USA

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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By |2021-02-13T17:03:01-08:00February 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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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
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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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By |2021-02-10T17:05:17-08:00February 10th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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February 9, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except… it was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By |2021-02-09T17:03:00-08:00February 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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January 31, 2021

Several years ago, I visited the U.S. for about 30 minutes with a process that’s called “Flag poling” – where you in essence cross the border, touch the American flagpole, and hop back into Canada. The reason was to take my nephew who had to re-enter Canada to validate his student visa… which requires entering through some specific port of entry. You can’t do it from within Canada.

The idea was to just drive down, do a U-turn, and come back and do the paperwork. It’s all on the Canadian side; the U.S. doesn’t care at all. Or, shouldn’t.

When we got to Peace Arch, there was a long lineup (this was a Saturday morning) – more than a 90-minute wait… backed up well-past the Duty Free on the right. Which got me to thinking… let’s just walk. Walk into the U.S. enough that we can turn around and walk back into Canada with a little piece of paper proving where we were.

We parked the car in the Duty Free parking lot and set off on foot. It’s not a long walk… and, it’s kinda cool. We did the “haha you’re in Canada and I’m in the States” nonsense and took some pictures. Then, we kept walking, and, as we approached the U.S. border control from the “wrong” side, there was border guard, with a big gun, standing with his back to us. He was staring to the south and couldn’t hear us coming, but the last thing I wanted to do was “surprise” this guy, so… while still walking towards him, when we were about 20 meters away, I coughed loudly. He spun around quickly, both hands on his automatic weapon… which, fortunately, he didn’t point right in our face.

“What are you doing!!”, he screamed at us. I explained.

“You’re doing it wrong!!”, he screamed. Yikes. Welcome to America. OK, noted for future reference… there’s a right way — and a wrong way — to walk into the U.S…

Our wrong way took us not just past the actual Peace Arch but, of course… if you’re there already, you walk through it.

The Peace Arch itself is exactly that, a monument to peace between these two great nations, celebrating the longest unprotected border in the world. Attached to the Peace Arch are some iron gates, and several inscriptions:

“Children of a common mother”

“Brethren dwelling together in unity”

And, of course, the famous “May these gates never be closed”.

Technically, those gates will indeed never be closed; they can’t be, because they’re not hinged… and, they’re solidly bolted onto The Peace Arch. It’s purely symbolic. But the spirit of it is well-understood… and, of course, since last March, they’ve been very-much closed. For how long? Every month, that closure gets extended… currently, till at least Feb 21st… but it’ll be a lot longer than that. On that note, there’s an interesting anniversary coming up in September… when The Peace Arch will turn 100 years old; it was in September of 1921 that it was dedicated. There should be a good party on that lawn that day… weather-permitting. And pandemic-permitting. But for now, it’s as closed as it’s ever been… including, as of today, even more-so to travellers from Mexico and the Caribbean.

As exciting as walking into another country can be, there’s one better… on my to-do list one day is to cross from Spain into Portugal via… zip-line! Yes… from a little hill in Portugal, you can zip-line over the Guadiana river, straight into Spain… a 720-meter ride that takes less than a minute, at speeds up to 80km/h. You even get to cross a time zone. Maybe not for everyone, but it’s better than being yelled at by an American border guard.

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By |2021-01-31T17:04:32-08:00January 31st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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January 27, 2021

Today is Holocaust Remembrance Day… recognized every January 27th because it was on this day in 1945 that the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp was liberated.

For all my Jewish friends and family, there isn’t much I could write here that they don’t already know… but this is going out more to everyone else, because I want to touch on the topic in a way that involves everyone… because, at the end of the day, this affects everyone, not just the unfortunate 6,000,000.

In second place to the most easily disprovable conspiracy theory (flat earth being number one) is holocaust denial. And while flat earthers just amuse me and make me a little sad, holocaust deniers get me angry. Very angry. There’s a video clip somewhere of some idiot “Moon Landings Were Faked” conspiracy theorist hounding Buzz Aldrin on the street, trying to shove a bible in his face and trying to make him swear on it that he actually walked on the moon. Calling him a liar and a thief. Buzz tries to get away from him, can’t… and eventually loses his cool and punches the guy in the face. I get it. It’s what anyone can expect from me as well if you question something that’s, unfortunately, far too close to home; going back on both sides of my family, more perished than survived the holocaust… and some entire branches in Auschwitz itself.

Hearing the nonsensical “here’s an aerial view of the camp… there’s no way that blah blah blah….” type of arguments… and setting aside the overwhelming quantities of first-hand evidence and eyewitness accounts… here’s a simple question in return: The well-documented and widely published European census of 1933 counted 9.5 million Jews. In 1945, that number was around 3.5 million. It’s really a very simple question… where did all those people go? If this was a big conspiracy, where did they all hide? Six million people is a lot… where are their kids and grandkids? The world population of Jews was 16.6 million just before WWII, and it still hasn’t recovered. Today, it’s still less than 15 million.

At the insurrection at The Capitol three weeks ago, there was a guy with a “Camp Auschwitz” t-shirt. There was a guy with a shirt that stated “6 million wasn’t enough”… and that right there answers the question, if there was any doubt, as to why we need a Holocaust Remembrance Day. It is, of course, first and foremost… to recognize, remember and honour those 6 million… but part of that is remembering for the future; spreading the message far and wide… not only did this happen, but it can happen again. And not just with Jews, but with anyone. Yeah, anyone… consider the fact that Jews weren’t geographically tied to any place. There’s never justification for genocide, but at least you can understand the tribalism when one group of people who look a certain way march into the territory of others who don’t look like them and decide to get rid of them all and take everything. It’s not a justification, but perhaps an explanation deep-rooted in the human animal of survival of the fittest.

But in this case, Jews were a thriving part of society… making up roughly 2% of the population and immersed within it at every level. Why target them? You know who else is 2% of the population? Red-haired people. Gingers. What would happen if some psychotic military leader somewhere in the world today decided that red-haired people are clearly soulless, devil incarnates, and we need to get rid of them. Unfortunately, the events of three weeks ago leads me to believe that a not-insignificant population of brain-washed zombies might buy in. Yeah, it’s for the greater good… and hey, it’s not us they’re coming after… so, sure.

The motto of this day is “Never Again”… but the frightening part – perhaps the most impactful part – perhaps the most important and persistent legacy of Holocaust Remembrance Day – it needs to be this, and I will quote another Jew who managed to survive the holocaust… Albert Einstein: “The world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.”

You’ve all read that poem… which to summarize, talks about how first they came for some guy, and nobody said or did anything… and then they came for some other guy and, again, nobody did or said anything…and eventually they came for me, and there was nobody left to help me.

This is why it’s critically important, not just to passively remember, but to actively be engaged at forging a future that can’t repeat the past… like throw the book at Donald Trump. And at the insurrectionists. And at the lawmakers who supported them. Because anything less is a tacit acknowledgement that as long as it doesn’t affect “me”… well then, whatever. It’s not my problem. This is the key that needs to be hammered home, and America almost got a taste of it… that by the time you’re saying, “Holy shit, what’s going on?!” – it might be too late. Everyone has to remember…it’s not just a question of letting people think it’s ok to get away with things when you think it doesn’t affect you; at the end of the day, it most certainly could. “If only we’d…” are not thoughts you ever want to be having when it affects your country, your home, your family.

Maybe they didn’t see it coming in Europe. That’s bullshit, but it’s an argument. Then when it arrived, well, maybe nobody knew it was going on. Also bullshit. I don’t buy it for a moment. Also – irrelevant. To some extent, if it’s not already here, it’s coming. It might be tomorrow or it might be in 200 years… but somewhere between those two end points, the “it could never happen here” mantra will be chanted out shortly before whatever *it* is actually happens.

Or, everyone realizes that we’re all in this together, whatever *this* is, and we maintain an active – not passive – role in maintaining it. As we’ve seen recently in countless examples, it takes a lot longer to build something meaningful than to destroy it.

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By |2021-01-27T17:03:01-08:00January 27th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , |10 Comments
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January 23, 2021

We watched a movie the other night… I thought it’d be a waste of time, but the kids really wanted to see it. OK… I can spare an hour and forty minutes, and who knows… it might be amusing. It’s called “Behind the Curve” (Netflix), and it’s all about Flat Earthers – the society whose members genuinely believe that the earth is flat. Or, pretend to. Or, are members for other reasons. OK, queue it up.

My assumption was that it’d be 100 minutes of idiots espousing theories that make no sense. Certainly, that was part of it. But above all that, there’s a genuine sadness to it, and some enlightening points that are incredibly relevant to today.

Of all the conspiracy theories out there, this is the one that’s most easily disprovable. For more than a thousand years, intelligent people have been devising experiments based on heights, distances, shadows and trigonometry… that show that the earth is a sphere. So good were some of these ancient experiments, that they were pretty-accurately able to calculate the diameter and circumference. This throws a bit of a wrench into the flat-earth conspiracy where millions of scientists, NASA employees and pilots are all in on it. You’d have to add Pythagoras, Plato, Aristotle and Archimedes to the list, among many others.

Anyway, it doesn’t matter – the details of how a flat earth could even be possible don’t add up, to the extent there’s disagreement within the group. Is there a giant dome, snow-globe-like, covering the heavens? If not, what are all the stars and planets attached to? Queue the internal bickering.

Shortly into the movie, you realize that there’s something a little off about these people. They’re not dangerously crazy… just… off. Something emotional that comes across as almost child-like… and then it becomes obvious. This is a support group for like-minded people who’ve found each other. They feel like they’re part of something big. They feel they get it, and everyone else doesn’t… and it’s their mission to educate the poor, ignorant masses.

They don’t mind being called stupid idiots by the rest of the world… not only because they’re used to it, but because, to some extent, they bask in it. Us versus them. We know. You don’t. And this is where the bigger-picture relevancy comes in. When everyone tells you what you believe in is nonsense, for many people, human nature dictates they double down. They entrench their belief and they will never let go of it and they will build (and share) crazier and crazier ideas to support something that’s actually unsupportable. Queue the madness.

Sound familiar? At least, these guys aren’t storming The Capitol. Let’s talk about a different sort of queue… just Q.

There’s an interesting thing going on in the U.S. (actually, around the world – apparently Japan has a big following as well…) – and I’m talking about Q and QAnon and all that. For years, their now-absent leader Q has been dropping hints about what’s about to happen. The original finish line was January 6th, when Trump would seize control via – heh, we know what that looked like. That didn’t work out so well, so the Qs shifted to believing the failed storming was part of a bigger plan; one that would now allow the president to invoke martial law, take back those key states, and continue the presidency. None of that happened, of course, and the smooth, quiet transition of power took place. Now what.

Typically, when conspiracies hit their finish line, one of a few things can happen. One is that people realize it’s nonsense and bail. Another is that they’re so sunk into it that they will continue the fight, no matter how senseless it might be. And another possibility is that they claim it all actually came to be, just as they said… and most people don’t realize it. There was a lot of that – all of it – in 2012 when the world didn’t end. Some people came to the conclusion it was all nonsense. Some people claim the math was done wrong, and the end is coming.. later in 2012 (didn’t happen) or maybe 2021. I guess if you keep pushing the date further and further, eventually you’ll be right. And, some claim, the world *did* end, and now we’re in some illusionary remnant version. For what it’s worth, if this is The Matrix, give me the blue pill. I’d rather ride out this illusion than battle aliens the rest of my life.

Q is seeing a lot of disillusioned people bail on them at present. They realize it must have been nonsense; they were duped. There is no master plan. For those not feeling so rudderless, they will continue the fight, though now I’m sure there’s confusion what that might look like. And… there are some who think it all worked out… and that, I kid you not, Trump is still in fact in the White House, and that he and Biden did some sort of face swap thing like in that John Travolta/Nicholas Cage movie. If you really need to keep holding on to this particular conspiracy, and that things are still in place, that’s where you wind up today.

And with these flat earth people… skirting the fine line between philosophy, art, science and madness… the final scene of the movie – I don’t think I’m giving too much away here by announcing that the earth is, indeed, a sphere (an oblate spheroid if you want to be perfectly technical about it… the earth is a little compressed at the poles and bulging at the equator, due to the spin)… so at the end of the movie, these guys have devised an experiment to prove the earth is flat. It’s pretty straightforward… attach a powerful laser to a stick 15 feet high. Point it to a big poster board a few miles away, also 15 feet high. If the laser hits it, clearly the earth is flat.

This is a sound experiment. At that distance, the curvature of the earth is not irrelevant. If you imagine the curve “kicking in”, that laser should hit about 21 feet high to compensate.

The guys wait for darkness and fire-up their well-calibrated laser. But nothing hits the board. “Jeez, what’s wrong”, they wonder. The laser is on, they really should see it. They move the big poster board around, but nothing.

“Try moving it up”, suggests one guy… so they do… they lift it 6 feet, and the bright laser comes splashing in.

“Oh.” says the guy.

Queue the credits.

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By |2021-01-23T17:03:40-08:00January 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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January 20, 2021

I remember exactly how I felt four years ago, watching Donald Trump’s inauguration, and listening to his speech. A sense of foreboding. Disbelief. Fear of the unknown. That this guy is going to guide the U.S. to some dark places, and he may well take Canada and much of the rest of the world with him. Barack Obama was probably having similar thoughts when he penned his outgoing letter to Trump. In it, he wrote, “… we are just temporary occupants of this office. That makes us guardians of those democratic institutions and traditions — like rule of law, separation of powers, equal protection and civil liberties — that our forebears fought and bled for. Regardless of the push and pull of daily politics, it’s up to us to leave those instruments of our democracy at least as strong as we found them.”

In Pink Floyd’s “The Wall”, there is a song called “Goodbye Blue Sky” – and if you watch the video of the song (taken from the movie), it conveys it well… you only need to watch the first 30 seconds… where things go from sunny and happy and hopeful… to darkness. The symbolism is not subtle; it’s blunt, like a sledgehammer to the gut. Trump did indeed take many things in the wrong direction, but at least he didn’t take the planet down with him. He left his country in tatters, from which it’ll certainly rebuild… and now, at least, it can begin. There was a big sigh of relief when noon EST came and went. It’s done.

Biden’s inaugural speech was the polar opposite of what was spoken four years ago; he preached unity, understanding, dignity, tolerance, respect. He faced-up to the challenges ahead. He alluded to the mess he inherits. We shall see. Talk is cheap, and his actions will speak louder than his words… but in my opinion, he offers for the U.S. something that’s been sorely lacking for the last four years… leadership.

I’d never intended to write so much about Donald Trump, but I started writing this blog exclusively because of the pandemic, and what became glaringly obvious very quickly was his brutal mishandling of it… and, along with that, his brutal mishanding of so much else.

I was asked this morning… come on, name at least a few good things Trump did in power. Sure, there are a few… he didn’t start any wars, and the middle east is on a potential path to a more lasting peace. Those who support his policies would argue that the reshaping of the federal judiciary is an achievement. Same with his tax reform. Space Force sounds like a joke, but it actually isn’t. But ultimately, whatever could be called a positive achievement is far overshadowed by the negative. There’s one other achievement, and it’s hard to label it positive or negative; his raging divisiveness served to rip off a huge, ratty band-aid that had been hiding a wound that’s been festering in the country since its inception… the deep, ugly gash of inequality. A lot of issues have been brought to light, and a lot of people (myself among them) are now far more familiar with systemic issues that have been plaguing American society for years. Decades. Centuries.

By now, you’re probably pretty sick and tired of hearing about Trump. It was engaging before he was elected, interesting early-on in his presidency… but grew tiring, repetitive and frustrating as time went on. Four years was more than enough. Four hundred thousand Covid deaths (not all – but certainly a significant amount, his fault). While we’re keeping score… 22,000 lies… about 15 per day of his presidency. 150 rounds of golf (one every 10 days). 127 days at Mar-a-Lago. Two impeachments. Two popular-vote losses. I can’t attach a number to the lawsuits that await him, but they will deservedly hound him for the rest of his life. It’s sad that his brainless followers will be the ones footing the legal bills, but the thought that he and perhaps some family members may be facing prison time… there are some sleepless nights ahead. I’m sure Mar-a-Lago has 24-hour room service; one burnt-to-a-crisp steak with ketchup coming right up, sir.

I’m looking forward to writing about other things. Trump mattered when he could actually do something: Mandate a federal mask policy. Set an example. Say something meaningful to his 70 million Twitter followers. He didn’t do any of that, and now he can’t. Now he’s just a two-time loser… silenced, and facing an unknown future… but now his problems (and lack of ability in solving them) are largely his issue; not his country’s, not this country’s… and, certainly… not mine. Moving on.

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By |2021-01-20T20:59:52-08:00January 20th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Politics, Movies, Music & Entertainment|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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January 17, 2021

Once in a while, the trunk of your car fills up with enough crap that it’s time to clean it all out. I usually grab a big garbage bag and dig in. Whatever is garbage goes straight into the bag. Whatever shouldn’t remain in the trunk finds its way to the floor of the garage, and eventually finds its way to where it needs to go. And the rest remains in the trunk, where it belongs. And if there wasn’t enough garbage to justify throwing the bag away, the bag itself also winds up in the trunk… for further use in the future.

Many years ago, I drove to Seattle. Then I came home, and the border guard, bored I suppose – or maybe I looked guiltier than usual – made me get out and pop the trunk.

“What’s this?”

“It’s garbage.”

“You can’t bring American garbage into Canada!”

Fair point… but I explained…

“It’s not American garbage… it’s Canadian. That bag has been in my trunk all weekend.”

“You took your garbage for a ride in the U.S.?”

I suppose I did. Not on purpose, but whatever. Who cares.

Well, he cared. Fine, confiscate it.

“I don’t want your garbage!”

Fine, I’ll throw it away. Where’s the nearest…

“You can’t throw it away here!”

What an odd stalemate. Eventually, he let me go. With my garbage.

I was reminded of this episode because something else (which I’ll get to shortly) reminded me of the opposite… the time we were returning from Seattle after a long weekend. When you do that, be prepared to wait… the border waits are brutal on those Monday nights. But this time, traffic just kept flowing… how odd. Tons of volume, but we never stopped… just slowly crawled toward the border… where all the lanes were open, and there were border guards just waving people through. Go, don’t stop, welcome home, have a nice evening. This was pre-9/11, but still. Wow.

On one hand, I was happy to not have to wait. On the other hand, two things bothered me. One was… well, you know how there are people who keep every receipt, meticulously add up what they spent, who spent it, what it was, how much it was, both in US and Canadian dollars? I’m one of those people. I was ready to answer any question the agent would ask. All that work for nothing. Annoying, but not as important as point two… which was, what a joke. What a mockery of all the times so many people have been stopped for no reason, been given the third degree for no reason, searched for nothing. And now, all the cigarettes and booze and full gas tanks and maybe drugs and guns all flowing into Canada… because I guess they were too understaffed that day, or too tired of dealing with the monotony… or were just realizing none of them would get to go home till 6am with so much traffic to handle. Sure, some stuff will get through. Whatever.

The rules that those people enforce exist for a reason, and when they decide to ignore them, as briefly as it might be, they compromise the integrity of the entire thing. What is the point? What was ever the point?

On that note, we have a rule in place at the moment. If you’re flying into Canada, you have to prove you’re C19-free. Take a test and show the test results at check-in… or you’re not getting on the plane. Very straightforward, and it applies to everyone.

Except, for some reason, not everyone. Like, not Haiti. Why not Haiti? Since the start of the year, flights from everywhere else have had this requirement. And the answer is simple: Haiti, nobody’s example of a first-world country, doesn’t have their shit together when it comes to testing. So rather than just say “No”, we, being the polite Canadians we are, say “Don’t worry about it.”

As a result, two flights from Haiti that arrived in Montreal (Jan 10th and 13th) were so infested with C19 that the post-flight alert that went out to the passengers was not the typical “rows 6 to 10 may have had an exposure”; it was “all rows”. Basically, if you were on either of those planes, you came in contact with someone who was found to be infected.

I had little sympathy for that guy from Kelowna who got stuck in Lake Tahoe, having decided his ski trip was “essential”. He got stuck when the regulations kicked in, and had no way to get a quick test… so he was stuck for three or five days. Cry me a river.

But… had he decided to go waterskiing in Haiti instead, no worries.

The issue isn’t so much with the haphazard rules that seem to appear and rule our lives; borders have always been hit and miss. When you head into the U.S. (and/or come back home), the experience will be greatly defined by what border agent you get, and what sort of day they’re having. That’s just an accepted part of it. Sometimes they’re harsh with the rules. Sometimes they couldn’t care less.

But in the middle of a raging pandemic… whether it’s a self-entitled skier from the interior, or a bunch of tourists in London… and/or pretty-much everyone else… what is the point if it doesn’t apply to everyone?

“Hey, teacher, I didn’t feel like studying for the test today. I mean, I realize everyone else is prepared. I’m just not. Is it ok if I just don’t write it?”

“Oh, of course. I’ll just give you a pass”.

That’s not how it works… we don’t live in a “everyone is equal but some people are more equal than others” society. At least, we’re not supposed to… but stuff like this causes a lot grumbling; a lot of well-justified grumbling. If politicians are going to make rules, make them so that they apply to everyone… and enforce them. Or don’t make them at all.

And/or have a very eloquent staffer ready to write some poetic excuses to the families of people who died of C19 as a direct result of those flights.

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By |2021-01-19T13:05:22-08:00January 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report|Tags: , , , , , , , |8 Comments
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January 16, 2021

If you live in London, England (or recently travelled there, and are now stuck), you’re very familiar with Trafalgar Square… the large plaza in front of the National Gallery. Also facing the square is Canada House, which houses the offices of the High Commission of Canada. If you’ve ever lost your passport in the U.K, you’ve been there. It’s also a great place to visit on July 1st… there’s usually a good party going on.

Also at Trafalgar square, right in the middle of the plaza, is an almost 200-foot pedestal, upon which stands the statue of the great British naval hero, Horatio Nelson.

The excellently-named Nelson was a true war hero, having fought in numerous battles (including the American War of Independence), but he’s most well-known for his efforts in the Napoleonic wars, and his greatest victory, the Battle of Trafalgar. In the waning minutes of that battle, having led the British to victory, he was shot by a Spanish sniper and died a few hours later.
But before being shot through the spine that day, he’d already suffered quite a beating over the years. He’d lost part of his arm in one battle, and an eye in another. As a result of that latter injury, he wore an eye-patch, looking every part the fierce warrior. In fact, with half an arm and an eye patch, he looked more like a pirate than a British naval officer.

Interesting point about eye-patches, and pirates specifically… our stereotypical view of a pirate with missing limbs… perhaps a wooden stump for a leg, perhaps a hook for hand, and always an eye-patch. Pirates wore them for another reason; not just to cover a shot-out eye.

When you’re the captain, you spend a lot of time running around the ship… on the deck and outside in the brilliant sunshine one moment, below deck and in near-darkness the next. As you know, like when you head to the movies for a matinee on a sunny summer afternoon, going from blaring sunshine to darkness takes some adjustment. When you turn off the lights in any room, it’s pitch-black for a bit… and then, things start coming into focus as the rods and cones of your eyes do their thing and adjust.

Before suitable artificial light, captains and pirates didn’t have time to wait for their eyes to adjust all the time, so they’d keep one eye “in the dark”, and switch to it when needed. That eye would always be ready for darkness. Indeed, you never see that part in the movies, where the pirate goes below deck and removes the eye patch.

There’s lots of symbolism that can be drawn out of this… like, covering up something good in the short-term for a beneficial payoff down the road. You wander around in the sunlight half-blind… but that hidden vision is ready and waiting when you need it.

Or, sometimes we cover up in ourselves what we don’t want to see. You need some pretty good eye-patches to have been part of the crowd that stormed The Capitol the other day. What exactly is an off-duty cop seeing when he runs into his buddy, who happens to be on-shift that day? What does some pro-Trump Jew think, standing next to a nazi with a T-shirt that says Camp Auschwitz, or one claiming that 6 million wasn’t enough? What do senators, hiding for their lives, think when they’re staring at their similarly-sheltered compatriots who may have been part of organizing this?

Like saving your vision from sunlight, some people need to come to terms with the patches they’ve been wearing… not over their eyes, but over their conscience. People who need to be able to rip off all the patches, and look in the mirror, and come to terms with what they see.

I wonder how much of that sort of reckoning is going on these days. The McConnells and Pences of the world are one thing, but the run-of-the-mill typical American, specifically the 70+ million who threw their votes into the darkness… what do you see now, if you remove that patch? Part of me really wants to know, but the other part of me really doesn’t… because some people wear those patches, literal and/or figurative, like a badges of honour.

True American patriot or MAGA deplorable? They can look alike. The greatest British Naval hero in history looked like a stereotypical pirate; you can’t judge a book by its cover… and actions speak louder than words.

Here’s one more cliché to add to the list: “When the going gets tough, the tough get going.” And now it’s that time for the U.S. Now it’s time to just get on with it. They came a lot closer than they think to seeing it all disappear a week ago. Now that all of the eyes have been opened and many of those patches ripped off… now begins the hard work of fixing it all.

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By |2021-01-16T17:03:33-08:00January 16th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , |4 Comments
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