Numbers

August 29, 2020

No AB or BC numbers today (or tomorrow)… so, like waiting for that final “river” card in poker, we wait to see how the hand plays out on Monday.

Indeed, poker is on my mind because I’ve spent the better part of today (and will continue into the night) trying to advance a bit further in the World Series of Poker Main Event. It’s all online this year, which has its advantages and disadvantages.

The biggest advantage of course is being able to sit at home, comfortably, and scream at the computer and throw your mouse at the wall in frustration when appropriate to do so. I haven’t done the latter, but plenty of the former… certainly something you can’t (and wouldn’t want to) do in a real cardroom.

If you’re only familiar with the game of poker from what you’ve seen on TV, you might have a bit of a misguided notion… but here’s the deal: Poker is not a game of cards which you play with money. Rather… it’s a game of money which you play with cards. It’s a subtle distinction, but it makes a huge difference.

Watching on TV, you’d think most hands are people throwing their money into the pot and hoping for the best as the cards get dealt. Certainly, that does happen… perhaps one out of ten times. The other nine times, all the poker playing takes place before any cards are seen… or just a few. It’s 80% luck, 15% mind games and 5% math.

Everyone knows the math, and the 80% luck aspect can be rolled out of the equation… other than it serves to level the playing field to the extent “good” amateurs like me can go toe-to-toe with the pros for a while, but eventually they’ll get caught by that intangible 15% of mind games. There’s a reason that, after 5,000 people have entered a tournament, you always wind-up with a lot of familiar names in the top 500… the guys who can stare at you from across the table; stare into your soul and make you think exactly what they want.

To some extent, not having that be a part of it… helps a bit. Nobody can tell what’s going through my mind while it’s counting down, waiting for me to do something. For example, at this moment, for the last two minutes, I’ve been typing here while some guy in Italy put me All-In and is waiting for me to Call or Fold. I already know I’m going to Fold, but he can wait.

If we have to wait till Monday to know what's going on, he can wait 120 seconds extra.

And with that, the break is over — I will gratefully accept your wishes of good luck and let you know tomorrow where I'm at.

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August 28, 2020

To be honest, not great numbers today, if you’re looking at new cases… as we head into the weekend, today’s new-case counts are the highest ever, here in B.C… and in Alberta as well. The only positive thing about that, one would hope, is that it serves as a wake-up call. We’re presently heading in the wrong, direction… albeit slowly. And now is the time to address it. We can at least appreciate the transparency with which we’re handed this information. That’s not the case everywhere.

The U.S. election is 67 days away, and Donald Trump needs to make sure things look as good as possible during that time. All other issues aside, his continued waffling and ineffectiveness with respect to managing the pandemic (the U.S. response is now ranked 2nd-worse on the planet, only slightly better than the U.K.) has made him look awful, no matter what he says. His insistence that things are going well, and it’ll soon be over and all that… most people are wising-up that this is far from the truth.

He’s taken two significant steps in trying to put lipstick on this particular pig. One is that the testing data no longer goes directly to the CDC. It goes to the White House, where it’s compiled, curated and released to the public. The other is his strategy of testing less… because, you know, the less you test, the less positive results you get… and the better it looks. Duh.

The combination of those two things has led to a significant decline in positive test results.

If you average the number of positive tests in the U.S. (and Canada, in [brackets], whose population is about 1/9th the size), starting a month ago, the 4 subsequent weeks were:

56,061 [395]
55,197 [382]
47,356 [377]
42,872 [425]

Wow – those are some great American numbers… look at that downward trend, even as Canada, at best, stays flat… or goes up a bit. Let’s hope some aide doesn’t jokingly suggest to The President to cut testing altogether… because what’s better than zero positives!

Of course, when reality checks in, things look a little different. Here are the daily deaths averages for those same time periods:

1,053 [5]
1,095 [7]
998 [6]
1,059 [7]

Remarkably consistent. No matter how you try to hide the numbers with respect to this disease and its spread, it’s hard to hide the deaths. Those numbers are beyond the reach of the White House to “manage”.

The President of the United States may not be aware that there are two things in life that are a certainty… death and taxes. You can’t escape either….and history will not be kind in exposing his attempts to cheat on both.

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August 25, 2020

We’ve all heard the joke about the guy who calls in a computer expert to fix some problem. The expert comes in, hits a few keys, problem solved. He then hands the guy a bill for $1,000.

“Outrageous!!”, screams the guy, “How do you justify that?!”

“$1 to hit the keys, $999 to know which keys to hit.”

I was reminded of this joke, dealing with some emails today.

Actually, a somewhat-related story from ages ago… a prof telling me about how when he used to work for some big company back in the 1960s, and they had some fancy, big, expensive IBM adding machines… which were available in three different models… and to simplify things, it was something like the basic model cost $1,000 and ran 1,000 calculations per second. The next model up cost $2,000 and ran 2,000 c/s… and the fanciest model cost $3,000 and ran 3,000 c/s.

Those numbers are off, but you get the idea. And, IBM offered upgrades… if you wanted to go from 1k to 3k, no problem… just pay the difference.

These days, where everything is digital, this is easy to do. Most software can be upgraded online.

But how did that work in the real world? As he told me, when they upgraded from 1k to 3k, an IBM mechanic showed up, broke the official IBM seal, used an IBM-specific tool to open the machine… and then moved a belt… from one small pulley to a bigger pulley. It took two minutes.

Exact same machine… like, identical. Just running faster. Functional pricing at its finest.

If you watched that happened and didn’t quite understand the engineering and backstory, you might feel like it’s a complete rip-off… but the truth is the exact opposite. The guys paying the bills just want a faster machine, and they got it (instantly). How it got there doesn’t matter.

The expert that came in and restored that one corrupted operating system file… that suddenly fixed everything… how much was that guy worth?

Real expertise has a cost, whether mechanical or digital. Lifetime accumulation of knowledge and experience is worth what the guy (or company) providing it thinks… not what you think, just because it looks easy. When it comes to real expertise, typically… the easier it looks, the harder it actually is.

Yadda yadda… it often makes sense to listen to experts; it's often more than just a fancy opinion.

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By |2020-10-08T01:09:43-07:00August 25th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , |1 Comment

August 23, 2020

On one hand, I’d like it if B.C. and Alberta, like they used to, reported numbers over the weekend… it’d help keep things up to date… and I like accuracy. On the other hand, if one or both resorted to that, it’d imply things are getting out of hand enough that it’s important to do so… which means, for now, I guess we’re happy to have to wait for Monday. Even today’s U.S. numbers look suspicious (I’ll correct everything later, or tomorrow).

Even so, unraveling the weekend data into component bits isn’t always easy when, sometimes, single clumped numbers are reported on Mondays. “356 new cases and 5 deaths since Friday.” Great… Where? Who? When? This is like the mechanic saying, “Yeah, we fixed everything… that’ll be $4,500” and you asking “What and why!? What did you do? Where’s the breakdown of the parts and labour??” and they say, “Yeah… well, don’t worry about it… it’s kind of technical and very complicated.”

I do worry about it; even if I don’t understand what they’re talking about… even if it’s complete B.S…. “Yeah, see… the muffler bearing was rubbing up against the flywheel bracket… and your car… it’s a model without an exhaust impeller, so we had to machine not only the suspension elbow and rotary pistons, but also replace the fuel pump linkage.” I’d prefer that nonsense to just a single final obscure total.

Speaking of cars… here’s the story of my first car…

I bought it in 1986. I’d been saving up money over the years, and was actually still a couple of thousand short for what I wanted… when, that Summer — and all the racetrack people here will appreciate this – I hit the Sweep Six. This is the wager at the track where you try to pick the winning horse in six consecutive races. It’s obviously hard to do, and very lucrative when you manage it. The few thousand dollars I picked up for that put me over the top.

I paid cash, exactly $9,200 for that new red Ford Mustang LX, and over the next 12 years, put over 280,000km on it. I could write a book on all the memories that car provided me.

By 1998, it was time for a new car… and I’d been so happy with this one, the next one was also a Mustang… a blue 1998 GT.

The old one sat in my parents’ driveway for a while… my intention was to sell it privately, thinking I could get a lot more for it than the trade-in value that I’d been offered. It sat there for weeks… months… my parents over time wondering when I’d remove it, gently asking when I’d sell it, implying in stronger language that it’s time to get rid of it, and finally telling me to get it the hell out of there already.

One summer morning in 1998, I decided it was a good day to do this: I would drive up Kingsway, which is littered with used-car lots, and simply sell it to the first place that would offer me what I was after. I wanted $2,000 for it (yeah, I know, ha ha).

The first place offered me $500 cash. I was offended and laughed at that. The guy laughed back.

The next place didn’t want it. Nor did the place after that. And after that… place after place, not interested, or ridiculous low-ball offers like $100 or $200.

By then, I’d reached the intersection of Kingsway and Victoria. That’s the intersection where the McDonalds is, but kitty-corner to that, there used to be the best Indian food in town, a restaurant called Rubina Tandoori. I had a sudden idea… for sure I was going to spend a bunch of money there in the future; why not trade the car for some Rubina credit?

So I wandered in there and spoke to guy who greeted me, and explained my offer… $1,000 of Indian food credit for the car. He didn’t know what to think, but he went and got his father, the owner of the place.

Then the three of us went outside, where the two hummed and hawed and inspected the car… they popped the hood, literally kicked the tires, scratched their chins, hummed and hawed some more, but ultimately… decided they didn’t want it. I dropped my offer down to $500 worth of credit but they still didn’t want it. And that was that.

I did U-turn, went back to the first place, and told the guy I’d take $500. Nah, he said… I changed my mind. I don’t want it.

So back on the road I went, past Rubina, heading towards Burnaby and New West, and zero luck. I got all the way to the end, and to say I was upset about how this day had turned out… would be an understatement.

Give up or continue? It was now late afternoon… I decided to give it one more shot, and crossed the bridge into Surrey. I stopped at the first lot I found, and while waiting for someone to attend to me, an older lady who was there looking for a car approached me. She offered me $400 for the car. I’ll take it, I said.

“Well, I only have $200 cash with me, but I can give you some post-dated cheques.”

“Sure”, I said… “No problem.” Ha ha.

Conveniently, she had all the necessary papers to sign over the car… so we filled it all out, right there on the hood of the car, signed everything… and that was that. I sold my car for $200 in cash, $200 in cheques, and a ride to the SkyTrain.

But the story doesn’t quite end there.

First of all, the cheques all bounced, and I was unsuccessful in tracking her down… so I guess I actually sold the car for $200. But that’s not all.

About a year later, I got a frantic call from an insurance agent in Surrey. Apparently, this woman was trying to renew the insurance on the car… but couldn’t, because the car was still in my name. Whatever paperwork we’d done didn’t properly transfer the car to her, and she’d somehow been driving my car, with NO insurance, for a year. I hightailed it over there and signed what was needed.

Many great memories with that car… and I still have the license plates, hanging on the wall in my garage: SWEPT 6

Look, I managed to write a whole update without mentioning Trump… and barely mentioning the pandemic. Sometimes, it’s nice to set aside the present day and dig up some good old memories. There are plenty to choose from. And there are also plenty of new ones, waiting to be made.

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August 22, 2020

No BC numbers, no AB numbers… no rain, no worries. No update… and no real time to write one anyway, because here’s where I am right now. ????????????????????

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August 20, 2020

Kind of a blah day with the weather, and also a blah day with the numbers. Nothing too encouraging… and nothing too different than what we’ve seen recently.

For what it’s worth, sometimes “Blah” is ok. Blah weather in this case means some much-needed rain. Blah numbers mean at least things aren’t spiraling out of control.

And for me, just a day of long meetings and phone calls… which I can summarize lucidly and succinctly with one word: Blah.

Maybe tomorrow’s weather will be better. Maybe tomorrow’s numbers will be more encouraging. And almost certainly, tomorrow’s post will be a little less…. Blah.

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By |2020-10-08T01:09:45-07:00August 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Life in Vancouver|Tags: |5 Comments

August 17, 2020

By popular demand, and because their numbers are very relevant to the overall picture, please welcome Alberta to the party. As you can see, they now get their own 4 columns and graph.

Alberta had that awful last two weeks of April… then things settled down for a while, until mid-July… when they took a turn for the worse. They’ve since started to slow down… sort of… their numbers jump around a lot, but at least they seem to be trending downward. Those graphs can be a bit misleading, because the scales are all different. If you were to overlay B.C. and Alberta, pretty much all of B.C. fits “under” the Alberta activity. Their down-trending case counts are similar to B.C. numbers these days… so I guess we’ll see where things go.

From a “trend” point of view, the B.C. graph really looks awful in comparison to the others, but it’s worth noting the Y-axis. We still have some wiggle room… our numbers are good if you compare things, simply apples-to-apples. Saturday’s 100 new cases was the worst day we’ve ever had… but our cases and deaths per 1M of population continue to be way ahead of other provinces.

There will be more to say about this in the near future; we're using up all the "goodwill" we earned leading up to this… and while it's not too late, everyone needs to take some responsibility… for how we got here, and… more importantly… where we go from here.

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By |2020-10-08T01:09:46-07:00August 17th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , |5 Comments

August 16, 2020

Update…

Today was supposed to be a socially-distanced backyard get-together with some good friends… which went sideways shortly before they arrived, when the dog evidently swallowed a wine cork. We rushed to the vet, but the x-ray couldn’t see anything… and while they were about to prep him for an endoscopy, the friends arrived and started trying to help in crawling around the garden looking for it “just in case”… and found it. Well-chewed but not swallowed. So now we take the pup home with a huge wave of relief… and since today there are no B.C. numbers anyway, let’s forget the numbers and charts till tomorrow. Instead, you get a picture of me and this bestest boi.

 

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By |2020-10-08T01:39:33-07:00August 16th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Our Dog|Tags: , |40 Comments

August 15, 2020

No numbers here in B.C. today or tomorrow… so notwithstanding the famous “lies, damned lies, and statistics” quote… I’m going to intelligently extrapolate some numbers… and will correct them on Monday. Until then, both our local and national numbers are just good guesses.

The average new case count in B.C. over the last 5 days averages to 67, so let’s just go with that. For what it’s worth, one standard deviation would make it plus or minus 21 (so somewhere between 46 and 88 new cases). Actually, the 90% confidence interval (15) defines the potential range as between 52 and 82… so it’ll be interesting to see what things look like by Monday. If we’re within this range, we’re sort of stable. If we’re growing… well, I guess we’ll know that too. Take it all with a grain of salt. And that’s enough math for a Saturday.

It’s also enough writing for a Saturday, because it’s a beautiful day and I’m going to take advantage of it… but it seems like a good opportunity to plug the blog where all of these posts are going, in case you feel like you missed something. If you visit www.kemeny.ca and click on the red seal, everything I’ve written here recently (like, every single day since March 17th) can be found there.

Hope you’re enjoying this beautiful day… in an appropriately-masked socially-distanced and well-sunscreened sort of way.

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By |2020-10-08T01:09:47-07:00August 15th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , |6 Comments

August 14, 2020

Here are some sets of numbers: 84, 87, 92. Or how about 78, 78, 104. Or maybe 85, 95, 95.

What are these numbers? They’re new case counts for Quebec, Ontario and B.C… for today, and for the last couple of days. Which is which? Well, it doesn’t matter… and that’s the point… because we here, with our 5 million in population, are seeing the same sorts of new-case numbers as our fellow provinces with populations of 8.5 million and 14.7 million.

Ce n'est pas bien. 不是很好。Isto não é bom. ਇਹ ਚੰਗਾ ਨਹੀਂ ਹੈ. No está bien. これは良くない。Hindi ito maganda. Ez nem jó. این خوب نیست. Questo non è buono. Αυτό δεν είναι καλό. Dit is niet goed. זה לא טוב. Tämä ei ole hyvä. Das ist nicht gut. यह अच्छा नहीं है।Bu iyi değil. Dette er ikke bra. Điều này không tốt.

This is not good.

If Google Translate knew the Sḵwx̱wú7mesh language, I’d have written it in that as well. As it is, I’m sure I missed a few key languages… we’re a very diverse group up here… but these days, we clearly have something very much in common, no matter how you spell it out… we are headed in the wrong direction, after so long of doing it right.

I really don’t want to see these numbers keep climbing, and neither do you, because at some point, they start translating into hospitalizations and ICU admissions and deaths. And lockdowns and isolation and now… you know, it’s not Spring. It’s not chilling and crafts and making bread and Tiger King and reflection. Everyone has had enough… but we haven’t yet done enough, and we risk slipping back and giving up everything we achieved. Quitting the race as you approach the finish line is worse than not having run the race to begin with. Let’s not let it happen. There is that finish line, and we are actually getting closer to it… but we will keep pushing it back if we keep acting irresponsibly. That is the message, no matter in which language you need to hear it.

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By |2020-10-08T01:09:47-07:00August 14th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , |5 Comments
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