Coronavirus

November 27, 2020

If you haven’t already seen “The Queen’s Gambit”, you probably have a lot of people telling you that you should… and they’re right. It’s really, really good. You probably know that it’s about chess, but, like chess itself, it’s about a lot more.

The basics of chess are easy to learn; anyone can learn how the pieces move in less than 10 minutes. But then you spend a lifetime trying to move them well. I’m happy that series came into this household… I only wish it’d been at the start of this pandemic. There would’ve been a lot more quality screen time in those early days.

It was funny… a few nights ago, to hear my son yell for me… “Dad! Help!” – I ran over there… what, is the room on fire? No… he was on chess.com, playing against some guy in Russia, and found himself in a precarious position, not quite sure what to do because he thought he was about to lose his queen. That’s quality father/son time right there, ganging up to beat some Russian in chess. Right on.

I get the impression that Donald Trump wouldn’t be a very good chess player, and here’s why I think that: Chess requires you to think a few moves ahead, and if you can’t do that, you have zero chance of success. Just like in life, if you lead it in such a way that’s entirely reactionary – stimulus/response, stimulus/response… you’re going to have a tough go of it. That lifestyle works well for single-celled organisms, but our real world is a lot more complicated than a paramecium needing to navigate a petri dish. And in chess, if every time you move a piece it gets taken… and then you stare at the board wondering how that could’ve happened… well, you’re doing it wrong.

The stimulus/response pattern of the soon-to-be-former-president is something I guess we’ve gotten used to over the last four years, but now that he’s on his way out, it’s a little more pathetic than it used to be.

Actually, at the start, it was far from pathetic; it was frightening, with real-world consequences.

Early in the presidency, Trump was watching TV and saw something… and then Tweeted about how the new Air Force One is too expensive, and “Cancel Order!” There’s a lot of misinformation in that Tweet to begin with, but the immediate response was a sharp drop in Boeing’s stock price. It recovered quickly when people realized the president didn’t know what he was talking about, but the damage was done, and it was a good indication that this guy shoots from the hip and doesn’t really consider the implications. Much bigger and broader shooting from the hip was his unilateral and unexpected Muslim travel ban. Never mind that it violated the first amendment, the fifth amendment, the Immigration and Nationality Act, the Religious Freedom Restoration Act and the Administrative Procedure Act… who cares. You can see Trump, with his infallible logic… Muslim = Terrorist, Terrorist = Bad, Banning Bad is good… what’s the problem? No need to consider the consequences. We all remember the chaos that resulted, and how much effort it took to resolve it.

But these days, with only 53 days, 15 hours and 57 minutes (but who’s counting) left in his presidency, his shooting from the hip holds little clout. Now, it’s the same old baseless nonsense, and none of it is surprising to hear. I honestly thought he might have some surprises waiting in the wings, but… nothing. Like an awful chess player, he telegraphed ahead everything he had planned. He called the election a fraud before it even took place, threatened he had lawyers in place ready to challenge it, and, as a result, everyone was ready for it. He served up exactly what was expected.

Of course, there was no wide-spread fraud, and the “superstar” team of lawyers who were happy to say “Yes! Yes! Yes!” to him in person, and who were happy to take his money… most of them bailed before making complete fools of themselves. Those that stuck it out longer faced serious admonition from judges who were not happy to see their court’s time wasted with this nonsense, especially when the stakes were so high. Vague handwaving and unfounded, grandiose statements don’t work well in a court of law. Case after case was thrown out, some of them angrily.

At a recent press conference, Donald Trump was repeatedly asked if he was going to concede. His long-winded answers of irrelevant bullshit and false claims were exactly what we’ve grown accustomed to. He never answered the question, which of course, in itself, is the answer.

If this were a chess match, he’d be the king, pretty much left all alone. All that’s left of his colour is the king itself… and a few pawns. The other side has more than it needs… the queen, a rook or two, a knight or two. A bishop. Perhaps a few pawns. Perhaps 80 million pawns. Whatever.

In 53 days, 15 hours and 57 minutes, his Tweets will go from presidential and influential… to those from just another right-wing conspiracy-theory-believing nut-job. Right now, he could be Tweeting about how maybe masks aren’t such a bad idea. How maybe a little social distancing wouldn’t hurt. Will he do that? Of course not.

And during that time, more than 5 million Americans will become infected with C19, and more than 100,000 will die. And, after all of that, Donald Trump, the former president, will have the rest of his life to think about what he did, what he didn’t do, and what a mess he left behind. Maybe he can think about it while he’s sitting in prison, where he belongs… and where there isn’t much else to do.

Well, I guess he could always take up chess.

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By |2020-11-27T19:45:06-08:00November 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Humour, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |12 Comments
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November 26, 2020

So at some point in the not-too-distant future, a person says to their robot… “Please go to the grocery store and get two steaks. And if they have eggs, get a dozen.” And the robot goes to the store, and comes back with… a dozen steaks.

This is a popular joke among computer programmers, because they’re the ones who get it right away. Indeed, computers are only as good as what you put into them, and the programming error that would lead to the twelve steaks is a common one. With computers, you need to be specific. You can’t make assumptions. If told to get steaks, it will get steaks. Computers aren’t smart enough to read into the obvious subtext that the human brain picks up instantly… and this is why the errors in the B.C. data that came to light yesterday can only be blamed on human error. Officially labelled “an IT error”, it’s more colloquially known as a “B.C.K. error” – Between Chair and Keyboard. Another common computer saying: Garbage In, Garbage Out. I’m thinking there may be someone looking for a job.

We don’t need to single out the health authority that messed up… but if you’re curious, their name sort of rhymes with “laser stealth”. Or “blazer wealth”. Given that it’s actually the provincial health region with the most cases, screw-ups there could make a difference to where we think things are at. Did it?

The ultimate changes are reflected in today’s numbers; all corrections have been applied, and I’m assuming with today’s data, we’re back on track. If you want to compare, you can flip back to yesterday’s post and see what changed. Side-note, if you’re looking at yesterday’s post, feel free to have a look at the comments, especially near the bottom…

Anyway, after it all shakes out, the end result isn’t too different. The provincial case count is 271 more than had previously been thought, a discrepancy of less than one percent. The interesting thing is how it got there… undercounts *and* overcounts. I could understand if there was data missing every day… or, double-counted, so bigger-than-expected numbers here and there. But both? That’s just… really bad.

The 271 isn’t a big deal, but what might have made a difference would’ve been the “shape” of the numbers. We’d all thought we had this massive day of 941 new cases. That never happened. That day only had 706. The “big” day was Nov 21st, with 835. Except, of course, this is changing by the day… and you can ignore all of that, because, unfortunately, the B.C. record for number of new cases was set… today, at 887. And don’t expect it to last too long.
What as I was saying about the “shape” of cases was simply this: Let’s say there were 5,000 new cases over the last 5 days. There’s a big difference… if those 5 days looked like 300, 489, 797, 1299, 2115… vs. 1000, 1000, 1000, 1000, 1000. Or, of course, 2115, 1299, 797, 489, 300. Those are three very different stories being told.

As it turns out, if anything, the corrected numbers served to “flatten” the look a bit. But again, not materially relevant.

At the end of the day, these graphs, charts, and ultimate analysis are only as good as what goes into it. As per above, Garbage In, Garbage Out.

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By |2020-11-26T19:20:29-08:00November 26th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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November 25, 2020

At some point soon, Health Canada will announce the availability of a vaccine. Provincial Health Services across the country are already working on the logistics of providing it to you.

If you ask someone today whether they’ll be getting it, the usual answer is “Of course… but not right away… just want to make sure it’s ok.”

Well… by the time it gets to most of us, it’ll almost certainly be ok. More than ok. In fact, it will have been ok from day 1, where some of the first people to have gotten it would have been at higher risk… front-line workers, elderly people… and they will all be just fine. More than fine.

It’s not an irrational concern; vaccines, as we’ve repeatedly heard, take many years to develop. And, even then, sometimes there are problems. How can this one, super-rushed at every step, be guaranteed to be safe? How can we sacrifice so much time without sacrificing quality?

Part of the answer lies in understanding why it usually takes so long.

First of all, as usual, money. Developing a vaccine isn’t cheap, and isn’t always successful. The millions of dollars it takes aren’t always so easy to find. After the initial idea for the vaccine is thought up, it takes money to develop that thought. A grant gets applied for, and that’s usually not successful… something like the good old 80/20 rule plays out… where only 20% of these proposals actually get funded to proceed. Just getting to that point is a grueling and time-consuming process. Where animal testing will be involved, ethics boards also need to sign off.

In this case, there were no grant proposals. A ton of money was found, and quickly. Bill & Melinda Gates have thrown a staggering $420 million dollars into C19 research. Also, a million dollars that went towards the funding of the Moderna vaccine came from… Dolly Parton. From far and wide, the money rolled in… and what usually takes years (if it happens at all)… took minutes.

This allowed multiple, parallel paths of development. Top minds from every angle tackled this problem, and it was found that developing an mRNA (instead of DNA) vaccine would be the right way to approach things. This inherently saved some time because some concerns that usually need to be addressed became non-issues. You don’t need the actual virus. You don’t need to attenuate it… a tricky process of reducing the virulence of a pathogen, enough that it becomes relatively harmless, but not so much that it becomes useless. All of that takes a lot of careful experimentation… and consumes a lot of time. But in this case, all that was needed was the genome sequence of the virus. The risk is far less with respect to human safety. The bigger risk is whether it’ll work at all.

At some point in the research, a vaccine candidate makes an appearance. And normally, there begins a cycle of testing, publishing, approval and requests for further funding… and each iteration requires more people, more testing, more money, more oversight and more approvals. These cycles take time. Finding more people. Finding more money. Sitting around waiting for approvals. But in this case, there were plenty of people and there was plenty of money. Typically, the people who hold the giant stamps of approval are busy… things enter a queue… to the bottom of the pile, and they slowly sift to the top, at which time they get dealt with. This time… straight to the top.

Eventually, after tests are shown to be successful and safe in large populations (tens of thousands of people), a drug company willing to take some risk gets involved… because they start from scratch, and need to duplicate the results to their satisfaction. The production, the testing results, everything. And if they do that successfully, then they can approach the FDA (or whatever other relevant governing body) for approval… after which they can figure out how they’re going to produce and distribute all of that in a way that makes economic sense.

In this case, a lot of that took place in parallel. We will never know how many millions of doses of non-viable vaccine got thrown into the garbage, and by whom… but with so much money available and so much at stake, it was the right way to do things. If this vaccine candidate might actually be the one, make lots, and make it now… and if turns out to not be the one, oh well… some money was wasted, but the risk/reward made it worth it.

There are already millions of doses of Pfizer and Moderna vaccine in existence. As we speak, millions more are being made… on the assumption that when this all goes in front of the FDA on December 10th, things will go well… so well that it’ll only be days later when wide-spread distribution will begin. Normally, production would have begun only after FDA approval.

Indeed, the right question that was asked months ago was a simple one… “How do we get a vaccine out to the world as quickly as possible?” – and the answer was to cut corners that wouldn’t affect the safety or effectiveness of the end result. And that’s what we’ve gotten.

When you’re so used to something taking that long, it’s natural to view it with suspicion… but here’s a simpler example. Let’s talk about NFL football for a minute… a typical NFL game takes a little over three hours to play. The game clock, though… it’s only an hour… 4 quarters of 15 minutes each. But here’s the thing… inside that one timed hour, the actual time the ball spends moving is… eleven minutes. But… there’s the time between plays, where the clock keeps moving… but the ball is sitting at the line of scrimmage, waiting. There are official replays. There are challenge flags. There are timeouts. There are clock stoppages. There are two-minute warnings. There are commercial breaks. There’s halftime. If you were to compress a typical NFL game by removing all of that, you could watch the entire thing in less than 15 minutes. Do you miss anything of value by doing so, if all you’re really interested in seeing is actual football being played?

Similarly, as it turns out, once you remove the bureaucratic delays from the vaccine-development timeline, all you’re left with is the science, and the procedures that drive it. And an end-product that’s as trustable as one that would otherwise have taken years.

After reading all that, you still might be thinking, “Yeah, but still…” and that’s ok. At some point, it’ll reach your comfort level… but for what it’s worth, if nobody wants to go first – sign me up. Having a clear understanding of how this all came about, I would have zero hesitation. If volunteers are needed for the front of the line, I’m there.

By |2020-11-25T21:08:57-08:00November 25th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |22 Comments
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November 24, 2020

Crazy, irrational people have always been around and will always be around. It’s part of living on earth, and as long as their craziness doesn’t negatively affect you, let them do their thing.

That’s more difficult in the midst of a pandemic, because some champion of civil liberties, coupled with a good dose of conspiracy paranoia, can actually affect you very negatively. Like some anti-masking moron who purposefully coughs on you, just to prove the point that it’s all a hoax.

There will come a point when some idiot doing that will be of minimal concern, and, of course, we’re not there yet… but let’s talk about immunity.

The chances of you getting mumps, measles or rubella are negligible if you’ve had the MMR vaccine, properly administered. Properly administered means two doses, and in doing so, the efficacy is 97% against measles, 97% against rubella and 88% against mumps.

Measles is a good one to discuss because the vaccine is so good, yet the illness is so contagious. As per the numbers above, even if you’re in the vicinity of someone who actually has measles, if you’ve been immunized, you only have a 3% chance of getting sick. Conversely, if you haven’t been immunized, there’s a better than 90% chance you’ll catch it. And that’s why even though measles is pretty rare, it flares up here and there… the perfect little storm of someone who’s been exposed, running into a cluster of enlightened Southern-California moms who’d never poison their precious kids with vaccines, when we all know essential oils are all you need to keep them healthy.

Sadly, it’s relevant to note that 2021 is likely to see outbreaks of measles in many places due to missed vaccinations. Around the world, some 94 million children have missed their scheduled vaccines… due to C19. If anyone is wondering how effective vaccines really are, just have a look at the unfortunate measles numbers next year.

When things get back to normal, measles will once again be brought under control. With a coordinated effort, like was done with smallpox, it could actually be extinguished. And the same could be said for C19. Since it’s a virus, in theory… it could be eradicated.

My chances of getting smallpox are zero. My chances of getting measles aren’t zero, but thanks to my immunity and the herd immunity caused by enough people having been administered, over many years, a vaccine that’s more than 95% effective… they’re very, very low.

And so it will be with C19 one day. You will be vaccinated, enough people around you will be vaccinated, and that will be that. At that point, it will take a lot for you to get C19… and the evidence we’re seeing seems to imply that in all cases, if you’ve been vaccinated, it’d be, at worst, a mild case.

There will, of course, still be anti-vaxxers and Covidiots around. There are also the quiet anti-vaxxers… they’re not out in the streets screaming about Bill Gates is trying to inject you with 5G trackers… but years of misinformation has made a difference. A recent report states that in the U.S., it’s pretty much 50/50 as to who’s willing to be vaccinated and who isn’t.

Around here, the numbers are better… our denier-precentage is in the 20 to 30 range… but we have them too – the quiet anti-vaxxers, and the loud ones… who will march on the steps of The Art Gallery for years to come. Alien abductions, 9/11 was an inside job, the moon landings were faked, the earth is flat, covid was a hoax. All looney birds of the same feather. I look forward to the day, hopefully sooner than later, when their craziness can once again no longer directly affect me.

By |2020-11-24T19:41:59-08:00November 24th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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November 23, 2020

One might be a fluke, but two implies some consistency… and three pretty-much says, “lock” – and that is where we’re at with respect to vaccines.

Another announcement this morning from yet another vaccine manufacturer, this one from AstraZeneca, showing an average efficacy of 70%, but going up to 90%, depending on the dosage. Regulators from the FDA and Europe will be having a look at it soon.

From a timeline point of view, the two frontrunners, Pfizer and Moderna… may have their vaccines hitting the streets in the last two weeks of December, assuming the present timeline and FDA approval (set to be discussed Dec. 10th). Pfizer expects to make 50 million doses by the end of the year (and up to 1.3 billion next year). Moderna will have 20 million doses ready this year. Who will get it first? Mostly Americans, I would expect… and, honestly, they need it.

That great American Founding Father Patrick Henry proclaimed, “Give me Liberty or give me Death!” back in 1775. Americans, known for wanting it all, are taking those words to heart… potentially changing the “or” to an “and”.

Over the weekend, over 3 million people passed through security checkpoints in American airports. Something like one in 111 Americans travelled on a plane in the last 48 hours, the majority on their way home for Thanksgiving, where they will mingle in close quarters for several hours if not days… before boarding those same planes and heading back to wherever.

The timing with “vaccines vs. the virus” will be interesting… and will be the grand crescendo of 2020. In fact, let’s call it for a specific day – Dec 20th, 2020, precisely one month before Donald Trump exits, stage left. On that day, many places in the U.S. will be facing a catastrophic and unmanageable surge in cases, with hospitals completely overwhelmed. And right alongside that, there will be the knowledge that the vaccine is out there, and “How the hell do I get my hands on it?!”

The amusing-if-it-weren’t-so-tragic part of it will be the conspiracy spin… from those people who for the better part of a year have been claiming it’s a hoax and it’s all bullshit… who will now be screaming that only the elite have access to it and how come we don’t all get it, like, *now*, and it’s my right to have a vaccine… my *constitutional* right as part of the Declaration of Independence: Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness. Clearly a vaccine fits into that. Like, you know, I don’t want a vaccine, I don’t need a vaccine, vaccines are for crowd control, vaccines are to murder us, Bill Gates, 5G, etc, etc… *BUT*, even so, if I want a vaccine, I should be able to get one. OK.

Keep your seatbelts securely fastened… the roller-coaster has just begun that big downhill. This is the part where you can put your hands up in the air and scream… or just hold on for dear life. Like I keep saying, there’s a finish line… but it’s going to be a wild ride getting there.

Graph for November 23, 2020

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By |2020-12-03T18:59:31-08:00November 23rd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Humour, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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November 2, 2020

As a kid (or a very immature adult), the “I was just kidding” go-to is the failsafe to fall back upon when you have undeniably and unapologetically screwed up, but… for your own fragile-ego reasons, you’re unable to take responsibility. So you shift it back onto the person you victimized. “What’s wrong with you? Can’t you take a joke?”

The more mature-adult version of that evolves to things like, “Well… didn’t see that coming” or “Who knew?” or “It was unavoidable” or… the big final F.U. – “Que será, será” – because once you’ve run out of people to blame, let’s just blame the Higher Power or universe in general. Whatever will be, will be.

For those who have egos capable of taking a hit, for whom admitting they’re wrong isn’t a problem, who are clear that their actions have consequences… and so on… it’s frustrating these days. It’s frustrating to hear the same thing over and over from people whose opinions are based on science and fact… and then see those things belittled or ignored, often with those sorts of deflecting explanations.

The blatant disregard for the “bigger picture” was on full display this weekend, and has been for a few weeks… which is why the eyebrow-raising jaw-dropping local numbers of this weekend are certainly not that shocking when you consider that at the same time those numbers were being generated, downtown was flooded with people; crowds voicing the same nonsensical excuses, deflecting responsibility from the problems they themselves are causing. And in two weeks when the numbers are even worse, the same stupid nonsensical rhetorical crap will be heard… “Didn’t see that coming”, “What can you do”, “It is what it is”.

Thoughtless people who are in a hurry to get back to normal, pretending nothing is wrong… ironically are the ones who will prevent it from happening. Notwithstanding the majority of big transmission events are happening in private homes, get ready for restaurant and pub closures again. The only thing that remains to be seen is how much longer and how much worse this all will be, thanks to the thankless, blatant disregard of a few… whose selfish actions will ultimately affect us all.

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By |2020-11-02T21:08:50-08:00November 2nd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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July 17, 2020

What a beautiful day… I hope you all managed to take advantage of it, and if not… good news… it’s mostly supposed to stick around over the next few days.

That is good news; what’s not so good news, as usual, is what’s going on south of the border. I know I sound like a broken record, but sometimes it’s important. Many news outlets are keeping track of Trump’s lies, as they should… otherwise, you get used to it and normalize it and it becomes par for the course. Accountability is important, even if it’ll ultimately be after the fact. Some things are not an OK part of the new normal.

Yesterday came the news that the White House will be controlling the data. Today comes the news that the White House will block the CDC from testifying on re-opening schools.

Not everyone believes in prayer, but whether you do or not, keep Ruth Bader Ginsburg in your thoughts. She is a fighter, a trooper, a survivor… a legend. And, for the moment, her presence implies a significant tipping point for the Supreme Court.

But she is 87 and is now undergoing chemo for a 4th recurrence of cancer, this time pancreatic… having fought off lung and colon over the last 20 years. The reality is she’s unlikely to be around another 4 years, though we can hope. But given her fighting spirit, perhaps we can see her hanging around till the end of the year… or at least, long enough that Trump wouldn’t have the opportunity to replace her with a frightening ultra-conservative.

It’s funny (or perhaps tragic) to listen to some of the fervent Trump supporters screaming things like “This is not a democracy! This is a republic!”

There isn’t enough room nor enough time for me to voice what I’d like to try to explain to some people, and unfortunately, it might go in one ear and out the other. But, to be honest, when I started writing this daily thing exactly 4 months ago (to the day), it was all about the pandemic. It’s shifted to the management of the pandemic, where the vast majority of the world is handling it properly, or at least making an effort to do it as well as they can. We’re all familiar with the glaring exception.

But interestingly enough, with all my Trump bashing, I think I’ve gotten through to a few people. Every time I write about Trump, I hear about it from a few people, including family… not because they disagree, but because they know I’ll be facing a barrage of negative comments.

And for a while…initially, that was true. A few Facebook friends took exception to my continual bashing of their guy, and left. A few others have stuck around, and stuck to their… guns. And I do hear from them.

But there’s also a contingent that perhaps has seen the light; perhaps has managed to differentiate their political leanings from the person who’s supposed to be promoting and leading those ideals. Trump's falling ratings… the only thing he seems to genuinely care about… are indicative of that.

I’m not American and I don’t get a vote. But I have family and friends who live down there, and while I fully support keeping the border closed for now… I miss them; they miss me. Trump’s spokesman yesterday said, “Why would anyone want to go to Canada, anyway?” … and he continued with the usual “this is the greatest country in the world, and Donald Trump, blahblahblah”.

Well, to reply to that rhetorical question, the answer might be “to get the hell away from exponentially growing coronavirus numbers”.

It’s kind of melodramatic to say that the suvivial of the U.S. as we know it depends on it… but history is full of examples of Republics rounding that ugly corner. It all used to be a joke, how Trump might be the last democratically elected president. Ha ha, it’s not so funny now.

From up here, all we can do is watch…enjoy our sunshine and our safe, closed border. And worry. And hope, that down there, they figure it out.

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By |2020-10-08T01:21:23-07:00July 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |11 Comments
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Day 93 – June 17, 2020

Hernán Cortés (1485-1547) was a Spanish Conquistador who led the expedition that led to the downfall of the Aztec Empire. He’s the guy that turned Mexico “Spanish”. As such, depending who you ask, you’ll get very different answers… To the Spanish, he was an adventurous, conquering hero who brought great wealth and pride to his people. To the Aztecs, he was a raping, pillaging, savage barbarian who destroyed and stole their land, their history, their culture and their prized possessions.

That’s a pretty wide and varying difference of opinion, the sort that reminds us that while “History Is Written By The Victors” (Sir Winston Churchill said that, or quoted someone else saying that), it’s not quite so simple. The implication is that when it’s all said and done, those who won get to create the narrative that history will record as facts, shove that truth down the throats of future historians, and that will be that, especially these days.

The obvious example is the current President down south who likes to make things up and hope they stick. This began a few hours after his inauguration, where the relatively trivial and irrelevant claim that his inauguration crowd was the biggest ever — was attempted to be presented as fact. Period. It’s the truth and it’s what’ll go in the history books. Except, of course, it wasn’t true. There were witnesses and cameras and everyone there and pretty much every version of verifiable evidence to contradict that claim, but that hardly seemed to matter. It was presented as “Alternative Facts™”.

Except that the world isn’t quite so gullible. “I guess we’ll move on” seemed to be the general consensus. If the president wants to make things up (3,000,000 illegal voters), etc… we all know it’s not true, so let’s just move on. All the lies are documented, so whatever. One day it might matter; today it doesn’t.

The thing is though, the world seems to be collectively getting sick of alternative facts. False claims, false reports. People are tired of having unverifiable BS jammed down their throats, and the result is an awakening that’s spreading into all sorts of different facets. I’m very interested to see where it all goes. To those who complain we’re erasing history… no, we’re not. Perhaps re-interpreting it, because perhaps the guys who were originally labeled the good guys — the guys who wrote the history… neglected to take into account the other side. We’re not so big on statues around here, but if we were, there’d probably be a few that’d need toppling.

The first one that comes to mind would be Joseph Trutch. Trutch was an English-born Canadian engineer, also surveyor and politician, who served as this province’s first Lieutenant Governor… guiding B.C. during Confederation. So far, so good. But also… Trutch was also horribly racist, and said some things about the Aboriginal peoples that are so vile that I won’t quote them. He also rolled back their previously-agreed-upon land reserves by more than 90%. Maybe in its day, “just the way it is”, but through today’s lens, more than worthy of a good statue-toppling. There’s a Trutch St. on the west side, and there’s one in Victoria. There were some rumblings a couple of years ago… perhaps time to consider changing them. Not much came of it, but I wouldn’t be surprised if we start hearing about it again. Uncle Ben’s. Aunt Jemima. They had their day. Time to move on.

All of these changes are occurring at the exact same time, when facts regarding something else that’s critical… our health and our economy and the next several years of existence… are all being argued about, with wide and varying opinions.

At the end of the day, we need to know what’s going on. Transparency, clarity, all the rest of it. There are those “victors” already trying to write today’s history, but fortunately, we’re not all ignorant sheep. You can try to convince someone it’s safe to go back to normal, but don’t expect they’ll just believe it. The Vice President says coronavirus is over. Twenty-one states are reporting rising numbers. Some states are shutting down again, the obvious consequence of opening up too soon. And around here… you know what, not great numbers. We would’ve been very happy with these numbers two months ago, but as far as trends go… it’s creeping in the wrong direction. Again, low two-digit numbers aren’t a calamity, but I prefer high single-digit numbers. Let’s not forget, this thing isn’t over… history needs to be written… just not yet.

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By |2020-10-08T01:22:26-07:00June 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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Day 42 – April 27, 2020

Purely for the sake of creating examples, I am going to once again virtually kill a lot of people. Please don’t be sad… this is all made up as I go along.

  • Older lady, sheltering with family. All of them became a little sick, but not sick enough to get tested. Some fevers and coughs. She dies in her sleep, but doesn’t get tested. A few weeks later, the family is tested and they’ve all had it.
    – Young man, smoker, high blood pressure. Has a heart attack and dies. Tested and found to have had the virus.
    – Elderly man, tested positive, was doing ok at home, but breathing is becoming difficult. Gets in the car, speeding to the hospital, blows a red light and gets T-boned by a truck. Killed instantly.
    – Young man who, as a result of the lockdown, lost his business and is now losing his home, history of depression, commits suicide. Tests negative.
    – Same example as above, but tests positive.
    – Middle-aged man has a heart attack, rushed to hospital, but massive delay at ER… and dies while waiting for admission. Tests positive. Or negative. Whatever.

    I can come up with lots of “edge cases”, but perhaps they don’t serve much purpose other than to spark an interesting conversation. Some of these are obvious, some are not, and some, one could argue, should be… but aren’t.

    The question you might think I’m about to pose is… what counts as a COVID-19 death… and yes, that’s part of it… but trying to answer just that question… can be quite problematic.

    At the moment, there is confusion and disagreement with respect to what counts and what doesn’t. There is a certainly a big difference between dying of COVID-19, and dying with it. And there’s a lot of grey area in-between the obvious cases.

    To compound the confusion, different jurisdictions have different ways of counting things… and many of them have changed their method as time has progressed. On April 14th, the state of New York changed what counts as a COVID-19 death, adding 3,700 to their count. More recently, Pennsylvania made adjustments that lowered their number by 200.

    My examples above are only a tiny fraction of the sorts of cases one could argue one way or the other, and my examples are pretty superficial. When it comes to categorizing deaths where there were pre-exisitng conditions, it requires real medical knowledge, and even then… one lung is full of fluid but the other is not, patient was positive but that’s an unusual presentation of the virus, plus this, minus that… it’s up for debate among medical professionals, let alone everyone else who may have a vested interest in that number being higher or lower.

    It’s complicated. And, obviously, necessary to standardize in the long run so everyone can be talking about the same thing. But in the meantime, there’s another number that’s very telling and, to a great extent, indisputable.

    If you want to shut up the “it’s just a seasonal flu” crowd, and the “the death rate is like 0.04% because everyone already has it” crowd… look no further than excess deaths.

    Excess deaths is exactly what is sounds like… if in a certain place, on average, N people die in the month of March, and historically that’s held quite accurately as X% of the population, then you have a pretty good argument for COVID-19 deaths when that number is N+2,000. Even if the official tally says only 1,500 virus deaths, you know it’s been understated by up to 500… which would indicate undercounting by 33%

    You can then set aside the differences between states and countries as to what counts and what doesn’t, because after you factor out the obvious ones such as accidents, you have a bunch of deaths that are generally unaccounted for, with no category. There’s a good chance that this virus is their category.

    This has been going on long enough that we can actually start looking at those numbers, to see if they reveal anything of value.

    Note that there are times when averages are worth talking about… and there are times when they are not. Averaging the ages of passengers on a school bus full of kindergarten kids and their grandparents… tells us little. The average of 20 5-year-olds and 20 people aged 68 to 82… is about 40. And nobody on that bus is anywhere near that age. Two averages tell us a lot more… like one average is 5, and the other is 75.

    Keeping that in mind… is there any consistency with respect to excess deaths?

    Europe is a good place to look, with its diversity of population and experience during this pandemic. The average excess death percentage across 13 countries is 49%… which means for every two documented COVID-19 deaths, there was an additional one that flew under the radar.

    As one might expect, the hardest hit places were Italy (90%) and Spain (51%). Those are two places where things got out of control quickly… and also where there is already enough data to make sweeping generalizations. If you look at graphs of what this looks like, The Financial Times, at ft.com, has an article titled “Global coronavirus death toll could be 60% higher than reported” with lots of little graphs, per country, to look at.

    Note that this still isn’t apples to apples, because Spain and Italy were first, and are much further along their pandemic trajectory than others. In comparison, you might be tempted to look at other countries and think it doesn’t look so bad, but this is something to revisit in the future, when more than one month of data is available. Those graphs, per country, all show a series of flat, grey lines (previous years) and then the red 2020 line… which goes along quietly on top of the others and then suddenly spikes, sharply and quite alarmingly in most cases. What’s interesting to see is that these spikes are like ocean waves… and there’s no way to tell if that wave is crashing, or whether it’s the first part of the wall of a tsunami. Ideally, it spikes right back down again… and Spain and Italy may well be doing that. The others; the jury is still out. The England/Wales number is “only” 37%, but that graph looks ready to continue to rise, and/or at least continue to fill a long red section. As do many others.

    And when you drill down to certain, known areas of concern… New York City — forget the official stats… they have a 300% excess death-rate to look at. London, 96%. Paris, 122%. Stockholm, 75%. And if you look at Northern Italy, specifically the hard-hit Bergamo province… 464%.

    He are some raw and indisputable numbers of how it looks when things don’t get clamped down. Lots more people die, directly or indirectly, as a result of this virus.

These places seems distant and irrelevant to some of us here, lucky enough to live in a place with 39 new cases yesterday and only 11 today. And that’s a result of doing things right. It’s not just luck.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:49-07:00April 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Business & Economics, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Day 2 – March 18, 2020

Follow-up to yesterday’s post… and I will try to update this daily, around 5pm. To make it consistent, I’ve normalized the numbers for that. The data comes from https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

The individual Canada chart looks a little curvier than it did yesterday, but that’s only because I added a bit of earlier data and while the trend was indeed increasing, the historical numbers are small. Check the y-axis, not just the pattern.

Also, while yesterday saw an increase of 157 cases nationally, that number was lower (129) today, according to this source of data. And that’s what it’s all about… slowing the growth, because it will grow for the foreseeable future. The question is how fast.

I’ve also added South Korea as an example of how it looks when you do things right; that is the trend everybody wants to see. Still growing, but way slower than before.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:40-07:00March 18th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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