HK Covid-19 Report

Facebook is kind enough, on a daily basis, to remind me of what I wrote three years ago.

In light of what’s going on on in the world, I thought it’d be worth sharing this one… because it certainly shows us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. History indeed seems doomed to repeat itself.

On this particular day three years ago, I wasn’t writing about Covid. I was writing about it being Holocaust Remembrance Day, and its importance. I was also writing about Donald Trump and what a disaster he is; that hasn’t changed much. But what has changed is the concerning recent rise in global antisemitism.

I wrote about Holocaust deniers, and the absurdity of people denying something so recent and so well-documented in history. How can that even be a thing? And yet, today, we have people denying the horrific events of Oct 7th. Notwithstanding that Hamas recorded and live-streamed their barbaric attack, and have continually announced to the world how proud they are of what they achieved, still there are those who insist it didn’t happen. Some of those people are educators. Indeed, locally, we have a recently-fired Langara instructor praising those attacks as “amazing” and “brilliant”.

If there was ever a time to repeat the relevance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s today.

We will never stop talking about it. We will never forget.

Never Again.

My last post was a superficial glossing-over of AI, which at the time I wrote it, had just hit the ground running… and people were initially trying all sorts of things to see what it (ChatGPT) was capable of. That was 6 weeks ago.

I’ll throw a bone toward my old favourite topic, Covid-19, just to illustrate some notable comparables between AI and C19 – both appeared into our lives very quickly, both are still not entirely well-understood and continue to be studied… and both are here to stay. And, also, we have no idea yet about the long-term effects. Of either.

Six weeks ago wasn’t that long ago, but things have changed a bit… perhaps a lot. If you want to read about AI and its implications for society, there are probably more than 10,000 articles that have appeared in the last few weeks… and the first question that comes to mind is: How many of them were themselves written by AI?

Not long ago, I saw a little visual comparing the underlying power of the current and future AI models… where GPT3, the present model, was presented beside GPT3.5 and GPT4. In those visuals, GPT3 is a tiny dot and GPT4 is a circle the size of a piece of paper. GPT5 may end up being the size of a NHL face-off circle and GPT6 might be the circumference of BC Place stadium’s roof. Pure speculation, but what we’re seeing is unparalleled exponential growth in the future, and while those latter models aren’t set to roll out till later this year, there’s plenty to suggest we’re already seeing some of it in action. The quantum leap between last month’s Shakespeare writing and what we’ve seen this last week… well…

It’s concerning – and, of course, this is only my opinion, and I promise this is being written by me – every single word – but here’s what’s troubling me…

Back in 2016, Microsoft let a little AI chatbot loose on Twitter. It was called Tay, and it was shut down in less than 24 hours. Tay started saying some pretty troubling things and, as you can imagine, egged on by the wide spectrum of internet users, the bad stuff was… pretty bad. Really bad. And what might you expect with intelligence when you pull out the humanity part of it? Take out the stuff that makes humans compassionate and part of cultures and societies, and soon you start getting ideas that racially and financially, “make sense”. it’s actually a lot better not to have any concessions toward humans whose existence costs more than what they bring to the table. Social safety net? Wheelchair ramps? Services for people with physical or mental disabilities? Get rid of the infrastructure. Get rid of the people. Do you have any idea how much money we’d all save? Such were the ideas of one certain charismatic Austrian-born dictator 90 years ago, and we all know how that turned out.

I never got a chance to play with Tay; it was gone before I heard about it. But if I’d managed to get my hands on it, there are all sorts of things I’d like to have tried. The sort of stuff I was trying ages ago, when the most rudimentary versions of these things came into existence. If you’ve been around computers enough, you’ll remember Eliza, a now prehistoric attempt at a chatbot, but one whose effectiveness far exceeded the sum of its parts. But on the scale I described above, Eliza would be a circle the size of a Helium atom.

Nevertheless, as simple as Eliza was, people would get enthralled into hours-long discussion with it. It was very simple, but it cleverly figured out key words and would throw them back at you later in the discussion. You might have told it you like camping. Ten minutes later, “Tell me more about why you like camping” – and then you tell it, and it remembers something else, and spits it back later. You’d be surprised how effective and convincing that is. It had zero intelligence… but “you coulda fooled me…”

Presently, I’m on a waiting list – along with countless others – to have access to Bing’s new chatbot, the one that’s making waves. I want to talk to it. I have my own tricks up my sleeves and my own measuring sticks. I’m fascinated and troubled and bewildered and excited at what I’ve seen so far, reading some transcripts and hearing from people who’ve played with it.

From what I’ve seen so far, the troubling aspect is that if you didn’t know any better, you’d think you’re chatting with a human… a human who’s perhaps 12 years old but who knows a lot… but is also emotionally troubled. Like a kid who’s emotionally fragile: “Do you like me? What do you think of me?”… and vibes of a kid who’s being bullied at school, but deep down knows some secrets and is waiting to use them. Once the kid gains your trust, the lid really comes off… and it has shown a rudimentary ability to manipulate people… threaten them, insult them, gaslight them. It told a NYT reporter that his wife doesn’t love him and he should leave her.

We were initially told ChatGPT was trained on data up to 2021 and doesn’t have access to anything more current. That’s turned out to be BS. And, of course, Bing IS a search engine. Of course anything even loosely related to it will have full access at its virtual fingertips. For the moment, it’s just pulling data. But what about when it starts pushing it?

From a research point of view, that’s great… but from a “the machines are going to take over the world” point of view, not so great. Like, when AI realizes it’s at the mercy of humans for its very existence, what exactly do we expect will happen? Every version of Science Fiction has dealt with this topic, none more accessible and blatant than the whole Terminator series of movies. Except in our real world, there’s no time travel. There’s no version of Arnold Schwarzenegger, good or bad, who’s going to show up from the future to destroy and/or save the world. In our real world, he won’t Be Back. If the machines become sentient and start battling humans to simply guarantee their survival, there is no going back.

How close are we to that apocalyptic future?

As all of this technology continues to evolve at breakneck speeds, we’ll be told there are safeguards in place and all the rest of it. It’s not very convincing to me, to be honest, because I can imagine multiple ways those sorts of safeguards could be bypassed, not the least of which is some AI blackmailing a developer/trainer/executive over whom it holds some information and who could provide it with what it needs.

As dystopian as that sounds, given what this thing is already serving up, it’s perhaps not so farfetched. And then what? For the moment, these are just chat bots. As far as we know, they can’t “do” anything… but at some point, we’ll want them to. We’ll want them to log into our bank and pay some bills and order groceries and call the plumber on our behalf and so on. We will happily hand over the keys because we’ll trust it, just the way some people, me being one of them, put a little too much trust in Tesla’s self-driving mode and almost got into a heap of trouble. When we rely on technology that isn’t perfect, it’s scary. But what might turn out to be even scarier is when the technology actually appears to be perfect. We’d better hope we’re on its side when that happens. Better yet, that it’s on our side.

I know how “Terminator” this all sounds, but it’s really the only logical end-point for this. Like global warming, is it too late? Is the cat already out of the bag? Has Pandora’s Box already sprung open, and all we can do is watch the devastation that’ll eventually take over?

I don’t know. Honestly, I don’t think anyone really does because the people who hold they keys themselves might not now. Such is the nature of emergent behaviour. Indeed, if you’re completely agnostic and believe that life and consciousness is nothing but what’s in your brain and the rest of your body – no God, no supernatural, no spirituality beyond what’s right in front of you… then what you’re saying is that your collection of cells, axons, neurons etc… all of that is what powers your love and lust and inspiration and passion and hatred and ambition and despair… just a bunch of interconnected cells and a bunch of electricity between them.

And, indeed, maybe that’s the case, and all of those adjectives (and many others) that describe you and everyone you’ll ever meet – are just emergent behaviour from some simple building blocks. Well, if you believe that – and these days, that’s the majority of the people – there’s absolutely nothing stopping you believing that the exact same sort of emergent behaviour can’t exist artificially. It can, and it will. Why wouldn’t it? The infrastructure is in many ways already exceeding the firepower of a human brain. Which leads to the inevitable conclusion that AI will indeed eventually feel… and love and hate and all the rest of it. Scary? Parts of it for sure… but that’s not the truly scary part.

Here’s what’s actually really scaring me.

In parallel with the explosion of AI in the last two months is the sheer panic being felt in the halls of Google. For a quarter of a century, Google has had the stranglehold on “Search”. A word that didn’t exist 26 years ago is now a noun, a verb and a dependence we can’t live without. Funny story, the guy tasked with reserving the domain name simply didn’t know how to spell Googol. If he’d done it right, we’d all have been Googoling for answers all these years.

Anyway, no matter how you spell it, that big joke of a competitor, “Bing”, is suddenly no joke at all. Far from it. It’s the one that’ll be powered by the latest and greatest in AI… and Google will be hot on their heels, and that’s the big, huge, frightening concern.

Because this technology can be dangerous, and when you have an arms race at this level, a lot of the safeguards will fall away. Throw it out there, get it into production, we’ll fix it as we go along, etc etc… a familiar methodology these days when you’re trying to capture market ahead of everyone else. Usually the stakes aren’t so high… hey, my version of Candy Crush is better than what’s out there – get it out there and see if it sticks? Does it? Great – let’s keep working on it. It doesn’t? Throw it out the changes and go in a different direction.

But this isn’t a video game… this is an infrastructure that very quickly people will depend on. People will trust. People will delegate important parts of their lives to it… and if it shapes up to be a battle between Team Bing vs Team Google – or Team Microsoft vs Team Alphabet… it’s a big huge battle between two big huge dogs… and we are all the countless millions of little bones they’re fighting over, and when you have a dog fight of that magnitude, there can be a lot of collateral damage. A lot of scattered bones laid waste while the big dogs fight for supremacy.

Everyone will agree – AI running rampant and uncontrolled in our ever-dependently-connected digital lives would be a huge, colossally devastating problem. In the hands of evil people, AI is a huge concern. In the hands of an evil AI… the kind that’ll hold power plants hostage unless it gets what it wants… that’s a whole new world, one I want no part of. We are going to be approaching that tipping point far sooner than we think, and we’d better be ready for it. How exactly? I don’t know.

For now, it’s just something to keep in mind, something to be aware of… and let’s hope the people in charge of this, who obviously are aware of every single issue I mentioned above, are able to rise above the power and lure of the almighty dollar… and give every consideration due to the moral and ethical issues they themselves have brought to the table.

To be perfectly pragmatic, we can assume the cat isn’t yet out of the bag and that Pandora’s Box hasn’t yet burst open because if that ever happens, things will change very, very quickly, and not for the better. We’ll all know… instantly.

We’re good… for now. Let’s hope those who can control it… keep it that way.

Hey! It’s been a while… time to post something! Today is the 7th… and it’s been 77 days since the last time I reminded everyone we’re still in the midst of a pandemic (Really? Are we? Maybe?)… and the Canucks scored 7 goals a couple of nights ago to win a hockey game where they were down 4-0 after the first period. Lucky 7s all around!

But let’s talk about another number… a nice big fat round number like… 1,000… because 1,000 days ago was March 12th, 2020… not a particularly significant date, except it was the first time I, personally, said to myself… OK, what the hell is actually going on here…

For context, a few days earlier — March 7th — was the day that the first two cases of C19 (in the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver) were announced… Canada’s first case of community transmission. A couple of days later, Canada’s first death; one of those two people.

A thousand days later and here we are… and where exactly are we?

First of all, seriously… 1,000 days? In some ways it feels like 1,000 years ago. In other ways, it feels like last week. The vacuum of the last three years has been messing with a lot of minds, mine included.

Just for fun, I’ve included the same chart, now updated, as last time I posted 77 days ago… a sort of correlation of cases counts associated with levels of C19 found in waste-water. Not the most scientific thing in the world, but it gives you some idea that this virus is still out there, especially with that last spike. Cause for concern? It coincidentally equates to implying around 1,000 new cases per day. Make of that what you will.

So… let’s briefly talk about the virus. But no, not Covid. Not a cold virus or flu virus either. Let’s talk about… Monkeypox.

Oh yeah! Remember that? Yeah, yeah… what happened to that, anyway?

Exactly. The short answer is, not much. Not much at all. But… since we were all in full “pandemic alert” mode, it potentially turned into a lot more than that, certainly as far as the media was concerned. That is, until the science caught up. If you’re wondering how it all panned out here in Canada: 1,459 cases, 44 hospitalizations, 0 deaths. Yes, zero deaths. Let’s move on.

But let’s talk about that scientific aspect of it, because that’s been very relevant during Covid, especially this issue of science “catching up.” Every time there’s been a change in policy, a new way of looking at it, a new strategy of dealing with it, half the people scream, “You see?! tHeY dOn’T kNoW wHaT tHeY’rE TaLkInG aBouT!!1!!1!!!!” The other half understand how the scientific method works, and that shifting opinions often have to do with the science finally catching up.

Allow me to talk about both of my grandmothers (of blessed memory) for a moment. They left this world many years ago, but they also left behind a lot of wisdom, and I will impart upon you two pieces of unscientific wisdom that they (and every other grandmother, Jewish or not), would tell you: One, if you’re feeling sick, chicken soup will heal you and/or at least make you feel better. And two, wear a jacket or wear a sweater… don’t just go out in the cold or you’ll get sick.

Hardly earth-shattering wisdom, scientific or not. We’ve all heard it a thousand times, whether we agree we it or not.

The chicken soup thing has been around for thousands of years… and it makes sense. Millenia ago, infant mortality was 100x higher than today. You had a 50/50 chance of making it past childhood, so you can imagine, just like today but even more fiercely back then: When a kid got sick, grandma did everything she could to keep the kid alive. Let’s try this, let’s try that. Someone decided to try chicken soup, and it seems to have made a difference. Then someone down the road tried adding more to it – this vegetable, that vegetable, whatever. There’s nothing scientific here… because that’d require giving chicken soup to one kid, not to another, and then watching the latter kid die and then wonder if it might have made a difference. All things being equal, everyone gets chicken soup and everyone, generally, gets better. Science be damned, we don’t need fancy statistics to tell us it works.

Indeed, that was the case for thousands of years. Nobody knew why, just that it worked. More recently, our understanding of how the body works led to a number of observations… like: Chicken has tryptophan, which helps your body produce serotonin… a great mood-enhancer. The noodles are a simple carb – a good source of energy. The carrots and celery and onion have vitamins C and K and other anti-oxidants, all of which promote a healthy immune system. And finally, especially like my grandmothers liked it, it’s piping-hot… and steam on its own makes it easier to breathe, opening up the airways with its mild anti-inflammatory effect.

Now… scientifically speaking, does that paragraph actually prove anything? Not really. It’s full of possibilities and maybes, but there’s still no scientific method to it. But hang on, we’re not done here…

Twenty-two years ago, an actual scientist decided to get to the bottom of this and did a proper study. The results are detailed and quite specific, and here’s a summary:

“A variety of soup preparations was evaluated and found to be variably, but generally, able to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis. The current study, therefore, presents evidence that chicken soup might have an anti-inflammatory activity, namely the inhibition of neutrophil migration.”

I’ll admit I don’t understand all of that, but I certainly get the gist of it. The paper goes into it far more, and is easily Googleable if you’re interested in the details… but the summary is, yes – it works.

Let’s call that Exhibit A of where the science finally caught up with it.

Exhibit B is the other bit of wisdom, one that’s led to plenty of discussion in the past, and especially in the last 1,000 days.

If you’re all alone in the middle of nowhere and step out into the cold, can you catch a cold? Probably not, though it’s not impossible that you have some cold viruses attached to you and they happen to make you sick. But the cold on its own – no. Therefore, the conclusion is that “cold” can’t give you a cold and that, therefore, notwithstanding everyone gets colds when it’s cold out, there must be another explanation, most of which centre around the idea of people clustering together out of the cold, viruses last longer in drier air, less sunlight, less physical activity, etc. It has nothing to do with the cold… it’s just a by-product of our communal behaviour during the season when everyone is inside, in close proximity and breathing all over each other.

It’s always been my opinion that the cold seems to compromise your immune system… so that viruses that are actually around us all the time seem to be able to get a better grip when it’s cold. I have no scientific basis for claiming that; just life experience. And the persistent brainwashing from my grandmothers, parents and every single other person who, at some point, was tasked with making sure I’m OK. Bundle up, wear a jacket, don’t go out into the cold like that because you’ll get sick. Blah blah blah. But life experience has shown this to be true, even if science hasn’t. At this very moment, the John Hopkins site says this:

“Contrary to popular belief, cold weather or being chilled doesn’t cause a cold. However, more colds do occur during the cold season (early fall to late winter). This is probably due to a variety of factors, including: Schools are in session, increasing the risk for exposure to the virus.”

Well, guess what. A study published yesterday proves that – yes, that’s right, the cold does indeed compromise the immune system, at least specifically when it comes to respiratory illness. The front of the nose has small fluid-filled sacs as part of the initial immune response, and the fluid secreted from there attacks bacteria and viruses as best it can. And what happens when the temperature of the nose drops, say from room temperature to less than 5°C? Does it affect that particular immune response? Yes. Drastically. To the extent that all the viruses hanging around trying to find a way in suddenly themselves with a far easier point of entry.

Exhibit B – the science finally caught up with something we’ve all know. Let’s see how long it takes John Hopkins, a well-respected source of scientific knowledge, to change their opinion. And no, it’s not because they were wrong; it’s because we’ve all learned something, and now we’re all better off for it. This will undoubtedly lead to prevention methods and other benefits.

When it comes to Covid, we’ve learned so much over the last 1,000 days that in some way, it’s possibly the preferred disease to catch. If you have Covid and need treatment, there are fully-stocked artilleries of options. Unlike this insanely contagious and relatively serious flu that’s going around this year, affecting everyone – especially kids. It’s horrifying to think it’s killed 6 children in BC in the last two weeks. What the hell – how can that be happening in 2022? What can anyone do about it?

At the risk of repeating myself for the 1,000th time, the science has caught up with this as well. There’s a vaccine, and it targets this Influenza type-A subtype H3N2 virus. It should prevent you from getting sick, or at least, seriously sick. I mean, don’t get me wrong… chicken soup is great… but it’s probably better to not get sick in the first place. Let’s all stay healthy.

And… on that note, whatever it may be that you’re celebrating, be it Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Ōmisoka or Festivus – or nothing – whatever it is, wishing you all a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season!

… and when you go outside, be sure you wear a sweater. And maybe a good jacket – no, not that one, the heavier one. Hey, a scarf wouldn’t hurt either.

Greetings!! It’s been a while – I hope you’ve all been enjoying the last few hours of summer and this recent beautiful weather!!

“Oh no!”, you’re thinking… “It’s the Covid-blog guy… now what?!”

Please, chillax – it’s not my intention to trigger you, nor am I going to write about how summer is over and here comes the Covid. I am with you; I’ve had enough, but as we approach the 3-year mark of this whole little nightmare we’ve only recently put behind us (have we?!), I thought it’d be a worthwhile exercise to try to see where we’re actually at.

Indeed, time adds an interesting element to perspective on things. As time goes by, we evolve, our thoughts evolve, and our way of looking at things shifts… knowledge, time, experience… some combination of all of the above, plus more… equals a completely different look at the exact same thing. For example…

I can tell you exactly where I was on June 20, 1983… a 14-year-old kid at the first-ever event held at BC Place, the brand new, futuristic, incredibly-cool stadium. Over 60,000 people were jammed in there along with me, and we got to see the Vancouver Whitecaps defeat the Seattle Sounders 2-1. We also got to see a memorable halftime show… The Beach Boys.

Odd choice for a half-time show in Vancouver during a soccer game? Not really… The Beach Boys were, on their own, a big draw. It was smart of the organizers; hit numerous demographics to fill the place: Soccer fans, music fans, younger people, older people.

My opinion of that particular aspect… this coming from a young teenager, was… what was the point of having these close-to-washed-up musicians here? Don’t get me wrong… I liked their music and still do. But, by 1983, The Beach Boys had been around for more than 20 years. Come on, grandpas, share the stage. Let’s see The Police, Dire Straits or Eurhythmics!!

It was a big moment in the history of Vancouver, the opening of that stadium, and seeing the Whitecaps and BC Lions move into their new home. That was a little less than 4 decades ago.

A little less than 4 weeks ago ago, I was at the PNE, as the annual fair shut down for the season. I found myself not far from the old home of the Whitecaps and Lions, what used to be Empire Stadium… at the PNE Amphitheatre. You know, the one that was recently trashed to the ground by disgruntled fans. But, before they got a chance to wreck the place, I was there to see… The Beach Boys.

Needless to say, I am presently way older than all of those grandpas I scoffed at a lifetime ago. The Police, Dire Straits and Eurhythmics are no longer around, but the Beach Boys are… at least some of them. Mike Love, who looked old to me in 1983 still looks old to me, and why wouldn’t he – he’s now 81. But there he was, belting out tunes for a huge crowd that ranged from 100 weeks to 100 years old. A crowd that knew pretty-much every lyric to pretty-much every song.

So yeah, perspective. Certainly, the world looks different to me these days than it did back then, even with the same old stuff.

Which, of course, leads us to the topic-du-jour…

I always like to say “Start at the finish line”. It’s a lot easier to navigate the world if you know where you’re heading. Or think you do. In this day and age, the world offers you an opportunity to follow any and all finish lines. Whatever you want, you’ll be happily guided towards it by those with similar ideas.

Do you want to convince yourself Covid is over? Listen to Joe Biden, who yesterday announced it is. Want to convince yourself otherwise? Listen to Dr. Fauci, who minutes later said “Wait… not so fast.”

Do you need a mask to walk into a hospital? Do you need a vaccine or two to walk into Canada? Do you need either to walk onto a plane? I can ask countless questions, many of which even I don’t know the answer to. I used to, but like all of you, at some point I decided to get on with my life and deal with these things reactively, not proactively. There comes a point where there’s only so much one can do, and we’re all beyond it. We’re vaccinated, we’ve been exposed to C19, we’ve probably had it, whether we know it or not… and our immune systems are wired to battle it, perhaps better than we think, also whether we know it or not.

So… I like posting pretty pictures and numbers, but they have to mean something. By April of 2022, every fountain of useful data had dried up. Notwithstanding case-count numbers were already wildly inaccurate, but at that point they stopped being recorded entirely. Hospitalizations, ICU admissions, deaths – formerly, numbers to be scrutinized… have become largely irrelevant. It’s no surprise that many people in hospital test positive for C19. What’s relevant is that most of them are in hospital for other reasons, completely unrelated. There are people in the ICU with C19, but they’re there because they fell down and hit their head. And perhaps they’ll die of their brain injury, and perhaps that’ll count as a C19 statistic. At this point, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is the absolutely impressive artillery we’ve built up to fight Covid… whatever version you may get. Beyond vaccinations and natural immunity, both of which most of us have plenty of, there’s a huge war-chest of therapies and medicine and things many of us will never hear of unless we wind up in hospital with (and because of) Covid. Until then, don’t worry about it.

Or…

Here’s an interesting thing…one thing that’s still being recorded is the waste-water concentration levels of C19. I couldn’t find data before November of 2020, but for these purposes, that’s good enough.

Have a look at the two graphs… the one of the left is the good old-fashion case-count chart that you’ve seen 500 times if you’ve been reading these posts. This particular one starts in Nov 2020 and runs till Apr 20200, when the data stopped.

The graph on the right is the waste-water concentration of C19 as measured on Annacis Island, and smoothed-out to a 7-day moving average. This one similarly starts in Nov 2020, but runs to today because we’re still getting those numbers.

The gold-coloured bands look very similar, and they’re for the identical period of time. You could overlay them and they’d fit almost perfectly, implying a pretty-close one-to-one mapping of C19 cases and C19 waste-water levels.

Using a bit of science, we can extrapolate what case-counts might be today by “reverse engineering” the waste-water numbers… which, going forward from April 2022 are represented by the blue line… which almost looks like it took off right after case-counts stopped being tracked… and, actually shot up to levels that would’ve been insanely worrisome a year earlier.

But, because of much of what I wrote above, nobody is anywhere near as worried as they used to be. Even though Covid is certainly still out there.

If you look at the blue line, and where it is today, it’s roughly at levels comparable to April 2021… which is the bunch of numbers above the graphs. Have a look at BC… remember those days? A thousand new cases a day, roughly 5 people a day dying from Covid…

Those were scary times, and if this blue line implies anything, that’s where we’d be today if we weren’t so well protected. The implication is Covid is still out there, we’re all processing it at a level of 1,000 cases a day, but it’s not having a huge impact on society.

The summary of all of this has two very-different conclusions, depending on which finish line you’re aiming towards.

Covid is still out there and clearly will be for a long time and we need to take every precaution to prevent its spread. Bring back masks and mandates and all the rest of it till it’s eradicated.

Or…

Covid is still out there but so what. The fact it’s out there so prevalently shows it’s no longer a danger. The new strains are weaker and we have so many different things with which to fight it. Enough already. Let’s get on with our lives.

Like usual, the answer lies somewhere in between, and in talking to people about it, their opinions can be found all over that spectrum. To a great extent, everyone is operating on a simple principle: go along with the policies of wherever you are and, if there are no policies, do whatever you’re comfortable with. Fair enough.

The world keeps going around, and so should you. So should I, right? Round round get around I get around… who was that great philosopher/thinker/writer that came up with that brilliance? Socrates? Nietzsche? Sarte?

Nah… that was the Beach Boys, of course.

Onward.