit card processor Stripe has dropped him. Shopify had been operating some online stores for the organization but have dropped him. The 2022 PGA Championship won’t be played at a Trump course, as had been previously scheduled. The list goes on and the list will grow. Good.

Unlike every other president in the history of the U.S., this one deservedly leaves power with a lot less than what he entered with… and a very uncertain future. If it were just bankruptcy he were facing, he might be able to claw his way out of it, now armed with his army of tens of millions of brainwashed devotees who’d do anything for their near-mythical cult leader. Ten bucks a month times tens of millions of people should keep the doors open for a while. But it’s not just that.

After the Watergate scandal, president Richard Nixon resigned… but subsequent president Gerald Ford pardoned him. That pardon cost Gerald Ford the re-election, an election he narrowly lost to Jimmy Carter. Enough people were pissed off about it; “you shouldn’t let him get away with it”… and that lesson has hopefully been learned. All of this “we have to come together as a nation” and “we need to move on” and “it’s a huge distraction while we have far more important things to worry about…”

No… that is totally wrong. The most important thing now, by far, is setting an example for the future. Every single person that was responsible or was a part of this insurrection should face the maximum that the law can throw at them. It’s remarkable what we’re hearing now about how much of an “inside job” this was… how actual leading Republicans not only knew what was going on, and not only were encouraging it, but may actually have had a leading role in planning it. As time goes on, we’re hearing more and more details about what went down, and how much worse it could actually have been. A bunch of misguided hooligans breaking into a sacred building and suddenly realizing “oh shit, what are we doing” is a lot different than calmly walking in there with guns and handcuffs, ready to take hostages. There should be no little slaps on the wrist for the Cruz’s and Hawley’s of the world; they need to fully face the consequences of their actions, and those consequences need to be significant.

You’ll recall the Stanley Cup Riots of 2011 here; it’s disputed how many actual ringleaders there were (at most a few hundred) and how many people (tens of thousands) just got caught up in the moment. There’s a big difference between looting The Bay because suddenly everyone around you is doing it… and having shown up there with a knapsack full of matches, rags, gasoline and bottles, ready to cause some real damage. Both are very wrong, completely unacceptable, and need to be prosecuted (and kudos to the VPD who spent years meticulously tracking down every single identifiable participant that they could). Not everyone went to jail, but everyone who could be identified was held accountable for their actions.

Similarly, down south… even though there’s a difference between an explanation and an excuse, every single one of them needs to be made an example of… so that future generations understand, at least in the U.S. with its first amendment and rights of free speech; go ahead and say whatever you want… but if you actually start trying to mess with the infrastructure that’s been in place since 1789, you will pay the steepest price possible. There’s no explaining or excusing or pardoning… treason.

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By |2021-01-13T17:02:39-08:00January 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , |4 Comments
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January 12, 2021

There was a presumed silver lining to this pandemic… that the masks and social distancing and just plain staying away from each other would lead to the number of seasonal colds and flus being less than usual. To be sure, those illnesses are around… and if you didn’t catch a cold this year, you’ll probably get it eventually… but, for that to happen, it has to get near you, and, like C19, if it can’t get close to you, it can’t infect you.

Catching a cold or flu is easier than C19; these things are generally more infectious. They’re also, of course, far less lethal… and the conventional trade-off with life in general is that you expect to get sick once in a while, especially during winter when these viruses/bugs are around, and our immune systems are more susceptible.

As per the CDC… let’s pick the 3rd week of December, where in 2019, 30,000 samples were tested for Influenza A…. 16.2% came back positive. This year, ie 2020, ie a few weeks ago… that same sample set of 30,000 came back with a positivity rate of… 0.3%. A drop of two orders of magnitude. Hugely statistically significant.

Some of that can be attributed to the fact that flu-shots were way up this year… but if you’re a rabid anti-vaxxer, you’ll have to pick your poison here… because something worked, and it worked very well. Was it the flu vaccines? Was it the masks and social distancing?

Whatever the cause (a lot of both is the answer), that’s a huge drop, and similar huge drops are being seen across the board of illnesses, including the common childhood infections of not just flu, but also croup and bronchiolitis.

As per above, it’s not that these things are gone… it’s just that they’re just more difficult to catch these days. Once measures are relaxed, these things will come back and numbers will be way up… but hopefully some of the measures we’ve become accustomed to stick around. The whole “hug-hug kiss-kiss everyone” that’s so prevalent in some cultures; good riddance. Go ahead and hug and kiss strangers if you like, but let’s make it optional and not frown on others who choose to not partake. And if you’re asking yourself “WTF is he talking about”, I’m guessing you’re Canadian, American, British… from one of these “low-contact” cultures.

There are cultures where saying hello with three kisses (alternate cheeks, start on the right) is the norm. In parts of France, that number is actually four. Heck, there are cultures where kissing on the lips (a quick peck, no tongue!) is a normal greeting. Latin American culture has a wide variety of customs, and they vary significantly from place to place… but they all have one thing in common; if someone is already sick, everyone will be getting sick.

At the risk of being accused of cultural appropriation, going forward, might I suggest what ancient cultures have been practicing for centuries: “Namaste”, or a similar bow – it conveys respect, and it respects personal space. And it also keeps the bugs far away.

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By |2021-01-12T17:03:20-08:00January 12th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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