Yearly Archives: 2021

March 20, 2021

Last Summer, there was a question I wanted to ask Dr. Henry… it was after the big initial wave had died down, and things looked ok at the time, but Dr. Henry kept warning about the impending second wave in the fall (which certainly happened) and how it would overlap with “respiratory season” (which didn’t… more below) – the time when all of us get sick and numbers always spike up, just not so seriously.

Colder temperatures leading to lowered immune systems, the climate where viruses thrive, people being inside more and in closer proximity… it’s annually the combination to leads to everyone, at some point, catching some version of the sniffles.

The question that I wanted to ask was… why would we expect anyone to be catching colds and flus from each other? With masks and social distancing and hand sanitizers everywhere, how would it work? Like how would we transmit a common cold to each other… but not C19?

The question was eventually asked by one of the reporters at one of the daily update briefings, but the answer wasn’t too convincing, from what I can recall. It was a bit vague… more to do with those illnesses being more contagious, etc… but still, they’d have to be pretty darn contagious to make their way past a lot of defences we’d all put up.

As it turns out, nature answered the question better… which was, there was next to no “respiratory season” at all. Speaking for myself, I inevitably get sick at some point over the winter… and I can usually tell you where or from whom I caught it. Stuck in a crowded ski lodge for an hour with a room packed with heavily breathing people and poor ventilation? Stuck in an airplane for a few hours? Getting infinite kissy-kissies from relatives?

Not really surprised that this year, I didn’t get sick. How could I? From whom? When and where? For the first time I can ever remember, no winter cold.

Did you? Certainly, nobody in my immediate circle got sick with any virus. A spot of food poisoning perhaps, but nothing contagious.

Which leads to ask an interesting question, one that Asians answered centuries ago… but we didn’t follow suit: Are masks now going to become much more normalized in Western society? They most certainly will not be mandated, but it’s the same as sunscreen… no one should be giving people dirty looks for doing whatever works for them… and I wonder… how common will masks be on planes? On public transit? These habits that we’ve normalized actually make a big difference. Forget C19 and the risk of death; let’s just talk about the risk of inconvenience. The risk of catching a cold, perhaps having to miss work or some event you were looking forward to.

And I do get it, some people will say to hell with it, I don’t care about catching the sniffles for a few days if it means I don’t have to worry about it after that. Just catch the seasonal cold, get it over with, and get on with your life. Makes sense too.

I’m undecided, to be honest. Chances are, if I don’t take it seriously always… ie, all the masks and social distancing and hand sanitizer I’m doing now, I’ll probably catch something at some point… and, therefore, what’s the point at all. That’s probably my version of it; get the seasonal flu shot, which from now on will be juiced up with the latest and greatest C19 formula… and go back to living… with a little bag of Kleenex in my pocket.

By |2021-03-20T17:03:07-07:00March 20th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 19, 2021

Chaos Theory is an area of math that deals with complex systems which seem to appear to act randomly because of the unpredictable nature of what’s being observed… but, in reality, there’s a very well-defined set of deterministic rules underlying what’s going on; it’s just that the initial conditions make all the difference… and, minor variances in those initial conditions change everything.

Indeed, that’s where the concept of the “Butterfly Effect” comes from… that a little butterfly flapping its wings in Japan today might be responsible for a hurricane on the other side of the planet next week… and it’s true. Weather is a hugely complex chaotic system that the world’s biggest supercomputers endeavour to model and predict… and that’s exactly what they’ve found. Sneeze at the wrong time, and everything changes.

Without getting into an entire philosophical discussion about Free Will — whether everything is pre-determined or not — I think we can agree that your one little action today can have a profound effect on the entire planet, without you even knowing about it. You showed up a few minutes late to your dentist appointment, which set the whole schedule back a bit… and some patient three hours after you had to wait, and then was late leaving and had to hurry back to some meeting, but was speeding and caused an accident… nobody was seriously hurt, but the paramedics that were called to the site would’ve otherwise been able to attend to some old guy who had a heart attack… and that delay meant the difference between the old guy living and dying. See? Don’t be late to your dentist appointment.

And what if that old guy that died was the swing vote in parliament with respect to a bill that would introduce sweeping changes with respect to environmental responsibility… and now, without his vote, the bill doesn’t pass… and it has to wait seven years to get passed, by which time it’s too late, the planet is doomed. Antarctica melts, sea levels rise, global temperatures go off the charts… all because you, seven years ago, couldn’t be bothered to show up in time. Way to go.

Interestingly, there’s now some evidence that this entire pandemic could easily have been avoided… could easily have never happened… if only a few key things hadn’t aligned. Like, the initial patient zero… if that guy hadn’t gone to that Wuhan wet market, and just stayed home because he wasn’t feeling well… and/or if he’d gone to the market but not interacted closely with the one or two people he infected… and/or those people, in turn had stayed home or been elsewhere or not breathed right at that moment. Who knows. Unfortunately, all of the stars aligned in the worst possible way… the necessary initial conditions… and here we are.

Not that there’s anything we could’ve done to prevent it, of course. This chaotic system we live in, whether it’s a simulation or reality of an invention of our consciousness… whatever it is, we’re at its mercy. We just do what we do, and things happen… c’est la vie. What can you do with this life? …just live it.

But also, seriously… just in case, don’t be late to dentist appointments. It can really mess things up.

By |2021-03-19T17:03:31-07:00March 19th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , |5 Comments
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March 18, 2021

As I like to say (and have experienced numerous times in my life), the first 90% of any project takes up 90% of the time, effort and resources. Then, that last 10% actually ends up taking 90% of the time, effort and resources to finish the project. It’s so incredibly easy to start something, but as time goes on, everything becomes a little more difficult… and continues on that path, with every aspect becoming a bit more challenging as time goes on. The “Time/Effort” graph looks exactly like the exponential growth graphs we’ve been trying to avoid for a year.

Ironic that as we approach the finish line of this pandemic, that’s what the end of this adventure is beginning to look like; in some places, because cases are once again growing at an alarming rate… but even where they’re not, the “We’re done with this” attitude of people who’ve already “checked out” of the effort. The “Forget everything, we’re fine” crowd reminds me of the people who start bailing on projects in that final 10%, because they figure they’ve done enough… the momentum will carry it through to the end, other people will pick up the slack, and so on. I don’t think I need to spell out what happens when a critical mass of people suddenly all switch to that mindset.

You’d think if you have a bad infection, the worst thing you can do is leave it untreated… while the best thing is to throw some antibiotics at it and cure it. But actually, the worst thing is to throw some antibiotics at it in a half-assed way, and then drop it because you yourself came to the brilliant conclusion that you’re cured, even while the doctor, pharmacist, Google and everyone will tell you: Take the antibiotics for the entire recommended course. Do not leave a single pill behind, even if you’re feeling 100% and think you’re cured.

If you don’t stamp out the infection properly, then the 90% of the bugs you killed won’t hurt you, but the 10% that are left… the strong ones… will be happy to make a re-appearance. These are the 10% that were tough enough to withstand your 90% effort in dealing with this in the first place, and now they’re mad. And resilient. Now you’re back to square one, fighting a tougher opponent.

We are at the 90% point now in this pandemic, but that 10% of rapidly-growing variants could quickly become the 90% of cases, and then we’ve all taken a huge step back. While we’re well-down the path of vaccines, if the new variants require a booster or a modification or whatever, we’re back to trying to vaccinate everyone… and now it’s also a steeper uphill because the anti-vax crowd will use it as ammo: “See, vaccines are useless! What, we’re going to need a new one every year?” – yeah, ironically, because of their attitude, we might. The people who tell us we don’t need masks will be responsible for us all needing masks. The people who tell us we don’t need vaccines will cause us all to need them.

An awful lot can happen in the last furlong of a horse race, something to which a lot of people reading this can attest. The best thing any jockey can do is put themselves in a position to win, do what they can… and hope things work out… though there’s always plenty outside of their control that will enter the story. 90% got them to the head of the stretch, perhaps in first place. But that last 10%… where we are now… this is where it gets real. This is where the race is won or lost.

And… this is not a project any of us want to throw out and start over.

By |2021-03-18T17:03:40-07:00March 18th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 17, 2021

March 17th… St. Patrick’s Day, of course. Many, many years ago, this would’ve meant a green Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s. Years after that, it would’ve meant green beer pub hops, though I must admit those memories are pretty hazy. In recent years, a pint or two of Guinness.

Last year, none of the above. Last year, right at this time, a state of emergency was declared, and, instead of imbibing pints, I was reading through a bunch of stuff, like the rest of us… trying to make some sense as to what the hell is actually going on here. It led me to find an interesting little table of numbers… showing how Italy had gone from 100 cases one day to 1,000 in less than a week to 10,000 about 10 days later… and how the U.S. growth in cases was mirroring that, step by step, only 11 days behind. I wondered how Canada would compare, so I found the data and lined it up… and to make things easier to visualize, graphed it. And realized we were on the exact same track, a week behind the U.S. And thought, simultaneously, “Wow, cool”… and, also… “Holy shit”.

I thought it worthy enough to post… and since enough people were interested to see how it would evolve, I resolved to update it and post it at 5pm every day. And I resolved to myself to update this thing for as long as I could… ie, the end of the pandemic.

Facebook was kind enough to remind me earlier today, so I didn’t have to scroll back 365 articles to find it. It’s reposted below this. That lame little graph and tiny columns of numbers pale in comparison to what I’m cranking out these days, but I must say… I felt dread looking at those graphs for the first few weeks.

So, yes… that was exactly a year ago… and during that time, I have posted the ever-evolving numbers and charts and details exactly 365 times. Yeah, I find it remarkable too – I haven’t missed a day. I’m a computer guy, so the numbers and graphs are now at the point of complete automation… click-click-click and today’s picture and numbers are ready to upload. That’s the easy part. But what’s more remarkable is what you’re reading right now… because behind this, there are 365 versions of my rambling, extemporaneous (adj. spoken or done without preparation) thoughts… some serious, some funny, some confrontational, some informative… and all of it, coming from a place in my brain I truly didn’t know existed. I keep saying I need to slow down, and one year would mark a good cut-off… except, you know what… I enjoy it too much. It’s fun to sit down here and just unload whatever my brain decides is worthy of providing for public consumption.

For me, the unfortunate aspect of the end of the pandemic (let’s find a little cloud in a huge silver lining) is that I’m having less and less time to write. And there’s lots of other stuff I’d like to be writing too. A book (that has nothing to do with any of this) will emerge from this keyboard one day, and I’d like to devote some time to that.

But… yeah, I’m not going anywhere. Until this pandemic is over, I’ll be around posting this… which today is relatively long, but often will just be a placeholder for the numbers and pictures. And looking back, those numbers and pictures sure tell a story. And these stories that go along with them; they also tell a story, haha. Reading through a bunch of them just now, there’s a common thread… and it’s like I’ve been saying all along… we’ll get through this, together. It’ll all be ok… eventually.

You often regret getting on the roller-coaster in the midst of that first, huge drop… or during those tight loops that impose enough G-forces on you to think you’ll pass out… but once the ride over, and once you can once-again walk straight and you’re not feeling nauseous… part of you is happy you went for the ride, if for no other reason than you can tell everyone you did it… and made it out alive.

And… so it’ll be with all of this… especially now, with a finish line well in sight; let’s not paint it rosy… it’s been a year of hell, and a year that has been catastrophic to many people’s lives; their health and their livelihoods altered in ways they’d never imagined. Nothing will make up for it, and the healing will take decades.

But, you’re still here… and, while this pandemic still rages… or, at least, till it’s snuffed out… so am I.

I raise my pint of Guinness to you: Cheers! … to a better year ahead. And see you tomorrow.

By |2021-03-17T17:03:24-07:00March 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , |11 Comments
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March 16, 2021

As I’ve said before, instead of “Do unto others…”, I much prefer the subtle but distinctly different: “Don’t do unto others… as you’d have them not do to you.” In other words, don’t impose your crap on others… unless you’d be happy with them doing the same.

So… for those who keep screaming about their human rights with respect to masks, perhaps it’d be easier to shift in your mind the mask to something like a big cigar. A huge cigar, just to make it a little more offensive… one of those gigantic Cohibas that Fidel Castro used to smoke.

Now, imagine you, flaunting your anti-mask awesomeness, sitting in Starbucks, glaring at anyone that gets close to you, let alone tries to address your masklessness. Now imagine me… I wander in with my gargantuan cigar, puffing away, and sit down right next to you. You start screaming at me to get the hell away from you. In fact, obviously, the entire coffee shop, customers and baristas alike, are all yelling at me… “WTF do you think you’re doing!”, “Get the hell out of here!”, “Hey, that’s Cuban, there’s an embargo, I’m going to have you arrested for treason!”

First of all, this is Canada… so Cuban cigars are available everywhere… and let’s at least agree on something: That’s hardly the issue.

The issue is, I’m invading your space (and everyone else’s) with this foul stench that you find indescribably awful, toxic and unhealthy. Fair enough, many people can’t stand cigar smoke, and why should I have the right to exhale it all over you. In fact, there are laws protecting your rights specifically because it’s known that not only is it unpleasant for many people, but it’s also a health hazard. Appropriately, it’s banned in public spaces and it’s banned in private places to, to the extent that the owner of said private space is entitled to make their own rules.

We all agree that in my own private space, I can do whatever I want. I can sit on my deck and smoke cigars all day long, and nobody can do anything about it… nor should they able to… and nobody should care, either. It’s my business and it’s not hurting you and it’s not being imposed upon you. And if I invite you over, you’re free to stay… and perhaps enjoy your own cigar… or you’re free to leave. Can we please agree that you’re not entitled to tell me to put out my $40 cigar? My house, my rules. Starbucks’ house, Starbucks’ rules. SkyTrain’s house, SkyTrain’s rules too.

There’s a remarkable 11-minute video of a woman on the SkyTrain who refuses to wear a mask and refuses to leave the train. A policeman, very calmly and politely tries to explain this to her, repeatedly… certainly with more patience than I would… but, even so, it escalates to her assaulting the officer and getting arrested.

I am certainly at the point where I understand the fact that someone who, these days, is still refusing to wear a mask… is someone who will never wear one. So… it’s pretty simple. You stay away from me, and I’ll stay away from you. I don’t have the right to tell you to put on a mask, you say… well, in my home, I do. In my place of business, I do. And I have the right to tell you to go away if you don’t want to play by my rules.
This is a pretty good comparison. The difference is that we can all see and smell cigar smoke… so it’s blatantly obvious when it’s headed in your direction. Not so with tiny virus balls, but the fact we can’t see them doesn’t mean they might not be there…and you have the right to be protected from it. It might help people to understand the concept that a mask requirement is a bit like a no-smoking sign. Just like you can’t expect to smoke somewhere, because you may be breathing something dangerous on people… these days, for now, you might be doing exactly that and not know it. Doesn’t everyone else also have the right to be just as protected as you are?

I think so… and I’m not just blowing smoke here.

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By |2021-03-16T19:05:45-07:00March 16th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Humour|Tags: , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 15, 2021

Beware the Ides of March… happy March 15th. Indeed, one day after Pi Day comes Die Day… at least, that was the case for Julius Caesar who, on this day 2,064 years ago, quickly realized that unfortunately, sometimes even your best and loyal friends can literally stab you in the back.

It’s good that politics, at least around here, have evolved beyond that. The House of Commons would be quite a different place if that were still an accepted method of resolving disputes.

One dispute that continues to make some waves has to do with the AstraZeneca vaccine… the opinion of which seems to widen with each passing hour. More people vehemently say there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it, yet more and more countries continue to “cancel” it.

I wrote about it yesterday, so let’s update this evolving story. In Europe, 17 million people have received the AZ vaccine. 37 of them developed blood clots. That is 0.00022% of the population. One in 460,000 people. The typical European rate is actually significantly higher than that. I wonder if this story can turn a 180, where suddenly people realize that the AZ vaccine significantly lowers the risk of blood clots. I’m not a doctor, of course… just looking at the numbers. But that’s what they imply.

This is a great example of politics versus medicine. The science, the data, the everything battle tested says it’s safe; more than safe. The politicians who need to cover their asses always like to play it safe, so once those dominoes start falling, “the optics” dictate you need to follow suit. If eleven countries have decided to suspend it “out of an abundance of caution” (and to hell with the data, such as that analyzed and reported by the World Health Organization), and you’re the leader of the 12th nation, what are you going to do? Even as the scientists tell you… it’s fine, it’s ok, here’s the data… yeah, you’re going to cave. This is high-school peer pressure on a global level. Look around; everyone is putting up their hand. What was the question? Who cares, follow along, don’t look like the idiot.

Unfortunately, as I wrote about and am now believing more strongly by the hour, this might have a profound effect on what C19 looks like in the coming weeks in Europe.

Around here, as much as there are people who’d like to jab a dagger in Trudeau’s back, I applaud his resoundingly unambiguous statement endorsing the AZ vaccine, and I applaud the reliance on the suggestions coming from Health Canada – not the obscure political PR analyst firms in Ottawa.

Sunny day here in B.C…. and we get an extra hour of it… and, nicely trending numbers over the weekend. All of that pointing in the right direction.

March 15, 2021 Graph

By |2021-03-16T19:18:01-07:00March 15th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Humour|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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March 14, 2021

You know… if you take a pizza with radius “z” and thickness “a”, its volume can be calculated as pi•z•z•a – and that is my π contribution for the day – so Happy Pi Day!

Pi, like many people, is irrational… and Pi, also like many people, goes on forever… but it goes on forever after the decimal point, so it doesn’t get much bigger after a while. But let’s talk about numbers that *do* get big, and what happens when they collide with the fallacies of causality.

For example, unfortunately, sometimes people die unexpectedly. It happens a lot. People unexpectedly choke to death or have heart attacks or strokes or burst aneurysms or whatever else, and when they do, especially when it’s unexpected, people tend to try to blame it on something… because, somehow, our brains don’t like to accept the fact that sometimes, bad shit happens… and there’s nothing that caused it and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.

If someone ran the stats, I’m sure one would find that more than 99% of heart attacks happened in people who’d had a glass of water in their last 2 hours. Did the water cause those heart attacks?

At the moment, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been paused in Ireland… the usual “abundance of caution” reasoning, which pleases some liability lawyers tremendously, but does little to instill public confidence in vaccines, a topic where there’s still a lot of uncertainty and hesitancy. “Just in case, until we figure this out.”

I’m not sure what they’re hoping to figure out. This started in Norway, where “a number” of cases of blood clots were discovered in people who’d recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine. That number was 4… out of hundreds of thousands of shots. Italy banned a particular batch of AZ vaccine following the death of a serviceman in Sicily… who died of cardiac arrest one day after his shot. Cardiac arrest, blood clots… same thing. It must be the vaccine.

When you look the actual large numbers, 17 million people in the EU and UK have received the AZ vaccine… and the number of people who’ve developed blood clots, some number in the hundreds, is actually lower than the expected number out of a random sampling of the population. The number of people who’ve unexpectedly dropped dead shortly after getting the vaccine is probably similar to the number of people who unexpectedly dropped dead after drinking some coffee. Or yawning. Or breathing. But… that’s unacceptable; there must be something to blame.

I get it; in this day and age of lawyers ready to pounce, it’s easy to see where the abundance of caution comes from. I wonder how long it’ll be before they all realize there’s much ado about nothing here… except preventing the rollout of the vaccine to areas that now, more than ever, need it; Italy is suspending the vaccine at the exact time they’re seeing a frightening, exponential growth in cases. Because one person died, of causes almost certainly that have nothing to do with the vaccine.

They might tell you “better safe than sorry”, and with that, I agree… except I think their implementation of the concept is backwards. Far more people will die of C19, having not received their shot in a timely manner, than might be “saved” by an issue that’ll turn out to have been non-existent to begin with. It’s really that simple… as simple as apple… strudel.

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By |2021-03-14T17:04:15-07:00March 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 13, 2021

There’s a lot to be said with meeting someone in person, looking them in the eye, giving them a firm handshake and knowing that you’re not leaving the room till you get what you want. Obviously, a lot more can be achieved in person than online.

As introverted as I may be, I miss those in-person meetings… in the same way I miss being able to properly hang up a phone. A real phone. At the end of an unpleasant conversation, there was nothing more satisfying than slamming the receiver down onto the cradle. Those Bell phones were made of nuclear-war-resilient plastic. Unbreakable. My uncle in Chile a few times lost his temper on whatever was on the other side of the call and flung his phone out of a second-story office window. The cord ripped away, but the phones always survived. Clicking the [Leave Meeting] on Zoom angrily is a far cry indeed.

Speaking of Chile and doing business, specifically the sort of business that has them pretty close to the top of the list of vaccinations… perhaps my post a few days ago seemed to allude to the fact that perhaps there was some sort of funny business that may have occurred when those Chileans flew out for those in-person meetings and got those vaccine agreements. A little nudge, a little bribe, a little kick-back. I didn’t mean to imply that; I meant to state it unequivocally. Of course that’s what happened. I don’t have any proof of it, of course, and what does it matter… it’s just my opinion. But I also understand what greases the wheels… what gets slow-moving government bureaucracy going in a hurry. What jumps the queue. What gets it done.

My first experience with government corruption occurred when I was quite young… 12 or 13. I had a friend who lived nearby, and his dad put up a basketball hoop in the back lane, hung up over the garage door. The lane was flat and paved… and it was great. We were out there for hours the first week… playing one-on-one and every variation of P-I-G and H-O-R-S-E you can imagine. One day, the neighbour’s wife came out to see what was causing all this racket. The next day, her husband came out to have a look… watched us play a bit… didn’t say much, just went back inside. Oh, did I mention that guy was an Alderman for the city of Vancouver?

Two days later, when we got there after school, there were two freshly-laid speed bumps in the lane, perfectly placed and wide enough to completely destroy our basketball court. It still smelled of freshly-poured tar. Not a single other speed bump in any back lane for 10 blocks around. And not like there were ever any speeding cars there to begin with. What the hell. Is this how things work?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy. Our version of petty revenge lasted years. That guy ran in two subsequent elections, and every time an election sign (with his name, of course) popped up in front of his house, we’d replace it with three different ones from various opposition parties. We’d have to venture deep into East Van in the middle of the night to collect all of the colourful alternatives. Totally worth it.

Ok, where was I… yeah, governments. I think it’s no big surprise to learn that there’s corruption at every level. Screwing up a couple of kids’ fun just because you don’t like the sound of a basketball is a small example. Bribing officials, peddling influence, making big promises, forgiving crimes, throwing huge money at certain people and, ultimately, lying… were things Abraham Lincoln did to push through his Emancipation Proclamation and ban slavery in the U.S.

Ah, didn’t see that coming, did you… yes, indeed… sometimes, that corruption is for the greater good… and for those crimes that today would’ve gotten Lincoln jailed for life, he’s instead considered the greatest president in history. Quite a fine line, isn’t it. I don’t know what those Chileans did, and I don’t care, and certainly, the well-vaccinated populace of Chile doesn’t care either.

If you want to argue that Canada should be above that sort of thing, name me a Prime Minister and we can discuss his corruption scandal. Chretien’s helicopters, Mulroney’s Airbuses, Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin. Closer to home, Glen Clark’s deck/casino, Harcourt’s BingoGate and Vander Zalm’s Fantasy Gardens.

Government corruption has been around forever, and it’s never going away. At the very least, they could put it to use for the greater good… not just individual gain.

Lincoln? Awesome. Chile? Same. The rest of my examples? Brutal.

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By |2021-03-13T17:03:30-08:00March 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 12, 2021

Our last dose of local numbers until Monday, and, as usual, they tell a mixed message… hospitalizations up by 11, ICU cases down by 1. Case numbers rose by 648, the largest one-day jump since Janurary 7th. But also, nobody died of C19 in the last 24 hours… which hasn’t happened since November 5th. As per yesterday’s post, it depends how you look at it. You’ll find disagreement with respect to what it means.

On the other hand, it’s rare for Republicans, Democrats, Liberals, Conservatives, the NDP… pretty much everyone… to all agree on something… but there’s a topic that keeps coming up twice a year, and I have never heard anyone speak in favour of it. Everyone is opposed to it, yet it’s still around… and all of the aforementioned have the power to once and for all to deal with it, but for some reason simply haven’t.

Wouldn’t we all be a lot better off without the constant, biannual Daylight Savings nonsense? Pick one or the other and just leave it there… and by the way, the right answer is to leave it ON – when we move our clocks forward tomorrow, that is the setting they should stay on… forever.

Are you getting up at 4:30am to spread manure on the fields? Me neither. What a load of crap. But what’s ironic is that, unlike what we’ve all been hearing forever, it was not the farmers that wanted DST… they initially opposed it. Saskatchewan is effectively all farms, and they’ve never been a part of this nonsense.

DST was created during WWI as an effort to conserve fuel. In fact, it was the Germans who came up with it… and much of the world involved in WWI went along with it, the U.S. and Canada included. And although most of North America and Europe still does the clock flipping, the rest of the world has abandoned it… or never did it in the first place.

Studies have repeatedly shown that when you stop screwing around with the clocks twice a year, there are reductions in crime, depression, childhood obesity, energy consumption and car accidents. Economic activity goes up… and, might I suggest, the next 6 months will be wonderful with the extra hour of afternoon sunshine… but, after that, just in time for Winter comes the flip back, and 5pm darkness… wouldn’t every single economy benefit from that one extra hour? No more flipping back. Nobody is getting up early to go have breakfast on a patio somewhere at 6:30am… but all the pubs and restaurants would love an extra hour of “afternoon/evening crowd.”

Like I said, nobody likes DST. The issue seems to be that unless everyone decides this in unison, it’s problematic. I take it for granted that L.A. is the same time as us, and that Toronto and New York are three hours ahead. I don’t ever want to have to devote a single brain cell to that calculation. It’s already annoying enough for places that flip the opposite direction, and now, at different times. Sometimes Chile is 3 hours ahead… sometimes they’re 5 hours ahead. On paper, they’re supposed to be 4 hours ahead but it’s rarely the case because both places are haphazardly moving their clocks back and forth.

Enough already. It’s time for a change. Or not, I guess.

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By |2021-03-19T16:21:25-07:00March 12th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Business & Economics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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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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