Italy

March 17, 2023

I’d be remiss if I didn’t post a little something today; today is the 3-year anniversary of the first of what turned out to be close to 500 pandemic-related posts. And look, I even posted it right at 5pm, just like the good old days… and included the very first graph and accompanying data table.

It’s an interesting Catch-22… were it not for Covid, I’d obviously never have started writing about it. But not only that; I wouldn’t have had the time to do so. It was isolation and social distancing and cancelled meetings and Zoom that led to a nice pocket of free time every day to do some writing.

With Covid effectively over, at least what all of us would consider to have been “The Pandemic”, I’m back to not having anywhere near as much time as I did from 2020 to 2022. It shouldn’t take a relatively-catastrophic pandemic to be the driving force for being able to find time for myself, but this was continually on my mind today as I hopped from Zoom to Teams to Zoom to Teams to Zoom, meeting after meeting. WTF am I doing. I want to write something, and I’m actually not going to have time. How things have changed.

Well… maybe let’s put that change to good use. It’s taken me 5 minutes to write what you’ve just read up to here… what if AI could do the rest? What if I told some AI to write about this St. Patrick’s Day, bending the curve, three weeks to do so, following South Korea’s example, not following Italy’s, and speculating about an eventual vaccine. Hey, AI, take everything I knew (or thought I knew) on St. Patrick’s Day three years ago and write an essay.

So I did that… and here, between the lines, is what it spat out:

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Title: Three-Year Anniversary of My First COVID-19 Blog Post: A Reflection on St. Patrick’s Day and the Unpredictable Journey

Introduction

As the world celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, the luck of the Irish and the joy of the festivities, I am reminded of a different milestone. Today marks the three-year anniversary of my first blog post about COVID-19. It’s hard to believe that it has been that long since we were first introduced to the virus that brought the world to a standstill. This anniversary will always hold a special place in my heart as it falls on St. Patrick’s Day, a day meant for merriment and camaraderie.

In this article, I will take a walk down memory lane, reflecting on how things looked so uncertain back then, how we tried to copy South Korea’s success, and how we prayed we wouldn’t experience what was going on in Italy. We will also revisit the race for a vaccine and the long-lasting impact of the pandemic.

A Time of Uncertainty

Three years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, we were filled with trepidation as the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic began to set in. It was a time of uncertainty, and we were all grappling with the reality of the situation. As the virus rapidly spread across the globe, countries implemented lockdowns and social distancing measures to slow down the transmission.

The phrase “three weeks to bend the curve” became a rallying cry as people around the world did their best to adhere to the new normal. Those three weeks turned into months, and as time went by, it became increasingly clear that the virus would not be eradicated as quickly as we had hoped.

Learning from South Korea

As the pandemic progressed, we looked towards other countries for guidance. South Korea’s success in controlling the virus was a glimmer of hope for many. Through widespread testing, contact tracing, and strict quarantine measures, South Korea was able to minimize the virus’s impact significantly.

Countries around the world tried to emulate South Korea’s approach, but varying degrees of success were observed. It became evident that each country had its unique set of circumstances and challenges that needed tailored strategies.

Italy’s Struggle

As we were trying to learn from South Korea’s success, we also feared experiencing what was happening in Italy. The country was hit hard by COVID-19, with hospitals overwhelmed and the death toll rising at an alarming rate. Images of packed intensive care units and exhausted healthcare workers haunted us as we prayed that we wouldn’t have to face the same fate.

The world came together to support Italy in its time of need, with countries sending medical supplies, financial aid, and words of encouragement. The situation in Italy served as a grim reminder of the devastating potential of the virus.

The Race for a Vaccine

In the midst of the chaos, the scientific community was hard at work trying to develop a vaccine that could put an end to the pandemic. Typically, vaccines take years to develop, but the urgency of the situation led to an unprecedented global collaboration.

The development and distribution of vaccines became a race against time, and the world held its breath as we awaited the outcome. Within a year, several vaccines were developed, tested, and approved for emergency use – a remarkable achievement in the history of science and medicine.

The world rejoiced as vaccines became more widely available, and vaccination campaigns were launched worldwide. The vaccination process brought a sense of hope and optimism that we might finally be able to return to some semblance of normalcy.

The Long-lasting Impact

While the creation and distribution of vaccines marked a significant milestone in the fight against COVID-19, the pandemic’s long-lasting impact cannot be ignored. The world has changed in many ways, with remote work becoming more prevalent, increased focus on mental

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Huh… that’s interesting. It stopped right there. “increased focus on mental”… mental what? Mental health? Mental breakdown, much like this AI suffered at a wonderfully-coincidental moment? We’ll never know.

I have to be honest… and I say this with all due respect to the hundred trillion neural connections powering this beast… and also somewhat humbly… that I write better than this thing. Reading that was like crunching yourself through raw cereal with no milk or sugar; dry and tasteless. I read what it wrote and it’s like a grade-8 essay written by a kid whose friends are all already outside playing after-school road-hockey, and all he wants to do is get the hell out of his room and get on with real life.

Which, in essence, is a pretty good summary of where we’re at. Life is, indeed, for living… and, especially on such a beautiful day… blue skies, sunshine, with people already making their way to pubs everywhere, ready to get hammered on green beer, sing, be merry, and celebrate life… yeah, what am I doing here? It’s 5pm and still sunny and beautiful; let’s get on with it.

By |2023-03-17T17:00:00-07:00March 17th, 2023|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
Read More

September 20, 2021

Where to start.

Well, it’s election day… if you can, go vote… an awful lot of people in the past gave their lives to offer you the right to vote in a democratic process; something, clearly, that gets taken for granted around here – a fact that becomes very obvious when people start screaming about their rights being taken away from them. To summarize what I wrote about last time… your right to vote is indeed one that, if it were taken away, would be worth complaining about. Your unilateral and thoughtless and stupid decision that’s preventing you from entering your favourite restaurant… isn’t. So, go exercise your actual freedom and right to vote, and if you’d rather not because “they all suck”, keep in mind that not voting is itself a vote – a vote for the status quo. If you want to see some change, go be part of it.

And what exactly has that status quo brought us? Let’s rewind 18 months or so to the start of this pandemic… to the time where we were all freaking out at the single-day case numbers which were really not that high… but we had good reason to freak out. Because in other places around the world – remember Italy and Spain? — things got out of hand very quickly; that’s what happens with exponential growth and when things hit the tipping point.

The horror of what was going on: Hospitals swarmed with cases, packed to capacity. People dying in the corridors. People dying in the parking lot because they couldn’t even make it inside. ER doctors having to make decisions that will haunt them for the rest of their lives: You get to live. You get to die. Come on in; you’re welcome. Sorry… really sorry. Go home. Good luck.

We watched in horror. We hoped whatever the hell our leaders were doing around here, it’d be enough to prevent that from happening locally. Just in case, emergency beds were prepped, among them the 271-bed $2M hospital that was created at the Convention Centre. We hoped it’d never get used (and it never did), but it wasn’t till earlier this year that it was all dismantled for good. So many unknowns.

As time went on and more understanding came to light… the cause, how it spreads, effective treatments and eventually, of course, vaccines, the chances of it spiraling out of control around here diminished. We made it. Phew.

Which is why it’s actually unbelievable what’s going on in Alberta right now. Like, truly. Of all of the possible outcomes, is there any reasonable person who could’ve foreseen this? That 18 months after a few very unlucky places got the crap kicked out of them (and, in hindsight, there was little they could’ve done), that here, in Canada, with first-world medical care, a year and half of history and knowledge, effective treatments and vaccines… we’re at this point? Mind-boggling doesn’t even begin to describe it. I look at the hospitalization / ICU graph below and, honestly, it’s hard to believe. Or is it.

The thing with living day-to-day is that things creep up on you slowly… it’s just one small evolutionary step from yesterday… changes so subtle you don’t notice them and you don’t even think about it… but that sort of short-sighted thinking has no place at any higher level of responsible planning. Pandering to the crowd “today”, for a short-term “gain”, should never be a part of it. At an individual level, every single day, the news has multiple examples of people whose thought process over time went something like this: It’s no big deal, it’s just a flu, I’m young and healthy, I can take care of myself, I don’t trust vaccines, I’m not feeling well, I’m getting checked out just in case, it turns out I have Covid, I’m having trouble breathing, they’re putting me on a ventilator, pray for me. Then a final update from a friend with a GoFundMe link because funerals are expensive, you know, and they left behind a family who’s now pleading to everyone around them to get vaccinated.

But that’s one individual. Actually, unfortunately, many individuals. At ground-level, that’s how it looks.

But from 30,000 feet in the air, looking down at the big picture, to allow a province in Canada to reach this point? It’s not like it crept up on anyone. It’s not like you couldn’t see it coming. It’s not like the world hasn’t been offering numerous, comprehensive examples of exactly how to (and how not to) do things. They didn’t see it coming? Where were they looking?

Perhaps the only thing they saw coming was an election… and that’s relevant because it reminds us all… that we, the innocent people, think that those in charge have our best interests at heart. Don’t get me wrong… in a way, they all do, or at least think they do. But that sentiment is in second place. In first place is a very clear mandate; get elected. Stay elected. Do and say whatever the hell you need to… just get in and stay in.

We have our own little version of Red State / Blue State up here. Alberta, aka Texas of the North, is now facing a potentially catastrophic situation and they have absolutely nobody but themselves to blame.

I think we’re all reminded of the story of the squirrel or a beaver or ant or whatever creature it is that mocks everyone in the summer who’s busy squirreling away nuts for the winter (ok, I guess it’s a squirrel). Who has time to worry about it when the sun is out and there’s fun to be had? Then winter rolls around and the squirrel is starving and cold while all the others are warm and happily being fed from their vast supplies.

I don’t remember in the story whether some other squirrel comes to the rescue or whether the short-sighted squirrel is left to die, but I can tell you that around here, there are no spare ICU beds. There are probably enough to cover our local freedom-seeking non-vaccinated Covidiots, but that’s about it.

Next to oil, Alberta may soon be exporting Covid patients, though to where remains to be seen. It’s sad and pathetic, and as fellow Canadians, they deserve a lot better than that.

By |2021-09-20T20:01:33-07:00September 20th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
Read More

March 17, 2021

March 17th… St. Patrick’s Day, of course. Many, many years ago, this would’ve meant a green Shamrock Shake at McDonald’s. Years after that, it would’ve meant green beer pub hops, though I must admit those memories are pretty hazy. In recent years, a pint or two of Guinness.

Last year, none of the above. Last year, right at this time, a state of emergency was declared, and, instead of imbibing pints, I was reading through a bunch of stuff, like the rest of us… trying to make some sense as to what the hell is actually going on here. It led me to find an interesting little table of numbers… showing how Italy had gone from 100 cases one day to 1,000 in less than a week to 10,000 about 10 days later… and how the U.S. growth in cases was mirroring that, step by step, only 11 days behind. I wondered how Canada would compare, so I found the data and lined it up… and to make things easier to visualize, graphed it. And realized we were on the exact same track, a week behind the U.S. And thought, simultaneously, “Wow, cool”… and, also… “Holy shit”.

I thought it worthy enough to post… and since enough people were interested to see how it would evolve, I resolved to update it and post it at 5pm every day. And I resolved to myself to update this thing for as long as I could… ie, the end of the pandemic.

Facebook was kind enough to remind me earlier today, so I didn’t have to scroll back 365 articles to find it. It’s reposted below this. That lame little graph and tiny columns of numbers pale in comparison to what I’m cranking out these days, but I must say… I felt dread looking at those graphs for the first few weeks.

So, yes… that was exactly a year ago… and during that time, I have posted the ever-evolving numbers and charts and details exactly 365 times. Yeah, I find it remarkable too – I haven’t missed a day. I’m a computer guy, so the numbers and graphs are now at the point of complete automation… click-click-click and today’s picture and numbers are ready to upload. That’s the easy part. But what’s more remarkable is what you’re reading right now… because behind this, there are 365 versions of my rambling, extemporaneous (adj. spoken or done without preparation) thoughts… some serious, some funny, some confrontational, some informative… and all of it, coming from a place in my brain I truly didn’t know existed. I keep saying I need to slow down, and one year would mark a good cut-off… except, you know what… I enjoy it too much. It’s fun to sit down here and just unload whatever my brain decides is worthy of providing for public consumption.

For me, the unfortunate aspect of the end of the pandemic (let’s find a little cloud in a huge silver lining) is that I’m having less and less time to write. And there’s lots of other stuff I’d like to be writing too. A book (that has nothing to do with any of this) will emerge from this keyboard one day, and I’d like to devote some time to that.

But… yeah, I’m not going anywhere. Until this pandemic is over, I’ll be around posting this… which today is relatively long, but often will just be a placeholder for the numbers and pictures. And looking back, those numbers and pictures sure tell a story. And these stories that go along with them; they also tell a story, haha. Reading through a bunch of them just now, there’s a common thread… and it’s like I’ve been saying all along… we’ll get through this, together. It’ll all be ok… eventually.

You often regret getting on the roller-coaster in the midst of that first, huge drop… or during those tight loops that impose enough G-forces on you to think you’ll pass out… but once the ride over, and once you can once-again walk straight and you’re not feeling nauseous… part of you is happy you went for the ride, if for no other reason than you can tell everyone you did it… and made it out alive.

And… so it’ll be with all of this… especially now, with a finish line well in sight; let’s not paint it rosy… it’s been a year of hell, and a year that has been catastrophic to many people’s lives; their health and their livelihoods altered in ways they’d never imagined. Nothing will make up for it, and the healing will take decades.

But, you’re still here… and, while this pandemic still rages… or, at least, till it’s snuffed out… so am I.

I raise my pint of Guinness to you: Cheers! … to a better year ahead. And see you tomorrow.

By |2021-03-17T17:03:24-07:00March 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , |11 Comments
Read More

March 14, 2021

You know… if you take a pizza with radius “z” and thickness “a”, its volume can be calculated as pi•z•z•a – and that is my π contribution for the day – so Happy Pi Day!

Pi, like many people, is irrational… and Pi, also like many people, goes on forever… but it goes on forever after the decimal point, so it doesn’t get much bigger after a while. But let’s talk about numbers that *do* get big, and what happens when they collide with the fallacies of causality.

For example, unfortunately, sometimes people die unexpectedly. It happens a lot. People unexpectedly choke to death or have heart attacks or strokes or burst aneurysms or whatever else, and when they do, especially when it’s unexpected, people tend to try to blame it on something… because, somehow, our brains don’t like to accept the fact that sometimes, bad shit happens… and there’s nothing that caused it and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.

If someone ran the stats, I’m sure one would find that more than 99% of heart attacks happened in people who’d had a glass of water in their last 2 hours. Did the water cause those heart attacks?

At the moment, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been paused in Ireland… the usual “abundance of caution” reasoning, which pleases some liability lawyers tremendously, but does little to instill public confidence in vaccines, a topic where there’s still a lot of uncertainty and hesitancy. “Just in case, until we figure this out.”

I’m not sure what they’re hoping to figure out. This started in Norway, where “a number” of cases of blood clots were discovered in people who’d recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine. That number was 4… out of hundreds of thousands of shots. Italy banned a particular batch of AZ vaccine following the death of a serviceman in Sicily… who died of cardiac arrest one day after his shot. Cardiac arrest, blood clots… same thing. It must be the vaccine.

When you look the actual large numbers, 17 million people in the EU and UK have received the AZ vaccine… and the number of people who’ve developed blood clots, some number in the hundreds, is actually lower than the expected number out of a random sampling of the population. The number of people who’ve unexpectedly dropped dead shortly after getting the vaccine is probably similar to the number of people who unexpectedly dropped dead after drinking some coffee. Or yawning. Or breathing. But… that’s unacceptable; there must be something to blame.

I get it; in this day and age of lawyers ready to pounce, it’s easy to see where the abundance of caution comes from. I wonder how long it’ll be before they all realize there’s much ado about nothing here… except preventing the rollout of the vaccine to areas that now, more than ever, need it; Italy is suspending the vaccine at the exact time they’re seeing a frightening, exponential growth in cases. Because one person died, of causes almost certainly that have nothing to do with the vaccine.

They might tell you “better safe than sorry”, and with that, I agree… except I think their implementation of the concept is backwards. Far more people will die of C19, having not received their shot in a timely manner, than might be “saved” by an issue that’ll turn out to have been non-existent to begin with. It’s really that simple… as simple as apple… strudel.

28 Likes, 4 Shares

By |2021-03-14T17:04:15-07:00March 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
Read More

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.

16 Likes, 2 Shares

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

January 30, 2021

If, off the top of your head, you had to guess which three countries in the world had the most cases per 1M of population, you would think about it, come up with three countries, and be completely wrong. It wouldn’t make sense not to include places like U.S, India, Russia, Brazil, U.K, Spain, Italy… etc… on that list of guesses… but again, with exception of the U.S. (which lands in 8th place), none of the others even make the top 10. In fact, with only Spain at number 18, none of the others make the top 20.

The list of the top three countries with the highest case counts on a per-capita basis are: Andorra, Gibraltar and Montenegro.

Wait, you say, those places are barely populated and that skews the numbers. That is correct. Andorra, top of the list, scores 128,000 per million of population who’ve tested positive. Close to 13% of the population. That’d be like Canada having close to 5 million cases (we’re at less than a million). But, of course, Andorra only has a population of 77,000. Only 100 people there have died of C19. Gibraltar has a population of 34,000. Same idea… and, for what it’s worth, both of them share a border with Spain, where, no doubt, all of their cases came from.

So what, you may be asking….

If you look at Europe as a sort of big country, and each individual country as a province, then some issues relevant to Canada come to light.

Like, with respect to vaccinations, guess where in this country we have the highest per-capita vaccination rates. Now you know it’s a bit of a trick question, so perhaps it’s harder to fool you… so if your guesses included places like the three northern territories, you’re correct. By far.

Vaccination rates for a few key provinces…

B.C.: 2.5%
Ontario: 2.2%
Quebec: 2.8%

Vaccination rates for the territories:
Northwest: 21.0%
Nunavut: 13.5%
Yukon: 15.4%

Some say that’s fair. Some say they should be distributing it more evenly. Some say more should be directed to the hotspots. And everyone is a little perturbed with last week’s news… at the start of the week, we heard how we were not getting what we were expecting from Pfizer… and at the end of the week, we heard how we were not getting what we were expecting from Moderna. Too bad. C’est dommage.

At what point could we conceivably start counting on ourselves for some vaccine? Some homegrown, domestically produced vaccine where we would be first in line?

The only viable possibility would indeed be home-“grown”, and that is Quebec-based Medicago’s tobacco-plant-based vaccine which recently wrapped up phase-2 clinical trials and is about to enter phase 3, involving 30,000 people in 11 countries. For what it’s worth, it’s off to a great start… 100% of people who received the vaccine developed significant antibody responses with no severe side effects. Like Moderna and Pfizer, this one also targets the spike protein, so there’s no real actual virus involved and therefore zero chance on getting sick with C19 from the vaccine. Side-effects – nothing bad so far, and we shall see what phase 3 reveals.

Unfortunately, the earliest we could hope to see this vaccine available to the public would be the second half of the year… but, certainly the government’s order of 76 million doses (and all the money that came with it) is helping push things along. But also, unfortunately, although they’ve been trying to get funding for years, we still don’t have the manufacturing capabilities in place. Medicago reps met with government officials no less than 24 times from 2017 to 2020 trying to find a way to fund the construction of just such a facility. The funding finally came through… in March of last year, when the “Oh shit” moment arrived. At least we’ll be all set for the next pandemic.

25 Likes, 1 Shares

By |2021-01-30T17:04:17-08:00January 30th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
Read More

October 30, 2020

You’ll notice below that I’ve added Saskatchewan to the numbers and graphs. While their absolute numbers aren’t looking too bad, their trend isn’t great… and, unfortunately, they’ll soon be a relevant part of the national picture. But what’s worse is that they’re sandwiched between Alberta and Manitoba, and looking at how things are going in those two places, it’s starting to turn that corner from concerning to frightening.

Let’s recap a bit, starting with the fact that a Covid-19 infection takes up to two weeks to kick in, and that Thanksgiving in Canada was a couple of weeks ago. What effect was there from everyone who somehow thinks they’re above getting sick or being infectious or “having their freedom taken away”? To hell with this hoax, it’s just a flu, it’s just the government trying to control us, etc etc. Let’s get together and celebrate; it’s no big deal.

Listen… I don’t mind being that guy, the one that you consider to be nagging or preaching or whatever. Standing on my little soapbox, inciting panic by spewing the government lies. Telling you what to do like I’m holier than thou. Maybe that’s the way you see it.

I really don’t care how you view this message… but, to be clear, I’m no different than you – I can get just as sick and infectious as anyone else. I’m trying hard to avoid becoming either of those things, but, evidently, many of you are not trying as hard. Here it is again, in the plainest English possible: if you don’t wear a mask when you should, and if you don’t socially distance, and if you don’t wash your hands and sanitize and do everything you’ve heard 1,000 times from everyone around you that understands the implications of not doing so, this thing will spread. And it will spread exponentially. And we will *all* suffer as a result.

Last three days in Alberta: +410, +477, +622
Last three days in Manitoba: +169, +193, +480

Winnipeg will soon be starting a full-on lockdown; shutting it all down till this can once again be brought under control. The tipping point is unfortunately near, with ICUs at over 90%. When you spill past 100%, that’s where you have patients in hallways, in lobbies and out in the street, dying. Listen to first-hand accounts from ER doctors… pleas of despair from places like Italy, Spain and New York, when that’s what happened. And that was in the spring… let’s not try to imagine what this looks like when it’s 25 below zero… as it’ll be in Calgary, Edmonton and Winnipeg in the not-too-distant future. Yes, in the past, this was far away… the other side of the Pacific, then the other side of the Atlantic, then south of the border. It is now knocking on the door… “it” being the point of no return.

Sure, call me alarmist. Feel free to point fingers back at me and laugh in a few months when the world didn’t fall apart. Don’t worry, I can take it. And, if in any small way, getting this message out actually helped prevent that emerging disaster, great. I guess we’ll never know; I don’t care. I’ll happily join in your mask-burning bonfires, happily admitting I was wrong… even if perhaps I wasn’t. But that’s not the point… the point is, we can’t afford to be wrong in the other direction.

Follow and Discuss on Facebook

By |2020-11-02T20:23:56-08:00October 30th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
Read More

October 18, 2020

No new numbers till tomorrow, but here’s something older that you may remember, especially if you’ve been reading these updates since the beginning. Today’s graphs aren’t the usual up-to-date provincial and national tallies. Rather, these are what those original Time-To-Double (TTD) graphs look like today.

Early in the pandemic, when things were spiraling out of control, the TTDs were being measured in handfuls of days… 2, 3, 5… that’s what we were witnessing in places like Italy and Spain and, for a little while, severely-affected pockets of the U.S. That’s what we were hoping Canada would avoid.

While things are still growing exponentially, the TTDs are way down. The recent second wave is certainly visible, especially in the left-most (non-logarithmic) graph, but the TTD line on which Canada sits is 20.

The middle graph is the same as the one on the left, except represented with a logarithmic Y-axis… which straightens out the curves of those dotted exponential TTD lines, and serves to represent the rate of exponential growth (or lack thereof) compared to the beginning.

The graph on the right is what Canada looks like compared to the U.S… and since the Y-axis is “compressed”, it makes things look a lot closer than they actually are. Rather than scaling up evenly, every Y-axis grid line on those two right-most graphs represents 10-times the growth. The red line is just below 200,000. The blue line is above 8,000,000.

All that being said, the Canadian graphs’ hockey-sticking up-to-the-right is quite evident, both nationally and provincially. What we’d obviously like to see is for them all to flatten out again… which one day they will.. but, hopefully, sooner than later. We know what we need to do to make that happen…

October 18, 2020

By |2020-10-26T19:36:05-07:00October 18th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , |0 Comments
Read More

September 16, 2020

Today’s brief update will simply be about some simple numbers and some simple math.

Let’s say 100 people catch Covid-19… and struggle through it, till they’re either cured or dead… if 93 survived and 7 died, let’s write it down as 93/7. Looking around the world, here’s a brief sample of how that looks in different places:

United States: 95/5
China: 95/5
Canada: 93/7
Mexico: 87/13
Italy: 86/14

It’s annoying that some places have stopped publishing their recovery numbers. I’d be interested in throwing Sweden, U.K. and Spain into that mix to see how they compare.

The best ratios out there seem to come out, at best, 97/3.

If we just add up the entire planet — there have been almost exactly 30,000,000 cases – and the global ratio is 96/4.

The implication of that is that the true potential extent of this virus, should everyone on the planet get it, would mean a little over 300,000,000 deaths; simply 4% of the world’s 7.8 billion people.

Fortunately, there’s every reason to believe… through social practices and herd immunity (one way or the other), that nothing close to that will end up transpiring. But it’s always worthwhile to look at all the scenarios, and as far as the worst-case goes – there you have it.

View Original Post and All Comments on Facebook

By |2020-10-08T01:09:03-07:00September 16th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Travel Stories|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |8 Comments
Read More

September 8, 2020

There was a time in late March/early April where, with a sense of dread, it seemed like a perpetual waiting game — with a rolling two-week incubation period thrown in, just to make things a little less predictable — where the numbers could do this, or the numbers might do that. Are we following the footsteps of Spain or Italy? Is this about to spiral out of control? Notwithstanding we’ve learned a lot in the last 6 months, we might be back to that original mindset. And, for what it’s worth, Spain is unfortunately suffering through a very significant second surge.

There’s no doubt numbers are going up nationwide, so now what…? Let’s talk about B.C… where triple-digit new-case numbers will likely become the norm for the forseeable future… and note, as important as new-case numbers may be, hospitalizations and ICU admissions are an important trailing indicator… and, for now, they’re relatively flat. As per above, though… that’s a question that gets answered in 5 to 14 days.

For now… in an effort to get ahead of things a bit, given people’s general inability to follow the rules (See? This is why we can’t have nice things)… all nightclubs and banquet halls are closed. Restaurants, pubs & bars are to close by 10pm, and to have everyone out by 11. What’s next? Two weeks is about the right window of time to evaluate where schools are at… because that’s all starting up now, and it brings a long list of question marks to the forefront.

Let’s remember… by definition, the period just before things get wildly out of control is the period of time when they *are* in control… which is where we are right now. Dr. Henry can only make strong suggestions; the rest is up to us.

View Original Post and All Comments on Facebook

By |2020-10-08T01:09:07-07:00September 8th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , |2 Comments
Read More

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

Go to Top