Monthly Archives: March 2021

March 11, 2021

Like many things, it depends how you look at it… and that generally leads to a bit of disagreement.

I happened to be reading a news story about a cassette tape that a girl lost while on vacation in Spain. Twenty years later, she saw it in an art gallery, part of a “Sea of Artifacts” exhibit by an artist who’d been documenting plastic pollution and making art out of it.

The girl contacted the artist, and the tape was sent to a professional audio restorer who managed to extract all of the music from it – an eclectic collection ranging from Shaggy and Bob Marley to a bunch of Disney numbers.

So, what’s the story?

Is it about the variety in musical taste of some random 12-year old girl?

Is it about serendipity, synchronicity and the universe?

Is it about the resilience of cassettes? It’s impressive; lost at sea for 20 years, travelling 1,200 miles in rough, salty seas… and it’s still playable. The inventor of the cassette tape died recently (aged 94) – I’m sure he was impressed.

Is it about how plastic is so ridiculously indestructible that we really need to be aware of what we’re dumping into the ocean?

Like usual, it depends who you ask and it depends on their agenda. Today, on the one-year anniversary of the WHO declaring Covid-19 a global pandemic, I’m thinking back to all the news I’ve heard, read and written… the spins I’ve muddled through myself, trying to figure out what’s really going on.

Today, Dr. Bonnie Henry announced a bit of relaxation in restrictions… outdoor gatherings of up to 10 people are now allowed. Also, today, I should point out that our case numbers and ICU admissions are flat… or, keep going up, though not by rates that anyone would call alarming.

It’s been like this from the beginning; somewhat conflicting information that’s left up to interpretation. If you already know the agenda you’re trying to promote, you’ll be able to extract it from there.

I will keep it simple, and this is, as always, only my opinion… outdoor gatherings are probably fine, totally fine. They have been, for a while. Ten people sounds about right, officially, but what does that even mean… if you take over a football field, why not 100. The issue is don’t get too close to someone, and not for too long. You chances of inhaling a lethal viral dose of C19 are next to zero if you’re outdoors. But rules need to be defined, especially because the numbers are not going down… because as straightforward as the rules are, they’re generally not being followed by a significant number of people, and that plays into the math. If 95% of the people stick to the rules and 5% don’t, what can we expect? What if it’s 80/20? What if it’s 50/50?

Once you factor all of that into it, these haphazard-sounding decisions suddenly don’t feel so random or unexpected; they’re not. Like life, it’s all a calculated risk… and the path that’s evident now is one where the numbers don’t get worse, but stay flat or slide downward toward zero… while at the same time slowly and methodically reducing restrictions. It makes sense, though everyone will grab onto the story from different sides and pull in their direction… “numbers aren’t improving”, “see, why did we ever need restrictions”, “I told you it’s ok to get together outside”, “ICU cases keep rising”.

Here’s a generalized suggestion to every single person: Keep doing what you’re doing; we’re all headed in the right direction collectively… you do you, I’ll do me, and we will all eventually hit the finish line. Nobody knows what that percentage split is, but it doesn’t matter… whatever it is, it’s working for us now. If you’ve been sticking to the rules, keep doing so. If you haven’t, I’m sure you won’t start now. And hopefully, that’s all factored into this and it doesn’t matter.

No matter how you look at it, I’m sure we can agree on that.

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By |2021-03-11T22:16:47-08:00March 11th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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March 10, 2021

There’s a lot to learn from looking at the list of countries who managed to secure significant doses of vaccine early in the game, because it begs a lot of questions. Why are they doing so well? Where did they get it from? Why did they get it and not us?

Starting at the top of the list and sorting by Doses… either by “population percentage with at least one dose” or simply “doses per 100 people” – the results are pretty much the same. There, it makes sense to remove the “big” names because the answer is obvious… those that are making the vaccines are using it for themselves as much as they can. The U.S., the U.K, China, Russia. Also remove from there places whose numbers are skewed because of low populations. The Maldives, the Seychelles… tiny populations, mostly vaccinated.

The top of the list now is of course Israel, who was on top of the list before anyone else was removed. They have a population of 9,000,000. They’ve administered 9,000,000 doses. They’re not all first doses, but most are. I saw a picture of a café in Tel Aviv yesterday… and outdoor patio, crowded, no masks, people having a blast. We’ll be there one day… but they’re there now.

How did Israel do it? A pretty sweet deal with Pfizer – one that worked out well for everyone. Lots of data, lots of healthy people. There are plenty of articles to read about how it all came about.

But who’s next on the list now? A terrific outlier to study, as far as I’m concerned.

Chile… and I’m interested because I was born there. Because I have friends and family there. Because I used to travel down there on an almost annual basis, and I know how things work; I know more about doing business with Chile than anyone would ever want to know… which led me to ask the relevant question… who’d they hustle and how’d they do it? Their population is about half of Canada. 22% of those people have had at least one dose. We’re at 5%.

May of 2020 was a bad month down there… 100,000 new infections and almost 1,000 deaths. That’s when they began taking their vaccine plan seriously. Their ministry of health set up meetings with 11 labs around the world, a number that went down to 5 as talks progressed. Internally, it was agreed that when the health regulators of those jurisdictions approved those vaccines, they’d be auto-approved in Chile. To lock in those supplies, meetings were scheduled *in person*. The Chileans flew out to numerous places, including Abu Dabi and the UAE, principal operational hubs for Pfizer and BioNTech. And this is where the Chilean way of business kicked in. I wasn’t in those rooms, but what I know is that those Chileans did not leave without firm deals to receive vaccine; letters of intent, confidentiality agreements… and, probably, agreements not so different from Israel – yes, for sure, we’ll give you the data… we’ll red-line vaccinations… whatever you need… just get us the stuff, AND, if *you* don’t comply with your end of it, there will be hell to pay, as enforced by whatever international laws apply.

I’m speculating a bit and drawing on my knowledge on how things work, and what sort of leverage (the only sort that could possibly be applied) might have worked… because it ultimately worked, and worked well. Very early in the game, Chile was already ahead. By September of last year, Chile was setting up clinical trials for Sinovac and Janssen. Some 3,000 Chileans happily volunteered between October and November. And, for doing so, Chile locked in a $14/dose cost of vaccine and top of the delivery schedule. Chile stuck to their end of it, and the manufacturers have stuck to theirs. Win-win.

Around here, we’re paying $35/dose, when we can get it. Yes, I know – we’ve all read the same news – we will get it all in due course, and just because we keep getting dropped down the list it doesn’t mean anything. Patience, etc. By the time our anger and head-shaking subsides, the pandemic will be over and we’ll have moved on and nobody will care. But allow me to put it in writing; our government let us down. Good intentions are not good enough. Intention to have enough vaccine in a timely manner. Intention to have an infrastructure for booking appointments. Getting up in front a podium and TV cameras isn’t worth anything if you don’t deliver. Nobody is interested in finger pointing and lame excuses, especially how it’s “out of our control”. Your job as our leaders is to find a way to put it into *your* control. Our control. Many governments around the world, with far less resources at their disposal, managed to navigate this process far better.

Ultimately, I’m familiar with the Canadian way of doing business too. The 300,000,000 doses we’ve procured – in the same way Seinfeld “procured” a car reservation in that famous episode – was done with lots of emails, phone calls, Zoom meetings. Whiteboards and PowerPoints. Lawyers and contracts and back-and-forth mark-ups, with nothing in there that could incur any liability. And with nothing to offer in return, very little teeth in those agreements. How can we be sure they’ll hold up their end? It doesn’t matter… and don’t worry about it because with all the “best efforts” language in there, we have zero recourse anyway. Let’s just hope for the best.

Chile started at the finish line. They simply asked, “What is the fastest way to get vaccines into the arms of our population?”… and assigned a group of intelligent resourceful people to just get it done. And they did. Pisco Sours all around. Salúd.

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By |2021-03-10T17:03:18-08:00March 10th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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March 9, 2021

From now on, every day will mark a one-year anniversary of something pandemic-related. Today happens to be the day that marks exactly one year since the first death of C19 in Canada… at the Lynn Valley Care Center. On this day last year, we were all wondering… how many more will it be before this is over…? How bad will it get…?

It’s unlikely to get any worse than it’s already been, so that part of it has probably been answered… but the slow descent to the finish line – the rate of it getting better — is still undefined… because there are plenty of unknowns. For example, how and when can you book your appointment for a vaccination…

A year ago, I knew very little about pandemics. But I knew a lot about computer infrastructure and computer systems and IT designed to handle thousands of people and millions of transactions per second. Accordingly, if a year ago you’d asked me to put together a system to handle vaccine bookings… from top to bottom – log in, identify securely, book an open slot, have that info make its way to the proper health authority, send reminders, integrate an app, use a QR code, etc etc… off the top of my head, I could have it designed on paper in a week, built into alpha-testing in six weeks, beta-tested it in three months and have a fully bug-free system – reliable enough for release into the wild — in six months. Then another six months waiting for the actual vaccines to materialize. And that’s conservative, and that’s just me. There are people far more knowledgeable with the present-day infrastructure possibilities (I was doing this 20 years ago), so it’s likely far easier these days.

The key to projects like this is to not re-invent the wheel. This isn’t complicated, but it has to be reliable… and, these days, chances are… no matter what you’re doing, someone else has already done it, and done it well… and so you take that, and you customize it instead of re-creating it. We have been booking online for decades. The only thing that needs any sort of customization is the B.C.-friendly user interface, and hooking it into the existing health network. The rest already exists; just because it doesn’t exist here, it doesn’t mean somewhere else in the world hasn’t been doing it for ages. The guts of it are out there and have been well-battle-tested. Attach to it whatever localization is needed and expected… need to be able to book online, need to be able to phone in, need to be able to handle FAX requests, need to be able to accept telegrams. Check check check & check. Integrate it all. Whatever.

It boggles the mind that Vancouver Coast Health, having had exactly a year to prepare for this day, managed to create a system that allowed exactly 369 vaccination appointments to get booked. A “phone-only” system. That system saw 1.7 million attempted calls in the first 3 hours… and more than 3 million by the end of the day. I’m pretty sure it was the same 30,000 people calling 100 times each. There were countless stories of people trying to get through all day: Most of them were met with busy signals and/or dropped calls… and for those that got through, many waited for hours on hold before the call vanished into thin air. Queue the finger-pointing… the government, Telus, whatever. Who could possibly have foreseen this demand? The answer is… everyone.

Excuses are fair to serve up when something unexpected enters the picture, but there was nothing unexpected yesterday. It’s unacceptable and inexcusable. Fishing around for the silver lining, I can come up with only one thing: It can only get better.

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By |2021-03-09T17:03:21-08:00March 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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March 8, 2021

Setting aside the vaccine optimism for a moment, let’s remember we’re not quite there yet… although, slowly, things will trend in that direction. It depends where you are and it depends how things are going. For example, today, New Brunswick shifted from level “orange” to level “yellow”… which means, for them, bubbles can grow to 15 people, sports teams are allowed league play across zones and in larger tournaments, formal indoor gatherings are allowed (with some restrictions) and informal outdoor gatherings of up to 50 people are also allowed.

But we are far from New Brunswick, in more ways than one.

B.C. is the only province in Canada where our 7-day rolling average of new cases has been consistently going up. Every other place has seen it bounce around, a little up and a little down. Ours is very consistently a little… up. A month ago, our 7-day average of new cases was 436. A week later, 452. A week after that, 482. Today, it’s 557.

So what, that’s just testing… but what matters are hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths, right? I’d argue that’s not quite true, but even if that’s what you believe, then all I can tell you is that all of those numbers, over the last month, are virtually unchanged. Around 250 people in hospital, 65 of them in ICU… but 136 people have died since then, so there’s a consistent pipeline. It’s neither a downward spiral nor an upward spiral. Just a churn.

It’s easy to fiddle with the numbers, but let’s remember these are real people, not just statistics. Every one of those 136 people have family and friends deeply affected. As do the 136 presently in the system. And as will next month’s 136 if nothing changes.

Things, fortunately, are changing… just more slowly around here, for the usual reasons. Like staunch Republicans who are still supporting Trump, we are now well past the point of changing people’s minds. If you were never into masks and social distancing, you’re certainly not about to change your tune now. If you’re adamantly against vaccines, that won’t change either. The flipside of that is that today was the first day to call in and book for vaccine appointments for the general public, starting with those aged 90+. The phone lines were flooded with calls… like 1.7 million calls for only 40,000 or so eligible people. That’s actually pretty encouraging. We’ll get there, but the impatience is evident… everywhere.

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By |2021-03-08T17:05:11-08:00March 8th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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March 7, 2021

We’ve all had colds before… the little sniffles. It’s annoying, but nothing some chicken soup and/or lemon tea and/or NeoCitran and/or a warm blanket and/or lots of water can’t cure.

And if someone said to you ok… here’s the deal… the pandemic is now over, but you have a 50% chance of catching a mild cold in the next 6 months… would you take it?

The overwhelming “HELL YEAH!” that you’re all screaming leads to a path we’re on now, though probably not by original design… because there’s a fundamental aspect to C19 and vaccines that perhaps wasn’t entirely expected, but that emerging data suggests… which is that a single shot of any vaccine of our “big 4” – Pfizer, Moderna, AstraZeneca and now Johnson and Johnson – prevents serious illness 100% of the time. Yes, it’s a bold statement, one worthy of marketing departments… but this one is coming from the science.

Two shots of Pfizer and Moderna suggest a 95% chance of not getting sick at all… and the appropriate doses of the other ones also suggest a remote chance of illness if you follow the directions… but proper recommended usage aside, one single shot… and you’re good.

Entering the mix (in Canada) as of Friday is the newly approved J&J vaccine… which, in the context above, is a true game changer. Its numbers don’t reach the lofty heights of 95% efficacy, but it’s becoming apparent that’s not so important. Should we take the Ferrari with a top speed of 340km/h? Perhaps the Porsche, but it only goes to 280kmh. How about the Tesla, which accelerates faster than those two… but is capped at 200km/h?

Dude, we’re going to the 7/11 that’s a block away. Take the bike. Or walk. We don’t need to get fancy here.

The J&J vaccine efficacy is in the 65%-75% range… compared to the 95% of Moderna and Pfizer. J&J serious illness and death rate 28 days after the dose (at which time its full effects have kicked in): Zero. Not a single case of hospitalization or death.

From a “fancy” point of view, J&J isn’t top 2… but who cares. It gets us there… and it does so in game-changing ways: It’s single dose, and it’s easily stored at convenient temperatures… for months. Don’t like needles? It’s only one. Don’t like side-effects? Far less reported with J&J. Allergic to preservatives in vaccines? J&J seems more tolerable. And, unlike mRNA vaccines, this one is optimized to both antibody and T-cell responses. Accordingly, it doesn’t need tuning to new variants… and therefore has been shown to be more effective against the South African variant. Pfizer and Moderna have modified their vaccines for these new variants, but J&J doesn’t require it… which implies it probably won’t require it for future variants either.

Red-lining the first doses seemed a little premature and perhaps not-so-well thought out when it started. In fact, I wrote some words to that effect; why mess with the science? The answer to that rhetorical question is the basis of science itself. To some extent, we’re all part of a big experiment… but assuming it’s being handled correctly, we should be able to trust the results… and the results are telling us a lot. Different people interpret them in different ways, but this is all not speculative guesswork… there’s a method to the madness. For example, it’s dawned on me that perhaps the province of Quebec has no intention of *ever* giving out second doses of Pfizer or Moderna… because, as per above… what’s better…. 95 people out of 100 who will never get sick at all… or, 200 people, none of whom will develop a serious illness or die? They’re betting on the latter, and so far, perhaps correct in their assumptions. Their hospitalizations and ICU admissions have been trending sharply down consistently; just look at the pretty pictures. They might just keep doing this until the pandemic fizzles out, and the answer to “When do we get our second shot?” will be “Next flu-shot season”.

The issue with vaccines that we’re quickly approaching has more to do with vaccine acceptance, though that’s also turning a good corner in some places. There seems to be a core of around 20% of people that adamantly refuse to consider the vaccine. The other 80% has been a spectrum based on hesitancy, but it’s mostly sliding in the right direction; more and more people seeing what’s going on around them and realizing that indeed… the vaccine is useful, the vaccine is safe and the vaccine is an integral part of all of us getting back to normal. That’s here in Canada. Our neighbours down south?

Last November, before any vaccines had actually been approved, 51% of Democrats said they’d get vaccinated when possible… as opposed to 43% of Republicans. Asking that question today yields this: 78% of Democrats would say yes… but only 47% of Republicans would agree. In fact, 44% of Republicans say, adamantly, “Never”. Interesting — but not surprising — that their cult leader and his entire family all quietly got vaccinated when no one was looking.

I’ll stop here because you know exactly what the next 3 paragraphs would say.

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By |2021-03-07T17:03:52-08:00March 7th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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March 6, 2021

Unrelated to everything… although relevant in that people have opinions they like to share… comes this, from a story that made waves a few years ago…

When you mention Nestlé around here, it’s like mentioning the Satan of corporate greed. These miserable people come in here, steal our water, and then sell it back to us for criminally high prices. It’s outrageous, it’s unacceptable, our government sold us out for next to nothing, somebody do something.

We, here in B.C., are blessed with some of the most bountiful and freshest water on the planet. We completely take it for granted, and only occasionally feel the pain when our water needs to be shut off for the day for repairs. Oh, the humanity, how will we survive. We are so, so lucky.

For centuries, people have been bottling fresh water and taking it to places where it’s needed. There are places in the world where you simply can’t drink the tap water, and you come to depend on it. Sidenote, when I lived in Northern Chile in 1987/1988, water was the equivalent of $3 a bottle, while beer was about 25 cents. I spent a lot of time pretty buzzed… because that water was totally undrinkable. The water was so loaded with calcite that if you didn’t dry it off after washing your hands, you’d quickly find them coated in chalk. The water was sticky and gross – and that was when you could get some actual water pressure.

Around here, there’s nothing wrong with the tap water. Far from it. It boggles the mind that people literally fill up bottles from our tap water, and then sell it back to us… and we buy it, like it’s magically better for some reason. It’s not. A cheap home filter will give you the same quality. An expensive home filter will give you much better quality, but most people don’t actually need it. Not around here. We have amazing fresh water, and more than we know what to do with. Accordingly, forever, the policy has been “take as much as you want” – so long as you don’t pollute the environment. Businesses have been parked on the banks of the Fraser for decades.

One day, a few decades ago, Nestlé showed up and set up shop, taking some of that Fraser River water and bottling it. No one said much, because nobody knew and or cared.

The government, at some point, did care. These guys are taking our water for free and then making a commercial enterprise out of it. Shouldn’t they be paying at least something for it? Maybe they should.

The government approached Nestlé and said, hey, maybe you should be paying for this water. Nestlé said sure, how much? We’re not sure, said the government… we’re going to study it and get back to you. Sounds good, said Nestlé.

Then the government figured out it’d cost a lot of money to study this issue… who’s using water, how much of it, how much should we charge, how much can we charge, how to we meter it, how do we control it, who’s going to manage it… and so on. It’s complex. The government figured it’d cost close to $10,000,000 to study it properly, and came up with the genius idea to get some of these commercial enterprises to pay for it.

Hey Nestlé… how about you pay for this study? Sure, said Nestlé.

OK, said the government… here’s how we’ll do it. We want ten million dollars… you guys pull out a zillion gallons of water a year, and we will charge you enough cents per zillion that we can get our money… and once we’ve figured it out, we will charge more, but this is a good start. Sure, said Nestlé.

And that is where Nestlé, who had been paying zero for the water, now began paying a nominal amount for their water. And when that tidbit of info hit the newswire, the shit hit the fan. Because the story that got told was very simple; the government just sold us ut. How can the government let them steal our water for fractions of a penny per litre… and then sell it back to us for 10,000x the cost. They should be charged $1 a litre! $2 a litre! $10 a litre! They should all be arrested and thrown in jail!!! Our poor precious water!!!

Do you know how much water Nestlé pulls out of the river? If you could dam the river for a certain period of time, how long would it take to accumulate all the water that Nestlé takes in a year? A month… no… of course not. A week? A day? OK, a day… that’s still a lot, sort of. Except it’s not a day. It’s not even an hour. It’s less time than it’s taken you to read this far. In seventy-two seconds, Nestlé takes their annual haul of Fraser River water… because, unfortunately, as priceless as our crisp, clear, pristine drinking water is, 99.99999% of it flows into the Pacific Ocean. It’d be nice to be able to tap into a lot more than that, but the infrastructure isn’t there.

I’m not sure what the status is of these water studies, nor what the plan is to bill industries that rely on it. It’s come to light that any meaningful increase in industrial water cost would cause big problems for some of those businesses who count on super-cheap (if not free) water. Like I said, it’s complicated.

If there’s any aspect of this that relates to the pandemic, it’s the part where well-spoken agendas, as one-sided as they may be, sometimes fill the echo chamber at the expense of a balanced opinion. There’s often more to the story.

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By |2021-03-06T17:06:15-08:00March 6th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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March 5, 2021

Yesterday’s post generated a lot of interesting responses, as expected… with no real answers, just everyone’s individual opinions. Also as expected, because there’s no right answer.

The summary is probably this: A lot of people, dare I say perhaps the majority, have some negative part of their life that is irrelevant with respect to what they provide to the world. They are brilliant musicians, but they beat up their spouse on occasion. For some people, especially those for whom there’s a personal connection, that’s too much. For others, the quality of their work outshines their personal shortcomings, especially if said shortcomings don’t matter to them. If you’re not trans or couldn’t care less about LGBTQ issues, you’ll keep reading Harry Potter without missing a beat. If you’re sympathetic enough to the cause, perhaps it’ll cause you to think about it. To each, his or her own… and that’s a big, wide chasm… a huge spectrum. There’s no fine line where this falls to one side or the other; it’s very personal – and different – for everyone.

I guess I would similarly draw the line. If it’s important and personal to me, perhaps it crosses that chasm. I sure as hell would not go to a Roger Waters show to watch anti-Semitic propaganda thrown in my face. But I would certainly go to a post-mid-80s Pink Floyd concert headlined by David Gilmour, should that ever happen again. And as far as the music that’s a mix of those two things… yeah, it’s tainted, but its importance to me will never go away.

On a similar note (haha!!), exactly 200 years ago, Beethoven was in the midst of composing his Missa Solemnis, and his 9th symphony… perhaps as close to musical perfection as we’ll ever get. But Ludwig himself… after his brother died, he spent years fighting with his brother’s widow, Joanna. The biggest fight was a custody battle over Karl, his nephew (their son)… and it was vicious… so much so that it led Karl to attempt suicide some years later. Beethoven, as it turns out, wasn’t the most pleasant of fellows… controlling, overbearing… traits that got only worse as he got older and his hearing worsened and his slow lead-poisoning kicked in.

And… I’ll be honest… there’s absolutely nothing that could come to light about Ludwig Van Beethoven that’d ever make me turn off his music. It would be optimistic to think that just because someone can create perfection, they themselves would be so perfect as well… and we can leave it at that. I’m good with that.

And speaking of being optimistic… let’s head into the weekend with some optimistic news: Given the new vaccines, the expected shipment schedules, the extending times between doses and the increasingly good weather, Dr. Bonnie Henry thinks we may start turning the corner to “post-pandemic” as soon as summer. That’d be less than four months before things feel pretty close to normal. I’m good with that too.

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By |2021-03-05T17:03:46-08:00March 5th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , |3 Comments
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March 4, 2021

I like these posts that stir up some intelligent conversation… so here’s a topic that came up recently. I don’t have all the good answers, but I’ll put out some thought-provoking questions…

For me… well, let’s start with The Beatles and Pink Floyd. Both of these bands have had a profound effect on my life. There were periods where they were all I listened to, and at some point, I knew pretty much every chord and lyric of their music… especially the Beatles. I had a couple of songbooks of the sheet music to their entire catalog, and I would bang it out on the piano mercilessly.

This was long before it came to light that John Lennon was a brutally sarcastic, child-abandoning, misogynistic wife-beating asshole. Or before I became familiar with Roger Waters’ irrational and raving anti-Semitic ideologies.

This whole issue is nothing new. For my dad, it was Richard Wagner… brilliant musician with profoundly evocative, complicated music… but also a raving anti-Semite, well-known for bashing Jews at every opportunity. Hitler was a big fan.

These days… there’s no shortage of disgraced brilliant musicians whose music has been just as influential. Michael Jackson tops that list, but R. Kelly and Chris Brown aren’t far behind. A few decades ago, Chuck Berry, James Brown and even Elvis… don’t scratch the surface too far because you won’t like what you find. And it’s unfortunately, a very long list.

This isn’t just musicians… it’s artists of every genre… and the ones that sparked this discussion recently are Woody Allen, whose personal life outside of his movies has been very concerning for decades… and J.K. Rowling, who went from an intelligent and established writer to… weirdo transphobic. Now we can add Dr. Seuss to the mix.

The question is… do you separate the artist from the work? Can you enjoy the genius fruits of the labour, or is it tainted forever with those revelations?

“Yesterday” was written by Paul McCartney. “Something” was written by George Harrison. Knowing that, do I treat them differently than “Imagine”…? I can’t listen to “Imagine” without seeing the video that goes with it, John and Yoko all dressed in white, singing about a better world… while somewhere in a nearby shadows is a beaten Cynthia Lennon and an abandoned Julian. Does it make a difference that “Imagine” came out after The Beatles had broken up?

I don’t know. I struggle with it, and I go back and forth on it. Except with Roger Waters…

When possible, I’ve been to every Pink Floyd concert that ever came to town. I’ve also been to a couple Roger Waters “The Wall” shows… and, at the last one, I was horrified by the imagery… the big, floating pig with glowing eyes (very Pink Floyd) – but now, with a Jewish Star of David painted on its side. And people wildly cheering all around, perhaps some oblivious to what they were looking at, but many not. That was enough for me. End of the line.

It’s interesting, the reaction to recent allegations where people say things like, “Well, I’ve never liked his movies…” or “Harry Potter sucks; I haven’t read any of them or seen the movies” – like that’s somehow got anything to do with it. The entire point is it doesn’t. Woody Allen had been cranking out a movie a year for a very long time. Some aren’t great, some are, and some are truly genius. Harry Potter has been transformative for a lot of kids. I’ve seen many Woody Allen movies and I’ve read the first three Harry Potter books. You know what I think? Correct, it doesn’t matter what I personally think. The question is a much-bigger-picture issue. It’s almost easier to answer if you’re not familiar – or don’t care about – a particular artist… just understand that to a lot of people, at some point, they meant a lot.

In many of the cases, people have known all along and haven’t cared. The more successful, the more has gotten shoved under the rug. Today, a lot of those rugs are being pulled back… and here we are.

For what it’s worth, that’s my take on it. What’s yours?

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By |2021-03-04T17:03:04-08:00March 4th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , |9 Comments
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March 3, 2021

Hot on the heals (haha) of yesterday’s post about vaccines… what they might be worth to people if there were an option to pay for them… comes a revelation I wasn’t aware of. In Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, people are being offered $5 to get vaccinated.

On the pro side, these are people at higher risk, for a number of reasons. The argument would be that having all of these people vaccinated benefits us all, because it gets us all closer to herd immunity… and if people need a little convincing, what’s the harm.

On the flip-side, there’s something paternalistic about that $5. Like $5 should make a difference to someone, whether to get vaccinated or not? Five bucks? And yes, I realize 5 dollars is significant to some people, and that’s my point… we are manipulating poor people for the benefit of the greater good. It might make sense on paper, but it feels a little dehumanizing to me. But on the flip-flip-side, many of them would get the vaccine anyway, so give them the $5. They can use it.

The DTES is a well-known colossal mess, one which the present governments, both provincial and municipal, have been struggling with for years. Before Covid-19, most of us had never heard of Dr. Bonnie Henry, but she was around… a driving force behind trying to deal with the opioid/fentanyl crisis. She published a very thorough report about all of it in 2019, a year before everyone’s plans went all to hell, including what had been planned for the DTES.

Uncharted territory… it’s what we’ve all been dealing with, and for those who make the big decisions, it’s no different. Somewhere, in some meeting, someone put up their hand and said, “What if we paid them to get vaccinated?”. I always applaud thinking outside the box, and if a little bribe is what it takes… well, I think back to my visits to the dentist when I was a little kid. That treasure chest full of little plastic junk; by far the best part of the visit… always something to look forward to. Maybe the tipping point between going voluntarily… and going, kicking and screaming.

I moved on from my kid dentist decades ago, and I’m not sure my current dentist is reading this, but in case he is… suggestion… a treasure chest for the adults. You have no idea how popular it’d be. Not sure what you’d put in there, but I assure you, everyone would love it. Little travel toothbrushes and toothpaste? A pack of sugar-free gum? How about a Starbucks gift card… but for how much?

Five dollars sounds about right.

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By |2021-03-03T17:03:03-08:00March 3rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 2, 2021

The whole concept of supply/demand is pretty easy to understand. You don’t need a degree in economics to wrap your head around the idea that the more supply there is of something, the less it’s worth… and when something – anything – is in short supply, its value increases… sometimes, irrationally. Toilet paper, hand sanitizers, masks. There was no actual rationale behind the toilet paper part of it, but since everyone decided there would be a shortage, a shortage was indeed created and prices shot up and scalpers moved in… until manufacturing turned it up to 11 and caught up, and then there was a flood of extra supply. When it happens in the consumer world, it’s easy to understand – not necessarily why it happened; just what’s going on. At any given time, you know exactly what something is worth because as soon someone who’s willing to pay that amount meets the person who’s willing to sell at that price, the question is answered.

Valuing something like an option is more complicated. Imagine someone is selling a horse for $20,000… and you’re interested, but not sure you can come up with the money… or not sure the horse is healthy, and want it checked out by a trusted vet. But you also don’t want someone to come along and scoop him up while you’re still pondering… so you call up the owner and offer him some money… he sells you an option to buy the horse for 20k, and it’s good for 5 days. After that, the option expires and he can do whatever he wants… and your money either goes towards the purchase of the horse, or you kiss it goodbye.

What’s that option worth? $100 is probably not enough for the owner to turn away potential buyers for a week. $2,000 feels pretty steep if you end up walking away from it. One can discuss it, and many opinions will be offered, but the only one that ultimately matters is what the two people involved in the transaction agree upon.

In the financial world, it’s no different. Options to buy and sell stocks trade on their own, independent market… and those prices are based on numerous variables, but the important ones are how much time until the option expires, at what price the option can be exercised at, and how volatile it is. All of that comes together to a single number, and every time two people agree on it, a trade happens.

But what happens when the thing being bought/sold/traded/optioned/whatever’d doesn’t have a value assigned to it? Or the actual financial value is an irrelevant aspect?

A parachute while browsing the local aviation shop is worth something different than when you’re in a plummeting airplane and there is one parachute left and three people who want it.

A Kit-Kat bar being auctioned after a week of hiking in the frozen snow of Strathcona Park is worth a lot more than when it’s sitting next to the checkout line at Safeway.

And… vaccines. A year from now, a Covid-19 vaccine… be it Pfizer or Moderna or AstraZeneca or, by then, numerous other ones… will be as common as Tylenol. “Hey doc, while I’m here, can you spare a….” “Say no more.” Jab. Done.

But today? People chartering planes to the middle of nowhere, just to get it. People flying to Dubai, just to get it. Young women dressing up as grandmas and getting into lineups… just to get it. Stories of people throwing all sorts of money at it in all sorts of ways, just to get it… now. What’s it worth? What’s it worth in a month, six months?

I don’t know. I suppose I could attach a number to it, as far as what I’m willing to pay for it. We can all do that, and we would all come up with different numbers. Some people are happy with zero; happy to wait. Some people don’t want it, even if you paid them.

All of this is largely irrelevant, because it’s not for sale. It’s like that old MasterCard commercial:

Parking at the clinic: $3
Alcohol/cotton swab/syringe: $1
Trained nurse: $40
Vaccine: priceless

There’s no real point to this; it’s just me thinking out loud, because my business brain can’t help but think about stuff like this. But this business brain also understands that some questions have no answers.

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By |2021-03-02T17:03:05-08:00March 2nd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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