Trump

January 27, 2024

Facebook is kind enough, on a daily basis, to remind me of what I wrote three years ago.

In light of what’s going on on in the world, I thought it’d be worth sharing this one… because it certainly shows us that the more things change, the more they stay the same. History indeed seems doomed to repeat itself.

On this particular day three years ago, I wasn’t writing about Covid. I was writing about it being Holocaust Remembrance Day, and its importance. I was also writing about Donald Trump and what a disaster he is; that hasn’t changed much. But what has changed is the concerning recent rise in global antisemitism.

I wrote about Holocaust deniers, and the absurdity of people denying something so recent and so well-documented in history. How can that even be a thing? And yet, today, we have people denying the horrific events of Oct 7th. Notwithstanding that Hamas recorded and live-streamed their barbaric attack, and have continually announced to the world how proud they are of what they achieved, still there are those who insist it didn’t happen. Some of those people are educators. Indeed, locally, we have a recently-fired Langara instructor praising those attacks as “amazing” and “brilliant”.

If there was ever a time to repeat the relevance of Holocaust Remembrance Day, it’s today.

We will never stop talking about it. We will never forget.

Never Again.

By |2024-02-01T17:16:09-08:00February 1st, 2024|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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August 15, 2023

It won’t surprise too many people to hear that I’m a numbers guy. Images, words, ideas… sure, I can work with all of them. But numbers are what I understand more fundamentally than anything, and it’s also what I remember and correlate best.

As a result, there are numbers that instantly remind me of multiple things in my past, and often those things have nothing to do with each other… except the number, which binds everything together.

I have countless examples, none of which I’ll bore you with… except one… and that is the number 19.

Nineteen is a pretty important number in Canada… suddenly, you can drink, you can gamble and you’re recognized as an adult in every way. We get a two-year head start on our American cousins in that regard. I remember when that Paul Hardcastle song came out, talking about how the average age of American soldiers in Vietnam was nineteen. N-n-n-n-nineteen. And how ludicrous it was in my mind, that you could send a 19-year-old into battle where he will kill or be killed, but that same solider can’t drink a beer with his buddies or place a $2 bet at Santa Anita.

I remember my own countdown to my 19th birthday… which landed on a Tuesday.

And… there’s another Tuesday I’d like to talk about, and that is 9/11. On Tuesday, September 11th, 2001, nineteen terrorists changed the course of the world (and especially America) forever. It’s not just all the Homeland Security and TSA nonsense… it’s the fundamental stripping away of constitutional rights in the name of security. Sure, as an American, your constitution and its amendments will ostensibly protect your rights, but if you’re suspected of being a terrorist? It all goes out the window. And you don’t have to be Arab or Muslim to have that distinction bestowed upon you, as many innocent people have learned over the last 22 years.

When I see the number 19, that’s mostly what I think of. 9/11, and those 19 terrorists that wrecked the country. So, naturally, reading the news headlines last night and seeing the number 19 and being reminded of all of this; that’s what led me to write what you’re presently reading.

Nineteen is the number of people recently indicted under the Racketeer, Influenced and Corrupt Organizations Act.

If the name of that Act feels a little contrived, you’re right. Americans love their acronyms, and if you have to shoe-horn the words to fit the intended target, so be it. Imagine the brainpower consumed by the guy who came up with “Maritime Augmented Guidance with Integrated Controls for Carrier Approach and Recovery Precision Enabling Technologies”. Really. It’s a thing. I’ll let you figure it out.

So… some guy was tasked with naming the Act to do with organized crime. At the time, when you thought of organized crime, you thought of the Mafia. And the Mafia made you think of Italians… so hey, hahaha, let’s name the Act after an Italian. It could just as easily have been the Murder, Aggression, Racketeering, Intimidation and Obstruction Act. But it’s RICO, and when you think of RICO, you also think of Al Capone and John Gotti and Tony Soprano.

What you probably don’t think of, at least until now, is a former President of the United States and his former Chief of Staff and a disgraced former New York City mayor. Not exactly what the guys who came up with RICO had in mind. Yet, here were… those three, plus sixteen others – all charged with differing offences, but all of them, at the very least, individually charged with violating the RICO Act.

On 9/11, nineteen terrorists managed to permanently scar the fabric that makes up the United States. Nineteen years later, a different group of nineteen – ok, we won’t call them terrorists, because they’re not. What’s the right word? Traitors? Yeah, that’ll do.

Nineteen traitors tried to subvert what’s at the bottom level, the ground zero of the
Foundation of the United States. Democracy. That a former president is involved is almost unbelievable, but not quite. The truth is, this sort of nonsense goes on all around the world on a near-continual basis. We take it for granted that elections are fair, and that losing candidates will genuinely bless their opponent, thank those who voted for them, and ride into the sunset gracefully. They will always wax poetic on how the people have spoken, and how proud they are to have been part of this timeless process, even if they lost. Certainly, having watched numerous Canadian elections at every level, whether municipal or provincial or federal, I sincerely don’t ever remember hearing what I’d call a sore loser.

For Trump to be a sore loser is really no big surprise. For Trump to question the election results is also no big surprise. He was doing it before he won in 2016, ready to arm the cannons with “Election Fraud!!” if he’d lost. Long before the 2020 election, he was already screaming the same thing. Either he wins, or it’s fixed. Yawn. We all heard it a million times.

Then came all the post-election bullshit. Then came January 6th. Then came yesterday’s indictments.

So, here we are. It’s not my 19th birthday and it’s not 9/11… but it’s a Tuesday, and many people will remember it forever… the Tuesday they learned a former president and his cronies, his crime family… are on par with the Al Capones and John Gottis and Tony Sopranos of the world.

But here’s the thing, the actual thing that I simply can’t wrap my head around. This guy, Donald Trump, has a very reasonable chance of winning the next election. There are more than seventy-million people who’d vote for a man who tried to steal an election and then try to cover it all up when he failed.

So now, we are in what’s known in the horse-racing world as a match race. It’s a two-horse race, winner takes all. One horse is Donald Trump, racing towards an election which might save him from prison. The other horse is Fulton Country District Attorney Fani Willis, a name none of us had heard till now, but you’ll be hearing it a lot for the foreseeable future. Fani Willis is tasked with prosecuting these 19.

Unlike an actual match race, though, this one has many layers. It’s important to note that the RICO Act under which these 19 are indicted is not the federal one; it’s the State of Georgia’s own version, meaning all of the federal protections typically granted a US President don’t apply. If he’s found guilty and sentenced to prison, in theory, there’s nothing he can do to prevent it. But Donald Trump doesn’t think that’s the case.

Of course, this is all uncharted territory. What if he’s found guilty, sentenced to prison, but elected President before his prison term starts? Would he serve from behind bars? Would he wear an ankle bracelet in the White House?

There are 19,000 “What-if?” questions that can be asked, and it’s a waste of time trying to unravel it all because nobody knows. The most knowledgeable jurists, constitutionalists, judges, lawyers… nobody knows. We’ll deal with it when we have to.

It worries me greatly that Trump might wind up winning, and, if that happens, it’s certainly the last free election in the US for a very, very long time. At least until everyone facing criminal charges (and there may be some, waiting in the wings, for Trump’s kids) is out of the picture. If he wins, he’d try to find his way out of prison and pardon whoever he can, and he’d make sure the Trump dynasty… Don Jr, Eric, Ivanka, Tiffany, Barron — were all in the line of succession. It’d turn into a weird mix of North Korea and Russia.

You know, Russia… did you know that Vladimir Putin was elected, in 2000, to a 4-year term? No problem. Then, in 2004, he was re-elected to another 4-year term, a resounding victory with 71% of the popular vote. All good. Then, in 2012, it was time for a fresh face. Much like in the United States, two presidential terms is all you get in Russia. So, gracefully, Vladimir Putin stepped down in favour of welcoming a new…

Oh, wait. Yeah… no. That’s not what happened. I will skip the details, but the end result is that Putin has been in power since then, and will remain in office until he’s dead… election shenanigans, private-deal shenanigans, corruption shenanigans all notwithstanding. He plowed his way to a permanent presidency, and here we are. On the edge of WW III because nobody managed to figure out how to pull the emergency brake.

Could that ever happen here? Putin is a lot smarter than Trump. Putin, like a Russian chess grandmaster, has always been five moves ahead. Trump is the proverbial bull in the china shop, and the storekeeper has finally had enough. But is it enough?

Al Capone was a gangster who was famously ultimately nailed by a different federal act, one to do with tax evasion. Capone was convicted and sent off to prison, where his brain, plagued by syphilis and gonorrhoea and cocaine withdrawal, ultimately left him very sick and confused and with the mental acuity of a child. John Gotti was ultimately convicted and died in prison. Tony Soprano – well, I won’t spoil it for you if you haven’t seen the series. Highly recommended.

What’s to become of Trump? Fasten your seatbelts… we’re going from zero to 100 in a lot less than 19 seconds.

By |2023-08-15T17:16:50-07:00August 15th, 2023|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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April 10, 2023

A few days ago, I opened up Facebook and was met with one of those questions that’s asked of thousands of people, usually a somewhat ambiguous one that’s sure to cause differing opinions.

In this case, it was a simple math question: What is…

48 / 8(14-8) ?

The answer is 1, and if you got that (or don’t care), skip the next paragraph. If you got 36 and are wondering why you’re wrong, read on…

The issue is that 8(14-8) is not the same thing as 8 x (14-8). It just so happens that what’s inside the brackets simplifies quickly to a 6, so if you think that latter expression is correct, then you wind up with 48 / 8 x 6 which, indeed, as per BODMAS or PEDMAS or whatever acronym you learned, is 36. But you can’t do that. The expression of 8(14-8) written out with variables looks like this: N(Y-X) which you can convert, using distribution, to NY – NX… so, you either wind up with 8(6) which is 48, or you wind up with 8×14 – 8×8 which is 112-64 which is, again, 48… which is the right answer, and then 48 / 48 is, of course, 1. You can’t just solve for what’s in the brackets (6) and then go left-to-right, 48 / 8 x 6… which does equal 36, but is simply wrong.

Anyway, I saw this equation, typed in “1” along with a small explanation, and moved on.

Wow… wrong move. Not since the days of the height of the pandemic, where I was writing daily, either explaining the benefits of fresh air, masks and vaccines and/or bashing Trump – that I received such a response of negativity. In some cases, I expanded my answer, with well-versed, simple examples and explanations. Only to be met with “You’re wrong” or, even better, “Your an idiot.”

Sticks and stones, etc… I’ve been involved with internet “discussions” for over 30 years, and I’ve heard far worse. But there’s a difference these days.

Back then, people engaged in “Flame Wars”. A flame war is exactly what it sounds like… two differing opinions starting off with relatively civil discourse, but eventually it starts heating up and eventually the flame-throwers come out. There are two sides, represented by an ever-growing number of people whose passion and anger is also ever-growing. The responses get more terse, and instead of taking days, they take hours… and, eventually, it’s one-word insults going back and forth, measured in minutes. At that point, eventually, the whole thing flames out when everyone realizes it’s pointless. One additional aspect of it… a flame war can come to an instant end when Godwin’s Law is invoked, which is simply that, as soon as you bring nazis into the discussion, whichever side did it – loses. You wouldn’t think a discussion arguing what’s better, the old Star Trek or the new Star Trek, would invoke that… but you’d be surprised.

But these days, you don’t seem to get good old-fashioned flame wars. It seems to cut to the chase immediately.

Question… “You know, I wonder… now that it’s there, why not leave the bike lane in Stanley Park?”

Answer… “You’re a f@!#’n idiot!” or “You’re letting the nazis in City Hall rule us!”

Hmm.

We’re in this day and age of instant gratification, where the dopamine hits, which years ago took some effort to generate, now are measured in seconds. The zombie-like scrolling of Instagram stories and TikTok posts are geared exactly to keep you engaged just long enough to go on to the next one. Once you’re in that loop, it can be hard to get out of it, and I’ve found myself caught up in it many times… someone sends you something, it’s amusing, it scrolls to something similar and almost as amusing, and then you look at a few more and now the algorithm knows you well enough to keep you engaged, clip after clip, the dopamine slowly dripping its way into your brain. There’s rarely anything of value there; it’s stimulus/response, and it works. And frankly, a few minutes of that vs. the few minutes it takes to eat a hot-fudge sundae… which is also stimulus/response… at least one doesn’t cause you to gain weight and/or spike your sugar levels.

But that’s also what a lot of internet “conversation” seems to have devolved to… it’s not a question of learning anything new or discussing a differing opinion… it’s more like “here’s what I have to say, who cares if it’s meaningless – take it!!”, and then instantly moving on to the next target upon whom to impose opinion and abuse. It’s not like this is trolling – another fun activity that’s been around for ages – where you post something that you know will inflame the masses. Sticking to the theme, go to a Calgary Flames forum and post a question like, “Hey guys, honestly, how come the Canucks are so much better than you…?” – and you’ll see what happens: the “two-for-one special” trolling flambé.

I guess I’m old-school… I get my online dopamine trickle from actual discussion, especially when my more-often-than-not humble opinion makes its way into someone’s brain and gives them an “aha!” moment. But that’s becoming more and more rare, because it seems people would rather snipe and move along, than stick around for something more profound. People claiming to have multiple degrees in math and physics, high-school math teachers, accountants, etc… all calling me names, and without any counter-example as to why I may be wrong. Nope… I’m just an idiot. And I’m not sure what’s worse – like if these people are think they know what they’re talking about, or not. Not sure what to make of a math teacher telling me I’m wrong, and he should know – he’s been teaching it this way for almost 30 years. Yikes. Expert indeed.

But while we’re here, let’s talk about two actual experts and what they had to say.

Last week, those two voices that had us hanging on every word three years ago… announced it’s over. Minister Adrian Dix and Dr. Bonnie Henry, in front of a much smaller gaggle of reporters than what they’d been facing on a daily basis for almost two years, announced the lifting of the final pair of restrictions – those that had to do with visitor restrictions in long-term care, assisted living and other healthcare facilities. If you happened to blink at the wrong moment, you likely missed the announcement.

So that’s it… and for those who love numerology, especially the 11:11 crowd, get this… if the initial state of emergency was announced March 19th and enacted March 20th of 2020… and the April 6th 2023 lifting of the final restrictions was decided-upon the previous day before the announcement, the length of this pandemic in this province was… 1,111 days.

Yes, indeed … that first C19 state of emergency, a temporary measure initially expected to last two weeks, haha… and by the way, did you know income tax was also a temporary measure enacted in WW2? And those ugly power-line towers down the middle-median of Boundary Rd. as you head north towards the water/wilderness? Also temporary, haha!!

The pandemic may be over, and I may never write about it again (we can only hope!), but while I’m here referencing the past… and the pandemic, and getting roasted by flamethrowers from all over America, I can’t just not mention Donald Trump.

I took a lot of heat over the last few years for what I said about Trump, so here’s a little more.

I said a while back, and I’ve said it many times… once the dominos start falling, they will keep going. There are a lot directions for the Trump dominos to fall, and New York State became the first to flick the initial domino, where 30 quickly fell. The state of Georgia is next in line, and those indictments will soon see the light of day. Then what? Who knows… but one thing is clear: After all this time (and it certainly seems to have taken a lot more time than one would’ve thought), you can expect that every single one of those initial 30 charges has been scrutinized down to the atomic level. Same with the Georgia prosecutors, and same with the ongoing Mar-a-Lago investigation. Plenty more to fall, and now that it’s begun, there will be plenty to topple.

But what’s clear is that they’re only going to go in legal directions where they’re sure they can stick the landing. Al Capone was as well-known mobster – racketeer, smuggler and murderer… but it was tax-evasion that finally took him down. Somewhere in the Trump dossier there is at least one tiny piece of incontrovertible evidence of wrong-doing. At a superficial level, there’s plenty… but these guys need it to be perfect down to tiniest of details, and I’m curious to see what it’ll be, but one thing is for sure… when it’s revealed, I’ll write about it…

…and then I will get roasted… flamed, in a glorious fashion. But what can I say… thanks to AI and the picture it generated (see attached), I’m ready!

By |2023-04-10T17:32:20-07:00April 10th, 2023|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |11 Comments
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December 31, 2022

No better time than a New Year’s message, so here it is…

I was trying to figure out what to write about… hey, want to hear about the last three years? Should we talk about Covid and Trump and masks and social distancing and Dr. Bonnie?

Probably not. I think everyone is more interested in the future these days… so let’s go in that direction. What does 2023 actually look like?

There was a bit of a societal quantum leap near the end of 2022, and it has everything to do with Artificial Intelligence… so let’s talk about that.

AI research itself seems to operate the same way as society, where it’s stagnant for a while, and suddenly there’s a sort of phase-change quantum leap that takes things to a whole new level. Very suddenly, AI is all around us. It started recently with a few AI-based art creators. Some are very good and some are insanely ridiculous. I’ll let you decide which, with respect to the picture attached to this post. That was AI-generated.

Apparently, my son’s school held an emergency meeting recently with respect to ChatGPT, an AI-based “author” that will write whatever you want, using some very simple prompts. Like:

ChatGPT, please give me a 50-word essay on Shakespeare:

“William Shakespeare was a British playwright and poet who is widely considered to be the greatest writer in the English language and one of the greatest in Western literature. His plays have been translated into every major living language and are performed more often than those of any other playwright. His works include comedies, tragedies, and historical plays, and are known for their complex characters, beautiful language, and insight into human nature.”

That’s 72 words, but jeez – not bad.

ChatGPT, please give me a 50-word essay on Covid:

“Covid-19 is a highly infectious virus that has caused a global pandemic. It has claimed millions of lives and disrupted daily life for billions of people. Governments around the world have implemented various measures to contain the spread of the virus, including lockdowns and mask mandates. Vaccines have been developed and are being distributed, but the pandemic is far from over. It is important for individuals to continue following safety guidelines, such as wearing masks and practicing social distancing, to protect themselves and others.”

That’s 84 words, but, also… not bad at all.

Is this the future? Yes, to a great extent… but the future isn’t quite here yet. One thing I’ve found playing around with this thing, and something many others have discovered, is that it’s very good at broad brushstrokes, but has serious issues with the nitty-gritty. I’ve asked it some complicated questions about things that I know a lot about and that require a lot of “vertical” knowledge. It’s pretty jarring to read something so well-written and so correct that suddenly contains glaring errors. And the issue is that those glaring errors would only be evident to someone who already knows the topic.

What do I see coming in 2023? A ton of misinformation. If we think it’s already bad, these echo chambers of self-fulfilling knowledge, it’s about to get worse because suddenly, anyone and everyone will have the ability to create well-written official-sounding content… which will start with something written by AI, and then be fiddled-around-with to suit the narrative.

For the moment, English teachers have realized that they will catch the cheating students because, inevitably, buried inside the broad brushstrokes will be little flicks of paint that absolutely don’t belong, and ruin the whole thing. But, unfortunately or not, as time goes on, these AI-based algorithms and the knowledge-stores that feed them will only get better.

Many schools no longer teach cursive writing, something a little eyebrow-raising to most Gen-X parents… but also, at some point, they stopped teaching how to use an abacus… and maybe one day, as horrifying as it sounds, the art of writing will be relegated to machines… and what we’ll be learning is how to feed AI the best queries to generate the best content.

Do you remember non-digital research? Heading to the library, looking through the drawers searching for the right Dewy Decimal System cards to point you to the right shelf where you could extract a pile of books and attempt, over a period of hours, to find what you were looking for?

I’m sure some people still do that, but it’s a dying art. Today’s equivalent is learning how to properly Google what you need, know what results are legitimate, and know how to search those results and extract what you want. As someone who knows how to do both things, I assure you… I prefer the latter. Like it or not, and I write this with only a few hours left in 2022, that’s how it works. Tomorrow is always a new day (in this case, also a new year), but that’s how progress, in every sense, works.

ChatGPT, please give me 100-word greeting of good wishes for a happy and healthy 2023:

“Wishing you all the best in the new year! May 2023 bring you good health, happiness, and success in all your endeavors. May you have the energy and strength to chase your dreams and make them a reality. May you find joy in the simple things in life and may all your days be filled with love and laughter. Here’s to a fantastic year ahead!”

Yeah… not bad at all.

Cheers!

By |2022-12-31T17:19:45-08:00December 31st, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |14 Comments
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February 26, 2022

There’s no doubt Prime Minister Justin Trudeau handled the recent “trucker convoy” debacle poorly. In hindsight, there’s a lot he could’ve done better… beginning with taking it seriously at the outset, instead of contemptuously dismissing it like it’s an annoying fly that’ll eventually find a window and make its way out.

No… by the time the fly had bounced off all of the closed windows numerous times… by the time the shit had really hit the fan, there weren’t too many options left. He chose one that’ll be discussed for years, or at least, until the next election… arguably, too harsh – who knows, though it will probably cost him that next election – but in the end, things have mostly gotten cleaned up. Hard to tell, because, of course, the world’s attention is focused elsewhere.

That Canadian State of Emergency lasted 9 days, during which time we heard every version of the Trudeau-hatred spectrum. The lefties call him Hitler-esque. The righties call him Castreau. There are a lot of confused people out there, but that never stops anyone from following the usual formula: Pick the worst, most evil leader/president/PM/king/dictator, whatever… compare your present enemy to that guy, and then somehow endeavour to draw parallels between the two. The lines will be jagged and nonsensical, but that doesn’t matter. The plethora of memes are testament to it… everyone has an opinion, and those opinions need to be heard… even if they make no sense whatsoever.

And one of those opinions being loudly chanted was how now, finally, as we can all see, Canada has become a true dictatorship. This is the beginning of the end. State of Emergency, War Measures Act, Martial Law… here it all comes, and it’s here for good. See what happens when you don’t fight for freedom? You get this.

Of course, that’s all bullshit. The State of Emergency was never going to last 5 minutes longer than it really needed to, and that turned out to be 9 days. Two hundred and sixteen hours. What’s 216 or so hours?

People typically walk around 5km/h. If you didn’t stop, you could walk over 1,000 km in that time. But, of course, you’d be stopping here and there; it’s not a sustainable pace. You’d also be slowed down depending on what you’re carrying. For example, if you’re fleeing your home in Kyiv and trying to get to the Polish border with only whatever you can carry on your back… if you could average 3.5 km/h, it’d take you almost exactly those 216 hours to cover the 750km to freedom.

Yeah, freedom. *Real freedom*. Not the “This isn’t freedom if I’m forced to wear a mask while I wait for my venti half-caff triple ristretto with caramel drizzle” nonsense.

Startling how an actual, real dictator can really bring things into focus, eh?

Putin is undoubtedly the scariest of type of dictator there is. You can see it in his eyes; a soulless stare that balances a lot of both sociopathy and intelligence. He’s been waiting for this moment for a long time, a time in place and history he’s been working towards for years. Slow and steady wins the race. It would’ve been even easier for him, but the pandemic and Trump’s non-election of 2020 got in the way of his master plan. Yeah, the Trump you convoy-crowd love so much is the same Trump calling Putin a genius for his recent moves. There’s a zero-percent chance a Trump presidency would be sending troops to defend Ukraine… and when Biden made it clear he wouldn’t either, that’s all it took. So much for the “policemen of the world”.

What other superpower can help? What other superpower has nukes or armies that at least could make some threats? China and India support Russia in this, so that’s pretty much it. Putin got in there before Ukraine became part of NATO, and that’s no coincidence. It’s open for season for Putin, and if he’s successful in Ukraine, I’ll be surprised if he stops there.

It’s actually hard to figure out how the same party that Reagan led in jamming a cold-war victory down the USSR’s throat is the same party now staunchingly defending Trump, their leader. And that’s putting it a little harshly; there was a lot of “greater good” thinking that went into what Reagan and Gorbachev ultimately achieved in the 80s… a greater good that’s now eroding every hour. Did you know Gorbachev is still alive? I wonder what he thinks of all this. I’m guessing “bitterly disappointed” would be a good summary.

If you’re still deranged enough to think waving a Canadian flag and honking your horn and blocking traffic is doing anything for freedom, tell you what: Change that flag from red and white to blue and yellow. Flooding the streets with the cacophony we’ve seen recently makes a hell of a lot more sense if you’re waving a flag from a place that’s actually going through a struggle most of us should be lucky enough never to experience.

We haven’t heard any stories yet of anyone walking 750km to freedom, but that’s only because it’s only been a few days; they’re still walking. They’re still heading towards their freedom, one defiant and heavily-laden – both physically and politically — step at a time.

By |2022-02-27T10:53:53-08:00February 26th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |15 Comments
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December 31, 2021

Talk about a perfect storm… a surging variant, a ridiculous cold snap, and this period of time between Christmas and New Year’s when everyone is barely working… and those who bother showing up are basically phoning it in. The reporting arm of the health department in Alberta has actually given up. “Yeah, we think today’s number is around 4,000… use that for now. Ask us next year. See you January 4th”.

Who can blame them; the temperatures are dipping to the levels where it doesn’t matter whether you measure it in Fahrenheit or Celsius because it’s the same number. You know, sort of like the snowfall forecast we got around here two days ago… you can expect 10 (mumble) of snow. Ten what? Centimetres? Inches? Whatever.

Well… not all things are “whatever”.

The staggering number of new cases around the country (and the entire continent… and, while we’re at it, the entire planet) beg some questions that require some answers but, due to all of the above, the simple responses are not so forthcoming.

Trying to consolidate the numbers with respect to new cases and hospitalizations and ICU admissions has been a real exercise, but what’s most important aren’t actually the case counts; at least, not around here. Dr. Henry made a statement which alluded to the fact that there are far more cases out there than we know about. That’s been the case since the start, but it’s far more pronounced in recent weeks. Her guess is 3x to 5x, but that’s what I’d have guessed months ago. These days, we don’t have the proper testing infrastructure to get accurate numbers and, even if we did, that majority of people aren’t going to get tested. Depending who you ask, in fact… people are being told not to go get tested. You’ve got symptoms? Pretend you have it. Isolate, take care of yourself… and don’t bother us unless you need medical attention. And those who actually tried to go get tested found multi-hour waits, or got sent home with a rapid test, or found that the testing site that’d been shut down because of the cold.

A quick note about those rapid antigen tests: they’re nearly useless. I say nearly, but not entirely… only because they probably work just fine if they’re used correctly, and if the test patient has a high-enough viral load to register. Unfortunately, neither of those things seem to overlap enough to get accurate results. A positive result certainly means you have it, but a negative result doesn’t mean anything.

If you’re taking a rapid-antigen test – and I am speaking now from direct experience, having subjected myself to be a guinea pig for a friend who was trying to figure out the validity of these things – you need to scour deeply — approaching your brain — for ten seconds a nostril, complete with long, uncomfortable swirls — to get a valid result. I took a few of these tests; a gingerly tickle of the inside of your nostril does nothing. Even a medium-sized dip into your nose doesn’t do it. Unless that gargantuan Q-tip makes your eyes tear up and cause you to cough, you didn’t do it right. And it was only when I did that *and* was symptomatic that I got a positive result.

Anyway, that aside, getting a positive test these days is somewhat secondary to what it implies. Around here, with our enviable “fully-vaxxed” rate, it’s pretty good. The daily new case numbers (5,000 on paper, closer to 100,000 in my opinion) are not translating to hospitalizations. At least not yet, but for now, that’s really good news. As a general statement, if you have a normal healthy immune system and you’ve been double-vaxxed or better, the overwhelming evidence implies that you’ll suffer some cold-like symptoms at worst, and that’ll be it. It still needs to be taken very seriously because, of course, you might end up passing it along to someone who wouldn’t handle it so well… and none of that has changed. Older, immune-compromised, at risk people… they’ve been taking the necessary steps to stay safe, and we need to do the same for their benefit.

The relative success story (for now) that we’re seeing here seems to be consistent with other places with high vaccination rates. Those with lower rates are being hit hard, but only because the sheer volume of cases at some point is going to translate to an overwhelming amount of more serious cases.

Looking at the graphs below, you’ll see that hospitalization rates have not gone up dramatically in Western Canada. Ontario and Quebec are indeed seeing more hospitalizations, but barely an increase in ICU cases. Manitoba, too… to a lesser extent. But West of that, numbers are actually down.

I’ve added a third row of graphs today. While the top two rows are the cases, hospitalizations, ICUs and deaths since September 1st, the bottom row are the daily new case counts starting at the very beginning of the pandemic. They’re interesting to look at for numerous reasons… like, you can see clearly the different waves… but have a look at Quebec, from day 1. Near the very beginning, in that first little wave, there’s a notable spike. That spike was from early May, 2020… when over a 3-day period, they saw more than 4,000 new cases and over 300 deaths. It’s interesting to note just how insignificant that little spike looks compared to what came after, especially what’s going on now. But, back then… that was honestly the moment were all thinking that we’re totally screwed. That we, here in BC, were two weeks away from a tidal wave of cases and deaths.

We’ve learned a lot since then, and one of the most important is the realization of just how effective these vaccines are. We see today’s skyrocketing case numbers and we’re nowhere near as freaked out.

On that note… I haven’t written about Trump in a while, but it’s worth mentioning this: For as long as this pandemic has been going on, he’s been talking out of both sides of his mouth. He initially played it down, no big deal, it’ll be gone in a few weeks… and it became the rallying cry of his most-extreme base. His fervent supporters were as anti-mask, anti-vaxx and anti-science as he pretended to be… notwithstanding he took great pride in being responsible for funding Operation Warp Drive which indeed had a lot to do with developing these miraculous vaccines. You know, the ones he claimed we didn’t need and don’t do anything anyway because the virus is no big deal BUT I’ve created the greatest vaccine ever to combat the China virus BUT you don’t really need the vaccine BUT yeah, I got the vaccine, as did my entire family… we all got it quietly while nobody was watching, as did every Republican politician in Washington BUT really, you’re fine, forget vaccines and masks BUT yeah, we all got the booster too BUT….

Recently, and this is the eyebrow-raising part, Trump has been announcing to his followers that yeah, he got the booster and, you know what, they should get it too. But rather than listen to their fearless leader, they boo him and disagree with him. He, of course, doesn’t care… but why is that? It’s a 180, and it needs to be understood.

From the people’s point of view, they’re so deeply sunk into that mindset that they can’t, at this point, admit it’s wrong. They’ve already drowned in the Kool Aid. A lot of them can be heard saying they’d rather die of Covid than get the vaccine, and many of them will get that wish granted. Trump doesn’t care; he never did. But he does care about making himself reasonable and relevant for 2022 and beyond, so now he’s pandering to the bigger Republic base… those that aren’t so anti-everything. And that leaves those fringe people completely abandoned, discouraged and betrayed. And, in a bit of trouble if they don’t change their mind because that’s the demographic that makes up the vast majority of pandemic-related deaths. The anti-vaxx crowd.

Our BC fully-vaxxed rate is 90%. The majority of people in hospital for Covid come from that remaining 10%. The math isn’t complicated. And the American fully-vaxxed number isn’t even close to 90%… more like 62%. Unfortunately, for some select demographics, it could get quite ugly.

Last year, at exactly this time, I wrote a relatively optimistic piece about how the worst is over. Vaccines are just around the corner, and once we all get them, this will all have been a bad dream. Well, that was a little naïve, but I’m going to say the same thing again. Given the direction of Omicron and where we are with all of this, by this time next year, Covid won’t be a distant nightmare from the past that’s still haunting us. Rather, it’ll be an endemic annoyance for which we’ll have an armada of weapons: Vaccines, treatments, prevention therapies, whatever. Every day is one step closer to C19 becoming the common cold of the future, but we’re not there yet. Next year…

So… wishing you all a Very Happy, Prosperous and – most of all – *Healthy* 2022. All the best… and Cheers!

By |2021-12-31T20:54:45-08:00December 31st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |16 Comments
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October 5, 2021

Well… I guess it depends how you look at it.

A little over 20 years ago, a group of terrorists took over four planes with the intention of crashing them into buildings. Three of them succeeded. So… what was the death toll? If you count the total of passengers, crew and terrorists on the planes, they add up to 284. Is it fair to say the death toll of 9/11 was 284? Of course not. We also have to count all of those on the ground.

Do we count the hundreds that were killed instantly upon impact? Do we count those that were killed trying to escape their building but were caught when it collapsed? Do we count those that preferred to jump, and die on their own accord, with a final breath of fresh air instead of being burned alive? Do we count the hundreds of firemen who lost their lives trying to rescue all of the aforementioned people? The answer to all of that is agreed upon to be yes… and it adds up to just under 3,000.

But many of those people that survived that day succumbed to injuries later. Many rescue workers developed respiratory problems and cancer due to the toxicity of Ground Zero. And how many suicides emerged from the shattered lives of those left behind? Do we count those?

And, of course, 9/11 launched a war, one that lasted twenty years. Add all of those casualties – military, civilian, other… and now we’re well over 70,000. Did those terrorists kill over 70,000 people? I don’t know where you want to draw the line, but here’s a simple fact: Were it not for the terrorists, most of those 70,000 would be alive today.

Closer to home… when this pandemic began, the “it’s no big deal” crowd loved throwing out bullshit numbers like “Covid has only killed 0.0000234%” of the population. With a bit of time and science behind us, we can get a pretty accurate feel for where things are actually at… and where they’re going.

To begin with, like my 9/11 example above, there are complicated philosophical arguments that can be made as to what counts and what doesn’t. There are also abhorrent arguments that can be made like “old people were going to die anyway, so if it’s from Covid, it shouldn’t count.” Tell that to a 9/11 widow whose husband took his own life a year after the attacks because he just couldn’t handle it.

After all is said and done, there’s very little to counteract against the simplest measure of all; Excess Deaths. You can argue that someone with serious pre-existing medical conditions shouldn’t count. You can argue the someone who had mild Covid but died in a car accident on the way to the hospital shouldn’t count. You can argue that a family that died of hunger or misery or loneliness because their sole bread-winner died of Covid – shouldn’t count. There are plenty of arguments that can be made on both sides of those, but it doesn’t matter. At the end of the day, it’s excess deaths. If a certain population typically sees 1,000 people die during a certain period of time but now it’s 1,200, unless you have a very obvious explanation for those 200, if it’s been in the last 18 months, I’m going to assume it’s directly related to Covid.

Globally, the official death count is around 4.8M. That number is way off, and as per all of the above, you can argue what should count and what shouldn’t, but I can tell you this… the real number is around 16 million, with a 95% confidence interval of somewhere between 9.9M and 18.5M. And where exactly do I get this? Excess deaths, of course.

The issue with all of this is that the analysis of this data is only as good as the data itself. From a North American point of view, excess deaths seem to be about 20% above the official C19 numbers… and that’s if you believe the numbers, which generally, you should. There was a period of time when the Trump White House took control of the numbers and everything suddenly dropped. The issue these days is that many sources of data seem to have become less reliable. Nevertheless, at the end of the day, you can’t fudge death numbers. Those are publicly available and out of anyone’s hands to manipulate.

In other places though… China’s official death toll from C19 is… less than 5,000. As you may have noticed, China no longer cares what anyone thinks, nor do they even make an effort to hide behind plausible deniability. They will do and say whatever they want without feeling the need to answer to it, and there’s no better example than the recent hostage exchange. The two Michaels came this way, Meng went that way. Notwithstanding China has been saying for two years how these two are spies and they have evidence and here’s an 11-year sentence, etc… a few minutes after Meng was released, so were they. There was no re-trial. There was no “new evidence” to show their innocence. There wasn’t even a “it’ll take a couple of days to process their release.” Nothing… and to hell with the optics. Here are your prisoners; we’ll take ours. Think whatever you want. We don’t care.

China’s official Covid death toll probably undercounts reality by about 11,000%. Their true death toll is estimated to be between 210,000 and 1.5M. There are countless examples around the world where the official counts are way out of touch with reality… and what’s emerging out of the data is are things like dire humanitarian crises in many countries in Africa. The excess deaths are in many cases, like in China, thousands of percentage points higher than the official numbers. The same can be said about some countries in Latin America.

Anyway… that’s where we’re at, and it’s unfortunately far from over. Or is it? Is there a global light-at-the-end-of-the-tunnel? Like all of the above, it very much depends how you look at it… but that’s a topic for another day.

October 5, 2021

By |2021-10-05T20:10:20-07:00October 5th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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September 10, 2021

Hey… it’s been a while! So… sit back and relax, because this is going to be a long one. We have plenty to cover.

I’ll start by glossing over a bit of the current situation, because we’re all familiar with it, and although the numbers continue to provide a glaringly obvious message, there are those who refuse to look at them.

Depending where you look, you’ll find variations on the same theme… and they all say things like your chances with vaccines are not 20% or 60% better… it’s more like 2,000%… or 6,000%. Every single person in BC today in the ICU that’s under the age of 50 is unvaccinated. The vast majority of people in hospital are unvaccinated. We can talk about BC, Alberta, Ontario, Canada, California, Nebraska, Florida, whatever… it’s all the same everywhere; just a different multiplier, often based on vaccination rates. The numbers all range from quite significant to truly significant. There are no exceptions anywhere; the vaccinated population is way, way better off.

I’ve included the usual three rows of graphs, though the top one – the graphs of daily new cases – once, the most important graphs imaginable… are becoming somewhat irrelevant. Much more relevant is who got infected (Vaccinated? Unvaccinated?) and how it’s affecting them. The real numbers to look at (and the graphs that go with it) are hospitalizations and ICU admissions; the bottom row of graphs. There’s certainly a kick upwards, especially in Alberta and Saskatchewan, who are seeing levels comparable to back in May… but for the rest of us, it looks pretty reasonable and no reason to panic. Especially if you’re vaccinated.

In the last three days, the average daily number of C19 deaths in Canada is 34. Since the American population is about 9x ours, you might expect a death rate 9 x 34, which is around 300. But instead, it’s close to 2,500. And needless to say, largely due to overwhelmed hospitals way beyond capacity in jurisdictions with low vaccination rates. No matter how you slice the data, it all points to the same thing.

On that note, the daily vaccination rates show a significant slowdown. That’s the middle row of graphs. It hasn’t totally died out, but we’re nowhere near the rates of early July… though it’s picking up a bit again, and I have something to say about that.

There are a lot of people who’ve recently gotten vaccinated because of the “vaccine passport” that’s coming alive in 72 hours.

Side-note with respect to the rollout; I am an IT/tech/computer guy and I can be as critical as they come, especially when talking about deploying systems to massive amounts of people who’ll all use it simultaneously. I have a lot of experience in that, and I know it’s complicated, so I know what you have to plan for, etc… and so I have to say, Kudos to those involved with this thing. It certainly wasn’t without some initial little hiccups, but that’s to be expected when unprecedented numbers of people suddenly flood to it. In fact, if it hadn’t bent a little under the load, I’d be complaining they spent too much on it. It’s like building a 16-lane Lions Gate Bridge, 8 lanes each way… when it’s only needed for New Year’s Eve. Sure, you’ll never have traffic problems on the bridge itself, but just imagine Georgia St. or Taylor Way. What a mess it’d be without addressing them too.

And this thing has to not only be its own infrastructure, it has to communicate with varying other older systems and not flood them with too many connections and requests. The queuing system seems to have worked well; I jumped on it the moment I saw the url and found myself in a 17-minute line-up. That queue grew to over an hour at some point, and indeed, some people got 503 errors and gateway timeouts and whatever else. So what. Moments later, it worked. I have yet to hear about anyone who got past the queue and then had a problem, and that implies excellent design. Everything past the choke-point, that single point of failure… so far has been flawless. And, after all of that… at this moment, the wait time is zero and it’s likely to remain that way, even with the flood of people on Monday rushing to get it.

But let’s talk about those people who, today, would get a “No Record Found” if they tried to fetch their card.

For the last two years, there have been those people… well all know a bunch… masks are useless, vaccines are useless, conspiracies and so on. Now, perhaps having done some actual research and listened to some actual reliable sources, maybe they’ve come to the conclusion that getting vaccinated would be the intelligent thing to do. But how can they, without totally losing face? Admitting they’re wrong now would mean admitting they’ve been wrong all along, and that’s a tough pill to swallow. Some people’s egos just can’t take the hit.

Well… now they have the perfect out. They can proudly and loudly announce how they still feel vaccines are useless… but… they just want to live their life in peace and do things they want… so, they just got vaccinated and there’s their little blue vaccine card, and soon, after their second dose, it’ll be green. Yay!

And if you’re one of those people or know someone… yes, do it. Tell them to do it. Go for it. All of your friends and family who’ve been pleading to you to get vaccinated couldn’t care less about your justification, whether it’s the inward-facing or the outward-facing version, however different they may be. Just go get it done. Go right ahead and blame it on anything and everything else. It doesn’t matter. All of those aforementioned people will welcome your decision with open arms.

Looking back at where a lot of this anti-everything came from, and removing Donald Trump’s catastrophic contribution to the public sentiment, in hindsight, there may have been two things that might have “spun” better. Better “optics”. It’s not like pandemics have a PR department, but if they did…

For one thing, naming this a novel coronavirus initially convinced people that this is something new, unseen and a complete mystery. If instead they’d labelled it originally what it really is… a new version of something old, perhaps there’d have been a lot less hesitancy when the vaccines appeared. Everyone understands sequels. Remember SARS from years ago? Well, here’s “SARS 2: The Killer Returns”. And everything we’ve learned from the original SARS we can now put to use. This is not a new story; it’s a continuation of an old one. So instead of a brand new vaccine technology being quickly developed against a pathogen the likes of like we’ve never seen before, people might understand that it’s just a new version of a virus that’s been around for decades, being fought by R&D technology that’s also been around for decades. In Hollywood terms, that story certainly would’ve “tested better.’

That didn’t happen, and that lesson didn’t get learned, and then that skeptical crowd was met with “Vaccine Passports”. Once again, something new, untested and worthy of rebellion.

Calling it was it is – an immunization record – would also have “tested better”. We all already have an immunization record… with words like smallpox and measles and diphtheria and mumps and whatever else in it. We all have it and many of us have needed it. Some employers demand it. Some schools demand it. Some travel destinations demand it. All doggy daycares demand it too. There’s nothing new with immunization records… but you throw the word “passport” in there, and the implications of not having one, and the “Freedom And Rights!!1!1!!!1!!!” crowd shows up.

And on that note… if you think I’m going to voice my disgust at people who picket and protest outside of hospitals, insulting healthcare workers and blocking access for actual patients… I am, but that’s only part of it.

The other part of it is the symbolism associated with it. I happened to see among the pictures of the protesters a person wearing a little yellow star with “Not Vaccinated” written on it, where conventionally you’d expect to see the word “Jude’”.

Cultures these days are up in arms about appropriation. Here’s a cheap dreamcatcher for $5.99, available in the local tourist shop. It’ll look so cute in the window! Here’s a bundle of sage; take it home and light it and wave it around. That’s called smudging. Isn’t that cute? And Woke? We’re *so* Culturally Lit!!

Yeah, one can see how offensive that would be to people who understand the depth and significance of what those things really are. Their history. What they symbolize. What it meant to the people for whom it was intended.

So, let’s talk about that little yellow star. First of all, and this part of it isn’t so well known, that wasn’t the only Nazi-imposed oppressive symbol of The Holocaust. Red triangle? Communist. Brown triangle? Gypsy. Purple triangle? Jehovah’s Witness. Pink inverted triangle? Homosexual.

And for a brief moment, imagine the outrage from the LGBTQ community if that pink triangle were appropriated for this purpose. Idiots screaming about freedom, comparing it to the struggles of a community that’s been marginalized for centuries.

But they’ve chosen that little yellow star to complain about their lack of freedom, so let’s go with that. That little yellow star is indeed a striking symbol of lack of freedom. For those who had to wear it, it meant a loss of freedom, and depending on what year, it meant something different. From 1933 to 1945, at differing times, it meant the loss of freedom to travel. To go to school. To own a business. To operate a business. To own property. To have your own home. To own anything. And finally, to live… slowly and surely, those rights were eroded until there was nothing left. But really, at no point, did it have anything to do with being able to book a table at that sushi place in Yaletown where they make those awesome cube-like nigiri that they roast with a blowtorch. No… the Jews of the Holocaust weren’t worrying too much about stuff like that and, further, if the solution to their problems could’ve been solved by a disease-preventing inoculation, I can think of at least 6 million people who gladly would’ve taken advantage of it.

If you want to complain about freedoms being ripped away from you, talk to the women of Afghanistan. Hell, you don’t even need to go that far. Talk to the women in Texas… both groups of women who until recently had rights which were ruthlessly and unexpectedly ripped away from them.

So… I look at these despicable people marching with their ignorant, illiterate signs and their tasteless and inappropriate symbols… and here’s what comes to mind: Many years ago, I took a few law courses at VCC… a sort of evening-adult-education thing. It was more about getting familiar with some business law issues, but we covered a bit of criminal law as well. Interesting stuff. One thing I remember is the difference between assault and battery. Those two terms are commonly used somewhat interchangeably, but there is a difference… and the word assault is sometimes used incorrectly. Hitting someone isn’t an assault; that’s the actual battery. There doesn’t need to be any physical contact for there to be an assault… just inducing fear or threats or intimidation; that’s an assault. Of course, it’s hard to hit someone without there having been some element of those three things beforehand, so it’s often assault and battery combined.

Why do I mention this? I mention it only because, in my case, it’ll undoubtedly be both that I’ll be charged with if I see anyone wearing one of these little yellow stars… because I will walk up right up to them and rip the fucking thing right off their shirt or jacket while simultaneously punching them in the face. A very quick one-two.

My thinking is that it’d be so quick that there technically might not be time for it to be an assault. Just battery… for sure. Anyway, nitpicking… but I think everyone who knows me well would be surprised… that the guy who goes out of his way to shoo a fly or bee or even spider out of the house, instead of so-easily squashing them… would be the guy arrested for punching a protester in the face. Truthfully, I haven’t been in an actual fistfight since I was 10 years old. But I’m telling you right now – perhaps somewhat blowing my potential “moment of rage, no pre-meditated intent” defence: If I run into one of these people, they will need to visit the hospital to which moments earlier they’d been blocking access.

Well! You’ll either hear about me in the news… or I’ll be back here in due course with more to say; this has already gotten a bit long. Enough for now. Have a great weekend… till next time!

By |2021-09-10T20:00:35-07:00September 10th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, History|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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July 3, 2021

Death and taxes aren’t actually the only certainties in life, of course… there are a few more… among them:

1. Have you ever had a cold?
2. Have you ever had the flu?
3. Are you presently alive?

The answer is 100% for all three, for everyone reading this… but if you want to argue it’s not, that it’s probably 99.999 something percent, then ok, I’ll mention that not everyone pays taxes either… exhibit A would be the former president of the U.S. and his entire organization… who are about to find out the hard way that you don’t mess with The Tax Man. Al Capone got away with racketeering and bootlegging and murder… for decades. But he couldn’t defend himself against the charges of tax evasion, and that’s what sent him to prison for the rest of his life.

But this article is neither about Trump nor his ill-fated organization. Rather, it’s a discussion about certainties, and what they look like going forward.

Colds are around. The flu is around. Measles and Mumps and Rubella are all around too, but we rarely worry about them… for good reason. They’ve been vaxxed out of our “worry zone”.

There are some important things to note going forward… and that is, that cases of C19 will come and go. Pockets of cases will flare up here and there, like that group of insane anti-vax moms in California responsible for a measles outbreak. Up next, the glorious state of Arkansas with its deplorable vaccination rates; bring on the completely preventable next wave of C19.

Actually, to clarify, we may see flare-ups of cases here too. Should we be concerned? At some point (and we’re at it, of very close to it…), the thing to watch is no longer cases. They become irrelevant. What becomes important are hospitalizations, ICU cases and deaths… numbers which have plummeted, and there’s every expectation they’ll remain low… because, again… you know… vaccinations.

This pandemic turns into an “endemic” in different places at different times. We’re pretty-much there now around here… because once you’ve done everything you can, and the support infrastructure is in place, there’s really not much else. As odd as it sounds, does it actually matter if you catch C19? If you catch it, but you’re asymptomatic and/or non-infectious to others? I’d never really thought of it before all this, but how many times have I had a cold or flu and not even known? Their presentation can also be so mild as to be asymptomatic.

So… with certainty: It’ll be around for a while, but if you’re fully vaxxed and/or fully immune for other reasons, you have little to worry about. The new seasonal cold will likely hit you harder, because for that one, you have no antibodies.

The one group that needs mentioning here are those who can’t be vaccinated for medical reasons and/or whose immune systems aren’t up to the task of reacting adequately to the vaccine… a group all of us become part of as we get older… which is why research into this will continue forever… or, until it’s eradicated from existence. We did it with smallpox… and we can certainly do it here too.

By |2021-07-03T17:01:23-07:00July 3rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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June 23, 2021

Let’s take a closer look at out neighbours to the south, where the overall single-jab vaccination rate is around 54% and stagnating…

The top-10 most vaccinated states are: Vermont, Massachusetts, Hawaii, Connecticut, Maine, New Jersey, Rhode Island, Pennsylvania, New Hampshire & New Mexico.

Vermont tops the list with a vaccination percentage of 73.1%, while New Mexico rounds out the top-10 with 60.8%.

The bottom 10 looks like this…

North Dakota, South Carolina, Georgia, Arkansas, Tennessee, Idaho, Alabama, Wyoming, Louisiana & Mississippi.

The best of those worst-10 is North Dakota at 43.4%. The worst is Mississippi at 36.0%

That’s quite a divide… where the top state more than doubles the worst one.

Here’s another interesting stat about all of those states…

In the last presidential election, of the top-10, all of them voted Democrat.

Of the bottom-10, 9 of them voted Republican. The one that didn’t, Georgia, is so inwardly-horrified at the result that their Republican-controlled government recently disenfranchised more than 100,000 potential voters, striking them from the rolls… and this was after enacting a number of laws that can only be called “Voter Suppression”. Take a guess which voters are most affected.

None of this is much of a surprise, though the blatant starkness of it is a little eye-opening… but what’s the deal? The blue state/red state divisions largely precede the pandemic, so how does it necessarily follow that raving, unrelenting Trump supporters would also be the anti-mask/anti-vax crowd?

The answer is a bit more complicated than “They’re just a bunch of ignorant rednecks”. The answer, in fact, has a lot to do with distrust of the government. When you’re poor and/or uneducated and/or sick and tired of hearing lies about how the government is going to do so much for you (and then doesn’t), you end up jumping ship to the guy you can relate to… he’s one of us, loud, abrasive, calls it like he sees it, etc. He’s not cut from government cloth.

Which makes Trump all the worse. If anybody could’ve convinced that group about masks and vaccines, it would’ve been him. It could’ve and it should’ve been him. Notwithstanding the shitshow it took to get him elected, it’s like the universe said “Hmm… there’s going to be this pandemic, and a lot of Americans will lose their lives. At least, who could we put in power in the U.S. to mitigate that? Someone that people who’d generally ignore government advice actually listen to?”

Without a doubt, his handling of this pandemic will be what history judges him on, and it’ll be appropriately brutal. When all is said and done, countless American deaths that could’ve been prevented… a figure officially set at over 600,000 at the moment, but the real figure is already a two-comma number.

Trump likes to make shit up as he goes along, depending who he’s talking to. We know he quietly got vaccinated while at the same time telling everyone it’s unnecessary. And then, a couple of months ago, this magnificent quote: ““In a certain way, I’m the father of the vaccine because I was the one that pushed it.”

At least we can end this relatively sad commentary with a good laugh.

By |2021-06-23T17:05:12-07:00June 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Space & Astronomy|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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