Science of COVID-19

January 26, 2021

There’s an episode of Star Trek:TNG where Captain Picard and the gang happen upon an odd planet… completely devoid of life, save for a small but picturesque patch of land where a peaceful, old couple (of humans) are living.

This guy (let’s call him Kevin) and his wife tell Picard that an alien race came by and wiped out everyone… except, for some unknown reason, them.

There’s far more to the story, but as it turns out, the alien who did the real wiping out was Kevin himself… who only looks human, but actually isn’t. Some aliens did come by and attack the colony… and Kevin’s wife was killed in the attack. Kevin, who’s actually a very powerful alien, took it upon himself to exact revenge by wiping out all of the aliens… and not just the ones that had attacked him, but he scoured the universe and found them all. Fifty billion aliens; the entire species wiped out. And now he was just trying to live his eternal life on this patch of land with a reconstructed illusion of his wife.

What do you do with a being that wipes out 50 billion others? Picard concludes that they, humans, are not qualified to be his judge… because there are no laws to fit the magnitude of the crime. Picard and The Enterprise leave, and he puts out the word to Starfleet; stay away from this planet. Leave Kevin alone. You really don’t want to piss him off.

Indeed, the punishment needs to fit the crime… and there are places in this world where that’s the case. Finland, for example… where in 2015, a successful businessman by the name of Reima Kuisla was caught doing 64MPH in a 50MPH zone… which translates to doing 103km/h in an 80 zone. That’s not even excessive speeding, and I’m sure more than one of you reading this today were on a highway today, where the limit is 80, and where you were exceeding 100. You’re lucky you didn’t get caught; that’s a $173 fine and 3 points.

Mr. Kuisla wasn’t so lucky… he got caught, and because of his Ten Million Dollar income, paid a fine of $80,000. To scale it down, that’s like someone making $50,000 a year being fined $400. Sounds about right… proportional fines, depending on the income of the perpetrator.

There are more extreme examples, but they seem to top out at… one million dollars. Yes, in 2010, a 37-year-old Swede had just taken possession of his new Mercedes SLS AMG in Germany and was driving it home. The cameras that clocked him only go up to 200km/h, which is what they captured… but the Swedish cops that caught up with him clocked him at close to 300km/h. He claimed he thought the speedometer of his new car was broken and that he was just putting it through its paces. Sure. That’ll be a million dollars, please.

Which brings us to a couple of local lowlifes, the ex-CEO and his actress-wife, whose actions have made them front-page news all over the world… and somewhat tarnished the view that all Canadians are thoughtful and polite.

It takes a lot of planning and a lot of disregard for others… to charter a plane, head to the middle of nowhere, lie repeatedly, and get into a vaccine line-up that’s supposed to be for, more than anyone else, indigenous elders. They lied about quarantining, they lied about why they were there, they lied about where they worked. And as soon as they got what they wanted, they high-tailed it out of here. Or, tried to… but that’s where piece-of-shit narcissists usually mess up. They’re so completely caught up in the ME ME ME of their existence that they forget everything and everyone else. Ten seconds after they got their vaccines, you can imagine hearing them saying to each other, “Let’s blow this popsicle stand”… and it was that urgent “straight to the airport” request that made people wonder… ok, who exactly are these people?

They were slapped with $500 fines, which is a joke… but, to some extent, like Picard… I’m not sure we have laws in place to punish this sort of thing appropriately. Like the Finnish businessman, the now-former CEO of Great Canadian Gaming Corp. made $10M last year. Is $80,000 an appropriate fine?

It’s a good start, but there needs to be more. A lot more. There are tens of millions of dollars to follow for that guy, thanks to stock options and the sale of the company… but it’s about a lot more than money. I’m not sure the answer is jail time; I think the answer is community service, and lots of it… and all of it in the community they affected.

Remote communities like Beaver Creek can probably use some help. Wash dishes at the restaurant. Mop up the airport. Or, actually, go work at that famous motel they don’t actually work at — and clean some rooms. Contribute back to the community, given that what you stole from them is difficult to pin a value on. Maybe consult with those indigenous elders from whom you stole the vaccine… and ask them what they need. And, might I suggest… you start with a series of apologies… to them, to their entire community, and to the countless others who deserve and need that vaccine ahead of you… but, like everyone else, are patiently waiting their turn.

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By |2021-01-26T20:20:45-08:00January 26th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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January 23, 2021

We watched a movie the other night… I thought it’d be a waste of time, but the kids really wanted to see it. OK… I can spare an hour and forty minutes, and who knows… it might be amusing. It’s called “Behind the Curve” (Netflix), and it’s all about Flat Earthers – the society whose members genuinely believe that the earth is flat. Or, pretend to. Or, are members for other reasons. OK, queue it up.

My assumption was that it’d be 100 minutes of idiots espousing theories that make no sense. Certainly, that was part of it. But above all that, there’s a genuine sadness to it, and some enlightening points that are incredibly relevant to today.

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, this is the one that’s most easily disprovable. For more than a thousand years, intelligent people have been devising experiments based on heights, distances, shadows and trigonometry… that show that the earth is a sphere. So good were some of these ancient experiments, that they were pretty-accurately able to calculate the diameter and circumference. This throws a bit of a wrench into the flat-earth conspiracy where millions of scientists, NASA employees and pilots are all in on it. You’d have to add Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Archimedes to the list, among many others.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter – the details of how a flat earth could even be possible don’t add up, to the extent there’s disagreement within the group. Is there a giant dome, snow-globe-like, covering the heavens? If not, what are all the stars and planets attached to? Queue the internal bickering.

Shortly into the movie, you realize that there’s something a little off about these people. They’re not dangerously crazy… just… off. Something emotional that comes across as almost child-like… and then it becomes obvious. This is a support group for like-minded people who’ve found each other. They feel like they’re part of something big. They feel they get it, and everyone else doesn’t… and it’s their mission to educate the poor, ignorant masses.

They don’t mind being called stupid idiots by the rest of the world… not only because they’re used to it, but because, to some extent, they bask in it. Us versus them. We know. You don’t. And this is where the bigger-picture relevancy comes in. When everyone tells you what you believe in is nonsense, for many people, human nature dictates they double down. They entrench their belief and they will never let go of it and they will build (and share) crazier and crazier ideas to support something that’s actually unsupportable. Queue the madness.

Sound familiar? At least, these guys aren’t storming The Capitol. Let’s talk about a different sort of queue… just Q.

There’s an interesting thing going on in the U.S. (actually, around the world – apparently Japan has a big following as well…) – and I’m talking about Q and QAnon and all that. For years, their now-absent leader Q has been dropping hints about what’s about to happen. The original finish line was January 6th, when Trump would seize control via – heh, we know what that looked like. That didn’t work out so well, so the Qs shifted to believing the failed storming was part of a bigger plan; one that would now allow the president to invoke martial law, take back those key states, and continue the presidency. None of that happened, of course, and the smooth, quiet transition of power took place. Now what.

Typically, when conspiracies hit their finish line, one of a few things can happen. One is that people realize it’s nonsense and bail. Another is that they’re so sunk into it that they will continue the fight, no matter how senseless it might be. And another possibility is that they claim it all actually came to be, just as they said… and most people don’t realize it. There was a lot of that – all of it – in 2012 when the world didn’t end. Some people came to the conclusion it was all nonsense. Some people claim the math was done wrong, and the end is coming.. later in 2012 (didn’t happen) or maybe 2021. I guess if you keep pushing the date further and further, eventually you’ll be right. And, some claim, the world *did* end, and now we’re in some illusionary remnant version. For what it’s worth, if this is The Matrix, give me the blue pill. I’d rather ride out this illusion than battle aliens the rest of my life.

Q is seeing a lot of disillusioned people bail on them at present. They realize it must have been nonsense; they were duped. There is no master plan. For those not feeling so rudderless, they will continue the fight, though now I’m sure there’s confusion what that might look like. And… there are some who think it all worked out… and that, I kid you not, Trump is still in fact in the White House, and that he and Biden did some sort of face swap thing like in that John Travolta/Nicholas Cage movie. If you really need to keep holding on to this particular conspiracy, and that things are still in place, that’s where you wind up today.

And with these flat earth people… skirting the fine line between philosophy, art, science and madness… the final scene of the movie – I don’t think I’m giving too much away here by announcing that the earth is, indeed, a sphere (an oblate spheroid if you want to be perfectly technical about it… the earth is a little compressed at the poles and bulging at the equator, due to the spin)… so at the end of the movie, these guys have devised an experiment to prove the earth is flat. It’s pretty straightforward… attach a powerful laser to a stick 15 feet high. Point it to a big poster board a few miles away, also 15 feet high. If the laser hits it, clearly the earth is flat.

This is a sound experiment. At that distance, the curvature of the earth is not irrelevant. If you imagine the curve “kicking in”, that laser should hit about 21 feet high to compensate.

The guys wait for darkness and fire-up their well-calibrated laser. But nothing hits the board. “Jeez, what’s wrong”, they wonder. The laser is on, they really should see it. They move the big poster board around, but nothing.

“Try moving it up”, suggests one guy… so they do… they lift it 6 feet, and the bright laser comes splashing in.

“Oh.” says the guy.

Queue the credits.

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By |2021-01-23T17:03:40-08:00January 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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January 22, 2021

I’ve written about queueing (Oohh! Five vowels in a row!) theory before, but sometimes you don’t need the fancy theory and rocket-science math that goes with it… sometimes, you just need common sense to understand what’s going on.

Example… I own a retail store. I’m open 10 hours a day, and I typically get around 600 customers a day. Conveniently, the math is easy… on average, that’s 60 customers an hour… one per minute.

What happens if I decide to close 3 hours early? Assuming all those customers want their stuff, and they’re all going to show up… now I’m facing 86 customers per hour… a 43% increase.

On Dec. 24th, around 42,000 people showed up a B.C. Liquor Stores. One might expect around the same number of people might go shopping on New Year’s Eve, and one would be correct… it turned out to be around 41,000.

The big difference, of course, is that the window of time they had to do so got shrunk by 3 hours, thanks to an unexpected announcement that materialized the previous day. All liquor sales to end by 8pm, announced Dr. Henry, much to the surprise of everyone… and the panic of those who worked that day, and had planned to swing by in the evening. Ultimately, I assume everyone got their booze… one way or the other; traffic was up 188% in those last few hours.

That part of it did not catch anyone by surprise; certainly not the people who make the decisions. It’s easy to understand what they were weighing: Upsetting a lot of people and having some crowded liquor stores… or having a repeat of Halloween downtown. They voted for the former, knowing full-well there’d be a rush inside those stores… but also knowing there are safeguards and mask policies and all the rest of it… and that the risk of trouble was higher in uncontrolled crowds.

Did that decision cause an appreciable bump in case numbers? See below…

There’s little reason to keep the 2nd-Wave graphs logarithmic, so I’ve now made the Y-axes all linear. It shows a clearer idea of what’s going on. Also, for today, I’ve removed the Deaths and Hospitalizations graphs; it leaves more room for the numbers above… although the graphs below tell the same story.

If you look at the 2nd-Wave graph, there’s the big run up… and then it starts to slide downhill (downhill is good in this context). That downhill started in late November and kept a nice, consistent run down. Then it turned uphill again… about a week after New Year’s, right around the time those effects would be kicking-in. You can see a smaller version of that in Alberta, and a much bigger version in Saskatchewan; the new cases caused by the events of New Year’s.

Was it a catastrophic increase? Certainly not. Was it due to the liquor stores closing early? That’s probably a part of it, but by how much…? Your guess is as good as mine.

But what’s interesting about it is that if you remove the effects of Christmas and New Year’s, you can see where we’d likely be at… just remove the uphill part and slide whatever is to the right of it down. That’s easier to do visually, but the numbers tell the same story, and the implication is that we’d likely be seeing new case counts in the 300s, not 500s… and death counts in the single digits, not double.

These are the sorts of trade-offs we’ll be dealing with until this pandemic is over. Re-openings and softening of restrictions are all based on the risk/reward of doing so. Same with masks in schools and inter-provincial travel. There are strong opinions on both sides of all arguments… and yeah, it’s not rocket science… but they’re not easy decisions either.

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By |2021-01-22T21:23:32-08:00January 22nd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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January 21, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By |2021-01-20T21:43:14-08:00January 19th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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January 15, 2021

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

So… let’s get back to vaccines…

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Talk about too little too late.

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

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

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

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

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

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By |2021-01-14T17:03:51-08:00January 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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January 12, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By |2021-01-12T17:03:20-08:00January 12th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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January 11, 2021

If you really want to blow your mind, try to keep up with what’s going on in the U.S. right now… it is uncharted territory in so many different aspects that it’s impossible to keep up with all of it. Not just because it changes by the hour, but because there’s just too much to process and there are too many unknowns. Whatever I write will be out of date by the time you read it, so let’s talk about something that’s not so fast-moving… like vaccine deployment.

I realize the U.S. has a lot on its mind these days, so perhaps it’s no surprise that things are lagging behind a bit. They’d planned to vaccinate 20 million people by January 1st. They’re at roughly 8 million. There are many problems with the distribution, as evidenced by the fact that they’ve got 64% of their doses sitting on shelves. Indeed, Pfizer and Moderna have done their part; they’ve distributed more than 22 million doses. That they haven’t found their way into arms is a logistical problem.

Closer to home, you might be surprised to learn that the country that has over-ordered more vaccine than anyone else is… Canada. We’ve ordered 414 million doses… and the simple math of 414 divided by 38 equals more than 10 doses for every man, woman and child in this country. Why? Good question… cover all the bases, you don’t know what’s going to work, you don’t know the timelines, you don’t know anything… let’s spread out the risk. Let’s hedge every bet we can. Such is the luxury available to wealthy nations.

Back in April, the World Health Organization realized that it was going to be the rich countries getting their hands on the vaccine first… and sought to find a way to equalize things for the impoverished nations of the world. They formed an initiative called COVAX… which hopes to secure 2 billion doses of vaccine for those nations that can’t do it on their own. Canada has pledged to provide COVAX with whatever we won’t need… though the timing of what that looks like is anyone’s guess. Will we dish some out slowly when we realize it’s all arriving at so so fast that there’s no logistical way to make use of it? There are reports in the U.S. of vaccine simply going to waste; after all of the effort, the last mile of the journey – from vial to arm… just doesn’t make it.

Like any chain, supply or mechanical, the usefulness/efficiency is measured by the weakest link. Outside of Israel, up to now, getting doses into people seems to be the choke point. As time goes on, one would hope those wrinkles get worked out… because at the pace things are at now… well, let’s do a bit more math.

Canada is presently vaccinating 40,000 people per day. It would take 950 days (two and a half years) to get to everyone. In B.C., at present, we’re averaging around 5,150 people per day. The only thing good about that number is it makes the math easy to divide into our 5.15 million people… ie, 1,000 days… 2.7 years.

It would be nice to be able to blame someone else other than ourselves when it comes to how slow it’s going… and it looks like, very soon, that’ll be the case. While recently we were only able to get around 65% of what we had into arms… we’ll be approaching 100% very soon… and from then on, injecting as fast as we can get it. Assuming that’s true, it’s encouraging for when vaccine deliveries ramp up. We’re being told March for that… where we might see a significant jump in availability. That plus the fact that not everyone will get it plus the fact not everyone needs it for herd immunity… my 2.7 years is the edge of the worst-case scenario. It can only get better, and it will. The only question is by how much.

I spoke above about the U.S. and how they’ve only managed to serve up 36% of their vaccine on hand. They’re doing around 300,000 injections a day these days, which extends out to 1,100 days… 3 years till they get to everyone. Of course, that number will go down quickly as they figure it out as well… and the fact that half the people don’t want it anyway… but, for now, they have other things to worry about. It’s hard to believe that there’s a pandemic raging down there, infecting more than 200,000 people per day and killing more than 2,000… and that’s not even remotely close to their biggest problem.

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By |2021-01-11T17:03:01-08:00January 11th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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January 9, 2021

There will be a slight delay in posting the pretty numbers and graphs… I haven’t been near a computer all day. This post comes courtesy of my iPhone. And the place-holder video explains why… we took the dog up to Mt. Seymour to wander in the snow a bit… so if you’re here for just the data, come back at 6pm… (EDIT: numbers and graphs are up… but the dog video stays ????) and if you’re here to read what I have to say, let’s go back to yesterday for a bit…

Like I’ve said before, I enjoy being wrong… it gives me an opportunity to learn something.

Certainly, when you post an opinion, it’s up for discussion… I’ve had a lot of contrarian opinions over the last several months when it came to my attitude towards Trump. It was much more fervent at the beginning; I’d post something negative about him, and the comments section would erupt with ugliness… as would my Inbox. I used to answer all of them, but I stopped when I learned to distinguish the difference between someone with genuine points worthy of discussion… as opposed to rabid pro-Trumpers that we’re all too familiar with now. But unless you were one of those foaming-at-the-mouth types, I’m always happy to share my thoughts.

It was a pleasant surprise yesterday to be wrong, but not be slammed by crazy people. On the contrary, the rational intelligent information provided to me by professionals, researchers, more-informed people; what a refreshing change. I’m happy to pass along what I’ve learned in 24 hours; some of it is in the comments from yesterday’s post, others came from calls and texts and emails… from people more familiar with the topic than myself.

The topic-du-hier was the vaccine, but, more specifically, the timing between the two required shots. I went off applying my experimental and empirical knowledge, and mapped it onto a subject that maybe doesn’t apply. Like I said yesterday, I’ve built IKEA furniture without reading the manual; the wooden pegs go in these holes, the round rotating fastening things obviously go in those big holes, the metal things they attach to go in these smaller holes; it’s not rocket science but nevertheless, if you do a step wrong, there’s a lot of rewinding. You may as well read the manual. Also, as per yesterday, I’ve actually landed an Airbus 320 that was way too heavy on an icy runway… and didn’t slide off the end. This was in an Air Canada Flight Simulator, not real… but the co-pilot/flight instructor next to me was saying… you’ll see why this is a bad idea.

So… as it turns out, my assumption that stretching the time between jabs being bad is… not entirely correct… it’s not a simple question of right and wrong. There’s certainly a gray area, and it looks like this…

On one side, you have Pfizer and the FDA… both of which have significant potential liability if they’re wrong. Accordingly, they can’t recommend something and stand behind it on just a whim. There’re both quite adamant: Stick to the script.

On the flipside, you have a couple of things that might make you see things differently… one are the logical conclusions based on the vast experience that exists in the field. While this vaccine is new, vaccines in general certainly aren’t… and there’s behavior around them that in this case can be assumed to be no different. The other is the frightening pace at which the pandemic is accelerating, especially in the U.S.

It’s that latter point that might be the tipping point; the staggering difference it makes getting as many first doses into people as possible. The immunity that one shot provides — enough to prevent a serious outcome (if not prevent infection entirely) means worrying about the second dose later. To that point, there’s plenty of evidence that delaying it a week does nothing to lower the efficacy… and stretching even further might have little detrimental effect. And, further to that… there’s always time in the future to fix that, once everyone has had their first shot and possibly-ill-timed second shot. Perhaps come back for a third if it’s found you really need it.

I’d certainly still prefer to do this on the prescribed and tested schedule, but now certainly understand the merits of stretching it out… which summarizes to hundreds of thousands of potential hospitalizations and deaths prevented.

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By |2021-03-01T23:24:46-08:00January 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Our Dog|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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