Canada

March 21, 2021

Two wrongs don’t always make a right… but three rights make a left! – a good rule to remember when it’s between 3pm and 6pm and you really need to turn left… but all the signs prohibit it. Skip ahead a block, turn right a few times… and you’re set.

But… back to two wrongs… first, there was a lot of misguided bullshit about the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots. Then, secondly, as a result of that, the European Union halted it “till further notice, out of an abundance of caution”…. caution of what? Caution of exercising critical thinking? Caution of not overreacting? Caution of not undermining a global initiative?

That all lasted a few days until some clearer thinkers came along and said, “Wait… wtf are we actually doing here…” but, by then, it was a little too late. A lot of time, and a lot of confidence, was lost.

The EU did the expected 180 and AZ vaccinations are ramping up. In fact, now, the EU chief is threatening to ban exports of AZ vaccine until Europeans can first get their hands on what they need. You know, the stuff that a week ago was considered toxic.

But, it’s a little late… not just because some of their vaccine rollouts have been significantly affected, but because a lot of that vaccine has already been shipped out, and it’s been sitting on U.S. shelves… and the U.S. has yet to approve the AZ vaccine… and so, rather than let it expire, they’re sending it off to be used… to Mexico, and… to Canada. We are getting one point five million doses of AZ vaccine, and that will most certainly accelerate things on this side of the border.

I said two wrongs… but reading back on all that, it took more than just a couple.

The result of all of that is now the EU’s problem, and it’s to our benefit. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes an abundance of caution is called for… but this entire episode (whose consequences, here in Canada, we’ll gratefully accept) could’ve and should’ve been avoided. A little bigger-picture thinking is called for, especially when the stakes are so high. It’s not a question of breaking rules; it’s a question of understanding when to apply them.

Like, for example… you want to turn left and it’s 4:30pm and the little red-slashed-circle says no, don’t do it… but there’s nobody coming and there’s no cop behind you. I’ll be honest… sometimes… temporarily banning myself from making that left turn makes as much sense as temporarily banning the AZ vaccine.

By |2021-03-21T17:03:05-07:00March 21st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |3 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 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 10, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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