COVID-19

March 3, 2021

Hot on the heals (haha) of yesterday’s post about vaccines… what they might be worth to people if there were an option to pay for them… comes a revelation I wasn’t aware of. In Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, people are being offered $5 to get vaccinated.

On the pro side, these are people at higher risk, for a number of reasons. The argument would be that having all of these people vaccinated benefits us all, because it gets us all closer to herd immunity… and if people need a little convincing, what’s the harm.

On the flip-side, there’s something paternalistic about that $5. Like $5 should make a difference to someone, whether to get vaccinated or not? Five bucks? And yes, I realize 5 dollars is significant to some people, and that’s my point… we are manipulating poor people for the benefit of the greater good. It might make sense on paper, but it feels a little dehumanizing to me. But on the flip-flip-side, many of them would get the vaccine anyway, so give them the $5. They can use it.

The DTES is a well-known colossal mess, one which the present governments, both provincial and municipal, have been struggling with for years. Before Covid-19, most of us had never heard of Dr. Bonnie Henry, but she was around… a driving force behind trying to deal with the opioid/fentanyl crisis. She published a very thorough report about all of it in 2019, a year before everyone’s plans went all to hell, including what had been planned for the DTES.

Uncharted territory… it’s what we’ve all been dealing with, and for those who make the big decisions, it’s no different. Somewhere, in some meeting, someone put up their hand and said, “What if we paid them to get vaccinated?”. I always applaud thinking outside the box, and if a little bribe is what it takes… well, I think back to my visits to the dentist when I was a little kid. That treasure chest full of little plastic junk; by far the best part of the visit… always something to look forward to. Maybe the tipping point between going voluntarily… and going, kicking and screaming.

I moved on from my kid dentist decades ago, and I’m not sure my current dentist is reading this, but in case he is… suggestion… a treasure chest for the adults. You have no idea how popular it’d be. Not sure what you’d put in there, but I assure you, everyone would love it. Little travel toothbrushes and toothpaste? A pack of sugar-free gum? How about a Starbucks gift card… but for how much?

Five dollars sounds about right.

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By |2021-03-03T17:03:03-08:00March 3rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 2, 2021

The whole concept of supply/demand is pretty easy to understand. You don’t need a degree in economics to wrap your head around the idea that the more supply there is of something, the less it’s worth… and when something – anything – is in short supply, its value increases… sometimes, irrationally. Toilet paper, hand sanitizers, masks. There was no actual rationale behind the toilet paper part of it, but since everyone decided there would be a shortage, a shortage was indeed created and prices shot up and scalpers moved in… until manufacturing turned it up to 11 and caught up, and then there was a flood of extra supply. When it happens in the consumer world, it’s easy to understand – not necessarily why it happened; just what’s going on. At any given time, you know exactly what something is worth because as soon someone who’s willing to pay that amount meets the person who’s willing to sell at that price, the question is answered.

Valuing something like an option is more complicated. Imagine someone is selling a horse for $20,000… and you’re interested, but not sure you can come up with the money… or not sure the horse is healthy, and want it checked out by a trusted vet. But you also don’t want someone to come along and scoop him up while you’re still pondering… so you call up the owner and offer him some money… he sells you an option to buy the horse for 20k, and it’s good for 5 days. After that, the option expires and he can do whatever he wants… and your money either goes towards the purchase of the horse, or you kiss it goodbye.

What’s that option worth? $100 is probably not enough for the owner to turn away potential buyers for a week. $2,000 feels pretty steep if you end up walking away from it. One can discuss it, and many opinions will be offered, but the only one that ultimately matters is what the two people involved in the transaction agree upon.

In the financial world, it’s no different. Options to buy and sell stocks trade on their own, independent market… and those prices are based on numerous variables, but the important ones are how much time until the option expires, at what price the option can be exercised at, and how volatile it is. All of that comes together to a single number, and every time two people agree on it, a trade happens.

But what happens when the thing being bought/sold/traded/optioned/whatever’d doesn’t have a value assigned to it? Or the actual financial value is an irrelevant aspect?

A parachute while browsing the local aviation shop is worth something different than when you’re in a plummeting airplane and there is one parachute left and three people who want it.

A Kit-Kat bar being auctioned after a week of hiking in the frozen snow of Strathcona Park is worth a lot more than when it’s sitting next to the checkout line at Safeway.

And… vaccines. A year from now, a Covid-19 vaccine… be it Pfizer or Moderna or AstraZeneca or, by then, numerous other ones… will be as common as Tylenol. “Hey doc, while I’m here, can you spare a….” “Say no more.” Jab. Done.

But today? People chartering planes to the middle of nowhere, just to get it. People flying to Dubai, just to get it. Young women dressing up as grandmas and getting into lineups… just to get it. Stories of people throwing all sorts of money at it in all sorts of ways, just to get it… now. What’s it worth? What’s it worth in a month, six months?

I don’t know. I suppose I could attach a number to it, as far as what I’m willing to pay for it. We can all do that, and we would all come up with different numbers. Some people are happy with zero; happy to wait. Some people don’t want it, even if you paid them.

All of this is largely irrelevant, because it’s not for sale. It’s like that old MasterCard commercial:

Parking at the clinic: $3
Alcohol/cotton swab/syringe: $1
Trained nurse: $40
Vaccine: priceless

There’s no real point to this; it’s just me thinking out loud, because my business brain can’t help but think about stuff like this. But this business brain also understands that some questions have no answers.

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By |2021-03-02T17:03:05-08:00March 2nd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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March 1, 2021

I’ve been tuning in to the 3pm news updates pretty regularly, especially on Mondays or Tuesdays, so I can get the real weekend numbers. I used to stick around for the whole update, but find myself checking out early, because, like life itself for so many people these days, it’s the same thing over and over… and, when it’s not, it can be easily summarized in a few brief paragraphs.

Today brought news of the vaccine rollout and the AstraZeneca availability… which is a bit of a game-changer. It’s not recommended for those older than 65, but it’s perfectly and conveniently (room temperature) suited for younger front-line workers, and many of them will be getting the option of that vaccine sooner than later. To find out what the vaccine rollout looks like for you, check the BCCDC for the most up-to-date info… but, to summarize, the older you are, the sooner it’ll be. See you in the lineup in July… hopefully.

But what I want to write about today is a topic that came up in conversation recently… how every event these days held in a public place or on TV or anywhere with a microphone… is preceded by an acknowledgment that the event is occurring on unceded land… and names the relevant Indigenous peoples from whom the land was “improperly” ceded.

To be clear, “unceded” really means “stolen”. This is a vast, complicated topic, and to some extent, around here, steps are being taken to alleviate the damage caused by the “winning” side. In the meantime, it’s interesting to read history from both sides. They tell very different stories.

In Canada or the U.S., you might learn about the great Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés, who in the early 16th century undertook dangerous expeditions to the New World, conquered huge lands and brought back great riches. In Mexico, I suspect it’s taught a little differently… that this rapist, pillaging, genocidal maniac showed up with his fancy weapons and illnesses, figured out how to make friends turn on each other, caused the Indigenous people to fight each other… and ultimately conquered the Aztec empire.

You can change the names and dates, but that story has taken place from present-day Alaska to present-day Punta Arenas. And everywhere, there’s a different slant on what happened and how to fix it. A literal and figurative whitewashing of history.

To me, there’s something annoying about standing up and just saying those words, as if that’s enough. Actually, as if it means anything at all. We acknowledge we’re on stolen land, and by saying so that makes us awesome responsible outstanding generous and thoughtful people. Now drop the puck and let’s play some hockey.

This perhaps triggers me more than it should, and here’s why. Many centuries ago, I was a student at SFU… and to pass the time during boring lectures, I would read “The Peak” – the SFU student newspaper which was available for free, everywhere on campus. I’d grab one on my way into the lecture hall, much the way we all used to grab a free “Georgia Straight” on the way to our seats at the Capitol-6 or Vancouver Center theatres.

In the course of a one-hour lecture, I’d get through the entire Peak… every single word… I knew more about the Christy Clark Student Society election scandal than anyone.

Every word… including the entire masthead… contact info, phone number, address (some trailers on campus)… and the final little sentence: “Unfortunately, The Peak is not wheelchair-accessible at present.”

Week after week, month after month, year after year. It bothered me, this grandstanding… look at us, we care enough to be aware of something that might be important to someone… but we won’t do anything about it. I wrote letters, which were never published. I actually tried to take it up with the president: During my tenure at SFU, the president was Dr. William Saywell. There was a thing set up… called “Say it to Saywell” where, ostensibly, you could show up on a Wednesday afternoon in a small room in the AQ… where President Saywell would be available to hear student grievances directly. Except… he never showed up. I tried to go like 10 times, and 10 times he cancelled on short notice. And one day, a sign on the door (and an announcement in The Peak) said it was cancelled forever.

I knew only a few people in wheelchairs and none of them had anything to do with SFU, but it bothered me that much. This wasn’t some great cause I was championing. I was just annoyed at the smug hypocrisy of acknowledging something and not doing anything about it. If it’s worth mentioning, then do something about it. Or shut up. It clearly still bothers me to this day… perhaps my serious issue with people who blow a lot of hot air but never do anything started there.

Stop talking about it like you care, and just get it done. Sit down at the table, listen, and negotiate. Go out and sign some vaccine agreements that actually have some teeth. And just build a freaking ramp.

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By |2021-03-01T17:03:05-08:00March 1st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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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.

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By |2021-02-28T17:03:10-08:00February 28th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 27, 2021

I think our dog would be happy to play “fetch the frisbee” forever (See attached, Exhibit A). Every waking hour for the rest of his life, he’d probably be happy to keep running after that thing and bringing it back. Makes sense; it’s in his genes… they don’t call them “Retrievers” for nothing.

As far as humans are concerned, we’re not wired to keep doing the same thing over and over. We go crazy. And it’s starting to become evident with respect to the ever-moving horizon that’d signify some sort of boundary for this pandemic. People have simply had enough. If you had to blame anything, it wouldn’t be the non-complaint mask-deriding freedom-seeking crowd; they’re not helping things, but it’s not just them that’s keeping the numbers from going lower and the rules from changing… it’s simply these new variants, and the unknown risk they pose.

A year ago, we were used to the “unknowingness” of this whole thing. We were happy to let them figure it out, and figure it out they did. What nobody was counting on were new strains that were this much more contagious. It sucks, because it’s moved the goalposts, the finish line, the end of the tunnel… whatever you want to call it. I had thought by Spring Break, we’d be back to a place of understanding that by keeping to our safe 6 or limited bubble or whatever we’d be at, things could look a little bit closer to normal than the same time last year. And they could’ve… but nature had other plans… so the ball gets punted down the field a bit further.

And… people are tired of it. Not just because the same old usual boring routine, but the uncertainty. I’ve written about it before and I’ll say it again: I’d rather be thrown in prison for an exact, known period of time… than wake up every day with a small random chance of going home… or not. It’s the uncertainty that would drive me crazy.

The unfortunate combination of Spring break in a couple of weeks, coupled with new variants may well put us back a few notches. It probably doesn’t affect the long-term that much… things will wind down on the same, relative schedule… but it’ll be a slower and bumpier path to get there. If numbers don’t soar in the next six weeks, they’re likely going to to start to fizzle out towards summer… and never jump back up… ever. Because with the heat of summer and vaccines (three to choose from, with AstraZeneca now approved in Canada) and lots of people having acquired immunity… through having had it (knowingly or unknowingly)… one could expect things to really slow down… and there’d be enough of a handle on it that by next “respiratory season”, the acute phase of this pandemic would be a thing of the past.

But, for the moment… for today… it’s frustrating. At least, with the weather getting better… around here, you can head down to the beach and play fetch… or just walk around. A bit of normalcy, but we’re all looking forward to the true normalcy, and the end of this whole thing. It’s coming… but it just might take a bit longer than what any of us had hoped for.

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By |2021-03-01T23:18:24-08:00February 27th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Our Dog|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
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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!

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By |2021-02-28T16:40:54-08:00February 26th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Interesting Words|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 25, 2021

Leap years… leap seconds… even, with some calendars, leap months… these tiny (or not-so-tiny) course corrections are necessary because, unfortunately, the earth doesn’t rotate exactly every 24-hours, nor does it orbit the sun exactly every 365 days. At the moment, one rotation is 23 hours, 56 minutes, 4.09053 seconds. One year is 365.2422 of those rotations. These are not nice, round numbers to work with… and even if they were, the earth is slowing down, so it’d all have to change eventually. In fact, they change continually.

The people who manage all this keep careful track of it, and often fiddle with it without us even knowing. If you weren’t aware of it, you certainly would’ve missed the extra second that was tagged on to New Year’s Eve in 2016. Approaching midnight, the time went from 11:59:58… to 11:59:59… to 11:59:60 (!) before continuing on to 12:00:00am, January 1st, 2017.

If those little adjustments didn’t take place, the errors would accumulate. The sun would start rising and setting at weird times. It would snow in Spring and get super-hot in late Autumn. And, once in a while, having not kept up with the corrections, some abrupt fixes would need to be implemented.

The calendar we’re all familiar with is the Gregorian calendar, which was preceded by the less-accurate Julian calendar… and not everyone switched over at the same time. While the Gregorian calendar was adopted in places line France, Italy and Spain back in 1582, it wasn’t until 1752 that the U.S. and Canada switched over… and since the Julian calendar is less accurate with respect to leap-anythings, it was falling further and further behind. In 1582, it required a 10-day adjustment. When Canada and the U.S. did it, it required 11 days… and when Turkey and Greece finally made the change, less than 100 years ago, they had to drop 13 days from existence. History is full of stories of landlords who tried to charge a full month’s rent during those half-month switches; you can imagine how popular that was…

Indeed, that’s what happens when you keep letting errors pile up; they become more difficult to correct down the road.

All of this is relevant because of the data and charts you see attached to this little blurb… and it has to do with the inconsistency of the data with respect to testing and cases and deaths and vaccinations. Like I wrote about recently, if you have one watch, you know what time it is. If you have more than one, you’re not so sure.

I have managed, I think, to consolidate and normalize all the data so that going forward, it’s not quite so apples-to-oranges. But to get things to align, there’s a bit of a Julian/Gregorian leap-year adjusting to do. In some calendar switchovers, a February 30th was added just to make it work; think of it like that.

Actually, it’s not so bad… but here’s what’s changed, if you’ve been following closely:

The U.S vaccination number has gone down. I’d previously been getting a number that was confusing with respect to its allocation of first and second doses. The number now is up-to-date, and certainly only first doses. It’s also dropped the vaccinated population percentage from 20% down to less than 14%.

While it’s important to know how many doses have been dished out, it’s more important to know how many individuals have had at least one. Now, for all the data, … U.S., Canada and all the provinces, those numbers should be accurate and far-more up-to-date than before for “at least one dose” – as well as the vaccinated population percentages that go along with it. Note how Quebec seems to be way ahead of other provinces; in a way, they are… that’s an accurate representation of first doses they’ve injected. Along with that goes the not-so-irrelevant-fact that they still have yet to dish out a single second dose.

The other number that changed radically is Ontario. They had 1,138 new cases today, and that’s what I wrote down… even though the case counts grew by 5,000. Why? Because the new data source is a bit more ahead of the game; they tap into the individual health departments instead of reporting the single province-wide number that’s relayed daily. Ahead or behind the curve isn’t as important as it being the correct curve, and that representation hasn’t changed. Now that everything is newly-aligned, it should work just fine going forward… but looking at today’s data feels a bit like those lost 10 or 11 days… like things don’t add up. But they do.

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By |2021-02-25T17:03:19-08:00February 25th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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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.

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By |2021-02-24T17:03:34-08:00February 24th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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February 23, 2021

Imagine a big map of North America… now, take 100 pins and stick then on the 100 biggest cities. Now imagine trying to find the shortest path that visits every city exactly once. Imagining the problem isn’t difficult. Solving it is a different story.

To solve it, you’d create a table of all the distances from once city to another. Each city would have a list off 99 entries below it… Vancouver to Seattle, Vancouver to Portland, Vancouver to Miami… etc. The total number of distances to consider would be 100 x 99… and yes, even though Vancouver to Seattle is the same as Seattle to Vancouver, you need the entry twice in the table because, in the solution, you’re not sure from which direction you’d be approaching.

Setting up a computer to solve this is simple: Generate every version of path through all cities, add up the little distances, and keep track of the best one so far. Once you’ve cycled through all the combinations, you’ll have the answer. This is easy, in theory.

It gets a bit more complicated in practice.

How many combinations of paths are there? Starting in any city, there are 99 options for the next one. Once you get there, there are 98 choices for the next one. After that, 97. Therefore, the number of combinations is 100 x 99 x 98 x… all the way down to x 1. That’s 100 factorial (100!) which equals… a really big number. How big? It’s a number with 157 zeroes after it. The number of particles in the universe is a number with 80 zeroes after it. How long would it take to analyze every combination? A few zillion years. Not too practical. That’s how long it’d take to find the perfect solution… but how about a “good enough” solution? Not 100%, but how about 95%?

Back in 1993, when I wrote a program like this, it took about 20 minutes. With today’s horsepower, any home computer could do it in less than a minute.

That’s quite a difference, and for all practical purposes, good enough. The traveling salesman can spend a few extra days on the road and burn a bit more gas… not a big deal. Good enough.

One strategy to solve big problems down to a “not perfect but good enough” level is what’s called a “Genetic Algorithm”… it’s what I used, and it’s pretty cool, so now you get to hear about how it works.

Out of the zillions of possible 100-city-tours, imagine you generate a bunch of random ones… say 10,000 of them. Just create 10,000 unique paths through those 100 cities, totally randomly. Some, like the ones that begin Vancouver-Miami-LA-Toronto… will be awful. Ones that start Vancouver-Seattle-Portland are likely to look better. But… whatever they look like, out of the 10,000… take the best 100.

Now… here comes the cool part… you take those 100 – call them the “first” generation, and figuratively “breed them” to each other. You pretend they’re like parents having offspring… you splice half of one, splice half of another, join them together… and now you have a whole new potential solution. It might be better than one or both parents… it might be worse. Doesn’t matter… breed all the combinations… now you have a whole new generation of 10,000 possible solutions, and they’re almost all certain to be better than their respective “parents”. And now you take the best 100 of those and do it again, and create a third generation. This is like instant evolution… but it doesn’t take 9 months and lots of diapers. It takes a few milliseconds… and that’s the beauty of it… after less than 1,000 generations, which doesn’t take long at all, you have a surprisingly good solution. Already north of 90%.

Modelling 100 cities with nothing but the distances between them is very simple. Modeling the infrastructure within which a virus may live and thrive and propagate is a lot more complicated, but once it’s in place, searching for a solution might look similar. Here’s a random formula for a mRNA vaccine… was it effective? Try 10,000 random formulas, pick the best 100… splice them, mix them, test them… and do it again. And again and again. Pretty quickly, you will have honed-in on realistic possibilities.

This isn’t quite how it came about… but when people wonder how it’s possible to come up with an answer to a supremely complicated and unknown problem, it’s strategies like this… which have the capability of very-quickly zeroing in on viable solutions drawn from an unfathomably huge search-space of potential solutions.

Finding the perfect vaccine might take decades… if not centuries. But a vaccine doesn’t have to be perfect.

How long would it take to find one that’s good enough… say, 95% effective…?

That question has been answered.

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By |2021-02-28T16:42:42-08:00February 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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