Money

April 8, 2021

A tiny glimpse of visibility with respect to how our federal government presently operates – and why we happen to find ourselves behind the 8-ball with respect to vaccines – is evident in the mandate letter sent to Anita Anand, Minister of Public Services and Procurement by Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, on January 15th.

But, let’s go back a little further… actually, a lot further.

At a gala held at the National Arts Centre on April 14, 1972, when Trudeau was only a year old, visiting U.S. president Richard Nixon famously raised his glass: “I’d like to toast the future prime minister of Canada, to Justin Pierre Trudeau!”, he proclaimed. Nixon was also later caught on his White House tapes, famously deriding that three-day trip: “… wasting three days up there. That trip we needed like a hole in the head.”

Two little take-aways from that… one is that if the person presently holding the office of Prime Minister had a last name like Smith or Jones, he probably wouldn’t be PM. He has a unique last name and the genetics to go with it, and they’ve taken him right to the top. Perhaps it was assumed that what he lacked in qualifications might be made up magically, with that last name… or, with experience, having been immersed in that life as a child, right from day one.

There might be an element of truth to that; if Justin hung around daddy enough back then and asked lots of questions, he’d certainly have had a very privileged viewpoint as to how things work. The problem is that Pierre Elliot Trudeau, love or hate the guy, was a true statesman. Whether he destroyed the country or helped shape it to what it is today – let’s set that argument aside. Either way, he was a true leader… and I suspect if he were in power today, we’d have lots of vaccine at our disposal.

But that aspect of leadership is not learned; it’s a personality type that requires a level of understanding and big-picture thinking that either you have or you don’t.

Which leads to the second little take-away… that a lot of government bullshit is a complete waste of time, but it’s necessary for the optics. Nixon called it for what it was… three wasted days of fluff. A gala? Pat Nixon delivering a stuffed Snoopy to Pierre and Margaret’s little boy? All while Nixon was facing some serious problems back at home. Like, you know, a war he was losing on the other side of the world.

Back to present day, this letter, publicly available of course… and, its optics. It’s a real work of art… and reading it, the first thing that comes to mind is that whoever wrote it knew that this document was going to live forever, and therefore, every single word needs to be perfect. Every single word, well-thought-out. Nothing is missing. It mentions every political issue imaginable, many of them irrelevant to the pressing issue at hand.

Emissions reduction targets, Gender-based Analysis, intersectional lens, Indigenous people, Métis, Inuit, LGBTQ2, persons with disabilities, reconciliation, self-determination, Yes, of course they’re all important issues… but instead of 3 pages on tangential issues, all of which are affected by the pandemic, how about one sentence: “Every Canadian deserves equal access to vaccines, and your job is to get it.”

Completely lacking in that document are actual targets. Zero deliverables. That part of it is difficult to figure out, but that’s the important part of it… not just inclusive (and vague) hand-waving. If I’d had a shot at it, my letter would’ve been a lot shorter:

“Anita, please go find as much vaccine as you can, as quickly as possible. Don’t be ok with signed documents and promises unless those documents have some clout to them; we need hard numbers with respect to delivery schedules, and they should agree to severe repercussions and/or reparations if they fail to live up to their end of it. Don’t be afraid to overpay to secure that – we can afford it. Don’t hesitate to leverage whatever we may have to offer. Trees, water, electricity, whatever. Don’t be afraid to charter some planes and waste some fuel. We can handle the political fallout from dumping excess carbon emissions into the atmosphere. For now, at this moment, this is more important. Getting these vaccines quickly and reliably is all that matters. We are scaling up a national vaccine program like no one has ever seen, and we need the product to fill the pipeline. Vaccine inventory can not be allowed to be the weak link in this chain. We don’t need 10 doses per Canadian next year. We need one dose… now.”

But, no… instead, we get a nice big fluffy document with zero teeth. It, literally, looks good on paper. So does cheque for a million dollars… until you try to cash it, and it bounces.

That’s the thing; it can’t just look good. It needs to actually work. And that’s perhaps the destiny of that mandate letter. It’ll be printed off on a huge sheet of fancy parchment and signed with a big feather and framed for all posterity… so that all of the grandkids of Canadians who survived the great pandemic of 2019-2022 can one day tour the great halls of Parliament Hill and look at it. And, as they slowly walk by it, say something… like… “Huh.”

By |2021-04-08T17:03:27-07:00April 8th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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March 27, 2021

We hear a lot about “They”. Who are “They”? Or, maybe… better yet, what is “They”? … as in,

“They’re trying to ruin our lives”
“They’re trying to control us”
“They’re trying to get rid of us”

Different versions of the same old idea that “They” imposed C19 upon us so “They” could get us all used to being controlled so that eventually we’re all just some drone army of zombies doing whatever “They” want so they can make lots of money and then… whatever.

If there is a controlling “They”, there are actually 200+ versions around the world, all of them getting some parts of this right and some parts of it wrong. You’ll have a hard time convincing me that there’s a “They” above that, because that “They” would be suffering greatly these days.

But on the note of enslaving everyone, some 3,500 years ago, there *was* a “They”. It was the Egyptians, and it was the Israelites who were enslaved, and it took Moses to appeal to the Pharaoh to let his people go. If you’re not familiar with the story, I hear you can read all about it in some Chapter of some Book. But if you’re not into reading The Bible, and whatever is found in the book of Exodus doesn’t excite you, do what you did in high school: watch the movie. There are various to choose from, but here are the top 3:

1. The Ten Commandments – a three-hour epic of biblical proportions starring Charlton Heston. The movie is 65 years old so the CGI might not be what you’re used to, but it’s good… and if you’ve ever taken the Universal Tour and seen the waters part so that your tour buggy could drive through (3,500 years ago, it was the Israelites crossing the Red Sea), you’ll be able to relate.

2. The Prince of Egypt – a more accessible animated version that tells some, but not all, of the story… DreamWorks, award-winning music, etc.

3. When Do We Eat? – this is a shameless plug, because I produced this fantastic little movie… but if you want an R-rated mix of religious observance with a whole bunch of craziness, this is the one for you. If you’re Jewish and haven’t seen this already… why the hell not? For all the older people, Quincy (Jack Klugman) is in it! For all the younger people, Zoey 101/iCarly (Victoria Justice) is briefly in it. Even Oscar from “The Office” is in it! Whether you’ve seen it or not, tonight is the perfect time to watch it! Conveniently available on Amazon Prime.

Indeed, tonight… because tonight is the first night of Passover, where Jews from all over the world will be sitting down to a ceremonial meal called a Seder, something they’ve been doing for thousands of years. Because when you’ve been enslaved for 400 years and the bad guy finally says, “OK, get out of here” – it’s something to celebrate.

Last year, Passover happened very close to the start of the pandemic. It was in fact the reason I signed up for a Pro Zoom account… because nobody is getting through the ceremonial part of any Seder in under 40 minutes (“When Do We Eat?!?!”). That’s how we got the friends and family together last year, and this is how we’re doing it this year. And, the old silver lining to this big cloud… you can fit a lot more people around a Zoom Seder table than you can in real life.

To some extent, we’ve all be enslaved by C19. It hasn’t been 400 years, but it’s sure felt that way some days. Who or what is the Moses of the day, leading us out of it? Some specific people? Some policies? Science? Vaccines? Discuss amongst yourselves.

In the meantime, before watching WDWE for the 15th year in a row after our Seder tonight, we’ll say the traditional last line of the ceremony… “Next Year in Jerusalem!” …but I’m happy to be a lot less ambitious. How about, just, “Next Year in Person!”

I’d love that. So would They.

By |2021-03-27T17:03:01-07:00March 27th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 25, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

By |2021-03-25T17:03:09-07:00March 25th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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March 23, 2021

It’s a good thing AstraZeneca makes a good vaccine… and perhaps that’s where all their money goes… because their PR/marketing/outreach/spin-control department certainly isn’t as world-class.

First, the whole blood-clot non-issue that spun out of control. It’s since spun back, but not before permanently eroding confidence in that vaccine among many people; irreparable damage.

Hours after that was all cleared up, another scandal, this one to do with reporting efficacy data… AZ reporting 79%, but then being accused of cherry-picking data, and that the number is probably closer to 69%. Their questionable data and the questionable inclusion/exclusion will all be sorted out in the next 48 hours, but, once again, “irrefutable” ammo for the anti-vax camp. “See, they’re lying to us.”

One number that isn’t in dispute is a number that agrees with the other relevant (to us) vaccines… AZ, Moderna and Pfizer… and all of the regulators who scrutinize their results, collectively, will tell you that 2 weeks after receiving a single jab of any of those three, your chances of getting seriously ill go down to zero. Zero is a bold claim, but there has yet to be a case of a hospitalization from someone who’s had one shot and given it a chance to kick-in. And no, it’s not zero if you count the guy who went home to celebrate, got drunk, fell over, hit his head and wound up back at the E.R…. but I do mean that nobody has developed serious C19 symptoms.

It’s so unfortunate that this recent messaging will most certainly cause hesitancy among those still on the fence, especially because aside from what I just said with respect to it preventing serious illness, at the end of the day, a 69% chance of getting a mild cold is not a lot different than a 79% chance. On top of that, when the “real” results are published, it may end up being what they originally claimed. Or higher. It certainly won’t be lower.

Last year, when the concept of vaccines for C19 was still being discussed, when the question of “Can we even develop a vaccine for this?” was being asked, efficacies of 60% would’ve been considered a great success. 70%? Awesome.

The 95% that Moderna and Pfizer came up with is off the charts, but here’s the thing… imagine you’re stepping up to bat at Fenway Park in Boston. Off to your left, 310 feet away and 37 feet tall is “The Green Monster” – that wall so famously targeted by all right-handed hitters whose only desire it to sail a ball over it. So you step up and uncork a “Moderna” — 395-foot crushing home run. Or maybe a “Pfizer” – a 394-foot homer.

Or… a lesser “AstraZeneca” – only 369 feet in the air. But guess what, it counts – exactly the same as the other two… and when you cross home plate, having just won the World Series with that hit, nobody is bringing out the tape-measure to see how far it went.

Perhaps not the most applicable metaphor, but it’s true in the sense that if all we had was the AZ vaccine and we were all taking it at the same pace as the other two, the further development and eventual end of this pandemic would likely look very similar. Nobody is adding up the length of the home-runs that were hit. It’s the final score that counts, and that’s what gets reported. Even by AZ, who even though is not so good at messaging, at least can hit a ball/develop a great vaccine.

By |2021-03-23T17:04:11-07:00March 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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March 13, 2021

There’s a lot to be said with meeting someone in person, looking them in the eye, giving them a firm handshake and knowing that you’re not leaving the room till you get what you want. Obviously, a lot more can be achieved in person than online.

As introverted as I may be, I miss those in-person meetings… in the same way I miss being able to properly hang up a phone. A real phone. At the end of an unpleasant conversation, there was nothing more satisfying than slamming the receiver down onto the cradle. Those Bell phones were made of nuclear-war-resilient plastic. Unbreakable. My uncle in Chile a few times lost his temper on whatever was on the other side of the call and flung his phone out of a second-story office window. The cord ripped away, but the phones always survived. Clicking the [Leave Meeting] on Zoom angrily is a far cry indeed.

Speaking of Chile and doing business, specifically the sort of business that has them pretty close to the top of the list of vaccinations… perhaps my post a few days ago seemed to allude to the fact that perhaps there was some sort of funny business that may have occurred when those Chileans flew out for those in-person meetings and got those vaccine agreements. A little nudge, a little bribe, a little kick-back. I didn’t mean to imply that; I meant to state it unequivocally. Of course that’s what happened. I don’t have any proof of it, of course, and what does it matter… it’s just my opinion. But I also understand what greases the wheels… what gets slow-moving government bureaucracy going in a hurry. What jumps the queue. What gets it done.

My first experience with government corruption occurred when I was quite young… 12 or 13. I had a friend who lived nearby, and his dad put up a basketball hoop in the back lane, hung up over the garage door. The lane was flat and paved… and it was great. We were out there for hours the first week… playing one-on-one and every variation of P-I-G and H-O-R-S-E you can imagine. One day, the neighbour’s wife came out to see what was causing all this racket. The next day, her husband came out to have a look… watched us play a bit… didn’t say much, just went back inside. Oh, did I mention that guy was an Alderman for the city of Vancouver?

Two days later, when we got there after school, there were two freshly-laid speed bumps in the lane, perfectly placed and wide enough to completely destroy our basketball court. It still smelled of freshly-poured tar. Not a single other speed bump in any back lane for 10 blocks around. And not like there were ever any speeding cars there to begin with. What the hell. Is this how things work?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy. Our version of petty revenge lasted years. That guy ran in two subsequent elections, and every time an election sign (with his name, of course) popped up in front of his house, we’d replace it with three different ones from various opposition parties. We’d have to venture deep into East Van in the middle of the night to collect all of the colourful alternatives. Totally worth it.

Ok, where was I… yeah, governments. I think it’s no big surprise to learn that there’s corruption at every level. Screwing up a couple of kids’ fun just because you don’t like the sound of a basketball is a small example. Bribing officials, peddling influence, making big promises, forgiving crimes, throwing huge money at certain people and, ultimately, lying… were things Abraham Lincoln did to push through his Emancipation Proclamation and ban slavery in the U.S.

Ah, didn’t see that coming, did you… yes, indeed… sometimes, that corruption is for the greater good… and for those crimes that today would’ve gotten Lincoln jailed for life, he’s instead considered the greatest president in history. Quite a fine line, isn’t it. I don’t know what those Chileans did, and I don’t care, and certainly, the well-vaccinated populace of Chile doesn’t care either.

If you want to argue that Canada should be above that sort of thing, name me a Prime Minister and we can discuss his corruption scandal. Chretien’s helicopters, Mulroney’s Airbuses, Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin. Closer to home, Glen Clark’s deck/casino, Harcourt’s BingoGate and Vander Zalm’s Fantasy Gardens.

Government corruption has been around forever, and it’s never going away. At the very least, they could put it to use for the greater good… not just individual gain.

Lincoln? Awesome. Chile? Same. The rest of my examples? Brutal.

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By |2021-03-13T17:03:30-08:00March 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 6, 2021

Unrelated to everything… although relevant in that people have opinions they like to share… comes this, from a story that made waves a few years ago…

When you mention Nestlé around here, it’s like mentioning the Satan of corporate greed. These miserable people come in here, steal our water, and then sell it back to us for criminally high prices. It’s outrageous, it’s unacceptable, our government sold us out for next to nothing, somebody do something.

We, here in B.C., are blessed with some of the most bountiful and freshest water on the planet. We completely take it for granted, and only occasionally feel the pain when our water needs to be shut off for the day for repairs. Oh, the humanity, how will we survive. We are so, so lucky.

For centuries, people have been bottling fresh water and taking it to places where it’s needed. There are places in the world where you simply can’t drink the tap water, and you come to depend on it. Sidenote, when I lived in Northern Chile in 1987/1988, water was the equivalent of $3 a bottle, while beer was about 25 cents. I spent a lot of time pretty buzzed… because that water was totally undrinkable. The water was so loaded with calcite that if you didn’t dry it off after washing your hands, you’d quickly find them coated in chalk. The water was sticky and gross – and that was when you could get some actual water pressure.

Around here, there’s nothing wrong with the tap water. Far from it. It boggles the mind that people literally fill up bottles from our tap water, and then sell it back to us… and we buy it, like it’s magically better for some reason. It’s not. A cheap home filter will give you the same quality. An expensive home filter will give you much better quality, but most people don’t actually need it. Not around here. We have amazing fresh water, and more than we know what to do with. Accordingly, forever, the policy has been “take as much as you want” – so long as you don’t pollute the environment. Businesses have been parked on the banks of the Fraser for decades.

One day, a few decades ago, Nestlé showed up and set up shop, taking some of that Fraser River water and bottling it. No one said much, because nobody knew and or cared.

The government, at some point, did care. These guys are taking our water for free and then making a commercial enterprise out of it. Shouldn’t they be paying at least something for it? Maybe they should.

The government approached Nestlé and said, hey, maybe you should be paying for this water. Nestlé said sure, how much? We’re not sure, said the government… we’re going to study it and get back to you. Sounds good, said Nestlé.

Then the government figured out it’d cost a lot of money to study this issue… who’s using water, how much of it, how much should we charge, how much can we charge, how to we meter it, how do we control it, who’s going to manage it… and so on. It’s complex. The government figured it’d cost close to $10,000,000 to study it properly, and came up with the genius idea to get some of these commercial enterprises to pay for it.

Hey Nestlé… how about you pay for this study? Sure, said Nestlé.

OK, said the government… here’s how we’ll do it. We want ten million dollars… you guys pull out a zillion gallons of water a year, and we will charge you enough cents per zillion that we can get our money… and once we’ve figured it out, we will charge more, but this is a good start. Sure, said Nestlé.

And that is where Nestlé, who had been paying zero for the water, now began paying a nominal amount for their water. And when that tidbit of info hit the newswire, the shit hit the fan. Because the story that got told was very simple; the government just sold us ut. How can the government let them steal our water for fractions of a penny per litre… and then sell it back to us for 10,000x the cost. They should be charged $1 a litre! $2 a litre! $10 a litre! They should all be arrested and thrown in jail!!! Our poor precious water!!!

Do you know how much water Nestlé pulls out of the river? If you could dam the river for a certain period of time, how long would it take to accumulate all the water that Nestlé takes in a year? A month… no… of course not. A week? A day? OK, a day… that’s still a lot, sort of. Except it’s not a day. It’s not even an hour. It’s less time than it’s taken you to read this far. In seventy-two seconds, Nestlé takes their annual haul of Fraser River water… because, unfortunately, as priceless as our crisp, clear, pristine drinking water is, 99.99999% of it flows into the Pacific Ocean. It’d be nice to be able to tap into a lot more than that, but the infrastructure isn’t there.

I’m not sure what the status is of these water studies, nor what the plan is to bill industries that rely on it. It’s come to light that any meaningful increase in industrial water cost would cause big problems for some of those businesses who count on super-cheap (if not free) water. Like I said, it’s complicated.

If there’s any aspect of this that relates to the pandemic, it’s the part where well-spoken agendas, as one-sided as they may be, sometimes fill the echo chamber at the expense of a balanced opinion. There’s often more to the story.

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By |2021-03-06T17:06:15-08:00March 6th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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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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February 9, 2021

Let’s talk about something else entirely… at least for today.

Like Covid-19, it’s invisible to the naked eye. Like Trump, it’s wildly volatile. Like both of those things, its future is uncertain, but there’s plenty of speculation. What I’m talking about is Bitcoin.

Bitcoin (BTC) was born almost exactly 11 years ago, created by an entity known as Satoshi Nakamoto. Nobody’s too sure if that’s a real person, or a group of people, and/or whether that individual, if it is one, is still alive.

The first time I heard about Bitcoin was some time in 2010… from a friend I’d formerly worked with… a very smart guy, one of the best Linux/network admins I’ve ever met. Smart guy, but nobody took his touting of Bitcoin seriously. This was late 2010, and Bitcoins were worth less than a $1. The following year, they started going up in value… all the way to $20. He was very happy. Then the price crashed back down to a few dollars again. He was not so happy. It all still felt like something not to be taken seriously… but that started to change as time went on.

In late 2013, the world’s first Bitcoin ATM opened up… right here in Vancouver. It’s still there… in Waves Coffee, on the corner of Smithe and Howe.

Very cool. I went down there with $500, plugged it into that machine, and bought 2.5 Bitcoins. And when you buy BTC, there’s no tangible evidence of it… but then again, there’s no tangible evidence of your bank balance, except for what your phone or computer screen tells you. You just assume the little numbers translate to value. Like cash or stocks or gold or anything else with a number that describes what it’s worth. Then I bought a coffee and some food with it; Waves was one of the first places to accept Bitcoin for payment.

I dabbled with BTC over the years; for a while, I had my own mining rig… but it wasn’t anything too sophisticated. In fact, it was computer motherboard and three video cards all crammed into a milk crate. That thing ran hot… and loud. I was selling most of what I mined as quickly as I could… BTC was $400 at the time… and that was the mindset; create $ out of thin air and lock it in. Obviously, in hindsight, holding onto all of that would’ve made far more sense, but BTC back then, at least in my mind, was simply a new-fangled digital currency to be used like any other. And like any other, it’ll fluctuate… but never appreciate to levels of insanity. You wouldn’t expect a Canadian Dollar to suddenly be worth $2,000 U.S.; this was no different. Eventually, I shut it all down. Mining BTC becomes more difficult and more expensive as time goes on. Doing the math on how much energy I was consuming in this increasingly-difficult exercise implied it was no longer worthwhile. The garage, where it had been running, became much quieter and colder.

Except… it was different.

The first evidence of that was in 2013 when BTC shot-up to over $1,000 a coin… and it was because of currency restrictions imposed in Cyprus, during a financial crisis. People there were frantically trying to get their money out. In the old days, you’d try to do that by smuggling out gold or diamonds… but if you can seamlessly tap-tap-tap here and somewhere else in the world, someone else does the tap-tap-tap and now has all the money (and, of course, that someone else can also be you)… and no financial regulator was in the way… well, great. Even better, even if the financial regulator saw that transaction go by, they have no idea who did it. BTC became the de-facto currency of the Silk Road marketplace, a dark web Black Market site for purchasing all sorts of illegal goods.

When the Cypriot financial crisis sorted itself out, the BTC prices came back down to earth, but everyone took notice. Hmmm… forget buying coffees and croissants… if this thing can hold its value, given everything else it brings to the table… hmm…

What else does it bring to the table? It’s secure. So far, nobody has figured out how to hack it, though many have tried. The general consensus is that it’d take a very long time for all the computer power in the world at present to do so. The infrastructure is secure and transparent. Everyone can know what every wallet balance in the world is at – but not necessarily know to whom it belongs. Transactions are verified in real-time by multiple machines around the world. It all simply works. And who’s to say what a BTC is worth? Well, who decides what gold is worth? Or a diamond? It’s simple… it’s worth exactly what at this moment in time, someone is willing to pay for it while someone else is willing to part with it.

But perhaps the biggest intangible, the one thing this particular commodity brings to the table that no other one does is… that it’s finite. Given how it’s designed, only 21,000,000 BTCs will ever be mined. Around 18,500,000 have already been mined, but, like I said, it’s getting harder and harder. The last one won’t be mined till around 2140, and it’ll take decades for that last one to emerge.

Oil, gold, diamonds, wheat, sugar, cocoa, pork bellies… the earth always provides more. Nothing is infinite, but we’re nowhere close to running out of those things… we can always mine, grow or breed more. But not BTCs. So what happens when you have a trusted commodity where supply is known to be limited? You’d expect it would appreciate in value.

At this moment, a single BTC is worth $60,000. That coffee and chocolate croissant I bought way back when for 0.05 BTC? It cost me $3,000 in today’s dollars. That initial $500 in BTC I bought (and is now long gone) would be worth over $150,000… but if that makes you go ouch, consider the very first BTC transaction ever… two Papa John’s pizzas… worth about $30… for 10,000 BTC. That is, in today’s dollars, a six-hundred million dollar pizza. Sorry, two pizzas.

A lot could go wrong with BTC, which would vapourize all that value instantly. Someone could crack the encryption. Governments could conspire to shut it all down. A better crypto-currency could appear, and all the value would flood in that direction. Or… it could continue to appreciate forever. Some people are saying a single BTC could be worth $500,000 within a decade. Given its recent meteoric rise, who knows.

People also wonder what’ll happen after 2140, when there’s no more reward for being part of the network, since mining will have stopped. But in the same breath, the answer is obvious. Not our problem… just like in 2140, perhaps we’ll all have fusion-powered diamond-makers in our homes, or do-it-yourself alchemy kits for turning old pennies into gold. Not our present-day problem.

For now, the world has a trusted, unique, ubiquitous and accessible form of wealth storage that seems to find a little bit more of legitimacy every day. Recently, Elon Musk announced that Tesla would be accepting BTC for payment. And that Tesla holds $1.5 billion in BTC, just as a part of a diversified investment portfolio. And perhaps that’s what a well-diversified portfolio looks like in the future… cash, equities, bonds, gold, real-estate, commodities… and now, also… BTC.

As far as my friend is concerned, the one who was into BTC so early in the game… at some point, he cashed it all in (whatever “it’ is), bought a boat, and has been sailing around the world ever since.

** Disclaimer: I’m nobody’s idea of a registered investment advisor. None of the above is intended as advice; just interesting info. Should you choose to dabble in BTC, do so at your own risk. Past returns are never indicative of future whatever yadda yadda…

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By |2021-02-09T17:03:00-08:00February 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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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.

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