Pandemic

February 15, 2021

Given the prevalence of anti-vaxx insanity and the fact that this virus continues to mutate, chances are it’ll be around for a long time. Perhaps forever. But that’s not the end of the world, because measles is also around, and nobody worries too much about it. The vast majority of people are vaccinated against it, and even if you get it, there’s a well-known treatment plan that’ll lessen the symptoms and help you get through it.

Similarly, for all the talk we have about C19 vaccines, let’s not forget that a lot has been learned about treatment, and a lot of drugs have been (and continue to be) developed specifically for that.

Initially, some already-existing drugs were found to have some positive effects. Dexamethasone, Remdesivir and Baricitnib among them, with varying degrees of success. Therapies involving convalescent plasma and monoclonal antibodies have been found to be very effective. “Potshots” with other existing drugs, such as Interferon and Tamiflu, have not been so successful. Antibiotics, drugs used to combat gout, other anti-virals… the list goes on and grows daily, as more data is collected and analyzed.

Two recent additions to the list are interesting.

First is news from Israel, who have been leading the charge with vaccinations — over 70% (!) of their population have received at least one dose — they’ve developed a drug for use in moderate or worse cases, and the early results couldn’t be more encouraging. Thirty people entered the hospital in relatively serious condition, and thirty people emerged cured… twenty-nine of them within three to five days. The drug, EXO-CD24, specifically fights the cytokine storm, the likeliest C19 complication that leads to death. Good numbers for a Phase-1 study. Onward.

Second is the locally-developed and hard-to-pronounce Bamlanivimab, which is beginning clinical trials locally… though it’s already been used on more than 125,000 patients in the U.S.

The one-two punch of vaccines and effective treatment is what will eventually return the world to normal… when everyone is convinced enough that they’re unlikely to get it, but even if they do, it’ll be no big deal. Given where our minds are these days, that seems like a big leap… but such was the case before antibiotics showed up. We take antibiotics for granted… oh, a little infection, no big deal… take these little pills a few times a day for a week and you’ll be fine. A hundred years ago, that little infection may well have killed you.

One day, catching some variant of C19 may be viewed with the same sort of novelty as catching Bubonic Plague… it’s rare, it’s out there, but… most importantly… it’s treatable and it’s curable. Interestingly, we’re probably at that point today, at least from a scientific point of view. Further tests will either confirm or disqualify that statement… but, either way, today’s issue isn’t the science as much as it is logistics and distribution.

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February 14, 2021

Happy SnowyFamilyDayWeekendValentinesDay!

You may have noticed how quiet and peaceful it gets when the ground is blanketed by snow. It’s simply due to the fact that snow actually absorbs sound… and, also, the uneven surface helps to disperse sound waves. The opposite of a polished concrete floor is a snow-covered surface – the fluffier, the better.

Two bits of fluffy vaccine news:

One is that the province of Manitoba has ordered 2 million doses of our own mRNA Canadian-produced vaccine; vaccine that’s made in Alberta by Providence Therapeutics. The only slight problem with it is that the vaccine doesn’t actually exist. Well, it does, but it’s only in a Phase-1 trial. Optimistically, Phases 2 and 3 start after May, and counting on emergency authorization from Health Canada in the fall, perhaps it’ll be getting into Winnepegian and Flin-Flonian arms before the end of the year.

Of course, we’ve been told the majority of us in the rest of Canada would have plenty of Pfizer and Moderna available by then, so what this really means is the government of Manitoba saying to the Federal government… “We don’t believe you.” Hard to argue. One thing is clear… one day, Canada will be flooded with vaccine… from what we ordered and from what we’re making. When exactly will that be? Perhaps around the time Hell starts looking like my front yard. At least we’ll have plenty of vaccines around for when this transitions from pandemic to endemic.

The other is that Bill Gates’ daughter Jennifer got her first vaccine dose today. She couldn’t help but crack a joke about it not actually implanting some sort of dad-designed microchip into her brain. It’s funny, but it’s also sad… that enough anti-vax people believe that nonsense to the extent that, as per above, this virus is unlikely to ever go away entirely. At least we’ll have plenty of vaccine supply…

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February 13, 2021

Snow day!! No school!! And also, no local numbers… which of course, snow or not, is always the case over the weekend. And, can I just say… back in the day when it snowed enough to actually cancel school, why did the big snow-dump always happen on a weekend? Not fair.

But, briefly, speaking of numbers and things that are not fair… New York Governor Andrew Cuomo is going to be facing some tough questions. The explanations are inconsistent and the story changes, but the bottom line is that in NY, Covid-19 deaths were underreported with respect to nursing home residents at the height of the pandemic. At its most fundamental level, this is just politics trumping science. Cuomo just didn’t want to look bad to the Trump government and face all the noise that’d be coming his way.

It’s ironic… in that the Trump loyalists, especially at the time, were always the ones claiming it’s a hoax and nobody is dying; that death numbers were being inflated and, anyway, old people are going to die. Had all of this come out sooner, they would’ve been faced with an interesting contradiction… how does one complain that deaths are being overstated… while at the same time, have proof – actual numbers that would provide you with actual evidence to justifiably criticize your opponents – that say the exact opposite?

Except among the truly deluded, long gone are the “Covid death rate is 0.000243%!!!” posts. The nonsense that the flu kills more people, etc. If you’re curious… these days, more people in the U.S. die from C19 in any rolling 10-day period than typically die from flu in an entire 12-month cycle. And this year, that ratio will be sharply higher because flu cases (and deaths) are way down.

Excess deaths in the U.S were around 300,000 between January and October last year… and Covid-19 deaths during that time averaged 975 per day. Since then, C19 deaths have averaged close to 2,500 daily.

At least this explains something that head-scratchingly wasn’t adding up… what are all these American excess deaths attributable to, if not C19?

Yeah… it turns out it was C19 after all.

Oh, some breaking news… I’ll conveniently provide it in the form of a poem:

It’s snowy and peaceful
And time for a book
The Senate acquitted
But Trump’s still a crook

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February 12, 2021

As much as I found it boring, I used to jog a couple of times a week… initially on my own, at some point with a trainer… but I never really found it as engaging as cycling or skiing. It’s effective for boosting your heart rate, but it’s also effective at stressing your knees. And it’s more boring… the world goes by a lot slower than when you’re on skis and/or a bike.

To alleviate the boredom, I used to jog to different destinations all the time… take a different turn here and there, see some new sights… different houses, different construction sites, different shops. Engage the brain a bit as well.

And then I came up with something even better.

Imagine a map, and stick a pin on your home. Then imagine a little string tied to the pin… the length of which corresponds to how far you want to jog every day before turning around and heading home (assuming you jog in a straight line, back and forth). If you intend to jog 5km a day, the string should represent a distance of 2.5km…. because 2.5km in one direction, then 2.5km to get back home.

If you put on your high-school math hat for a moment, you’ll recall that the area of a circle is Pi x Radius squared… in this case, 3.14 x 2.5 x 2.5 which is around 20 sq. km… a nice slice of potential real-estate to take in.

But what if you double that radius? What if you run those 5km in a straight line? How much bigger is that potential circle? Close to 80 sq. km… 4 times more cool sights to explore. Of course, then you have to get home… so what I used to do is find a Car2Go 5km from here, reserve it, and jog to it… and drive home. For the price of the Starbucks coffee that I didn’t get instead, I’d just drive home. Sometimes, with little local demand for Car2Gos, they’d start piling up outside the house… till some Car2Go people would come along and scoop them all up. Unfortunately, Car2Go has scooped-up all of their cars in North America, so… so much for that. It’s just not the same with Evo.

You’d think jogging would be making a good comeback during this pandemic. I’m not sure if the numbers are up or down, but jogging hits all the positives of exercising in a socially-distant way. You’re outside, and you can easily avoid other people… either entirely, or certainly by finding 6 feet around them.

… which is why I found very curious this directive from UC Berkeley: No outdoor exercise till further notice, masked or unmasked. Huh? What do you suggest is better? Pack the gyms?

The data is exceedingly clear – you get this disease by being nearby other infected people and breathing in their infected exhaust. The nearer you are… times the longer you’re there… equals the risk… the more little virus balls you inhale, the worse it’ll be.

From what I have read, there have been zero documented cases of transmission outdoors… except in cases where people were in close conversation. Undoubtedly, it’s difficult to define — and difficult to claim — zero… there are half-inside/half-outside spaces, there are tents… but, ultimately, I think everyone gets it… and can figure out the risks associated with that they plan to do. Jogging all by yourself is zero risk… to you, and to others.

All that being said, there seems to be a bit of what’s going on around here as well… the acknowledgement that for a lot of people, when you give an inch, they’ll take a mile… so no initial inches can be given. “Now is not the time”.

I’m not sure where the phrase, “This is why we can’t have nice things” originally came from… it’s been around a lot longer than the Taylor Swift song… but it alludes to situations where a frustrated parent says it after watching their tiny little toddler smash something like a priceless Beatles LP into tiny little bits. You can’t blame the kid; what does he know… but anyone who’s ever had little kids knows… try to keep the “nice things” out of reach.

I’m reminded of that sentiment when, around here, we’re not allowed responsible gatherings, indoors or out… not because it probably wouldn’t be ok, but because the powers that be know all too well… that we’re going to take that nice thing… and break it. Best to keep it out of our hands to begin with. I understand it, and I respect it. I’m also not too happy with it. But I also can’t come up with any better alternatives, because I understand very clearly what we’re all trying to achieve. And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, if we keep doing what we’re doing… we’ll get there.

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By |2021-02-12T17:05:05-08:00February 12th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , |5 Comments

February 11, 2021

A kind of funny story… back in 1968, parts of Chile were pretty disconnected from the rest of the world, and, more to the point, so were the people who were born, grew up, and worked there. For a lot of the workers there, they were born in small towns, and they remained in those small towns their entire lives. Some towns were only 40km from the coast, yet some of them, guys in their 20s, had never even been to the ocean. Accordingly, they weren’t too clued-in as to what exactly was going on in the world.

On June 6th, 1968, my uncle was in his office, sitting at his desk… also there was my dad… both of them discussing whatever. Then the phone rang, and my uncle picked it up… and it was a group of miners expressing their condolences… “We’re so sorry to hear the news”, they said, “It’s so sad, it’s so awful, him with his pregnant wife and everything…”

“What the hell are you talking about?”, asked my uncle.

“Your brother, of course.”

“What about him?”, asked my uncle, staring at my dad sitting across from him.

“Well, we heard he got shot and killed in Los Angeles yesterday.”

“That was Robert KENNEDY, you idiots! KENNEDY… not KEMENY!”.

Perhaps an innocent but somewhat amusing misunderstanding for some people who weren’t granted the benefit of the big picture.

But here’s something that’s not so funny… and it has to do with Robert Kennedy Jr… the aforementioned’s son… someone who certainly should have a good grip on reality.

He just got banned from Instagram, for promoting a whole bunch of anti-vax bullshit. But this guy is especially awful… because he lobbies Congress to give parents exemptions from state requirements that mandate vaccinations for children. He has an anti-vax Facebook page with over 300,000 followers… and yet… all of his children have been vaccinated. This is the worst kind of hypocrite on the planet… pandering to the masses; “elevating” themselves to the crowd they feel they need to reach. Vegans who secretly eat meat when no one’s looking. Environmentalists who throw all of their garbage and cardboard and food scraps into the same, landfilled-destined plastic garbage bags. Green Party members who drive 12-cylinder mega-fuel-injected super-turbo-charged Italian sports cars that get 2 miles to the gallon. Robert Kennedy Jr. They can all go to hell, pontificating their holier-than-though ideas while brazenly doing the exact opposite.

Speaking of vaccines, if you’ve been watching the bolded, inverse vaccination-percentage numbers near the top of the attached data, you’ll be disappointed to see that most of them went down. It’s because I adjusted the data… and because, for a while, all doses being dished out were first doses, and that’s what I was tracking. But now that the second doses are kicking in, it throws things off. The idea is to represent how many people have had at least one shot… not just simply shots divided by population… a number that doesn’t really mean much. Accordingly, the numbers have all gone down, and the more second doses that have already been injected, the bigger the change.

Well… not all. It was most interesting to see Quebec, the huge outlier… who have given out a total of… zero second shots. They’re really going all-in with their policy: Get as many first shots done as possible, and stretch that window for the second shot as far as possible and… hope fervently that enough doses show up in time when they’re needed.

Anyway, going forward, that’s what those bold inverted numbers mean; the percentage of the population that’s had at least one shot. B.C. is at 2.8%. Canada is at 2.5%. The U.S. is at 14.5%. For a bit of comparison… Israel is at 68%, the U.K. is at 21%, and Chile… even though they may not know the difference between the U.S. Attorney General and a local mining executive… is at over 7%, which puts them in the Top-10 in the world. Canada used to be in that Top-10, but we’re now we’re barely hanging on to our Top-40 position… sliding down the charts like a one-hit-wonder whose moment has come and gone.

We’re told that’ll change in the coming weeks. Let’s hope so.

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February 10, 2021

I must admit, it feels good not to be writing about Donald Trump. Because now, I read the news about the guy and my first thought is always, “Who cares”. Washington will have their hands full with the impeachment circus, and by the end of it it’s highly likely he’ll be acquitted… but through the motions they go.

I find it pathetic that the Republican Party hasn’t got the internal fortitude to figure out what’s really important to them; some of them cling on to their has-been demagogue for the simple reason that there’s still an army of misguided supporters out there. What they perhaps don’t realize is that those aren’t fellow Republicans. They’re cult followers. Jeez, if the events of January 6th can’t convince you of that, nothing can. Or, of course, they *do* realize that, and don’t care. Which is really far worse, when you consider the implications. Either way, I look forward to it all going away. And, hopefully, not coming back.

Sifting past the pages of all that nonsense for something relevant to write about in the few minutes I have to do so, I found an interesting story from the CDC claiming that double-masking can block 93% of potentially infectious particles. That number varies, depending how well you double-mask and how well knotted it’s done… but it’s drastically different than single masking in the 40-60% range. It’s a far cry seeing that published and possibly adhered to, as opposed to the aforementioned has-been demagogue who spent a year telling everyone masks are useless. For those who like math, the extrapolation of triple-masking goes to 97% and quadruple-masking 99%. Beyond that, it’s 100% because you probably can’t breathe.

Yeah, wear a mask or two… it makes a huge difference. I look around with some envy at places that had these mandates in place early and effectively… places where two-week mandatory quarantines don’t have exceptions and you pay for it yourself and you don’t complain; those are now the places that have bustling restaurants and crowded stadiums and no mask mandates. There are indeed places on the planet that are back to normal. The U.S. completely messed-up their opportunity, but that was because of colossally crappy leadership, right from the top, and right from the start. We’ve done a lot better here in Canada, but now that we’re a year into this thing, it’s not difficult to make apples-to-apples comparisons. It could’ve been a lot better. In gambling terms, it’s called the “woulda coulda shoulda” – it’s what you hear from most frustrated horseplayers moments after the horses cross the finish line… I woulda bet the 6… I coulda bet the 4.

And yeah, we shoulda had masks everywhere… long ago.

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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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February 8, 2021

A brief word regarding the SuperBowl… it takes both teams to show up for it to be a great game. Tampa Bay, their defence and, of course, Tom Brady all showed up. The somewhat crippled Kansas City offensive line also showed up, but you can’t blame them… the balance of power when two powerhouse teams go at it is very delicate; it doesn’t take much to make a big difference. Accordingly, that, plus the entire KC offense not having a great day (two dropped TD passes are just a small part of it) equals a well-deserved rout by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And further cementing the fact that 43-year-old Tom Brady, the SuperBowl MVP, whether you love or hate the guy, is unquestionably the greatest QB the NFL has ever seen. And that is the last you’ll hear about NFL football from me for a very long time.

A brief word re the NHL and the Vancouver Canucks… here’s everything good to say about the team at present:

Moving on to what’s important… today we get a numbers “refresh”, and they echo the recent trend… and they keep right along with what I, and everyone else who watches numbers carefully, have been saying… it’s looking pretty good.

I was wrong about the SuperBowl, but so far have been right about the very simplistic assumption that “the worst will be over after the last week of January” – simply because the effects of the holiday season will already have taken effect, and now with warmer weather coming, things should improve… and with vaccines ramping up, and… etc etc.

So… the coldest weather of the year is coming this week. The hail and snow that showed up today is a good reminder… there’s a long way to go. The vaccine rollout has been disappointing; not what we expected. Family Day, Lunar New Year… and the effects of everyone who attended SuperBowl parties are two weeks away, and then some. And, of course, the far-more contagious variants now in our midst. Everything in this paragraph could conspire to wreck those beautiful downward trends we’re seeing everywhere… cases, hospitalizations, deaths.

For what we’re battling at the moment, and the way we’re battling it, it’s working. Some second-wave drop-offs (like in Alberta) have been as drastic as the rise that led to their peaks. But the key to that is that even though it’s working for now, there’s a nervous trigger-finger on harsher lockdown measures… because what we may end up dealing with is not a third wave of this pandemic; it would be a first wave of a new one… one that blows-up numbers far quicker. At least we’d have a huge head-start in fighting it, because we’d only be months (if not weeks) away from vaccines. A silver lining to this is that by the time most of us get a vaccine, it’ll likely be primed to be more effective for some of these newer strains.

All that being said, ideally, we don’t get to that point.

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February 7, 2021

Just a few brief words because I’m watching… the SuperBowl… and I’m not the only one. The data sources for Canadian vaccinations and hospitalizations are all down, and I’m guessing the IT guys are all busy till after 6. No worries; updated numbers tomorrow.

It’s funny watching and listening and reading the lead-up to the game, by all sorts of companies who apparently aren’t allowed to say “SuperBowl” without paying for the privilege… so it’s “The Big Game” or “The Championship Game”. If you saw some advertising and were wondering what the heck it was all about, it’s this.

For what it’s worth, similar thing… The Kentucky Derby was called exactly that for over a hundred years… until it became “The Kentucky Derby Presented by YUM Brands”… and I guess YUM paid a lot for that, because they demanded it be phrased like that everywhere. You couldn’t say Kentucky Derby without the rest of it.

Anyway, back to football… it remains to be seen what happens, but Tom Brady, the oldest (43) player to ever play in a Big Game/Championship Game/SuperBowl… may well be on his way to leading his team to victory. Or not. Still a half of football to go.

Either way, the secret’s out. Patriots coach Bill Belichick may be good coach, but he wasn’t the key. He never was. The Patriots were 12-4 last year, 7-9 this year. The Buccaneers were 7-9 last year, 12-5 this year. What changed? Tom Brady… hopping from the Patriots to the Bucs. Pretty simple… win or lose, you have to hand it to the guy: Greatest Of All Time

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By |2021-02-07T17:03:02-08:00February 7th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |5 Comments

February 6, 2021

The only thing more brief than today’s update might be tomorrow’s… not just because it’s the usual incomplete weekend numbers, but also… it was a beautiful day… and a long, sunny-yet-freezing-cold bike ride was it order… and it’s interesting to people-watch as you whizz by… everything from large groups of mask-less people, to solitary souls standing in the middle of nowhere… wearing a mask.

At the moment, we are in the midst of restrictions that puzzle some people, but it’s really very easy. Sometimes, the only way to get what you want to is to over-reach, because that’s potentially the only way people will get it.

Like, Dr. Henry says no SuperBowl parties… but what she really means is, don’t get together in crowded, stuffy, over-crowded living rooms to watch it. She could’ve said, “Go ahead and have SuperBowl parties… just be sure to wear masks at all times and keep 6 feet of distance”… but she didn’t, because a lot of people would’ve stopped reading after the first 6 words. Or… would’ve had the intention of following those rules but we can all imagine what it’d look like an hour into the game. So – it’s the strong over-reach, and that’s that. At least it’s clear.

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By |2021-02-06T17:04:19-08:00February 6th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , |2 Comments
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