Monthly Archives: April 2021

April 20, 2021

Yesterday’s vaccine announcement – the one where now, anyone 40+ can go and get the AstraZeneca vaccine – wasn’t entirely unexpected… and some intelligent, forward-thinking people, earlier in the day, booked themselves appointments. At worst, you cancel it if you don’t ultimately qualify… and, if you do qualify at the end of the day, great.

I wasn’t one of those people, so by the time I started browsing London Drugs and Shoppers and other big pharmacies, all appointments were solidly booked. That being said, being resourceful meant getting on the phone and calling little pharmacies – the mom-and-pop shops that aren’t part of the provincial system and/or don’t have online booking. It took a while… but, finally… success. Booked for Thursday!

In the meantime, I’m on numerous waiting lists… Shoppers, LD, the provincial system. I guess the thing to do would be to remove myself from those lists (*after* Thursday, of course…), but I think I’ll stay on them. Not because I’ll show up to any of those appointments… and it’ll be easy to say “No thanks” when the email or text comes in… but because I’m genuinely curious to see when I’ll actually sift to the top.

The truth is, the system shouldn’t actually work this way. There should be exactly one list, and if you didn’t know any better, you still might think there is… the big provincial list that’s a bit confusing; the one where anyone can register any time, but you’re told to wait till it’s your turn to register. And where registering only means you’re now on the long waiting list, till your cohort comes up.

But there’s more than one list. Shoppers has one. London Drugs has one. Ostensibly, the provincial system should feed into that, but this pandemic will long be over by the time that integration would ever take place.

That part of the system is broken, but what’s not broken is the demand. As obscure as it is to figure out how to book an appointment, it’s not like pharmacies are dealing with overflowing fridges of vaccine. It’s getting into arms as fast as it’s showing up. As long as that keeps up, great. We keep hearing that we’ll all have one shot at least by July 1st… and, at this pace, perhaps that’ll turn out to be true.

With parallel lines of vaccine deployment and demand still ahead of supply, the important part of it is happening. It’s not entirely fair, but I’ll put out there what I did to a lot of people yesterday: If you’re having problem trying to find a pharmacy to give you the shot, send me a PM and I’ll happily give you the contact details of the place I found. The one where me, my cousin, and several friends will all be visiting on Thursday. I am so looking forward to it.

And speaking of looking forward, we are in the midst of the third wave, so no need to keep looking at first and second wave info… the graphs below are all current and concise as to what’s been going on since March 10th… and also looking forward, below those are vaccination graphs. It’s nice, for once, to look at exponentially-growing graphs that convey good news. To hell with flattening the curve; these ones we want getting steep as soon as possible. And, to be honest, they’re looking pretty good.

By |2021-04-20T17:03:06-07:00April 20th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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April 19, 2021

The “Presidency” of Augusto Pinochet in Chile lasted until early 1990. But you can’t really call him a President, because the Republic of Chile never actually democratically elected him into power.

So… in other words, when I was living there in 1987/1988, life under a military dictatorship was in full swing. It meant that a lot of the civil liberties we take for granted here in Canada simply didn’t exist. But other things, that we do take for granted *not* to exist… did. Such as… checkpoints.

Whenever you run into a checkpoint here… 99.9% of the time it’s to sniff out DUIs. The checkpoints are strategically placed so that if you find yourself heading into one, there’s no escape. Just over the hill on the Granville St. bridge, southbound – heading out of downtown on a Saturday night – is a good example.

And as you approach it, you will feel one of two things. If you’ve been drinking, dread. Fear. A complete freakout. And now you get to pay the steep price for making the poor decisions that put you in this situation.

Or, you haven’t been drinking, and you feel a mix of relief and indignation. Relief that you get to have a brief and friendly chat with the cop before you’re on your merry way… and a bit of indignation. How *dare* they stomp on my civil rights. Who do they think they are. I should be free to drive wherever I want. This is a free country. I should be able to do whatever I want.

We’ve been hearing a lot of those sentences recently, in a very different context… but these two different contexts will be merging a bit on the near future, much to the horror of civil libertarians.

Living under a military dictatorship kept you on edge. Every single time I went through one of those checkpoints… and, might I add, they not only popped-up unexpectedly, but many were semi-permanent. Imagine a checkpoint in the middle of the Lion’s Gate Bridge. In both directions… License and registration and insurance, please. Why isn’t this car in your name. Why are you going downtown. Who do you know on the north shore. How often do you travel this route.

That would be a permanent checkpoint… a little hut in the middle of the bridge, manned by a solider 24/7. Except it wasn’t 24/7… just to mess with you, sometimes the hut was empty and you could just go through. Just to mess you with and keep you on edge.

But usually, it was manned… so, you’d jump through the hoops; you let them execute their little power trip, you acquiesce to their bullshit. And unless you’re actually up to no good, you’re unlikely to have a problem. I was asked a lot of stupid questions… “Where’d you get that car radio?” “Canada? Is that one of those little states way up north?” but it was never more than a few questions before “Have a nice day”.

I’ve been back to Chile many times post-1990, and all of those checkpoints are gone… but the little huts are still there. And I drive by them now and think… what was the point of that. Seriously, what was the point.

Well, the point was that they wanted to keep you in fear. They wanted to constantly remind you… don’t forget who’s in charge. We control you. Don’t, for a minute, think you’re free.

It took a radical change in government to get rid of that but, rest assured, the right-wing military junta of Augusto Pinochet had zero in common with today’s NDP government of John Horgan… something to remember when people start screaming about today’s announcements… that for several weeks, travel restrictions… where you simply shouldn’t leave your local area. And you may run into a checkpoint. It’s temporary and it makes sense, but, oh boy… here comes the screaming and yelling from the freedom/liberty crowd.

I don’t expect to get pulled over at any checkpoint because I don’t expect to be transiting from home any time soon… but in a warped way, I’d look forward to it… because I wouldn’t be able to not compare it to my experiences from 30 years ago… the difference between slowly pulling up to a young, potentially itchy-trigger-fingered solider armed with a loaded semi-automatic weapon… and some VPD or RCMP cop whose only job in this context is to try to keep people safe. I’d look at today’s checkpoint and realize that the cop is on my side, that this is temporary, that this is necessary… and resign myself to the fact that we put ourselves in this situation.

It’s more serious than many people realize, but that’s counteracted by the measures already in place which *are* having a positive effect… and warmer weather, and vaccines. The outcome of this collision course is approaching… do we go the Israel route or the Ontario route in the near future?

Well, let’s look at the Chile route. Way ahead on vaccinations, and fully locked up… because they took that freedom and abused the hell out of it and things went from being under control to totally messed up. That’s what can happen. That’s what might happen here if strict and sudden measures weren’t put in place. So ironic that checkpoints in Chile might have prevented their full-on lockdown.

Around here… may I say… temporary. Can I repeat… temporary. As in – what we need to do today, so that we don’t all have to be doing this forever. I’m pretty sure we can do this for just a few short weeks.

I sure hope so. Otherwise, it won’t be short and it won’t be weeks.

By |2021-04-19T17:03:11-07:00April 19th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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April 18, 2021

I will update the data and graphs when I get home… but, for the moment… I am out enjoying the sunshine.

On that note…I’m not a huge fan of seeing my words being twisted into something I didn’t say… so I guess I’ll take another brief moment on yet another gorgeous day to yet again clarify something I’ve been saying for the better part of a year. Here it is again:

First of all, something I’ve been saying and dealing with and venting about seems to be this unbelievably incredibly annoying way of trying to discuss things with people who refuse to see anything other than in terms of right/wrong, black/white, “with us or against us”. I’ve written endlessly about having to explain things to certain people over and over again, because the minute one little thing doesn’t agree with what they think, everything else must be wrong.

This is not how the world works.

Let’s break this down into tiny little digestible bits so that there’s zero confusion about what I’m trying to say.

I am certainly not advocating staying inside, locked up in a tiny room with no windows, watching your mental health and that of your family deteriorate into a puddle of despair. It’s beautiful and sunny. Blue skies and fresh air. Go outside and soak in the vitamin D. It’s what I’m doing right now. It’s good for you. Wear sunscreen if you’re going to be out there a long time.

It seems, however, and this is the part that a lot of people don’t seem to want to understand… that then going down to the beach and sitting without masks in close proximity with hundreds of other strangers singing and partying about freedom and kumbaya… is not even remotely close to finding a quiet spot, just you and your group of up to 10, far away from others, not risking propagating infection from your bubble to someone else’s.

Some people want to hear just enough to suit their narrative, and that’s it.

“So yes, go outside and…”

Weeee!!! PARTY!!!! WooHoo!!!!

“No, that’s not what anyone said.”

“You said we could go outside and so we do and now you’re saying we can’t and freedom and you’re a liar and freedom and who needs masks and vaccines are bullshit and freedom and Mark Donnelly and freedom and f!@# masks and vaccines don’t work anyway and what about that restaurant on Cornwall and freedom and masks prevent oxygen and that gym in Kelowna and freedom and it’s a hoax and freedom and big brother and social distancing is bullshit and it’s just a flu and freedom and…”

Yeah, you know what, I keep getting accused of propagating a narrative that’s trying to limit your freedoms. This comes mostly from a group of people who don’t have much clarity with respect to what freedom actually is because they’ve never faced a reality where actual freedom has been at stake.

Being told to act responsibly is not an infringement of your freedoms. It’s simply part of you being a cooperative part of society so that everyone, including you, can benefit from the effects of the greater good that all of us have the power to bestow.

Most people know what that means. Some are incapable of understanding. And some… simply don’t care.

By |2021-04-18T17:05:38-07:00April 18th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , |9 Comments
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April 17, 2021

Gosh darn, what a beautiful day… what am I doing sitting in front of a computer typing this out, when I could be at Kits beach partying it up with 10,000 other people?

Sarcasm aside, I was down there on my bike yesterday, and it was pretty packed. I can only imagine what it looks like today. This grand collision course of “Who gives a crap” vs. vaccinations… will find its resolution in the not-too-distant future. The equally loud “they’re not doing enough!” vs. “they’re doing too much!” is something policy makers must get used to over time. Since nobody will ever be happy, if you have two equally unhappy groups, that’s about as good as it’s going to get.

So, those are the two big dogs in the fight, which can be summarized as “Follow the rules” and “Don’t follow the rules”. We’ve all seen the dogs fight, but you never see the bones themselves get involved; they just get tossed around and hope not to get destroyed by one side or the other. So, that’s most of us, whether we like it or not… the 5,000,000 little bones in a dogfight that has a month or two left before it becomes evident who’s coming out on top. But like I said yesterday, it might not be a case of winning… just a case of not losing.

With two sides and vastly different prevailing attitudes, that’s what you get… two sides that keep drifting further apart as the finish line gets closer.

In fact, speaking of bones… here’s what one might call a good bone-headed example… there’s martial arts gym in Kelowna that’s refusing to allow masks. Not a question of masks being optional, which, in a gym, is bad enough… but no… if you want to wear a mask, you’re not welcome.

Oh, but that’s not all. If you’re vaccinated, you’re not welcome at all. Yes, you read that correctly – if you have been vaccinated, you are not allowed in. But if you haven’t been, and agree to not wear a mask, come right in.

I can’t even bring myself to comment on that. It just loudly speaks for a voice that’s out there, and is surprisingly loud. I’m just hoping that voice belongs to the dog that ends up whimpering away.

On that note, time to go enjoy more sunshine and take the dog for a walk. Just not down to the beach.

By |2021-04-17T17:03:01-07:00April 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |7 Comments
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April 16, 2021

Perhaps the biggest misconception I had with all of this is evident in the thoughts I was posting around this time last year… basically, “We’re all in this together and we’ll get through it together if we all stick together and do what we need to do, together.”

Haha… how ridiculously naïve.

This thing will end one day, but it certainly won’t be like I pictured it. No VE Day with people dancing in the streets and randomly hugging and kissing each other. No… just a lot of disparate groups, all of them grumbling about something different.

We will never hear the end from the naysayers… the anti-vaxx, anti-mask crowd. The ridiculously short-sighted people who want to question everything, as if that’s the right way to critically think. Question everything. Doctors, politicians, specialists, scientists… all of them are wrong. It’s difficult to piece together logical arguments where you can make it all fit together, because most of those people don’t agree with each other to begin with… but people try… and that’s where you get the real wing-nut opinions. They will grumble about it forever.

The crowd that’s been doing the right thing from day one… and finds themselves exactly where we were last year, if not a little worse… waiting for their vaccine, being careful, and watching reckless behaviour all around them. Their grumbling is more quiet, but evident.

The crowd that’s been vaccinated and now feels invincible and is screaming to open things up. What’s the delay? What’s the problem? I’m willing to take the risk! Let me in! Very loud grumbling.

The crowd that, for actual health reasons, can’t be vaccinated and is counting on herd immunity to keep them safe “in the wild”, now realizing that it may take years… or if it’ll ever even happen. They’re more quiet, but justifiably pissed off.

The heroes of the equation; not just the scientists who developed the vaccines, nor the countless researchers who, over decades, contributed placing pieces to the puzzle that was finally solved. Them too, but I mean the front-line workers who, for a year, have been putting themselves at risk to benefit the greater good; everyone mentioned in this paragraph has faced backlash from those in the paragraphs above; they could’ve done it better, sooner… or, shouldn’t have done it at all. Many are feeling underappreciated… and grumbling about it

The politicians, the leaders, elected or not… who certainly didn’t choose this, and who’ve been making the best decisions they can, faced with difficult choices that are bound to upset someone. Love them or hate them, let’s all appreciate that they’re in no-win situations. For every person that considers Dr. Henry a reluctant-but-capable hero, there’s someone issuing death threats. At some point, all of them have made a specific decision that someone found completely wrong. People grumble at that. The politicians grumble behind closed doors.

I guess there are two ways to finish a marathon. We’re all familiar with the guy who’s never run one, trains his heart out, struggles… but makes it, and falls into the arms of his wife and kids at the finish line, tears of joy for all of them at the accomplishment. Yeah, that’s great, we’ve all seen that movie.

But there’s also the guy who trained really hard, as he does every year, trying to beat his personal best… he almost broke 4 hours that one year, and this time he knows he can do it. He pours his heart into it, but struggles nonetheless… and barely breaks 5 hours. He crosses the finish line, pissed off and upset, scoffs at the flowers and “Way to go dad!!” sign that his family is holding up.

“Let’s just get the hell out of here”, he says to them as he shepherds them into the car. To hell with this, he thinks. To hell with all of it and everyone involved.

I might sound like I’m grumbling myself… but I think that’s pretty much going to be it.

By |2021-04-16T17:03:14-07:00April 16th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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April 15, 2021

In answering a lot of “Ask me next year” questions, I can’t help but touch upon a topic I wrote a lot about last year… but haven’t touched recently.

Just my opinion, but the U.S. has gotten itself into quite a pickle. If you’re a typical, normal, right-leaning American who usually votes Republican because, above all, you favour their economic policies, you’re not facing a great situation. You want the Republican party, but you don’t want the racist misogynist narcissist that presently leads it. Your former president is as unhinged as ever, and that will never change… just get worse. From his point of view, you’re with him or you’re against him. His VP, Mike Pence, stuck with him through high and low, but that didn’t stop Trump from sending him to the lions on January 6th.

Mitch McConnell made his own deal with the devil… one he’s very much regretting. True to form, now that he and Trump are on the outs, he’s facing his own version of getting kicked to the curb. A few nights ago, Trump called McConnell a “stone cold loser” and a “dumb son of a bitch”. That honeymoon is certainly over.

The problem is that the populist Trump has a huge crowd of support and, as we’ve all learned, a significant percentage of that crowd is unshakable. And if Trump dumps the GOP and goes Independent, he will take most of those people with him, and those people, at present, make up half of the Republican voting base. In that scenario, if the GOP votes were to be split in half, there’s a reasonable chance the next election might be a 50-state sweep for the Democrats, a scenario no Republican wants to contemplate. Third-party candidates appear all the time, but rarely have a significant impact. One has never swung an American election one way or the other… but Trump certainly would. Sweep or not, the election wouldn’t be close, and it wouldn’t be a reflection of what the majority necessarily want… a scenario that’s actually not so uncommon.

Municipally, left-leaning Kennedy Stewart is the mayor of Vancouver… elected in 2018, having beaten the NPA’s Ken Sim by only 1,000 votes… something like 50,000 votes to 49,000 votes. Wai Young, who’s further to the right than Ken Sim, got close to 12,000 votes… the vast majority of which would’ve gone to Ken Sim.

Provincially, we saw it here in 1996 when the right-wing split-vote brought in a Glen Clark NDP government with only 39% percent of the popular vote.

Chile similarly saw it in 1970 when Salvador Allende won that election with only 37% percent of the popular vote, the right-wing having split the other 63%.

The U.S. could be next… so, for the moment, the GOP is stuck with Trump… and their bigger problem is that with cult populists, it doesn’t necessarily go away when the head guy goes away. We’re living it here, where the ghost of Pierre Trudeau lives on in Justin. In the U.S., there can potentially be 8 years of Don Jr. followed by 8 years of Ivanka followed by 8 years of Eric. By then, Barron will be over 40 and it can be his turn. Don’t think this isn’t exactly what they’re try to do.

Indeed, now that the cult of Trump is well-entrenched in the Republican party, those who don’t like it find themselves in quite a conundrum… because, perhaps, there’s no way out. But that’s what happens when you dance with the devil. Sometimes you wind up in a mortal embrace. And then you get burned.

By |2021-04-15T17:03:49-07:00April 15th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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April 14, 2021

About as close to hell on earth as one could ever imagine was Auschwitz. A final destination for countless innocent people, murdered for no reason other than their religion, ethnicity, sexual orientation or mental capacity. Most people know that part of it… but here’s something perhaps you didn’t know…

Most of the people arriving there didn’t know the fate that awaited them; they thought they were being resettled, and this was just a temporary stop. That’s what they were told. And they were told they could bring with them up to 100lbs of personal belongings.

As you might imagine, if you had to move on to a whole new life and could take only 100lbs of stuff with you, what would it be? Jewellery, watches, furs… your best clothes. Tools, medications, things for kids. Tinned food for the journey, alcohol… as many things of value as you could within the allowable limit.

Many of those people were murdered within hours of their arrival. What happened to all that stuff?

It wound up in an increasingly-growing and well-organized storage complex which ultimately occupied more than 30 buildings and “employed” more than 2,000 prisoners to sort through the stuff. For the prisoners who managed to get this work detail, it was the dream job. While they were tasked with organizing the goods for distribution for use in not only the camp, but all of Germany, they also would secretly procure what they could for themselves and their friends and family.

And what was it called, this large storage facility… this place of abundance and food and opportunity, smack in the middle of hell? It was called Kanada. Indeed, for all of these people caught in hell, the Kanada warehouses were named after this abstract distant place where nobody had ever been, but they could only dream… of freedom and abundance and wealth and opportunity. One of the very few who escaped Auschwitz (and wrote the report that blew the whistle on the whole operation) was Rudy Vrba, who made his way to Canada. To Vancouver, in fact, where he wound up at UBC, a professor of pharmacology.

We here in Canda take for granted what all of those people only dreamed of. This ever-lasting abundance of wealth and opportunity… but, more fundamentally, food and drinkable water… the latter of which literally falls from the sky. Sometimes endlessly.

Which is why it’s weird for us when all of this stuff we take for granted isn’t readily available. What do you mean you’re out of toilet paper? What, you don’t have a single bottle of hand sanitizer back there somewhere? How can you be out of masks? Many of those questions from last year have been replaced with a single one: Where’s my vaccine?

It’s odd for us here in Canada to be feeling that mindset. For many people, their entire life is a struggle to procure those basic necessities… but never here. And what makes it more odd is seeing the rest of the world having access to something we want, and being unable to get it.

The “out” we have here is that we know it’s coming; just be a bit patient… and that’s certainly the way it’s always been in Canada. Not so much in Kanada… which is why, while I grumble when I read the news that forty-nine percent of Republican men don’t want the vaccine or that forty percent of the U.S. military were offered it and refused it… well, that really sucks. But we’re in Canada, so… eventually, it’ll be ok. We have the privilege of hanging in there a little longer, not something everyone, presently of historically, has had. So we’ll take it.

By |2021-04-14T17:05:57-07:00April 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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April 13, 2021

The good old “abundance of caution” is back in the news, thanks to Johnson & Johnson’s vaccine, which, like the AstraZeneca, is in the spotlight for potentially causing blood clots. Both of those are adenovirus vector vaccines, as opposed to the mRNA Pfizer/Moderna vaccines (no accusations of blood clots there), so that adds to the correlation.

Here are some numbers:

In the U.S., close to 7 million doses of J&J have been administered. There have been reports of 6 potential cases of blood clots. That’s less than a one-in-a-million chance of developing this particular complication… and one of those cases was lethal, so there’s a close to one in 7 million chance of dying from the J&J vaccine. If it’s responsible for that.

Of the 6 cases, 100% of them were young women between the ages of 18 and 48.

Here’s something else that young women ages 18 to 48 do… they take birth control pills, and they have babies. If you throw that into the mix:

We hear that 1 in 1,000 women on birth control develop blood clots. The number is actually a little lower… more like 0.3 to 0.9… as in 3 to 9 out of 10,000. Also relevant is that in the 3 months after giving birth, that number goes up to 40 to 60 out of 10,000.

I really have no idea how much of that applies to these particular women, except to note that throwing a one-in-a-million factor into it changes nothing. It’s the sort of rounding error that gets lost in the mix. Insurance companies view events beyond one-in-a-million as “impossible”, which makes them easy to insure.

Nevertheless, in this age of litigation and ass-covering and risk mitigation, the CDC and FDA slammed on the brakes until everyone dances around a bit and indemnifies themselves, and then they can get back to it.

In the meantime… as with AstraZeneca, I assume the U.S. is sitting on large shipments of unused J&J vaccine. J&J has, for the moment, halted shipments to Europe. Don’t let it go to waste! We here in Canada would welcome it with, literally, open arms.

Dr. Henry and Premier Horgan and Minister Dix continually remind us all that our infrastructure presently supports much more vaccine-delivery capacity than the supply that’s feeding it. Great! Please secure a few million unused doses of that J&J and get it up here. Perhaps don’t make it the first choice to give young women (optics), but I know a lot of old men (I’m one of them!) who’d happily, unquestionably, without hesitation and with profound gratitude accept it.

Unfortunately, that’s unlikely to happen… one, because we here in B.C. have zero leverage to be asking for anything… and two, the Americans will quickly come to their senses and realize that even if these two vaccines, J&J and AstraZeneca, actually introduce a one-in-a-million chance of a complication, the benefit is far outweighed by the risk… and the intelligent thing would be to resume vaccinations as soon as possible. As soon as the $2,250-per-hour lawyers are done with it, they’ll be back in business.

By |2021-04-13T17:03:10-07:00April 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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April 12, 2021

Let’s tackle another one of those “Ask me in a year” questions that popped up around last April… and this one was pretty contentious… the question of how Sweden was handling the pandemic, in harsh contrast to most of the rest of the world. Sweden’s head epidemiologist, Anders Tegnell, had the same response to his critics. “Ask me next year”.

A year later, the answer can be summarized in one sentence: “What else were you expecting?”

Both Sweden and the U.K. initially tried the same approach… which was mostly a version of “Protect the elderly and vulnerable, but the rest of you can go on with your lives as normal. No masks or any of that nonsense needed.” In the U.K., that didn’t last long. They quickly course-corrected when things started getting out of hand. Back in Sweden, Tegnell felt abandoned, but held the line… and, as usual, the longer it goes, the harder it is to admit you were wrong, because then… part of it is having to admit you were wrong all along.

On that note, there are those who will still argue it wasn’t wrong. There are people who have friends and relatives that needlessly died… who’ll tell you it wasn’t wrong. I’m not here to judge people’s opinions, though one thing I’ve learned over the last year is that there are a lot of irrational people, and then more irrational the idea, the more irrationally some people will hold on to it.

Culturally, Sweden is most like its Nordic neighbours, so let’s just do a bit of and apples-to-apples comparisons:

Covid-19 deaths per million of population:
Denmark: 421
Finland: 158
Norway: 126
Sweden: 1,342

Economic impact of C19 on GDP 2020:
Denmark: -4.2%
Finland: -3.1%
Norway: -3.6%
Sweden: -4.0%

Expected GDP recovery 2021:
Denmark: +3.5%
Finland: +2.8%
Norway: +3.6%
Sweden: +3.5%

In summary, thanks to their policies, between three to ten times the number of deaths… and, as far as that being the trade-off for saving the economy? It seems to have had no impact whatsoever. And these days, in Sweden, out in public and especially on public transit… you’ll see lots of masks.

Asked and answered. Moving on.

By |2021-04-12T17:03:54-07:00April 12th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Business & Economics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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April 11, 2021

We’ve been at this long enough that we can actually start answering some questions asked long ago… and since there are no new numbers (B.C. and all of Canada) till tomorrow, instead of guessing ahead, let’s look back at something else.

A year ago, there began a whole “This is just a bad flu” crowd… from which emerged the anti-mask/anti-vax/anti-reason crowd. You’ll recall the memes about how “The flu has killed more people than this thing” were flying around. At the time, it may have been true… early April? Sure. With a year behind us, let’s look at typical numbers and compare. And… if this were indeed “just a flu”, then this is what we’d be looking at:

Flu/pneumonia deaths Canada:
2015: 7,630
2016: 6,235
2017: 7,396
2018: 8,511
2019: 6,893
2020: 15,606

Flu deaths USA:
2015: 23,000
2016: 38,000
2017: 61,000
2018: 34,000
2019: 22,000
2020: 360,000

Tucked in there conveniently is 2018, which was indeed, by any measure, an actual bad flu season in the U.S.… enough to trigger some markings on the “excess deaths” charts of the time.

But, by the same token, 2020 would be an insane outlier… and that gives us plenty to learn from these numbers.

First of all, in Canada, with all of the mitigation that took place… lockdowns, masks, social distancing… still, it was double the deaths we’d have expected. What would’ve happened if we hadn’t taken it so seriously?

The 10x south of the border might be an indication. So instead of the 23,000 C19 deaths we presently have, we in Canada might be at 230,000… yikes.

In any event, this isn’t the flu. It never was. But if you want to pretend it is, then you have to come to terms with the numbers above and rationalize them somehow… that it’s some of super-flu that requires masks and social distancing and, ultimately, vaccines… and, even with all of that, its outcomes are still far worse.

Or maybe, you know… it’s just not the flu.

By |2021-04-11T17:03:07-07:00April 11th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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