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Day 35 April 20, 2020

On the evening of March 23, 1989, Captain Joseph Hazelwood retired to his stateroom for the night, leaving his ship, the 987-foot, 240,000-ton Exxon Valdez, in the less-than-capable hands of his (unlicensed) 3rd mate. Shortly after midnight, the oil tanker fetched up on Bligh Reef, cracked open and, over 3 days, spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound, contaminating more than 1,000 miles of coast line, 200 of it very badly… damage still evident today. Hundreds of thousands of animals — fish, birds, otters — lost their lives, in what must have been viewed from their eyes, their own hellish pandemic. A literal Black Death oozing towards them, like some Stephen King horror swamp creature brought to life.

Captain Hazelwood was crucified in the press and public opinion. Every bad story needs its villain, and he took the hit. Ultimately, the captain is responsible for his ship, period… but for things to go so wrong, there’s usually more to it… and there was, but that didn’t stop the finger pointing, and all of those fingers pointed to him.

More recently, like yesterday at around 4:30pm, The Spirit of Vancouver Island, a B.C. ferry, had a bit of a hard landing in Tsawwassen after its 90-minute journey from Victoria. The ship was slightly damaged, but no oil was spilled and no injuries were reported, and other than the hassle for some people having to wait up to 4 hours to disembark (and completely wrecking the day’s schedule for sailings), that was pretty much it.

I wasn’t on that ferry (and unless you had some urgent business, you shouldn’t have been either), but I can imagine what was going on after that happened. An announcement… “Sorry folks, as I’m sure you realize, blahblahlah, we’ll sort it out”. After that, for the people who were stuck on board, more “sorry” and free juice. At the time it happened, on the bridge, right after that veritable “Oh… shit” moment, someone saying “Sorry… so sorry, my bad”. As the last cars and trucks finally drove off, I’m sure there were more waves from the crew, and “sorry”. After the fact, B.C. Ferries put out at statement saying… yeah, you guessed it.

It is such a Canadian thing; we are known as the kings and queens of sorry, to the extent it may have lost its meaning. You might be standing in the street minding your own business, and some idiot buried in his phone will walk right into you, and you will find yourself saying, “Sorry!” You might be standing in some grocery aisle trying to decide which brand of maple syrup to purchase, and some fool will run his shopping cart into you, causing you to drop your maple-leaf-shaped bottle… but for some reason, you will say “Sorry!” Not too long go, I found myself saying sorry to a door that I’d just bumped. How very Canadian.

But Captain Joseph Hazelwood… he didn’t say sorry. I remember watching an interview when this happened more than 30 years ago, this guy getting grilled by the reporter, and the last question… “Are you sorry?”

You could see it in his eyes, his quivering lip… he desperately wanted to, but couldn’t. Like, of course he was sorry. That’s what he wanted to say… a long, heartfelt apology to the people of Alaska, to his family, to Exxon, to the planet… for screwing up, at least to the extent that he was responsible. But no, because no doubt… some lawyer, before the interview, told him… no matter what… no matter what, Joseph… do not say sorry.

The reason is pretty straightforward… the legal implications. Sorry means: “I know I messed up and therefore it’s my fault and therefore I’m responsible and therefore you may sue me.” This is in the United States, where most certainly, when you screw up and when you’re liable, you will get sued.

Around here, we actually have a law… we needed a law… to allow us to continue to be Canadian, and say sorry, and not incur any liability in doing so. It’s so Canadian, you’d think we’d cover it federally, but we don’t. Each province and territory (except Quebec and the Yukon) have their own version of an Apology Act, which basically lets you say “Sorry!” to anyone and everyone, and not incur the sort of blame that would stand up in court.

South of the border, though… not many apologies and lots of lawsuits. As things continue to go… south… in certain jurisdictions, the finger-pointing will get more aggressive. The blaming will get louder. The alternative-facts will become entrenched and indistinguishable from reality. And there will be lawsuits; many of them. As people die and businesses fail, someone is going to have to take the blame, and it’s always someone else. Cities will blame counties, counties will blame states, states will blame the federal government. But the leader of the executive branch of the federal government is not well known for apologizing or taking blame; indeed, he’s well known for lashing out at anyone who blames him for anything… so where will it lead?

I have no idea, culturally, what “sorry” implies in China. But I do know that a class-action lawsuit (based in the U.S., of course) involving 10,000 claimants from 40 different countries is seeking 6 trillion dollars in damages from China, because the virus is, you know, all their fault. Maybe if that goes through, we can all go after Spain next. With 100 years of interest on top of it.

Six trillion dollars.. I can’t even begin to describe how much money that is, but here’s a visualization. Take a stack of $100 bills… we can all visualize $1,000… just 10 bills. A thousand of those stacks is a million dollars. That stack would be about a metre tall. So a billion dollars would be a stack 1,000 times bigger… a kilometre. And by the way, that’s a pretty good “wow” of just how much bigger a billion is than a million. But a trillion? That’s a stack of bills 1,000km high. That gets you to the International Space Station and back again to the ground and then another 200km back up. Oh, and it’s 6 trillion… a 6,000km stack of $100 bills.

Apologizing went out of style with President Trump, and lawsuits have always been in style… and nobody wants to be the one holding the bag at the end of colossal losses being incurred by a situation that, ironically, perhaps has no nexus of blame. Which means lawsuits, for decades. And no apologies.

For what it’s worth, 20 years later, in 2009 (after all the legal entanglements had been unravelled, and whatever relevant statutes of limitations had expired), Captain Hazelwood did indeed offer a heartfelt apology.

OK, while I’m here… an update on numbers… B.C. is really looking good, on track for some of the mid-May relaxations we’ve been told about if these trends and numbers hold. Let’s wait till 2 weeks after the long weekend to make that judgement. So far, so good… keep at it… that finish line, in whatever form it initially takes… is getting closer.

Finally… like I’ve said before, when I sit down to write this… the intention is to talk about some relevant aspect of the pandemic, but sometimes I’m not really sure where it’s going to wind up. Sometimes it’s current and sometimes it’s thought-provoking and sometimes it’s relevant and sometimes it’s… well, what can I say if it’s none of the above… if you read all that and now wish you had those few minutes of your life back………. sorry!

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:24:52-07:00April 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Business, Fact, United States, Pandemic, Remember, Money, Vancouver, Relevant, Animals, Trump, President, Quebec, Spain, South, British Columbia, Cars, Virus, Space, Numbers, Idea, China, Government, Imagine|21 Comments

Day 33 – April 18, 2020

Did you know that the bubonic plague is still around? That pesky little bug that killed up to 200 million people in the Middle Ages still pops up from time to time. A boy in Idaho got it a couple of years ago, I kid you not.

“Hey Jimmy, what’d you do all Summer?”
“Actually, I was sick for most of it with bubonic plague”

It’s almost worth getting, just so you can bring it up in Show’n’Tell. So much better than “Visited the grandparents in Wichita and miked some cows”.

Jimmy (probably not his real name) is fine… completely cured with a routine course of modern antibiotics. Jimmy is lucky he wasn’t born 500 years ago, because his pocket full of posies would have done nothing for his ring around the rosie.

The bacteria that causes bubonic plague has been quietly around for at least 6,000 years, but every once in a while, it makes a big splash. The Black Death, which peaked in the mid-14th century, was the biggest known pandemic of that particular bug, but there have been many outbreaks over the centuries… and while they’ll never achieve the magnitude of what happened in the Middle Ages, two breakouts is 2014 and 2017 in Madagascar killed around 200 people. And it’ll keep showing up, because it’s bacteria and it’s alive.

Unlike bacteria, viruses aren’t alive in the sense that they can just procreate on their own. They need a host, and in the current case, that host is a human… and in particular, human noses and airways. That’s a relevant point, which differs, for example, from SARS, also a coronavirus… which appeared and died-off in 2003. It incubated deep in people’s lungs. There are many other differences as well. SARS was far deadlier (~10%) but also less contagious. And the biggest difference is that while COVID-19 is still around, SARS-CoV is gone… extinguished from existence, except deeply-buried is research laboratories. Extinguished because of the way it was managed; the same gameplay of testing and isolating until every known host was known, and then kept away from infecting others. No host to jump to means it dies off, and that’s that. As has been widely quoted… if we could 100% isolate everyone on the planet for 14 days (probably a little longer, but not much) and keep completely isolated those who develop symptoms in that time — this thing would be squashed out of existence. That’s impossible to achieve, so the next best thing is a vaccine, which can, in due course, achieve the same thing. Has that ever actually been done?

Yes — and it’s one of the greatest achievements of medicine. Smallpox is gone, entirely, as of 1980, after a concerted effort that took decades. Smallpox was a horrible disease, with awful symptoms and a mortality rate of 30%, and you could catch it from someone coughing or sneezing on you, or touching contaminated surfaces… the usual that we are all familiar with these days.

But back in the day, medieval epidemiologists (heh) did not have a lot at their disposal, and it’s hard to blame them. Germ theory was centuries away from being figured out. Plague doctors wore those famous plague masks with the long noses, full of good-smelling herbs… which, if they didn’t help keep them safe, at least helped mitigate the stench of dying people all around them. In fact, back then, it was thought that illness was transmitted through miasma… bad-smelling air. A kind of chicken-and-egg causality where you assume the bad smell in the air is cause of all this illness… not the result. The name “malaria” literally means “bad air” in latin. But at least to some extent they’d figured out that keeping away from sick people was a good idea; the first versions of social distancing. Those Venetian masks with the long noses? It’s hard to cough/sneeze on someone when you can’t get too close. They understood at least that: stay away. I have this image of a medieval Dr. Henry, standing at the top of the Rialto Bridge, yelling down to the gondoliers on the Grand Canal… “Hey you down there! You shouldn’t be oot and aboot! Go home!” She wouldn’t be yelling, of course… more like softly but strongly suggesting.

Germ theory eventually sorted it out, but there was an interesting little overlap of time where smallpox “vaccines” from the Far East arrived in Europe, and worked… but nobody understood why. That didn’t fit with any known medical knowledge of the time, but it seemed that taking powdered smallpox scabs and inhaling them… would lead you to develop a mild form of the disease, from which you would recover. Well, most of you. There was a 2% mortality rate with that treatment… which is still a lot better than 30% if you get it. Game-theorists of the day could have tried to figure out what gave them better odds… a certain 2% chance of death vs. a N% chance of contracting something with a 30% chance of death. Here, I’ll do the math… if you thought your chances of contracting smallpox were greater than 7% (one in 14), go for the scab inhalation. I’ve bet on enough 14-1 shots in my life to know that I should take my chances with the scabs.

I say all this because the people back then, flying blind as they were, made the best of what they had and what they knew. We are way ahead these days… but as we’re all experiencing, there’s always plenty more to learn… and I think it’s going to really heat up in the next few weeks. We have a perfect storm overlapping of emerging antibody tests, conflicting studies from around the world regarding how widespread this is, data from jurisdictions that are doing things very differently and so on. And much of this is saddled with a conformity bias that makes it very difficult to navigate. When you start with a conclusion you’re hoping to reach, it’s not difficult to find the data to support it. It’s all out there. We will navigate it as best we can.

Speaking of we — we around here, and in Canada in general, saw a good day of numbers… a line of green… everything trending nicely… for now. This week we’ll start seeing the effects, if any (and hopefully, none)… of the long weekend.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:24:53-07:00April 18th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Science of COVID-19, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Relevant, Dr Bonnie Henry, Testing, COVID-19, Idea, Pandemic, Vaccine, Masks, Canada, Game, Research, Data, Mortality rate, Fact|15 Comments

Day 32 – April 17, 2020

Today marks one month since I posted my first little chart, with an accompanying short little paragraph explaining it. What’s the date today? March 58th? Seems that way.

Since then, everything has grown… the numbers have grown, the lines on the graphs have grown, and the volume of my little paragraph has as well. It seems to be dealing with a lot more than just numbers, doesn’t it… so… on that note…

Today’s update at 11am from Dr. Henry and Mr. Dix was a thorough presentation explaining where we’re at and where we’re going. The slides of that presentation are available on the BCCDC website, but I’ll give you the summary — we’re doing really well around here, well enough that we can stop comparing the Italy track… we’re not following it… and, looking at the numbers and charts below, haven’t been for a while. And recognizing that we may be seeing a plateau, on its way to a decline — cautious optimism — of many key numbers. New infections, hospitalizations, ICU cases… everything trending in the right direction. We are seeing lower numbers for new infections, even with enhanced testing. For now. We will see next week if the long weekend changed anything.

And it’s key to note that this success has largely been a result of the measures put in place, the timing of those measures, and our compliance with them. And now is not the time to stop. “It’s working” is a lot different than “It worked”. We are still a work in process, and those social/physical-distancing ways-of-life will be around for a while.

Capacity to handle patients is below 50%, and it’d be ideal to keep it there. The absolute certain end to this is a vaccine, and things will be different until then, but it doesn’t mean we’re stuck in our homes forever. The plan for opening things up with a methodical, well-thought-out strategy is in the works, but the last thing we want to do is open things up too quickly. That can drastically change things, and it can happen quickly. One interesting slide, #34, showed the results of dynamic modelling, testing different outcomes given the degree of compliance of social/physical distancing. Short answer — if we keep doing what we’re doing, very good. If we don’t, there are varying degrees of what would happen. Worst case scenario: we all take to the streets today…. In about 10 days, the near vertical growth in cases would quickly overrun our medical infrastructure. That model also implies that a little loosening wouldn’t have a drastically bad effect… but to what extent and how… again, as you can see on that slide, if you hit a tipping point, it’s hard to come back from it. And speaking of that scenario…

There was a story on CNN yesterday with a headline that read “The social-distancing deniers have arrived”. Before clicking on the story, I imagined the picture that’d accompany it… it would be a group of people protesting. I imagined bushy beards, hunting caps, guns, American flags, Trump signs and no masks. I was a little wrong about the masks… a couple of guys had them; the rest, bang on. Oh, and not just guns… assault rifles.

I have a great idea. Get Barack Obama, Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi to hold a press conference. Throw Bernie in there too. And there, they announce in angry, loud, unified voices… that social distancing is a terrible idea. That this lockdown is ridiculous. “President Trump!”, they should demand, while dramatically ripping their masks off their faces, “End this nonsense! Open every business! Get everyone out on the streets! Now! We demand you open this country, fully… RIGHT NOW!”

It might actually work.

Democrats say Zig, Republicans say Zag. Republicans say Ding, Democrats say Dong. It doesn’t even matter what Zig/Zag or Ding/Dong mean… nobody knows. Nobody cares. We are right, they are wrong. You are with us or you are against us.

Around here, we’ve pretty-much forgotten who’s in power. Premier John Horgan (NDP, if you need reminding) is not around much. I may not agree with everything he has to say, but he and I have something in common; an understanding of what leads to success… a concept that has served me tremendously well all of my life: Surround yourself with excellent people, keep them around, and let them do their thing. Two of those people these days are, of course, Adrian Dix (NDP) and Dr. Bonnie Henry (who knows and who cares). Political affiliations are pretty irrelevant at the moment.

Actually, John Horgan hasn’t been completely M.I.A… he holds a press conference once a week or so and answers questions. There are other issues facing the province, and while I’m unclear what he does all day, some of it has to do with dealing with other provincial issues, and of course, there are many. They haven’t gone away. And some of it is planning how to open up this province (beyond private liquor store hours), hopefully sooner than later, in a way that works and isn’t at odds with the big picture being laid out by Adrian Dix and Dr. Henry. Indeed, he’s letting them run the most important issue of the day, and he’s staying out of the way. It’s working really well, something even the most ardent NDP bashers would grudgingly have to admit. There will be a time and place for partisan politics, and I look forward to it because it’ll mean that things are back to normal.

In fact, the closest thing to partisan politics we’ve had recently was about all of this… Liberal leader Andrew Wilkinson serving up a little softball… “Hey, John Horgan, where are you?” The premier probably could’ve swung at that and hit it over the fence, but he let it go by and watched it dribble to the backstop. Andrew Wilkinson’s question was actually a little more pointed… like, shouldn’t the premier of the province be out in front of the cameras, telling us what’s going on, giving us updates and hope and encouragement, like a real leader… etc. And the answer is simply… no… he shouldn’t. The British Columbian leadership and response to this pandemic has a face (two of them), and it doesn’t need a third.

But behind closed doors, I have no doubt that if one of those two gentlemen needed something from the other — personally, publicly, privately, politically… they’d be listening to each other and talking and working together. If there was ever a time for political partisanship to take a back seat, it’s now. Everyone… from the top on down, needs to be pulling in the same direction. We, around here, are very fortunate.

But just a little south of here… well, that pulling looks like this: it’s a tug-of-war… one side of the rope is 500 trillion little virus balls, all pulling together. The other side is a mixed bag of people… men, women… some are wearing red shirts, some are wearing blue shirts. Some are pulling in the right direction. Some are pretending to pull but are barely holding the rope. Some are pulling sideways. Others are pushing the rope into the ground. One guy is twisting the rope… clockwise… while someone else is twisting it the other way. A couple of people have little hacksaws and are quietly trying to cut the rope without anyone noticing.

It is so incredibly sad and frustrating to watch this slow but inevitable trainwreck. You can’t look away, and wish you could do something… because solutions to the dysfunction exist… but they seem to be well-beyond the reach of the very people tasked to manage it. It shouldn’t be this convoluted. The reasonable voices do exist, of course, but they are drowned out in a sea of irrational, national insanity.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:24:54-07:00April 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: British Columbia, Pandemic, Question, Italy, Masks, Testing, Business, Trump, South, Numbers, Virus, Dr Bonnie Henry, American, Work, Adrian Dix, Country, Idea, Hope, Vaccine, Fact|20 Comments

Day 29 – April 14, 2020

In simple terms, there are three initial conditions to consider if you’re going to fire a cannon: the weight of the cannonball, how much gunpowder you load into the cannon, and the angle of the cannon when you fire it.

If you’re trying to figure out what effect changing those variables can have, the right way to do it is to fix two of them and then see what happens as you vary the third.

For example, set the cannon at a 30-degree angle, and use the same weight of cannonball for 5 shots. Pack each of those 5 shots with increasing amounts of gunpowder… like 10, 20, 30 pounds and so on.

After you’ve fired those five cannonballs, measure the different distances and graph them. And draw a line through those 5 points… and extend it, beyond the last one, following the shape of that line. It might be perfectly straight. It might curve a bit. This is called extrapolation, and lets you make a pretty good guess as to what would happen if you had kept adding more gunpowder.

Now, do the same… this time, use the same amount of gunpowder, but use different weights of cannonballs. Graph and extrapolate that too.

Finally, pick one of those cannonball weights and a fixed amount of gunpowder, and fire them all, changing the cannon’s angle by 5 degrees each time. Graph and extrapolate.

Given those three graphs and their extrapolated lines, you now have a pretty good idea of how to fire this cannon, depending on what you desire. There may be many ways of hitting a target 500 yards away, but one uses more gunpowder. Or maybe you want to hit it with a bigger cannonball. Maybe there are trees in the way, so you’ll need a steeper angle.

One thing that’s certain; the only control you have with this cannonball is what you set with these initial conditions. Once you light that fuse and the cannoball blasts its way out of there, there is nothing you can do about its trajectory. Hopefully you got it right.

It occurs to me that a more modern and relevant example would be golf. When you’re trying to hit a golfball into a hole 150 yards away, there are many variables to consider, and usually, too many for most people, all at once. Pick the right club, but after that… the wind, your tight grip (but not too tight), feet shoulder-width apart, bend your knees, lean forward, keep your waist straight, look at the ball… etc etc. There are many more, and very few people are able to maintain all of those, all at once. And one initial condition out of place affects the whole thing. And again, like the cannonball, once you hit the ball, all you can do is watch.

When you look at the graphs in this picture, it’s not hard to visualize where these lines might be going, given the trajectories shown. If you look at the TTD chart for the world, the one on the far right, you can see the red Canada line in between the black South Korea line and the green Italy line. For a long time, we were hearing thing about which trajectory Canada might be following, using those two countries as examples… ideally, South Korea… but, worryingly, looking like Italy.

Ideally, our red line would’ve bent harder and right, sooner. It didn’t, but it also didn’t follow Italy, though the shape is the same, and using extrapolation, all things being equal, we can tell where we might wind up with respect to cases, if nothing changes.

Except all things are not equal. Unlike cannonballs and golfballs, the big difference here is that we can course-correct, and we have. Our red line and the American blue line were on top of each other for a while… until around March 26th, where things diverged rapidly. Implementing changes makes a difference, and the timing of it is key. A few days sooner or later makes a big difference.

It’s important to note that there were many initial conditions, both here and around the world, that affected things greatly. A big crowd at a soccer game. A large church gathering. Staggered Spring Break dates. The Canucks were away for almost two weeks after Feb 22nd. An endless list of endless jurisdictions where at the right place/right time, some situation that may have brought together a lot of people from lots of different places — did or didn’t happen, for whatever reason.

We will be shown some modelling later this week, and some “what if” scenarios. The biggest “what if” around has to do with properly implementing the measures that have been imposed in many places (including here), and the effects they’ve had. There is some guesswork and some assumptions, but they’re intelligent guesses based on what’s been experienced elsewhere. Extrapolated graphs are part of it. And every indication is that what we’re doing has made — and continues to make — a big difference.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:24:55-07:00April 14th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Canada, Respect, Italy, Relevant, South, Idea, Game, South Korea, American|10 Comments

Day 23 – April 8, 2020

Back in 2007, a friend approached me. He’d started a company some years earlier, and it had reached a turning point. We talked about what it needed to take it to the next level, and I saw enough potential in it to get involved. He was the CEO, he had a vision, and I shared it. OK, let’s do this. As part of it, I also brought in one of my closest friends, and together we built it from a handful of people to an industry leader. In reality, those two built it with their day-to-day hard work. I just threw in my two bits when needed. Early last year, we sold it to a much larger company. A very nice success story.

Yesterday, I had a Zoom call with those two. One of them is the former CEO. The other is the former president, but still runs what used to be our company as a subdivision.

And it wasn’t a great call… just an update to let us know that our acquirer, themselves now facing top-line revenues that were 15% of original projections, had to let a lot of people go, including many of the key people who’d help build our success story. It knocked our piece right back to 2007. The worst part of it was hearing the names… these great, talented people who’d been such an integral part of building this thing… all out of a job.

Also yesterday, I had a very nice chat with a reporter who covers horse racing. She wrote a very nice article which you can see directly below this post. As much as it was a discussion about me and these posts, it also got into a much larger discussion with respect to the horse racing industry and the people it employs… including her. A sports reporter without any sports to write about… now what.

Like so many businesses and industries and people these days, very few have worst-case scenarios designed to deal with zero revenue. A pub might have a great month because the weather was good and the patio was open and jammed with people enjoying the sunshine. Or what could have been a great April and May were not, because the Canucks missed the playoffs. The guys in the offices have lots of fancy spreadsheets where they plug in numbers and run lots of different “What If” scenarios. But none of them ever plug in zero at the top, because zero at the top means you don’t have a business. Unless you’re Apple, and sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars in cash, you’re presently in completely uncharted territory.

Having had that discussion about horses yesterday, I woke up this morning really missing it. This beautiful sunny morning, exactly the sort of day where in that parallel universe — the one where the Canucks clinched a playoff spot a few days ago and are preparing for round 1 — I’d be heading off to the backstretch at Hastings Park, where I’d park myself at the gap, the rising sun behind me to the East, and watch horses, some of them mine. The smell of the barns, the hay, the horses, the mud. The sound of distant hoofbeats getting louder as the horses approach, and then fade away as they round the turn. The sight of these beautiful animals in full flight, sun glistening and steam rising off their bodies. Words don’t do it justice… but if you’ve never experienced it, that might give you some idea.

And then there’s the people, of course. I miss that crowd… the backstretch of any racetrack is its own society, and for lack of a better way of describing it, a “flat” one. Whether you’re the wealthy owner writing cheques or whether you’re the hard-working groom who’s up at 5am mucking stalls, everyone is there for the same reason, that same passion. Anyone can — and does — talk to everyone else, at the same level. An eclectic collection of peers. But there is also a big difference… for me, this is just a hobby. For them, it’s their livelihood, and in some cases, their home. There is uncertainty at every level.

Those of you who think you’re considered to be nothing more than expendable little cogs in a big machine… I assure you, you’re not. Whether you were writing software or serving beers or mucking stalls… and now, for the moment, are not… there is someone, somewhere… in a cramped little office, after a sleepless night, stressed out looking at a scary-looking spreadsheet. That spreadsheet these days has a lot of red numbers. And that guy feels bad. Really bad. Not because he’s not rolling in the cash, but because he knows you have rent to pay and mouths to feed. He wishes he could do more for you, and in many cases, he does. He wants that light at the end of the tunnel as badly as you. He wants you back at work. He wants to have work to give you.

I think if I ever had to go to prison, and were given a choice…. one option is a 10-year sentence. The other, unknown: you might get out tomorrow. Or, you might never get out. Every day, the same thing. Maybe you’re going home today. Maybe you’re not.

Given what I’m experiencing today… indeed, what we’re all experiencing… I think I might go for the 10 years. That’s a dreadfully long time to be locked away, but at least you can wrap your head around it. Set goals, set expectations, figure out how you’re going to fill that time.

I think what a lot of us are feeling these days is the despair that comes along with the uncertainty. Tell us when we can get back to normal goddammit… just tell us. I get it, and I feel it too. I don’t have the answers either, but one of these days I’ll give my version of what I think that finish line looks like… because there is one… the when and how. It’s on the horizon, but nobody is quite sure how distant… yet.

For now, we’re here today, so let’s look at some numbers…

It wasn’t a great day out East, as far as numbers go… but it’s actually not as bad as the first impression might imply. Ontario saw an increase of 550 confirmed cases, which is a jump of 11.6% from the previous day… but the average increase over the last three days there is only 9.3%… and the 3 days before that were 13.1%. And the three days before that were 17.9%. While I’m at it, let’s do the same for Quebec… their 3-day average daily increase including today is 7.9%. Three days previous, 13.2%. And the three days before that, 17.3%. As far as trends go, this is exactly what you want to see. A one-day spike doesn’t necessarily imply a sudden, drastic turn of events. Indeed, here in B.C. we saw 45 new cases… which is the highest one-day increase in 5 days. But then again, it’s only an increase of confirmed cases of 3.5% over yesterday.

Everyone — just listen to your respective chief medical officers. And if you don’t like what yours is saying, listen to ours — she’s awesome, and she’s right. We’re doing it. It’s working. It’s not magic; it’s science. But we’re not there yet. Stay at home, physically isolate, and do your part… we’re getting there.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:26:04-07:00April 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Science, President, British Columbia, Work, Space, Idea, Universe, Business, Cars, Horse Racing, Animals, Numbers, Ontario, Respect|0 Comments

Day 12 – March 28, 2020

There’s that feeling you get when you sit down in a rollercoaster… first of all, what the hell am I doing, do I really need to be doing this… but once the thing starts moving, there’s no way out, so the impending dread as you start going up that first big hill… click-click-click as the chain underneath pulls the train slowly… wow, this thing is going a lot higher than I thought… click-click-click… this was such a stupid idea… click-click-click… ugh, this is a lot steeper than it looked… click- ohh.. no more clicks. We all know that means…

… and as the train gains momentum and sends you flying down that first huge drop, two things will come to mind… one, this part of it will thankfully be over soon and two, now you have a clear idea just how steep it was. Which serves to illustrate where we are today with respect to the numbers coming our way in the next little bit… there is a finish line to them, a week to ten days… and we once we hit that bottom, we will know exactly how steep things were.

Given where we are today and as per what I wrote yesterday, I don’t think we need to close our eyes and scream and hope for the best. It’s looking better than that. At least, on paper and at least, for now.

In B.C., although we had the largest one-day increase in cases yet, it’s perfectly in-line with our linear growth. Dr. Henry, for now, would like to see that number consistent at 12% which is roughly where it’s been. The average of the last 10 days is actually 11.1%. Today’s number was 11.6%. Yesterday was 9.2%. Nice solid straight yellow line, right in the sweet spot. And might I add, I am tracking total cases as they accumulate, not factoring in recoveries and deaths. The outcomes of these cases is a whole separate topic. But on that note, while we saw an increase of 92 new cases, we also saw 121 cases moved to the “recovered” column. As far as these numbers are concerned, today in B.C., there are less active cases than yesterday.

Canada’s number is bigger, but also consistent and also, slowly, hopefully, for now… going down day by day. Yes, of course the number of cases is increasing, but that rate of increase is itself decreasing. See that column… 4 out 5 days of green numbers. The rate of growth is slowing. For now. Are we still following the U.S. trajectory? Visually, and numerically, we’re not. Not so long ago, and you can still see it on the chart, Canada’s data was almost exactly perfectly 8 days behind the U.S: Feb 29, Mar 1, Mar 2… the U.S. had 68, 75 and 100 cases. 8 days later, Mar 8,9,10 — Canada had 66, 77, 94 cases. Perfect lockstep. And if you eyeball those numbers as you slowly go down the two columns, you see them in lockstep… and then they slowly start drifting apart.

The hope is that we wouldn’t follow them down the hellhole-course they’re presently on, and, for now, we’re not. We’re at 5,655 nationwide cases. 8 days ago, the U.S. was at 24,218. Had we “kept up”, today’s number would be 4x what it actually is. We’re now more than 11 days behind them.

So what does it all mean…

I’d like to address some of the comments that question the usefulness of these numbers in general, how the testing is inadequate, this isn’t reality, this is a useless exercise because the numbers are all bullshit. That the real case numbers are anywhere from 10x to 50x and it’s anyone’s guess. And therefore, blahblahbblah.

So, first of all, the way to solve big problems is to break them in half. Solve each half independently, and once you do, the big problem is solved. And if one or both of those halves is too complicated to solve, break it in half again and solve that. Keep breaking it in half until you have manageable pieces to solve.

The enormity of our present situation requires breaking it into hundreds of pieces, but here are some of the big ones, each of which needs to be broken down into many smaller pieces:
– the actual number of cases out there, factoring in recoveries
– the actual number of cases that require hospitalization
– why are some demographics hit so differently than others
– the testing infrastructure, and the strategy and adequacy of it
– the ability of our medical infrastructure to handle the cases
– the actual number of people dying from this
– the economic implications of allowing this to go on too long
– the herd immunity thing
– the treatment options, effectiveness of therapies, and timelines
– when and where is the vaccine

Without tackling all of that, notwithstanding each of those topics is its own book, and that’s only a small snippet of topics that need addressing, where we’re at right now is trying to solve chunks of a problem with incomplete information. One thing we have to our great advantage is learning from what others have or haven’t done ahead of us. Like one big change that was implemented today here is that the number of patients on ventilators doubled. Because suddenly a lot more people got a lot more sick? No. Because we learned from data elsewhere that putting people on ventilators sooner has a huge impact on positive outcomes. We didn’t know that two days ago, and now we do, and now we use it to our advantage.

Just because we don’t know something is no reason to throw our hands in the air — “these numbers are all crap anyway” — but to tackle this particular aspect…

Knowing the actual number of cases out there would have a profound effect on many aspects… first of all, how many actual new cases are there each day… how many of them will the person never even know, how many will they get sick but not too sick, how many will need a hospital, how many will die. If we could snap our fingers and know all that, it’d be great. One school of thinking that might kick in is that if actually the number is not 10x or 50x but actually 500x, and many of us have had it and never even knew it, and now we’re immune and will be for several months and even if we’re not, who cares, clearly I can fight this thing off so let me get a little sick and impose my herd immunity and get back to work since the actual mortality rate is only 0.2% etc.

Don’t think everyone has their heads stuck in the sand thinking the published numbers are the extent of this. One day, in hindsight, we’ll know those numbers. It’s possible that one day, we will have instant, cheap and available tiny-traces antibody testing. You’ll be able to wander into Starbucks, and along with your chai latte, spit into some throw-away little thing that’ll turn red if you’ve had it, stay blue if you haven’t. But until we get to that point, to a great extent, all we’re doing is buying time. Flattening the curve to suppress the load on our medical infrastructure. Isolating ourselves so we don’t infect others, especially those who are much likelier to get lethally ill. Keeping this thing controlled and contained until we’re certain we can manage it. It’ll likely never go away, and the waves of it appearing in the future will hopefully wind up in the “no big deal” pile.

But for now, the published numbers, the important numbers… the ones that are putting load on our medical system… the 884 confirmed, the thousands of others likely presumed but not confirmed… don’t think they don’t know about it. Don’t think when they tell you to stay home for 14 days, pay attention to your symptoms but don’t come in — that they’re not tracking you. You, who may well have it who think you don’t count — trust me, you do. Not in my numbers, not in their published active-cases numbers, but you’re out there somewhere, included in all of the projections of what might happen and how they’re going to take care of you if you get really sick. Some of you think you have it, but don’t. Some of you have it and don’t know it. Neither of you got tested, so hey what the hell they don’t know what they’re doing this is bullshit… yeah, no. Not at all. They’re not going to waste a test to confirm a mild test. There’s an N% chance you have it, depending on your age and other risk factors. Take care of yourself with the provided guidelines, and you’ll most likely be ok. And if you’re not, critical care awaits you with open arms. As opposed to everyone who thinks they might have it coming in and overwhelming a system that, certainly at the moment, is not prepared to test 2 million people overnight. If you’ve had it, one day you’ll know.

The fact that our hospitals are not overrun… the fact that we’re prepared at present to handle anything but the absolutely worst-case scenario… the fact that were are notably flattening our curve, both provincially and nationally… and the fact that we’re doing that with incomplete information, tackling big, multi-faceted problems… don’t worry too much about absolute numbers and how you feel they don’t reflect reality. They’re serving us well.

Speaking of serving us well, please take a moment to step outside at 7pm tonight (and every night) to cheer the heroes of this nightmare — hope you never need their help, but the army of medical workers of this province and this country, and indeed, around the world… deserve to (loudly) hear our gratitude and appreciation.

None of us like this. They don’t. You don’t. I don’t. But let’s remember… as hellish as it may be, the rollercoaster ride eventually ends.

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:26:09-07:00March 28th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: British Columbia, Data, Testing, Future, Deaths, Work, Herd Immunity, Country, Idea, Mortality rate, Hope, Dr Bonnie Henry, Fact, School, Vaccine, Respect, Canada, Numbers, Question|0 Comments

Day 7 – March 23, 2020

The lack of data over the weekend left a bit of a gap… which I filled in with some guesswork. I know where we were on Saturday, and I know where we are now. How we got here looks to be pretty consistent, but the next few days are more important than the last few. We are tracking very closely to the US, trailing by 10 days… just before things started getting really out of hand down there.

It’s important to note that I’m tracking new cases — not active cases. It was good news to hear that 100 cases in BC considered active have been resolved to “cured”. More than 300 in Canada overall.

As time goes on, we can look forward to that number of resolved cases growing, but note that its growth doesn’t affect tracking new cases. Those will always go up. In fact, at some point, it’s (hopefully) likely we will have “negative” days — where there are less new cases than resolved cases… but the idea of these graphs is to simply track the spread (and control) of new cases. What we do with them is a whole other question, and I’ll be happy to offer my opinion on that as time goes on. So far, comparing it to what’s going on elsewhere in the world, it’s pretty good. And will gradually look a lot better if you all just #stayhome!!

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By Horatio Kemeny|2020-10-08T01:26:39-07:00March 23rd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: Data, Fact, Question, Idea, Canada, News, British Columbia|10 Comments