Cars

April 16, 2021

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

Haha… how ridiculously naïve.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

March 30, 2021

Here are a couple of dictionary definitions:

Mitigate (v): to make less severe, serious or painful

Alleviate (v): to make (suffering, deficiency, or a problem) less severe

Almost the same definition, but there’s an important subtle difference that’s crept into how those words are used… with one, you’re taking corrective action to correct a problem; with the other, you’re taking steps before the problem happens in hope it never becomes one.

A distant example was when I got my first car, and my dad telling me… no matter what, change the oil. Every 3,000km or every 6 months, whatever comes first… change the oil. Even if you don’t want to worry about spark plugs and fan belts and brake pads and everything else… change the oil. Mitigating that risk cost me $23 at Mr. Lube every 6 months. Alleviating the problem of a seized engine that ran dry of oil, or gummed up the motor because it was old and dirty… would’ve cost far more. I put close to 300,000km on that car and never had a serious issue with it. It was a rusty pile of junk when I sold it for $400… $200 cash, $200 in cheques that ultimately bounced… but the oil was pristine.

A far-more recent example… as told to me by my friend Henry, who designs boats… including tug boats, for the local company, Robert Allan Naval Architects. Six RANA tugboats were instrumental in freeing the Ever Given from the clutches of the Suez Canal yesterday. Not too long ago, RANA provided the Suez Canal a proposal advocating for escort tugs for all ships transiting the canal. This would be mitigation, and it would have a cost… but I suspect that cost would’ve turned out to be a lot less than the week-long alleviation that was necessary.

Getting sick with C19 requires alleviation… and I have no doubt for people knocked down by it, they wonder if they could’ve mitigated the risk of catching it. If they were wearing masks and distancing and not attending crowded events and they still caught it, that’s most unfortunate. It’s also possible that my car develops an oil leak and the engine light fails and one day I’m driving around… and the engine melts on me. It’s also possible that high winds or whatever it was that caused the Ever Given to ground itself might have been so strong that tugboats would’ve been helpless.

Sure… you can mitigate all you want, but it’s inherent in the definition of the word. It makes things better, not perfect. A vaccine that’s 95% effective says, in the same breath, that for 1 in 20 people, it won’t help in preventing infection. Unbelievably, that’s the reason some people give for not wanting the vaccine: “If I get the vaccine, I can still get sick… so why bother?”. There are actually two answers to that question. One is that a 19 out of 20 chance of not getting sick makes it worthwhile. And the other is that, with the vaccine, even if you do get sick, it won’t be so bad. It’ll just be a mild case.

If you don’t like the math of that, then I would ask you a simple question: Why aren’t you buying lottery tickets every week, and if you are, why aren’t you already filthy rich? After all, if you buy a ticket, either you win or you don’t. What’s the difference?

Eastern medicine has always been about mitigating; some Chinese doctors don’t charge you when you’re sick… they’re there for fix you. But they do charge you when you’re healthy, because their job is to keep you from getting sick in the first place. That’s mitigation, versus the western method of alleviation of going to the doctor when you’re already sick. Mitigation is the answer to a question we used to ask… why is that perfectly-healthy Asian person walking around with a mask?

We all have the knowledge and tools to mitigate the risk of C19… for ourselves and for others. Many of us do whatever we can, and it certainly helps… but it’s not full-proof. But it’s still worth doing, because, having spoken to people who’ve survived this thing, the cost of alleviation (which in some cases goes on forever) is far higher… and I don’t mean monetarily. That’s the least of it.

By |2021-03-30T17:03:06-07:00March 30th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
Read More

March 25, 2021

On the flipside of the virulent anti-vaxxers comes the crowd who’ll do anything to jump the line and get their shot. Our most famous local exhibit are those two “hotel workers” who flew to that remote village in the Yukon, happily joining the queue with the Indigenous elders of the area. Pathetic, and grossly unethical.

… and, as it turns out, far from uncommon. Given the haphazard rollouts at provincial and state levels, there are plenty of opportunities appearing. It’s come to light that any of us could hop on a plane, fly to an American city… and easily get jabbed. Different places have different requirements, but here’s a good example: Any smoker in Illinois is instantly eligible. People have been lying and getting shots all over the place… and if your ethics allow for it, why not fly to Chicago for $300, walk into a pharmacy, buy a pack of smokes and say, “Hey… while I’m here…”

Were it not for the 3-day, $2,000 mandatory hotel visit on the way back, I suspect this might be a more popular thing to do.

But, you don’t have to go so far… and, this changes daily. And, it’s completely ethical:

In four days, any adult in Ohio will be able to get the vaccine. A couple of days later, anyone in Utah. A few days after that, Michigan and Connecticut. Washington State is a bit behind, but they’ll likely have that in place by May. And that’s for *everyone*.

Eventually, places reach the point where the supply outpaces the demand, and the doors can fly open. Come and get it. And, until things get to that point, still… with a pre-existing eligible condition, just wander into the CVS and walk out vaccinated… as easily as getting a flu shot around here.

The three most common words that you’ll overhear at a racetrack are “Woulda”, “Coulda”, and “Shoulda”; you hear them a lot when the horses cross the finish line and frustrated horseplayers crumple their losing tickets and toss them angrily onto the floor.

“I coulda bet the Daily Double!”
“I shoulda put the 4 in my Trifecta!”
“I woulda bet the 7 if I had more money!”

One day, when this is all over, and the people in charge are trying to figure out why Canada, a first-world nation with every possible resource at its disposal, managed to fall so far behind the eight-ball on their vaccine rollout, these words will heard a lot. They coulda done this, they shoulda done that. No doubt lessons will have been learned… but it’s just as likely that by the time the next pandemic of this sort shows up – which, hopefully, is many many years from now, it’ll all be forgotten. The only lines people will be familiar with jumping will be for the SkyTrain… or for rides at Playland on crowded Labour Day PNE weekends.

Highly recommended, by the way… the rides, the food, the animals, that building full of hucksters shilling Ginsu knives and stuff to magically polish your car… and, while you’re there, check out the horses at Hastings Park. Pick a horse and bet on it… watch it finish fourth… and then, repeat after me – including you, Mr. Trudeau — woulda, coulda, shoulda.

By |2021-03-25T17:03:09-07:00March 25th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
Read More

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.

16 Likes, 2 Shares

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

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.

33 Likes, 3 Shares

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

February 28, 2021

Welcome to the end of February. Tomorrow begins March… and you’ll recall last year, March 2020 felt like the longest month in history. To some extent, it’s been a year but it feels like we’re still in it. Happy Sunday, March 334th.

At this time last year, Canada had seen 15 cases of Covid-19. Seven of them were here in B.C. Another 7 were in Ontario, and the other was in Quebec. By the end of March 2020, Canada had over 8,000 cases and 100 deaths. A month later, the case-count was over 50,000 and the deaths were around 3,000 and we were all freaking the hell out.

We’re all too exhausted to be freaking out anymore, and we’ve realized the numbers didn’t follow that trajectory. Had they, my quick math implies we’d all have caught it by the end of July, and we’d all have been dead by the end of Summer. None of that happened, and none of that will… but it’s worth thinking back to how things felt at the time, just to remember that things can change quickly and we shouldn’t take anything for granted.

On the flipside, like a lot of people, I’m actually starting to wonder what society is going to look like after this is all over. Many profound changes, and I’m not just talking about remote work and Zoom and virtual offices and things like that; let’s recall that in no small part, the end of the 1918 pandemic launched the roaring 20s… a decade of romanticised, glamorous fun that lasted until the economy collapsed and The Depression took over.

But here’s something else that with great subtlety changed the world drastically…

Up until 1918, there were steam cars and there were electric cars… and internal combustion cars were around, but not so popular. People with steam cars used to fill them up at horse troughs… free water, everywhere… but, with the pandemic, and standing water being a great collection point for mosquitos, those troughs got covered up… and the car manufacturers like Henry Ford seized that opportunity to tell the world how awesome gas-powered cars were. No waiting for it to charge, no waiting for the water to heat up, no chance of a steam explosion. Gas stations sprung up everywhere… and a hundred years of R&D that’s gone into gas-powered cars might have gone into steam-generated engines and/or electrical systems and batteries. Hard to imagine what society might look like… and how it would’ve evolved… without this dependency on oil.

I wonder what’s changing these days that’ll have such a profound effect on the entire world. What will they be talking about 100 years from now as one of the largest radical shifts caused by all of this?

I don’t know… I’m just asking the question… but happy to hear you thoughts.

23 Likes, 3 Shares

By |2021-02-28T17:03:10-08:00February 28th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
Read More

February 26, 2021

When you bash your finger with a hammer, yelling out “Golly!” doesn’t quite have the same clout, effect and/or relief than some other choice word. Why is that? There’s actually a word that describes it:

Lalochezia: (n.) the emotional relief gained from using abusive or profane language

We grow up attaching “value” to certain words, and that emotional release they offer is the payoff for all the investment over the years… the small outbursts and exclamations load the profanity cannon, ready to blast when needed. And it’s all inward-facing. There’s nothing magical about the words we all use, and if we’d grown up in a household where different words were used as exclamations of the sort, we’d have learned those associations instead… and then, when you’re in the parking lot of the supermarket and slam your finger shut with your car door, whatever you scream out wouldn’t be met with looks of disapproval from nearby mothers with small innocent children who’ve obviously never heard such vile language. Ah, what a great memory.

Interesting though… for those who speak more than one language… can you swear “effectively” in something other than your primary language? Of course you know all the bad words (it’s the first thing you learn in any new language…) but does it have the same effect?

I was out riding my bike today, lost in thought. A beautiful sunny windy day… perfect.

The vast majority of the time, I think in English… but I was composing a business letter in my head, in Spanish, so that’s where my brain was at when someone decided to walk straight onto the bike lane, crossing it without looking. I slammed on my brakes and skidded to a stop; nobody was hurt, but I did instinctively find myself yelling out a profanity… and so, one might wonder… in what language?

The answer is… English. Whatever fight-or-flight reflex that gets triggered… whatever part of the brain gets activated in this situation… it’s separate from the intellectual part, regardless of whatever language in which it was currently engaged. I switched instantly from intellectual, verbose Spanish… to one single well-known English word. And, in doing so, switched my brain entirely back to English, in which the ensuing conversation took place.

For those pedestrians who also enjoy the sunny windy beautiful fresh air, do keep in mind that if it’s a bike lane, the bikes have the right of way. And if you screw up and walk in front of a bike, causing the cyclist to slam on the brakes and instinctively yell something, don’t get all indignant. Just apologize and move on. Nothing got hurt except your fragile ego. You have the right to be pissed off… just not at me.

Speaking of pissed off, there will be a lot of pissed-off anti-mask, anti-vax, anti-intelligent people, who were all ready to invade the BC Ferry service and head to Victoria for Freedom Rally tomorrow. Thanks to high winds, all sailings are cancelled. How unfortunate. Perhaps they can quickly organize something locally. Given the wind situation, might I suggest… to all of them… go fly a kite.

And for everyone else, here it is in eloquent Spanish, now that my brain is back in that mode: Espero que tengan un muy buen fin de semana y que disfruten!

25 Likes, 1 Shares

By |2021-02-28T16:40:54-08:00February 26th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
Read More

February 24, 2021

It’s always good practice never to get version one point zero of anything… wait a bit, let them work the bugs out, let them fix what they got wrong. New car model, completely redesigned…? Maybe last year’s model is ok. iPhone update? Sounds good… but maybe wait a day or two till a lot of people have done it… just in case it “bricks” the phone. It makes sense.

A lot of intelligent, educated and well-vaccinated people with every intention of getting the C19 vaccine – eventually – had (and still may have) that level of uncertainty. That’s fair, though it’s turning out to be a concern that’s irrelevant to most of us because hundreds of millions of people will have gotten their shot before we do.

Would I have been first in line on day one to get the vaccine? Actually, yeah… I would’ve… but understand why many people would’ve wanted to wait a bit.

We’re well past that point by now. There’s a lot of data out there, and most of it is agreeing with what was expected, and most of it is even better.

And, for those that waited, now you’re on to version 1.1 or maybe 2.0… because the Moderna vaccine has now been modified to directly combat the South Africa variant. Those who had the old version can get it line for a booster down the road. Those who haven’t had it yet will get the new one… a silver lining of benefit to the cloud of having to wait this long. The irony, here in Canada, is that by the time we get them, we won’t need them – we’ll be enjoying the herd immunity offered by the rest of the world.

The arguments these days are all about whether we can actually end this pandemic, or whether it’ll turn into a ho-hum version of seasonal illness. COVID-19 may become just another version of coronavirus that never goes way, but is easily defended against via vaccine or treatment. Or, interestingly… the vaccines are so good that they may eventually eradicate it. We shall see.

… and, might I add, this is a much better discussion to be having compared to the one that was springing up a year ago… the “Can we even develop a vaccine against this thing?” That part of it has been answered, and answered well. Ask me next year about the questions we’re asking today.

29 Likes, 3 Shares

By |2021-02-24T17:03:34-08:00February 24th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
Read More

January 31, 2021

Several years ago, I visited the U.S. for about 30 minutes with a process that’s called “Flag poling” – where you in essence cross the border, touch the American flagpole, and hop back into Canada. The reason was to take my nephew who had to re-enter Canada to validate his student visa… which requires entering through some specific port of entry. You can’t do it from within Canada.

The idea was to just drive down, do a U-turn, and come back and do the paperwork. It’s all on the Canadian side; the U.S. doesn’t care at all. Or, shouldn’t.

When we got to Peace Arch, there was a long lineup (this was a Saturday morning) – more than a 90-minute wait… backed up well-past the Duty Free on the right. Which got me to thinking… let’s just walk. Walk into the U.S. enough that we can turn around and walk back into Canada with a little piece of paper proving where we were.

We parked the car in the Duty Free parking lot and set off on foot. It’s not a long walk… and, it’s kinda cool. We did the “haha you’re in Canada and I’m in the States” nonsense and took some pictures. Then, we kept walking, and, as we approached the U.S. border control from the “wrong” side, there was border guard, with a big gun, standing with his back to us. He was staring to the south and couldn’t hear us coming, but the last thing I wanted to do was “surprise” this guy, so… while still walking towards him, when we were about 20 meters away, I coughed loudly. He spun around quickly, both hands on his automatic weapon… which, fortunately, he didn’t point right in our face.

“What are you doing!!”, he screamed at us. I explained.

“You’re doing it wrong!!”, he screamed. Yikes. Welcome to America. OK, noted for future reference… there’s a right way — and a wrong way — to walk into the U.S…

Our wrong way took us not just past the actual Peace Arch but, of course… if you’re there already, you walk through it.

The Peace Arch itself is exactly that, a monument to peace between these two great nations, celebrating the longest unprotected border in the world. Attached to the Peace Arch are some iron gates, and several inscriptions:

“Children of a common mother”

“Brethren dwelling together in unity”

And, of course, the famous “May these gates never be closed”.

Technically, those gates will indeed never be closed; they can’t be, because they’re not hinged… and, they’re solidly bolted onto The Peace Arch. It’s purely symbolic. But the spirit of it is well-understood… and, of course, since last March, they’ve been very-much closed. For how long? Every month, that closure gets extended… currently, till at least Feb 21st… but it’ll be a lot longer than that. On that note, there’s an interesting anniversary coming up in September… when The Peace Arch will turn 100 years old; it was in September of 1921 that it was dedicated. There should be a good party on that lawn that day… weather-permitting. And pandemic-permitting. But for now, it’s as closed as it’s ever been… including, as of today, even more-so to travellers from Mexico and the Caribbean.

As exciting as walking into another country can be, there’s one better… on my to-do list one day is to cross from Spain into Portugal via… zip-line! Yes… from a little hill in Portugal, you can zip-line over the Guadiana river, straight into Spain… a 720-meter ride that takes less than a minute, at speeds up to 80km/h. You even get to cross a time zone. Maybe not for everyone, but it’s better than being yelled at by an American border guard.

30 Likes, 3 Shares

By |2021-01-31T17:04:32-08:00January 31st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
Read More

January 29, 2021

There’s an age-old question… would you rather fight a horse-sized duck, or 100 duck-sized horses?

OK, it’s not an age-old question. It actually materialized in 2003, in a UK newspaper, but really rose to prominence in a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” thread in 2012… where it was a question posed to president Barack Obama. Obama never got around to answering it, but the question wound up on “the crawl” on TV, and the rest is history. Here are my thoughts…

While a 1,000 pound duck would be formidable indeed, it’s one single enemy… and a coordinated, well-timed attack is all you’d need to neutralize it. On the flipside, I know horses… and I can tell you, dealing with a single angry horse is a handful; a potentially dangerous one… and 100 angry little horses would step on you, kick and bite you relentlessly, and not give up… so yeah, I’ll try my luck against the big duck.

Speaking of Reddit, and fights between one big thing vs. lots of little things… you’ve probably recently heard the words GameStop and AMC and short squeeze and hedge funds…

In a nutshell, here’s what’s going on:

The opposite of the well-known game-plan of buying a stock when you think it’s going to go up, holding it, and then selling it for a profit… is what’s called “shorting” the stock… and it’s what you do when you think a certain stock is over-priced. What you do is borrow the shares from “someone”, sell them… and then wait till the price goes down… and then buy it back at the lower price. Then you return the shares you borrowed and pocket the difference.

Huge (multi-billion-dollar) hedge funds like to short stocks here and there… for varying reasons. Given that their mandate is to hedge risk (it’s in the name…), part of that might be to take positions that go contrary to upward market movements… to hedge the risk in case the opposite happens. But also, using the same analytics and metrics they’d use to picks stocks they think will go up, they do it in the opposite direction.

Arguments can be made about the ethics behind shorting stocks to begin with; you’re basically betting and hoping that a company will do poorly. It goes against a lot of principles, like… well, you can’t sell a house or a car or anything else without actually owning it… why is this different? Because, at least for the moment, the people who run the exchanges say it’s ok. It doesn’t go against the principle of making money… therefore, as long as capitalism exists, so will short-selling.

One thing about buying shares and being wrong… the worst thing that can happen is you lose what you put into it. I buy 10 shares of ACME at $100 each and ACME goes bust and the shares become worthless… I’m out $1,000. But if I short 10 shares at $100 and it goes up to $200… well, I need to come up with $2,000 worth of ACME shares to give back to whoever lent them to me… and it means buying them back from the open market. I have the original $1,000 I made from the sale, but now I have to come up with $1,000 out of my own pocket to cover it. And if ACME went up to $900 a share, now I’m out $8,000 of my own money… and here’s a big problem. Zero is the limit on the way down, but there’s no limit on the way up… and what do I do when I see the price crawling upwards…?

There are two options. One is… cut my losses… buy it back at the higher price, give back the shares, and pour a glass of my finest single-malt scotch, while pondering recent life decisions. Or… double-down. Sell more. If I thought selling it at $100 was a good idea, then selling it at $200 must be a better idea… and now, when it goes down, I’ll make even more. Great plan if it actually goes down… but what if it keeps going up? And now everyone who’s short is buying back in, further lifting the price and causing more panic… this is what’s called short-squeeze, and it’s what sends stock prices soaring very quickly. But here’s an additional wrinkle…

Technically, when you short a stock, you would be borrowing the shares to do so. The brokerage house facilitates that for you (and takes a fee, of course). However, these brokerage houses play a little loosey-goosey with that… not too different from the banks, I suppose, in that if everyone suddenly ran to BMO and demanded all their money, there simply wouldn’t be enough to cover it. They’re counting on not everyone needing all of it all at once.

At the moment, something like 150% of GameStop shares are short. In other words, more shares of GameStop have been sold than actually exist. So… when the people who actually own shares, or own call options (which give them the right to purchase shares at a specified price) suddenly say “Hey, I’d like my shares now” – those shares are nowhere to be found. Frantic buyers who need to come up with them will just keep driving the price higher and higher.

An army of Redditors (from /r/WallStreetBets) decided months ago that if enough people bought up certain heavily-shorted stocks and/or call options (GameStop, AMC and some others) and then promised to hold them, it would drive up prices significantly. One of their targets, GameStop, was being shorted incessantly by a huge $13-billion hedge fund called Melvin Capital.

Shares in GameStop were below $3 last year… and not long ago (early November) were trading at around $10 a share. Then, the Reddit army started buying it up, feeding into the Melvin shorts. The prices started going up… and up…. and more up. And Melvin, instead of covering their losses and taking a bit of a hit… sold more, where it was quickly gobbled up. Lather, rinse, repeat.

This morning, GameStop shares opened at $380. They went as low as $250 and as high as $414 before closing out the week at $325. And there are still a colossal amount of open shorts that will need to cover eventually.

A lot of these stock-dabbling Redditors, swearing to hold it till the cows come home, have made thousands of dollars. Some have made millions. Melvin Capital has lost $5 billion. And it’s not over yet.

Let’s rephrase the original question… and remove the human… who would win the fight, one big duck or an army of little horses?

Perhaps I’m a little biased because I’ve been betting horses all my life, but this is no different… and it’s not 100 of them; it’s literally millions. The big old-school Wall-Street Scrooge McDuck might not have that huge pit of money to swim around in much longer.

17 Likes, 4 Shares

By |2021-01-29T17:03:03-08:00January 29th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
Read More

© 2020-2023 Horatio Kemeny | Web presence supported by KJS Design

Go to Top