Vaccine

March 17, 2023

I’d be remiss if I didn’t post a little something today; today is the 3-year anniversary of the first of what turned out to be close to 500 pandemic-related posts. And look, I even posted it right at 5pm, just like the good old days… and included the very first graph and accompanying data table.

It’s an interesting Catch-22… were it not for Covid, I’d obviously never have started writing about it. But not only that; I wouldn’t have had the time to do so. It was isolation and social distancing and cancelled meetings and Zoom that led to a nice pocket of free time every day to do some writing.

With Covid effectively over, at least what all of us would consider to have been “The Pandemic”, I’m back to not having anywhere near as much time as I did from 2020 to 2022. It shouldn’t take a relatively-catastrophic pandemic to be the driving force for being able to find time for myself, but this was continually on my mind today as I hopped from Zoom to Teams to Zoom to Teams to Zoom, meeting after meeting. WTF am I doing. I want to write something, and I’m actually not going to have time. How things have changed.

Well… maybe let’s put that change to good use. It’s taken me 5 minutes to write what you’ve just read up to here… what if AI could do the rest? What if I told some AI to write about this St. Patrick’s Day, bending the curve, three weeks to do so, following South Korea’s example, not following Italy’s, and speculating about an eventual vaccine. Hey, AI, take everything I knew (or thought I knew) on St. Patrick’s Day three years ago and write an essay.

So I did that… and here, between the lines, is what it spat out:

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Title: Three-Year Anniversary of My First COVID-19 Blog Post: A Reflection on St. Patrick’s Day and the Unpredictable Journey

Introduction

As the world celebrates St. Patrick’s Day, the luck of the Irish and the joy of the festivities, I am reminded of a different milestone. Today marks the three-year anniversary of my first blog post about COVID-19. It’s hard to believe that it has been that long since we were first introduced to the virus that brought the world to a standstill. This anniversary will always hold a special place in my heart as it falls on St. Patrick’s Day, a day meant for merriment and camaraderie.

In this article, I will take a walk down memory lane, reflecting on how things looked so uncertain back then, how we tried to copy South Korea’s success, and how we prayed we wouldn’t experience what was going on in Italy. We will also revisit the race for a vaccine and the long-lasting impact of the pandemic.

A Time of Uncertainty

Three years ago, on St. Patrick’s Day, we were filled with trepidation as the gravity of the COVID-19 pandemic began to set in. It was a time of uncertainty, and we were all grappling with the reality of the situation. As the virus rapidly spread across the globe, countries implemented lockdowns and social distancing measures to slow down the transmission.

The phrase “three weeks to bend the curve” became a rallying cry as people around the world did their best to adhere to the new normal. Those three weeks turned into months, and as time went by, it became increasingly clear that the virus would not be eradicated as quickly as we had hoped.

Learning from South Korea

As the pandemic progressed, we looked towards other countries for guidance. South Korea’s success in controlling the virus was a glimmer of hope for many. Through widespread testing, contact tracing, and strict quarantine measures, South Korea was able to minimize the virus’s impact significantly.

Countries around the world tried to emulate South Korea’s approach, but varying degrees of success were observed. It became evident that each country had its unique set of circumstances and challenges that needed tailored strategies.

Italy’s Struggle

As we were trying to learn from South Korea’s success, we also feared experiencing what was happening in Italy. The country was hit hard by COVID-19, with hospitals overwhelmed and the death toll rising at an alarming rate. Images of packed intensive care units and exhausted healthcare workers haunted us as we prayed that we wouldn’t have to face the same fate.

The world came together to support Italy in its time of need, with countries sending medical supplies, financial aid, and words of encouragement. The situation in Italy served as a grim reminder of the devastating potential of the virus.

The Race for a Vaccine

In the midst of the chaos, the scientific community was hard at work trying to develop a vaccine that could put an end to the pandemic. Typically, vaccines take years to develop, but the urgency of the situation led to an unprecedented global collaboration.

The development and distribution of vaccines became a race against time, and the world held its breath as we awaited the outcome. Within a year, several vaccines were developed, tested, and approved for emergency use – a remarkable achievement in the history of science and medicine.

The world rejoiced as vaccines became more widely available, and vaccination campaigns were launched worldwide. The vaccination process brought a sense of hope and optimism that we might finally be able to return to some semblance of normalcy.

The Long-lasting Impact

While the creation and distribution of vaccines marked a significant milestone in the fight against COVID-19, the pandemic’s long-lasting impact cannot be ignored. The world has changed in many ways, with remote work becoming more prevalent, increased focus on mental

– – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – – –

Huh… that’s interesting. It stopped right there. “increased focus on mental”… mental what? Mental health? Mental breakdown, much like this AI suffered at a wonderfully-coincidental moment? We’ll never know.

I have to be honest… and I say this with all due respect to the hundred trillion neural connections powering this beast… and also somewhat humbly… that I write better than this thing. Reading that was like crunching yourself through raw cereal with no milk or sugar; dry and tasteless. I read what it wrote and it’s like a grade-8 essay written by a kid whose friends are all already outside playing after-school road-hockey, and all he wants to do is get the hell out of his room and get on with real life.

Which, in essence, is a pretty good summary of where we’re at. Life is, indeed, for living… and, especially on such a beautiful day… blue skies, sunshine, with people already making their way to pubs everywhere, ready to get hammered on green beer, sing, be merry, and celebrate life… yeah, what am I doing here? It’s 5pm and still sunny and beautiful; let’s get on with it.

By |2023-03-17T17:00:00-07:00March 17th, 2023|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
Read More

December 7, 2022

Hey! It’s been a while… time to post something! Today is the 7th… and it’s been 77 days since the last time I reminded everyone we’re still in the midst of a pandemic (Really? Are we? Maybe?)… and the Canucks scored 7 goals a couple of nights ago to win a hockey game where they were down 4-0 after the first period. Lucky 7s all around!

But let’s talk about another number… a nice big fat round number like… 1,000… because 1,000 days ago was March 12th, 2020… not a particularly significant date, except it was the first time I, personally, said to myself… OK, what the hell is actually going on here…

For context, a few days earlier — March 7th — was the day that the first two cases of C19 (in the Lynn Valley Care Centre in North Vancouver) were announced… Canada’s first case of community transmission. A couple of days later, Canada’s first death; one of those two people.

A thousand days later and here we are… and where exactly are we?

First of all, seriously… 1,000 days? In some ways it feels like 1,000 years ago. In other ways, it feels like last week. The vacuum of the last three years has been messing with a lot of minds, mine included.

Just for fun, I’ve included the same chart, now updated, as last time I posted 77 days ago… a sort of correlation of cases counts associated with levels of C19 found in waste-water. Not the most scientific thing in the world, but it gives you some idea that this virus is still out there, especially with that last spike. Cause for concern? It coincidentally equates to implying around 1,000 new cases per day. Make of that what you will.

So… let’s briefly talk about the virus. But no, not Covid. Not a cold virus or flu virus either. Let’s talk about… Monkeypox.

Oh yeah! Remember that? Yeah, yeah… what happened to that, anyway?

Exactly. The short answer is, not much. Not much at all. But… since we were all in full “pandemic alert” mode, it potentially turned into a lot more than that, certainly as far as the media was concerned. That is, until the science caught up. If you’re wondering how it all panned out here in Canada: 1,459 cases, 44 hospitalizations, 0 deaths. Yes, zero deaths. Let’s move on.

But let’s talk about that scientific aspect of it, because that’s been very relevant during Covid, especially this issue of science “catching up.” Every time there’s been a change in policy, a new way of looking at it, a new strategy of dealing with it, half the people scream, “You see?! tHeY dOn’T kNoW wHaT tHeY’rE TaLkInG aBouT!!1!!1!!!!” The other half understand how the scientific method works, and that shifting opinions often have to do with the science finally catching up.

Allow me to talk about both of my grandmothers (of blessed memory) for a moment. They left this world many years ago, but they also left behind a lot of wisdom, and I will impart upon you two pieces of unscientific wisdom that they (and every other grandmother, Jewish or not), would tell you: One, if you’re feeling sick, chicken soup will heal you and/or at least make you feel better. And two, wear a jacket or wear a sweater… don’t just go out in the cold or you’ll get sick.

Hardly earth-shattering wisdom, scientific or not. We’ve all heard it a thousand times, whether we agree we it or not.

The chicken soup thing has been around for thousands of years… and it makes sense. Millenia ago, infant mortality was 100x higher than today. You had a 50/50 chance of making it past childhood, so you can imagine, just like today but even more fiercely back then: When a kid got sick, grandma did everything she could to keep the kid alive. Let’s try this, let’s try that. Someone decided to try chicken soup, and it seems to have made a difference. Then someone down the road tried adding more to it – this vegetable, that vegetable, whatever. There’s nothing scientific here… because that’d require giving chicken soup to one kid, not to another, and then watching the latter kid die and then wonder if it might have made a difference. All things being equal, everyone gets chicken soup and everyone, generally, gets better. Science be damned, we don’t need fancy statistics to tell us it works.

Indeed, that was the case for thousands of years. Nobody knew why, just that it worked. More recently, our understanding of how the body works led to a number of observations… like: Chicken has tryptophan, which helps your body produce serotonin… a great mood-enhancer. The noodles are a simple carb – a good source of energy. The carrots and celery and onion have vitamins C and K and other anti-oxidants, all of which promote a healthy immune system. And finally, especially like my grandmothers liked it, it’s piping-hot… and steam on its own makes it easier to breathe, opening up the airways with its mild anti-inflammatory effect.

Now… scientifically speaking, does that paragraph actually prove anything? Not really. It’s full of possibilities and maybes, but there’s still no scientific method to it. But hang on, we’re not done here…

Twenty-two years ago, an actual scientist decided to get to the bottom of this and did a proper study. The results are detailed and quite specific, and here’s a summary:

“A variety of soup preparations was evaluated and found to be variably, but generally, able to inhibit neutrophil chemotaxis. The current study, therefore, presents evidence that chicken soup might have an anti-inflammatory activity, namely the inhibition of neutrophil migration.”

I’ll admit I don’t understand all of that, but I certainly get the gist of it. The paper goes into it far more, and is easily Googleable if you’re interested in the details… but the summary is, yes – it works.

Let’s call that Exhibit A of where the science finally caught up with it.

Exhibit B is the other bit of wisdom, one that’s led to plenty of discussion in the past, and especially in the last 1,000 days.

If you’re all alone in the middle of nowhere and step out into the cold, can you catch a cold? Probably not, though it’s not impossible that you have some cold viruses attached to you and they happen to make you sick. But the cold on its own – no. Therefore, the conclusion is that “cold” can’t give you a cold and that, therefore, notwithstanding everyone gets colds when it’s cold out, there must be another explanation, most of which centre around the idea of people clustering together out of the cold, viruses last longer in drier air, less sunlight, less physical activity, etc. It has nothing to do with the cold… it’s just a by-product of our communal behaviour during the season when everyone is inside, in close proximity and breathing all over each other.

It’s always been my opinion that the cold seems to compromise your immune system… so that viruses that are actually around us all the time seem to be able to get a better grip when it’s cold. I have no scientific basis for claiming that; just life experience. And the persistent brainwashing from my grandmothers, parents and every single other person who, at some point, was tasked with making sure I’m OK. Bundle up, wear a jacket, don’t go out into the cold like that because you’ll get sick. Blah blah blah. But life experience has shown this to be true, even if science hasn’t. At this very moment, the John Hopkins site says this:

“Contrary to popular belief, cold weather or being chilled doesn’t cause a cold. However, more colds do occur during the cold season (early fall to late winter). This is probably due to a variety of factors, including: Schools are in session, increasing the risk for exposure to the virus.”

Well, guess what. A study published yesterday proves that – yes, that’s right, the cold does indeed compromise the immune system, at least specifically when it comes to respiratory illness. The front of the nose has small fluid-filled sacs as part of the initial immune response, and the fluid secreted from there attacks bacteria and viruses as best it can. And what happens when the temperature of the nose drops, say from room temperature to less than 5°C? Does it affect that particular immune response? Yes. Drastically. To the extent that all the viruses hanging around trying to find a way in suddenly themselves with a far easier point of entry.

Exhibit B – the science finally caught up with something we’ve all know. Let’s see how long it takes John Hopkins, a well-respected source of scientific knowledge, to change their opinion. And no, it’s not because they were wrong; it’s because we’ve all learned something, and now we’re all better off for it. This will undoubtedly lead to prevention methods and other benefits.

When it comes to Covid, we’ve learned so much over the last 1,000 days that in some way, it’s possibly the preferred disease to catch. If you have Covid and need treatment, there are fully-stocked artilleries of options. Unlike this insanely contagious and relatively serious flu that’s going around this year, affecting everyone – especially kids. It’s horrifying to think it’s killed 6 children in BC in the last two weeks. What the hell – how can that be happening in 2022? What can anyone do about it?

At the risk of repeating myself for the 1,000th time, the science has caught up with this as well. There’s a vaccine, and it targets this Influenza type-A subtype H3N2 virus. It should prevent you from getting sick, or at least, seriously sick. I mean, don’t get me wrong… chicken soup is great… but it’s probably better to not get sick in the first place. Let’s all stay healthy.

And… on that note, whatever it may be that you’re celebrating, be it Christmas or Hanukkah or Kwanzaa or Ōmisoka or Festivus – or nothing – whatever it is, wishing you all a Happy and Healthy Holiday Season!

… and when you go outside, be sure you wear a sweater. And maybe a good jacket – no, not that one, the heavier one. Hey, a scarf wouldn’t hurt either.

By |2022-12-07T22:52:29-08:00December 7th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Essays|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
Read More

September 21, 2022

Greetings!! It’s been a while – I hope you’ve all been enjoying the last few hours of summer and this recent beautiful weather!!

“Oh no!”, you’re thinking… “It’s the Covid-blog guy… now what?!”

Please, chillax – it’s not my intention to trigger you, nor am I going to write about how summer is over and here comes the Covid. I am with you; I’ve had enough, but as we approach the 3-year mark of this whole little nightmare we’ve only recently put behind us (have we?!), I thought it’d be a worthwhile exercise to try to see where we’re actually at.

Indeed, time adds an interesting element to perspective on things. As time goes by, we evolve, our thoughts evolve, and our way of looking at things shifts… knowledge, time, experience… some combination of all of the above, plus more… equals a completely different look at the exact same thing. For example…

I can tell you exactly where I was on June 20, 1983… a 14-year-old kid at the first-ever event held at BC Place, the brand new, futuristic, incredibly-cool stadium. Over 60,000 people were jammed in there along with me, and we got to see the Vancouver Whitecaps defeat the Seattle Sounders 2-1. We also got to see a memorable halftime show… The Beach Boys.

Odd choice for a half-time show in Vancouver during a soccer game? Not really… The Beach Boys were, on their own, a big draw. It was smart of the organizers; hit numerous demographics to fill the place: Soccer fans, music fans, younger people, older people.

My opinion of that particular aspect… this coming from a young teenager, was… what was the point of having these close-to-washed-up musicians here? Don’t get me wrong… I liked their music and still do. But, by 1983, The Beach Boys had been around for more than 20 years. Come on, grandpas, share the stage. Let’s see The Police, Dire Straits or Eurhythmics!!

It was a big moment in the history of Vancouver, the opening of that stadium, and seeing the Whitecaps and BC Lions move into their new home. That was a little less than 4 decades ago.

A little less than 4 weeks ago ago, I was at the PNE, as the annual fair shut down for the season. I found myself not far from the old home of the Whitecaps and Lions, what used to be Empire Stadium… at the PNE Amphitheatre. You know, the one that was recently trashed to the ground by disgruntled fans. But, before they got a chance to wreck the place, I was there to see… The Beach Boys.

Needless to say, I am presently way older than all of those grandpas I scoffed at a lifetime ago. The Police, Dire Straits and Eurhythmics are no longer around, but the Beach Boys are… at least some of them. Mike Love, who looked old to me in 1983 still looks old to me, and why wouldn’t he – he’s now 81. But there he was, belting out tunes for a huge crowd that ranged from 100 weeks to 100 years old. A crowd that knew pretty-much every lyric to pretty-much every song.

So yeah, perspective. Certainly, the world looks different to me these days than it did back then, even with the same old stuff.

Which, of course, leads us to the topic-du-jour…

I always like to say “Start at the finish line”. It’s a lot easier to navigate the world if you know where you’re heading. Or think you do. In this day and age, the world offers you an opportunity to follow any and all finish lines. Whatever you want, you’ll be happily guided towards it by those with similar ideas.

Do you want to convince yourself Covid is over? Listen to Joe Biden, who yesterday announced it is. Want to convince yourself otherwise? Listen to Dr. Fauci, who minutes later said “Wait… not so fast.”

Do you need a mask to walk into a hospital? Do you need a vaccine or two to walk into Canada? Do you need either to walk onto a plane? I can ask countless questions, many of which even I don’t know the answer to. I used to, but like all of you, at some point I decided to get on with my life and deal with these things reactively, not proactively. There comes a point where there’s only so much one can do, and we’re all beyond it. We’re vaccinated, we’ve been exposed to C19, we’ve probably had it, whether we know it or not… and our immune systems are wired to battle it, perhaps better than we think, also whether we know it or not.

So… I like posting pretty pictures and numbers, but they have to mean something. By April of 2022, every fountain of useful data had dried up. Notwithstanding case-count numbers were already wildly inaccurate, but at that point they stopped being recorded entirely. Hospitalizations, ICU admissions, deaths – formerly, numbers to be scrutinized… have become largely irrelevant. It’s no surprise that many people in hospital test positive for C19. What’s relevant is that most of them are in hospital for other reasons, completely unrelated. There are people in the ICU with C19, but they’re there because they fell down and hit their head. And perhaps they’ll die of their brain injury, and perhaps that’ll count as a C19 statistic. At this point, it doesn’t matter.

What does matter is the absolutely impressive artillery we’ve built up to fight Covid… whatever version you may get. Beyond vaccinations and natural immunity, both of which most of us have plenty of, there’s a huge war-chest of therapies and medicine and things many of us will never hear of unless we wind up in hospital with (and because of) Covid. Until then, don’t worry about it.

Or…

Here’s an interesting thing…one thing that’s still being recorded is the waste-water concentration levels of C19. I couldn’t find data before November of 2020, but for these purposes, that’s good enough.

Have a look at the two graphs… the one of the left is the good old-fashion case-count chart that you’ve seen 500 times if you’ve been reading these posts. This particular one starts in Nov 2020 and runs till Apr 20200, when the data stopped.

The graph on the right is the waste-water concentration of C19 as measured on Annacis Island, and smoothed-out to a 7-day moving average. This one similarly starts in Nov 2020, but runs to today because we’re still getting those numbers.

The gold-coloured bands look very similar, and they’re for the identical period of time. You could overlay them and they’d fit almost perfectly, implying a pretty-close one-to-one mapping of C19 cases and C19 waste-water levels.

Using a bit of science, we can extrapolate what case-counts might be today by “reverse engineering” the waste-water numbers… which, going forward from April 2022 are represented by the blue line… which almost looks like it took off right after case-counts stopped being tracked… and, actually shot up to levels that would’ve been insanely worrisome a year earlier.

But, because of much of what I wrote above, nobody is anywhere near as worried as they used to be. Even though Covid is certainly still out there.

If you look at the blue line, and where it is today, it’s roughly at levels comparable to April 2021… which is the bunch of numbers above the graphs. Have a look at BC… remember those days? A thousand new cases a day, roughly 5 people a day dying from Covid…

Those were scary times, and if this blue line implies anything, that’s where we’d be today if we weren’t so well protected. The implication is Covid is still out there, we’re all processing it at a level of 1,000 cases a day, but it’s not having a huge impact on society.

The summary of all of this has two very-different conclusions, depending on which finish line you’re aiming towards.

Covid is still out there and clearly will be for a long time and we need to take every precaution to prevent its spread. Bring back masks and mandates and all the rest of it till it’s eradicated.

Or…

Covid is still out there but so what. The fact it’s out there so prevalently shows it’s no longer a danger. The new strains are weaker and we have so many different things with which to fight it. Enough already. Let’s get on with our lives.

Like usual, the answer lies somewhere in between, and in talking to people about it, their opinions can be found all over that spectrum. To a great extent, everyone is operating on a simple principle: go along with the policies of wherever you are and, if there are no policies, do whatever you’re comfortable with. Fair enough.

The world keeps going around, and so should you. So should I, right? Round round get around I get around… who was that great philosopher/thinker/writer that came up with that brilliance? Socrates? Nietzsche? Sarte?

Nah… that was the Beach Boys, of course.

Onward.

September 21, 2022

By |2022-09-22T13:17:40-07:00September 21st, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Humour, Movies, Music & Entertainment, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
Read More

April 14, 2022

There was a time, in the increasingly-distant past, where I actually imagined this pandemic ending in the blink of an eye… literally instantly. A simple declaration – Hey, it’s all good! – and that would be the end of it. Imagine Tinkerbell flying around in relative darkness, among the shadows… where everything is some gloomy shade of gray. Then, with a simple tap of her tiny magic wand — and a little puff of pixie dust — it all transforms into beautiful colours… and the sun comes out and the sky is blue and the birds are singing and we all live happily ever after.

Unfortunately, life isn’t a fairy tale… and there’s no little fairy to rescue us like that. Indeed, it’s more like a bigger ferry… like the Queen of Esquimalt, when it’s going to dock in Schwartz Bay and suddenly it starts groaning and slowly turning 180 degrees because the cars are all pointing the wrong way. And everyone on board also starts groaning. Oh no, this is going to take forever! We’re going be late for our Tea At The Empress™!

Somewhere between the fairy and the ferry lies our reality; it’s not instant, and it’s a slow turn… but, eventually, we get there. We’re in the midst of that turn right now, but unfortunately, it’s very foggy and we can’t really see how far we’ve gone… nor how far we have to go.

This sort of reminds me about the whole pot ordeal of recent decades. For a long time, it was totally illegal. Today, it’s totally legal. Do you remember the many years of ambiguity? Hey, that guy is standing in the street smoking a joint. Is that legal? Can he do that? Well, maybe he can if he’s not selling it. Really? Who knows? Who cares?

It’s the “who cares” that’s a bit of an issue these days, because while a lot of people do indeed not care anymore, many still do. Also, there are some loud and credible voices stating in no uncertain terms: Hey, this isn’t over. Far from it…. while, at the same time, there are equally loud voices carrying a message that raises some eyebrows: Yeah, it’s over… if for no other reason than we’ve had enough and we’re not doing this anymore. Anyway, look at the numbers. What’s the big deal? Life goes on.

Who do you believe? Who do you want to believe? Every single day, you can choose what you want to believe and there will be a credible source to back you. Today, a Russian warship sank. The Russians say a fire accidentally broke out and detonated some ammunition. The Ukrainians say they hit it with a missile.

Like “Where are we at?” and like getting reliable news out of Ukraine/Russia, the pandemic analysis has also gotten murkier. Attached are numbers and graphs as best as I can do these days, which isn’t much because reliable data is few and far between. Most of it (what’s in italics) is extrapolated. I’ve done away entirely with the vaccination data because, as important as it as and as transfixed as I was every day watching the vaccination percentages creep upwards… now, the numbers are meaningless. From that aspect, we’ve done all we can. Anyone who wants a shot or two or three can get one almost immediately.

In summary, numbers are up, but just a little up. In BC, hospitalizations are close to where they were a month ago, but they’d dipped two weeks ago. ICU numbers continue to drop. In Ontario and Quebec, they’re in the midst of a sixth wave… and of course, what Toronto and Montreal dictate must apply to the rest of the country… so I guess we are too. But while hospitalizations are up, ICU numbers aren’t growing appreciably; in fact, down slightly. Everything is a lot better than it was at the start of the year, but arguably, headed in the wrong direction.

It’s all ambigious and uneasy and, to some extent, ends up being what you want it to be… which, for the present day, is probably as good as it’s going to get. It takes a while to turn the ferry around because if you don’t do it right… like, too quickly, you end up with a big mess on board and lots of complaints. Do it too slowly and there will also be complaints. Hey man, we have reservations, you know?

Well… I’m pretty sure… that if you’re going to be paying $89 per person for Tea At The Empress™, they’ll hold the reservation for you, even if you’re going to be a bit late. And, don’t worry… the ferry will get turned around, docked, and you’ll get there… eventually. Yes, you wish a little magic wand could get you there instantly. I also wish it could get us all there instantly, too… wherever that ultimate “there” is.

But, again, life isn’t a fairy tale. More like a ferry tale, I guess.

By |2022-04-14T20:16:28-07:00April 14th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Humour, Coastal Living|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
Read More

March 10, 2022

It’s been a while since I watched the Dr. Henry update, but I did today, if for no other reason than the fact that it’s going to be the last one… at least as far as scheduled ones are concerned. Two years ago, and for many subsequent months, you’d have found me glued to the screen on a daily basis, watching intently and trying to figure out what the hell is going on. That was my daily question, and the answer always was… “We’ll see.”

Today’s final press conference, close to two years to the day of the first one, came with some announcements that were expected… and will make some people very happy, and others not so much…

One big question people have been wondering about is when do we see the end of vaccine passports, and the answer is – assuming things remain on the path they’re on – April 8th. The provincial requirement for vaccine passports goes away April 8th and, in a perfect world (don’t we wish), stays away forever. We’ll see.

The other biggie is, of course, mask mandates: Also gone, as of midnight tonight… and notwithstanding some minor exceptions (medical settings), places like restaurants and concerts and hockey games will no longer require them. But let’s clarify that… restaurants will no longer be required to require them. I am guessing there will be some places who will be hesitant to just say it’s open season, and that’s likely to cause some problems. Some people will be offended that the person next to them is voluntarily wearing a mask. For others, it’ll be the exact opposite. Some restaurants, for their own reasons, may choose to stick with it… not for the scientific, but for the psychological reasons. We’ll see.

There is a huge, and I do mean… huge… difference between the science and the psychology of where we are today. I realized that recently when walking into my house and subconsciously reaching for my mask. Part of my brain is now on that autopilot; going from outdoors to indoors? Put on a mask.

That sort of autopilot has saved my life, literally… on a few occasions walking the streets of London. Here’s some advice, especially if you’ve never been there: When you’re crossing the street, look both ways. It’s that simple. Don’t try to think about traffic and where it’s coming from and where it’s going and who’s turning to and from where… just look both ways. I once came within inches of getting hit by a bus because I was quickly going to cross the street and there was nothing off to the left. Of course there wasn’t, because that’s not how it works over there.

So how’s it going to work over here? A mask or no mask is unlikely to be a matter of life and death, but the psychology of un-training our brains may take a while. I have a tremendous amount of empathy for people who aren’t automatically young and healthy and fearless. I feel for teachers who are worried about the fact that all students K-12 will no longer require masks after Spring Break.

I feel for them because the fear that’s been around for two years doesn’t go away so easily. Obviously, at some point, the mask mandate has to go away, and it’s the science that’s driving that decision today. But no matter when that was going to be, it was going to result in a lot of issues… and here we are. For a long time, we’ve been told we’re wearing masks for the benefit of others… but long after Covid is gone, there will be people with masks… and in that case, it’s entirely for themselves and their mental well-being. Whether it’s tomorrow or in 6 months or in 2 years, you will see people with masks. To quote our fearless Dr. Henry: “Be kind, be calm.” Perhaps the “Be safe” part of it is not so relevant anymore, at least not for you. But it is, and will remain so, for others.

Speaking of what’s relevant and not… I’ve been wondering for a while how long I’ll be updating these numbers and charts. “Until they’re no longer relevant” is my inward-facing answer to that. Does any of this mean anything anymore?

For a long time, case counts meant everything. Cases turned into hospitalizations and ICUs and deaths, etc. Well… it’s been a while since the daily case numbers have meant much. Testing protocols have changed… and while, for a long time, we knew that reported cases were significantly undercounting reality, we never knew by how much. That’s never been more true, to the extent that the published numbers no longer mean much at all… so much so that many jurisdictions are no longer publishing them on a daily basis, if at all. You’ll see a lot of italics in today’s chart… those are interpolated numbers. If it was 170 last week and it’s 100 today, you’ll see it stepping down by very pretty and consistent and italicized “10” on a daily basis. Does that really mean anything at all? Honestly, not much. But it’s better than blanks and then a big jump. And, to be fair, it’s a relatively fair view of a trend… though, again, the trend isn’t actually as important as simply: Where are we today?

So… where, in fact, are we today…

Today, B.C. has around 400 Covid hospital cases. That number was close to 1,000 a month ago. Also today, B.C. has 58 Covid ICU cases. A month ago, it was close to 150. To the extent this has always greatly been about managing the pressures on the health-care system, we’re nowhere near frightening levels, and continue to head in the right direction.

And, on that note, what do these numbers actually mean? Everyone admitted to the hospital these days gets a Covid test. If you go to the E.R. with a broken arm and test positive, you’re on that list. If you have a heart attack and wind up in the ICU, and happen to have tested positive, you’re on that list too. And if you die with Covid, notwithstanding it may have had nothing to do with it, you’ll count there too.

So… look at all the pretty charts, because they won’t be around much longer. I have to be honest and say that I don’t think they’re conveying too much useful information anymore. You can see the hospitalization and ICU and death trends pretty clearly; they’re what you’d expect… and unless there’s some unheard of Omegaplex variant coming down the line, all of those charts should be going downhill (in the good way) forever. Every single graph shows where we are, and every single graph is in a much better place than it was a month ago… by far.

I suppose this is what the end-game of the pandemic is supposed to look like; it’s what it was going to look like all along… a fuzzy finish line at best. Initially, like two years ago, I somehow imagined a V-E day-type ending to all of this… where the announcement is made, the case-counts are near zero, the death counts have been zero ten days in a row and we’re all out dancing in the streets downtown throwing our masks in the air and hugging strangers. Nothing remotely close like that will happen, and the only people jamming downtown are the insane trucker anti-mask anti-vax “freedom” brigade who are on their way to Victoria to protest… to protest what? Nothing left to protest, but that won’t stop them, so we’ll see.

In fact, that’s a good motto going forward… it answers a lot of the rhetorical questions: Do you feel comfortable in a crowded place? We’ll see. Where nobody has a mask? We’ll see. And nobody had to show a vaccine passport? Honestly, speaking for myself, I don’t know.

We’ll see.

By |2022-03-10T20:21:07-08:00March 10th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Follower Favourites, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
Read More

January 13, 2022

When this whole crazy thing started two years ago, there was exactly one number that mattered: Daily New Cases. Indeed, it’s the only thing I was tracking when I first started writing about the pandemic, and I got pretty detailed in analyzing what it looked like. How fast was it growing? What’s the rate of change? What’s the rate of change of the rate of change? What degree of exponential growth is that? What’s the Time To Double?

Yes… if you were following this from the start, you inadvertently got a lesson in differential calculus, regression analysis, statistics and good old-fashioned estimation.

At the time, the reasoning was simple: You can’t get sick, hospitalized, intubated, ventilated or die… if you never got infected in the first place. Accordingly, that is *the* stat we need to watch.

Eventually, I added hospitalizations and ICU admissions and deaths to all of that, and, finally, of course, vaccination rates. The picture you see attached to this blurb has a lot of info on it… and, of course, Daily New Cases figures prominently.

A good question for the day is… Why? That number is now useless.

It’s not entirely useless, but let’s backtrack a bit. For a long time, and I do mean a long time… like since almost the beginning, there are people who’ve been saying the number is meaningless and useless and very much an undercount.

I don’t disagree that it’s an undercount; the question has always been by how much. And, more importantly, whether it’s been a consistent undercount. If so, then the number is still useful. To make it easy, let’s imagine the number is always off by an order of magnitude; by a factor of 10. Let’s call that the Factor of Undercount (FoU). With a FoU of 10, if Dr. Bonny says there were 154 new cases today, it was really 1,540. If she says it was 2,583, it was actually 25,830.

The reason it’s not useless in that scenario is because we can still analyze the trends. Basically, the shape of the curve, the slope of the line, the acceleration/deceleration… is all the same. If you take out the units from the X and Y axes, you’d never know the difference.

Also, whatever the numbers actually are, there’s no disputing the hospitalization numbers, the ICU numbers and the death numbers. Those ones we know exactly. So, again… with a consistent FoU, we can tell a lot with respect the load on the medical system.

Anyway, that used to be the case… but you’d have to be crazy… indeed, un peu fou… to believe any part of recent case numbers. For numerous reasons, we’ve certainly lost the consistent FoU, and with that, the numbers mean nothing.

It’s disappointing just what a massive failure our testing infrastructure has become, and it’s surprising. To some extent, the focus in this province has always been to make sure we don’t overwhelm the medical system. But to some other extent, the medical system doesn’t really want to deal with you at all, unless your condition is bad enough that it needs attention. The mantra of “stay home and isolate if you don’t feel well” trumps everything; test results are irrelevant. Unfortunately, there’s now absolutely no way to know who’s isolating, who’s walking around sick, who’s walking around infecting others, who’s walking around coughing behind their mask and not caring, who’s vaccinated, who’s not, etc. Contact tracing has gone out the window.

When we talked about overwhelming the medical system, we’ve always thought that meant hospitals… but it’s not just the hospitals; it’s everything else too. We are all, indeed, crazily overwhelmed.

So let’s look at what matters now: Hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths. The two graphs below the new case counts show what those three things look like. The top one, since last September. The one below it goes all the way back to September 2020, for context. Just how bad are things now compared to back then?

The answer is really good or really bad or somewhere in between, depending how you want to look at it. Hospitalizations are way up, of course. Record levels here and in all the big provinces. That’s not good. But proportionally, ICU cases aren’t following suit. That’s good. It’s the ICU cases that ultimately turn into deaths, so how’s that conversion rate looking?

Well, if things were kept proportional, we’d be seeing deaths at least 7x higher than they are. We’ve already agreed cases are well undercounted, so this example is actually even more extreme: Last January, Canada. saw 200,000 new cases… and 4,400 deaths. This January, which isn’t yet halfway done, we’ve seen 500,000 new cases and 871 deaths. If the death rate were the same as last January, we’d be facing more than 11,000 deaths this month.

And that’s the good news; this isn’t going to spiral crazily out of control. Because most of us are vaccinated and because Omicron is indeed less lethal and because we know a lot more these days about treatment.

I’m therefore going to stick with my optimistic hope that we’re nearing the end of this; not that it all goes away, but that we’re on the doorstep of when it becomes a seasonal pesky disease that’s manageable and treatable and, if you stay current with vaccinations, likely avoidable in any serious form.

I base that on the patterns of places that are a week or two ahead of us; new cases spike up very quickly and then very quickly spike right back down. Hospitalizations, etc. trail that, but Omicron is spikier in both directions compared to all of the previous variants. Two weeks from now might look surprisingly calm compared to where we are today. A month, for sure.

The thing is getting there, and most people are more than sick and tired of it. All of it. If you’d asked me at the start of this almost two years ago that by January 2022, I wouldn’t be that interested in daily case counts, I’d obviously have thought that it’s because it’s all over.

Crazy, I know.

By |2022-01-13T21:42:36-08:00January 13th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
Read More

January 6, 2022

Usually I know what I’m talking about (or, at least, think I do)… but I’ve been trying to figure something out, and I am going in circles. Some things require questioning.

There are 2.8 million people in BC who are 50 or older, of which some 700,000 are ages 50 to 60… and this particular demographic (which I’m part of) is the one who got their first shot in late April/early May, their second shot in late June/early July… and, therefore, have become eligible for the booster in recent weeks. The invites may have been sprinkling down like tiny snowflakes at first… but now… we’ve seen in recent days what a real snowfall can look like. Terrific. As soon as you get your invite, book your appointment. Hopefully you can get to it.

But wait… here’s the question: If you recently had Covid, should you wait for the booster? How long should you wait? Why?

So… I’ve asked a lot of people and I’ve read lots of articles and data, and the best response I can formulate when presently asked, is… “Good question!” or “I sincerely don’t know” or “Ask me in 6 months”.

Here in BC, we don’t get to find out what variant we had. They’re obviously collecting the data, but for some reason, don’t want to disclose it. I wish they did, as do many people, because it might make some difference in the chosen course of action, given that the present vaccines are designed for Delta and previous versions; the booster is too. There is no doubt that one, two and three vaccines confer protection against serious illness no matter what version you’re unfortunate enough to contract, so everyone should eventually get all of them. But the issue is… if you’ve recently had Covid as the result of a breakthrough infection (ie 90% of us who got sick in December), when should you get the booster? Pouring a cupful of boiling water into an already-boiling pot doesn’t do much… but if that large pot of water has cooled off a bit, then it does.

I got in a bit of trouble trying to ask this question in one of the BC Covid Facebook groups; the moderators refused to allow it, and gave me pithy and useless one-line responses to my questioning their attitude. Yes, I know you can get the booster 14 days after your symptoms subside. Yes, I know Dr. Henry said just get the booster as soon as you can, no matter what… and I understand where she’s coming from; she doesn’t want to see a flood hospital admissions, and the best way to achieve that given what we don’t yet know – and to umbrella to the whole issue – is to just get everyone as vaccinated as possible… as soon as possible. But that’s not necessarily a medical decision; it’s based on mitigating the local worst-case scenarios with respect to overwhelming the medical infrastructure. My counter-argument would be, “Sure, ok… but maybe someone else needs that booster more at this very moment.” Indeed, there is a lot of talk of “super-immunity” that you have (for a while… how long? A month? Two months? Three?) after a vaccine/vaccine/infection course. If I’m presently “super-immune”, why waste a booster on me right now? Depending who you ask, here are the recommendations:

BC says get it two weeks later.
Ontario says one month.
Quebec says two to three months.
One American article I read said up to six months.

I’m a big fan of Dr. Henry and usually agree with her, so it was interesting to be treated like some sort of anti-vaxxer just because I dared asked a question that threatened to go against the (present-day) gospel of our PHO.

As we all know, science evolves and, as we learn more, so do recommendations. Dr. Henry herself has course-corrected many times, as she should. I suspect this issue will evolve over time as well as more data is collected, analyzed and understood.

But in the meantime, there are all sorts of complicated reasons and mitigating factors going into these various opinions, and there are too many variables… and, of course, different places have different priorities and/or concerns. Vaccine shortages? Bed shortages? Percentage of population vaccinated? Which strain was the infection? Etc etc.

For what it’s worth, I’m leaning towards waiting a month to six weeks. I’m pretty certain I got Omicron given the symptoms, lack of symptoms, and course of the illness… and, that being the case, that covers me (for a while) from all presently-known strains. Certainly, I should be good till the end of the month, and then I’ll reconsider. Or, of course, I might read something in an hour that’ll change my mind. I’m counting on the fact that actual data and facts on the topic will emerge every day, and my (and everyone else’s) opinions and decision making won’t be based on just rudimentary data, speculation and gut feel. And if you’re in the same boat, please feel free to share your thoughts in the comments; I’d love to hear where you’re thinking is at.

On a separate note, one that requires no speculation or changing opinions… we’ve been hearing for a long time that if you’re sick and/or unvaccinated, stay away from people who may have compromised immune systems. As healthy and immune as you may be from contracting the illness, not everyone is so lucky. So, stay away.

Even if you choose not to stay away, the potential victim usually has a say. If you’re not vaxxed but your relative is, and they tell you to stay the hell away, they themselves can flee the scene if you’re so entitled as to impose yourself upon their presence.

But… that’s not always the case, and the specific case I want to talk about are babies.

Human babies are pathetically frail when compared to other mammals. Some animals are good to go on their own mere hours after being born. It’s only humans that rely on parental protection for so long. Years, not hours. Babies depend on us to keep them safe, and the reason I mention this is that a recent article pointed out a very simple stat that speaks for itself: All of the babies presently hospitalized in Ontario due to complications from Covid-19… are from unvaccinated mothers. All of them. One hundred percent.

Yes… some other things don’t require any questioning at all.

By |2022-01-06T20:08:06-08:00January 6th, 2022|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
Read More

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
Read More

December 17, 2021

OK – it is indeed time for an update. I meant to do this a couple of days ago, but…

There are a lot of questions floating around these days, and it’s frustrating when, for some of them, there are no real answers. Let’s start with the obvious one… you can guess what that is. It rhymes with notthisshitagainicron.

I am still sticking with the cautious optimism that as contagious as it is, the symptoms are, and will remain, mild. And, on that note…

A few days ago, I started feeling a little under the weather. Headache, fatigue, cough… but also, fever. The sort of thing where in the old days you just bundle up for a day or two and are ok, but these days, our minds go elsewhere. Yesterday afternoon, I went and got tested… and waited in an 80-minute lineup to do so. A week ago, that lineup was three cars when I drove past it.

Test results take 24 hours, but I mentioned this to a friend… who came over with a rapid antigen test – which came back negative. Excellent. I thought so, but better safe than sorry. I was already feeling a little better, and then I had a good night’s sleep. I woke up without a fever and feeling pretty ok.

So… it was a rather blunt kick in the face to receive the official PCR result a few minutes ago: Positive.

Well… shit.

So, now… instead of speculating, here’s what I can tell you. Knock on wood that I’m past the worst of it, because if this is as bad as most double-vaxxed otherwise-healthy people get this thing, we are well on our way to seeing an end to it. I’m looking at the silver lining, which is… now, getting sick, coupled with two shots, I’m good to go – perhaps to the end of this entire nightmare. Like so many others whose second vaccine dose was in late June, I’ll be getting my invitation for the booster next week. I’d been hoping to avoid Omicron for a few more weeks, because the AZ/Moderna/Moderna series seem to be very effective against it, but things don’t always go as planned. Looks like I’ll be developing immunity the old-fashioned way.

But this brings up another of those yet-to-be-answered questions with respect to the mildness of these symptoms… how many people are walking around with Omicron-Covid19 right now? I’m going to guess – a lot. Far more than will ever get tested. I say that because while we all have little slip-ups once in a while, I’m exceptionally careful with respect to masks and open spaces and proximity to people and all the rest of it. Where and when the hell did I get infected? I sincerely don’t know. And if I can get this thing, anyone can get it… and, like I’ve said, it’ll eventually hit us all… though, ideally, when you’ve already received your three-shot course.

Which leads to another question, one I’ve heard 20 versions of… what do we do? And the preamble to that has a lot to do with airline tickets and hotel reservations, many of which at this point are non-refundable. Do we go? Do we bail? Help.

The answer very much depends on a number of variables which are very different and vary wildly from person to person. If you’re not worried about getting sick (and a plane-full of double-vaxxed and masked people heading to a place of warmth and sunshine and outdoor restaurants is actually a pretty safe place), what’s the problem? Well, WestJet threw a valid question back at the government a couple of days ago; where’s the science? Why are you telling people not to travel? They do have a point; on this fourth go-around, the one thing we’ve learned is that travel restrictions do nothing to prevent the spread. If they were perfectly implemented and 100% enforced, they would. But that’s not the case… and as we’ve seen with exponential growth, that 99.9% “good enough” decays to 80%, 30%, zero very quickly. A travel restriction might, at best, delay some numbers for a few days… but as we already have seen, by the time the whistle was blown on Omicron, it was already everywhere. The hastily-imposed travel restrictions on ten African countries have been lifted because they did absolutely nothing.

So why advise people not to travel? There may be many reasons such as the pressure on the testing infrastructure and the risk of being stranded overseas and the risk of wherever you’re going imposing some unforeseen restrictions on you; all of those are valid concerns, but they have nothing to do with preventing the spread of the disease. Questions related to needing to be back on a certain day or you’ll lose your job – are perhaps more relevant. At the end of the day, the government has to do *something* — so, we get travel advisories if for no other reason than if this all goes to hell, they can say they didn’t do *nothing*.

Can it all go to hell? Unfortunately, yes. I am basing this on my now-personal experience that Omicron symptoms are generally mild. If that turns out not to be the case, given how contagious it is, we could overrun our health-care system… and that’s what they’re trying to avoid. Dr. Henry’s rather specific list of restrictions imposed today target the sorts of gatherings that are highest risk; she just wants to be sure we don’t run out of hospital beds. Fair enough.

For the moment, this eternal optimism of mine always tries to look at the bright side, and while we see a frightening rise in cases, we’re far from seeing a frightening rise in hospitalizations and ICU admissions. On the contrary; the numbers are significantly down over the last 10 days. Around here, with our excellent vaccination rate, we’re in good shape. Red states down south? It remains to be seen. Around here, new-case numbers will go up, as they are all across Canada. The implications of that remain to be seen. But if you look at the pretty picture, while the unprecedent growth in new cases is alarming, look below it to hospitalizations and ICU cases. It’s a good counterpoint.

As far as I’m concerned, my positive test has certainly derailed our holiday plans, but whatever… we’ll make the best of it. On that note, let’s try to turn my positive test into a positive for you.

I have two pairs of tickets (great ones: center-ice row-3 club seats) for this Sunday’s Canucks game (7pm against the Coyotes) that I suddenly won’t be using… so let’s have a good old-fashioned contest like the old days. I’d base it on BC numbers, but they don’t publish over the weekend… so our neighbours to the east will help us out. Over the last three days, here are the new-case numbers:

Ontario: 1,808 2,421 3,124
Quebec: 2,386 2,736 3,768

The complete list since Nov 29th is on the pretty picture.

So, guess away! Submit two guesses per entry – your guess for Saturday’s numbers for Ontario and also for Quebec. Something like “ON: 4,000 / QC: 5,000” and whoever is closest for each province wins a pair of tickets. Ties go to whoever guessed first.

See? Here’s how we make lemonade out my particularly lemony test result… good luck!

And now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go off and curl up in bed for 10 days.

By |2021-12-17T22:41:07-08:00December 17th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
Read More

November 29, 2021

My first thought upon hearing that there’s a new, far-more contagious variant emerging was, “Great… finally.”

Given the world’s sudden panic with respect to it, I guess I should clarify. I’m not some Evil Overlord awaiting the demise of humanity; quite the opposite. So… here’s what comes to mind…

Let’s rewind to the beginning of the pandemic. But no, not this one… the big one a long time ago. And no, not that one either… I’m not talking about the 1918-1919 Spanish flu. Let’s jump further back… and arrive at the 1889-1890 Russian flu pandemic. That pandemic killed around a million people out of a world population of 1.5 billion… roughly 0.7% of everyone which, if you map it to today’s world population, would be a death toll of over 5 million… a number which, unfortunately, has already been far-exceeded by Covid-19.

That flu epidemic has been studied ever since, and it certainly got a closer look in 1918, when scientists were trying to figure out what they were dealing with. As it turns out, after a century of research, with scientists all-along trying to shoehorn in what sort of flu virus that might have been (because nothing made perfect sense, and nothing really fit), a simpler explanation has recently come to light… and it’s become evident that the Russian flu pandemic wasn’t actually the flu after all. It was… yeah, you guessed it.

This sort of retro-science is obviously much easier in hindsight… indeed, that’s the only way to do it… so when you read about the symptoms of that ancient pandemic these days, and read about the high fever, chest inflammation, respiratory issues, killing predominantly older people, loss of taste and smell… yes, it does all sound somewhat familiar… and it’s not the flu.

As it turns out, the great Russian flu pandemic was actually caused by a coronavirus strain labelled OC43, one that has been found to have jumped into the human population exactly around 1890… and it certainly hit the ground running, infecting and killing countless people.

But here’s an interesting fact, 130 years later… OC43 is one of the leading causes of… the common cold. Has it gotten weaker over the years? Is it now more contagious but less virulent? Are we just more immune to it? Did we acquire some of that immunity from our parents? Are treatments more common and accessible to the extent that it’s no longer a big deal?

Yes – to all of the above. It’s just a common cold. We’ve all been dealing with it all our lives, and it’s generally – the vast majority of the time — not a big deal.

For virus like OC43 to go from killing close to 1% of the population to being no big deal took over a century. These days, we’re not interested in waiting that long. We have nowhere near the attention span. The sort of mindset that demands we be able to binge-watch an entire seven seasons of some show during three days of lockdown is the same mindset that insists everything, including pandemics, be dealt with in a quick and efficient manner.

Nature doesn’t really care what we think, so we simply have to take what we can get… but what we’re getting, as per my opening paragraph is, in my opinion, cautiously optimistic.

Like a common cold, we’re all going to come into contact with it. Everyone scrambling to close their borders? It’s a nice theatrical exercise, but the truth is that the Omicron variant is probably already here. Where’s here? Exactly. Everywhere. Watch for cases to start rising dramatically… everywhere.

And is that a bad thing? Not necessarily. Cases will go up, but far-more-importantly, will hospitalizations? ICU admissions? Deaths?

I won’t go out of my way (yet) to say it’s all a good thing, but there’s one potentially very positive version of this: That this is the virus’s end-game. That this is where it gets a lot more contagious and a lot less virulent. Indeed, if we start getting data that this thing spreads like wildfire but causes only mild symptoms, we’re actually well on our way out of this mess… on a global scale. While it’s still too early to say for certain, initial indications imply a milder disease. While Delta cases cause elevated pulse rates, low oxygen levels and the loss of taste and smell, Omicron cases seem to cause different symptoms: Fatigue, head and body aches, and occasional sore throats and coughs.

And if that’s the extent of it – what sounds like nothing more than a common cold – and if it’s so virulent that we all get it and, with that, develop antibodies against the underlying C19… mission accomplished. Problem solved.

It’s interesting that this variant was first identified in South Africa.

On a somewhat related noted, it’s interesting to note that for the most part, the entire continent of Africa bypassed conventional telephone lines. It just wasn’t worth it to wire the entire country. They missed out on decades of the benefits of telephones in every household… but they’re making up for it now. Cellular infrastructure has arrived and, with it, internet and apps and everything that comes with it. They missed telephony the first time around, but thanks to leapfrogging technology, are pretty-much caught up. They’re exactly where you and I are with mobile phones, and, given how much we pay for cell service around here, probably a bit ahead. They leapfrogged into the cellular age… and they may end up leapfrogging vaccines.

The pathetic vaccination rates in Africa (not because they don’t want it, but because it just hasn’t been made available) might quickly become as irrelevant as an old Bell telephone (you know, the old ones… the ones where you could deliciously slam down the receiver in frustration) – because the prevalence of a mild and very-contagious version of this virus might finally be the thing to slam it out of existence. Africa may immunize themselves out of the pandemic by simply infecting each other with a much milder strain. And if that turns out to be the case, it won’t just be Africa; it’ll be everywhere.

I sincerely hope I’m not completely wrong. It’ll take a bit of time to confirm (or shoot down) some of these assumptions.., but I think it’s fair to put out there that there’s a version of this doom and gloom that’s not so gloomy and doomy. Far from it. The news that initially sent the world into a panic and markets tumbling and airports shutting down flights… might turn out to be a significant positive turning point.

By |2021-11-29T21:50:52-08:00November 29th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, History|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
Read More

© 2020-2023 Horatio Kemeny | Web presence supported by KJS Design

Go to Top