Vaccine

March 25, 2021

On the flipside of the virulent anti-vaxxers comes the crowd who’ll do anything to jump the line and get their shot. Our most famous local exhibit are those two “hotel workers” who flew to that remote village in the Yukon, happily joining the queue with the Indigenous elders of the area. Pathetic, and grossly unethical.

… and, as it turns out, far from uncommon. Given the haphazard rollouts at provincial and state levels, there are plenty of opportunities appearing. It’s come to light that any of us could hop on a plane, fly to an American city… and easily get jabbed. Different places have different requirements, but here’s a good example: Any smoker in Illinois is instantly eligible. People have been lying and getting shots all over the place… and if your ethics allow for it, why not fly to Chicago for $300, walk into a pharmacy, buy a pack of smokes and say, “Hey… while I’m here…”

Were it not for the 3-day, $2,000 mandatory hotel visit on the way back, I suspect this might be a more popular thing to do.

But, you don’t have to go so far… and, this changes daily. And, it’s completely ethical:

In four days, any adult in Ohio will be able to get the vaccine. A couple of days later, anyone in Utah. A few days after that, Michigan and Connecticut. Washington State is a bit behind, but they’ll likely have that in place by May. And that’s for *everyone*.

Eventually, places reach the point where the supply outpaces the demand, and the doors can fly open. Come and get it. And, until things get to that point, still… with a pre-existing eligible condition, just wander into the CVS and walk out vaccinated… as easily as getting a flu shot around here.

The three most common words that you’ll overhear at a racetrack are “Woulda”, “Coulda”, and “Shoulda”; you hear them a lot when the horses cross the finish line and frustrated horseplayers crumple their losing tickets and toss them angrily onto the floor.

“I coulda bet the Daily Double!”
“I shoulda put the 4 in my Trifecta!”
“I woulda bet the 7 if I had more money!”

One day, when this is all over, and the people in charge are trying to figure out why Canada, a first-world nation with every possible resource at its disposal, managed to fall so far behind the eight-ball on their vaccine rollout, these words will heard a lot. They coulda done this, they shoulda done that. No doubt lessons will have been learned… but it’s just as likely that by the time the next pandemic of this sort shows up – which, hopefully, is many many years from now, it’ll all be forgotten. The only lines people will be familiar with jumping will be for the SkyTrain… or for rides at Playland on crowded Labour Day PNE weekends.

Highly recommended, by the way… the rides, the food, the animals, that building full of hucksters shilling Ginsu knives and stuff to magically polish your car… and, while you’re there, check out the horses at Hastings Park. Pick a horse and bet on it… watch it finish fourth… and then, repeat after me – including you, Mr. Trudeau — woulda, coulda, shoulda.

By |2021-03-25T17:03:09-07:00March 25th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |2 Comments
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March 24, 2021

On July 12, 2018, an elongated dump truck, entering the Knight Street bridge via an onramp – a little too quickly – rolled over and dumped its contents all over the bridge deck, leading to a closure (in both directions) that lasted hours. Unfortunately, it started leaking diesel as well, which led to hazmat team showing up. Further complications (including the truck driver being trapped – he was fine, but it took a while to extract him) led to this entire episode going on for several hours; no traffic flowing either way.

The cascading effect of that was interesting to see. Knight St. being blocked led to Marine Drive being backed up… beyond the point where alternate routes were accessible. Trying to get out of Vancouver towards Richmond and Surrey is next to impossible from the south end if Oak St. is backed up and Marine Drive is clogged… so people started trying to head east from avenues that were further north… and slowly, 49th, 41st, King Ed… all the way down to Broadway and, eventually, downtown… all clogged. Standstill. For hours.

From an engineering point of view, the Knight St. bridge is a SPF – a Single Point of Failure. When it fails, there is a cascading effect that leads to bigger and bigger problems because everything that depends on it will also fail. It’s what you always try to avoid, but sometimes, it’s inevitable… as is usually the case with bridges. Traffic in Vancouver is at the mercy of our bridges… because we’re on the coast, and because we have rivers and inlets. The trade-off of not having 9 bridges spanning every arm of the Fraser River is that once in a decade or two, this will happen… and there’s really nothing to fix, and there’s really nothing to mitigate. Once in a long while, an accident will close that bridge and chaos will ensue, and we will deal with it. The previous time, you might recall, back in 2000… a boat carrying a crane miscalculated something, and 15cm of the top of the crane hit the bridge and ruptured the water and gas lines. Good times.

Those are SPFs at a municipal level. What do SPFs at a global level look like? The Panama Canal is an obvious one. Plug it up for a significant period of time, and global chaos will ensue.

Close behind that is the Suez Canal, where more than 10% of international maritime traffic travels… and where, yesterday, a 200,000 ton/1,300 foot container ship managed to ground itself diagonally and block the entire thing. An army of tugboats is there as we speak, furiously trying to un-wedge it… because there is an ever-growing traffic jam of oil tankers and other ships… on both sides.

Back to the local level… a vaccine rollout is a complicated endeavour, and nobody wants to be the SPF. Nobody wants to be that weak link. We got a hint of it recently, and we will label that SPF “Telus”. You might have loads of vaccine and nurses and tents and parking lots and clinics and doctors and syringes and all the rest of it, but the entire infrastructure is at the mercy of its weakest links; its SPFs. That’s why, properly done, you have not just phone banks, but every other version of communication available as well for booking appointments.

I don’t need to harp on this, because it’s already been discussed at length and solutions are being implemented and all the fingers have been pointed in the appropriate directions.

But it’s worth mentioning because, thanks to a very different sort of SPF, specifically the mishandling of the AstraZeneca messaging, we will be getting a lot more vaccine sooner than we’d expected. And I would love it if it were able to flow, unimpeded, into all of the arms that are eagerly awaiting it.

… because the only SPF I really want to be worrying about is the rating of the sunscreen I’ll be putting on, enjoying a Covid-free late summer on a crowded Kits beach, lying in the sand, staring at the blue sky, swimming in the ocean and watching all those big container ships transiting in and out of the harbour… hopefully not running into anything.

By |2021-03-24T17:03:03-07:00March 24th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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March 23, 2021

It’s a good thing AstraZeneca makes a good vaccine… and perhaps that’s where all their money goes… because their PR/marketing/outreach/spin-control department certainly isn’t as world-class.

First, the whole blood-clot non-issue that spun out of control. It’s since spun back, but not before permanently eroding confidence in that vaccine among many people; irreparable damage.

Hours after that was all cleared up, another scandal, this one to do with reporting efficacy data… AZ reporting 79%, but then being accused of cherry-picking data, and that the number is probably closer to 69%. Their questionable data and the questionable inclusion/exclusion will all be sorted out in the next 48 hours, but, once again, “irrefutable” ammo for the anti-vax camp. “See, they’re lying to us.”

One number that isn’t in dispute is a number that agrees with the other relevant (to us) vaccines… AZ, Moderna and Pfizer… and all of the regulators who scrutinize their results, collectively, will tell you that 2 weeks after receiving a single jab of any of those three, your chances of getting seriously ill go down to zero. Zero is a bold claim, but there has yet to be a case of a hospitalization from someone who’s had one shot and given it a chance to kick-in. And no, it’s not zero if you count the guy who went home to celebrate, got drunk, fell over, hit his head and wound up back at the E.R…. but I do mean that nobody has developed serious C19 symptoms.

It’s so unfortunate that this recent messaging will most certainly cause hesitancy among those still on the fence, especially because aside from what I just said with respect to it preventing serious illness, at the end of the day, a 69% chance of getting a mild cold is not a lot different than a 79% chance. On top of that, when the “real” results are published, it may end up being what they originally claimed. Or higher. It certainly won’t be lower.

Last year, when the concept of vaccines for C19 was still being discussed, when the question of “Can we even develop a vaccine for this?” was being asked, efficacies of 60% would’ve been considered a great success. 70%? Awesome.

The 95% that Moderna and Pfizer came up with is off the charts, but here’s the thing… imagine you’re stepping up to bat at Fenway Park in Boston. Off to your left, 310 feet away and 37 feet tall is “The Green Monster” – that wall so famously targeted by all right-handed hitters whose only desire it to sail a ball over it. So you step up and uncork a “Moderna” — 395-foot crushing home run. Or maybe a “Pfizer” – a 394-foot homer.

Or… a lesser “AstraZeneca” – only 369 feet in the air. But guess what, it counts – exactly the same as the other two… and when you cross home plate, having just won the World Series with that hit, nobody is bringing out the tape-measure to see how far it went.

Perhaps not the most applicable metaphor, but it’s true in the sense that if all we had was the AZ vaccine and we were all taking it at the same pace as the other two, the further development and eventual end of this pandemic would likely look very similar. Nobody is adding up the length of the home-runs that were hit. It’s the final score that counts, and that’s what gets reported. Even by AZ, who even though is not so good at messaging, at least can hit a ball/develop a great vaccine.

By |2021-03-23T17:04:11-07:00March 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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March 22, 2021

Here’s what seems to be a logical progression… some witty/smart/creative troublemaker comes up with an idea and “puts it out there”. The idea enters an echo chamber of like-minded people who welcome it with open arms. The idea gets tossed around, talked about, enhanced upon… grown in different directions, exaggerated and then commandeered to suit the narrative of whoever is propagating it.

Eventually, the original source of the idea backs away… but that’s now irrelevant. Those who need the idea to exist hold onto it and continue to manipulate it to their heart’s content. When logical people argue against it, they get shot down. When those believers are told it was all made up and whatever was said originally simply isn’t true, they refuse to accept it. When the original guy comes out and says, ”Hey, I was kidding”… believers will assume he’s bought out/paid off/threatened… whatever. Then that person backs away from the mess they’ve created, and all that’s left is a big mess of people believing nonsense they want to believe.

Every single conspiracy theory imaginable can trace its origins to something like this. Some religions as well.

But also… good old common fake news.

The former president of the US made “fake news” a thing. I don’t think any of us had heard those words until Donald Trump began uttering them on an hourly basis, a response to anything that didn’t fit his narrative. And now it’s become the de-facto argument for when people disagree with something to which they have no counterargument.

This follows-up on yesterday’s post, because in reading what people have to say about the AstraZeneca vaccine, one thing is now clear. It was smeared briefly with misinformation, and that smear, for those who want to believe it, will never get polished off. There is no science, no data, no version of facts that can now be presented to someone that’d decided that the AZ vaccine causes blood clots. AZ vaccine causes blood clots in the same way water and fresh air and blinking causes blood clots, but nobody wants to hear that. If vaccines are evil, here’s one more gargantuan piece of evidence. Forget that it’s wrong; that doesn’t matter. Of course, scientists will tell you it’s safe, etc etc.

What can you do? Actually, nothing. I saw a piece of a reported wandering into a restaurant in a very red state; a 90% Trump-voting district. He went in there and asked for a show of hands… “Who’ll be getting the vaccine?”

Not a single hand from the dozens of unmasked people. Not one. He then interviewed a few of them and asked why not… and got the usual answers you’d expect… they’re trying to poison us, they’re trying to control us, they’re trying to kill us… or, it was rushed, it’s not safe, there’s no covid, fake news, etc.
One person was asked the exact question I wanted to hear answered: “If Donald Trump today came out and said to do it… like he did… he got the vaccine, albeit quietly without telling anyone… would you then get the vaccine?”

That particular answer: “No way… why would I listen to Trump? He’s a Liberal New Yorker. Can’t trust him!”.

“But you voted for him.”

“Whatever.”

This is not a “steep uphill”… it’s a vertical, slick and slippery and unclimbable wall. Not even worth trying.

By |2021-03-22T17:03:45-07:00March 22nd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 21, 2021

Two wrongs don’t always make a right… but three rights make a left! – a good rule to remember when it’s between 3pm and 6pm and you really need to turn left… but all the signs prohibit it. Skip ahead a block, turn right a few times… and you’re set.

But… back to two wrongs… first, there was a lot of misguided bullshit about the AstraZeneca vaccine and blood clots. Then, secondly, as a result of that, the European Union halted it “till further notice, out of an abundance of caution”…. caution of what? Caution of exercising critical thinking? Caution of not overreacting? Caution of not undermining a global initiative?

That all lasted a few days until some clearer thinkers came along and said, “Wait… wtf are we actually doing here…” but, by then, it was a little too late. A lot of time, and a lot of confidence, was lost.

The EU did the expected 180 and AZ vaccinations are ramping up. In fact, now, the EU chief is threatening to ban exports of AZ vaccine until Europeans can first get their hands on what they need. You know, the stuff that a week ago was considered toxic.

But, it’s a little late… not just because some of their vaccine rollouts have been significantly affected, but because a lot of that vaccine has already been shipped out, and it’s been sitting on U.S. shelves… and the U.S. has yet to approve the AZ vaccine… and so, rather than let it expire, they’re sending it off to be used… to Mexico, and… to Canada. We are getting one point five million doses of AZ vaccine, and that will most certainly accelerate things on this side of the border.

I said two wrongs… but reading back on all that, it took more than just a couple.

The result of all of that is now the EU’s problem, and it’s to our benefit. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes an abundance of caution is called for… but this entire episode (whose consequences, here in Canada, we’ll gratefully accept) could’ve and should’ve been avoided. A little bigger-picture thinking is called for, especially when the stakes are so high. It’s not a question of breaking rules; it’s a question of understanding when to apply them.

Like, for example… you want to turn left and it’s 4:30pm and the little red-slashed-circle says no, don’t do it… but there’s nobody coming and there’s no cop behind you. I’ll be honest… sometimes… temporarily banning myself from making that left turn makes as much sense as temporarily banning the AZ vaccine.

By |2021-03-21T17:03:05-07:00March 21st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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March 14, 2021

You know… if you take a pizza with radius “z” and thickness “a”, its volume can be calculated as pi•z•z•a – and that is my π contribution for the day – so Happy Pi Day!

Pi, like many people, is irrational… and Pi, also like many people, goes on forever… but it goes on forever after the decimal point, so it doesn’t get much bigger after a while. But let’s talk about numbers that *do* get big, and what happens when they collide with the fallacies of causality.

For example, unfortunately, sometimes people die unexpectedly. It happens a lot. People unexpectedly choke to death or have heart attacks or strokes or burst aneurysms or whatever else, and when they do, especially when it’s unexpected, people tend to try to blame it on something… because, somehow, our brains don’t like to accept the fact that sometimes, bad shit happens… and there’s nothing that caused it and there’s nothing anyone could have done to prevent it.

If someone ran the stats, I’m sure one would find that more than 99% of heart attacks happened in people who’d had a glass of water in their last 2 hours. Did the water cause those heart attacks?

At the moment, the AstraZeneca vaccine has been paused in Ireland… the usual “abundance of caution” reasoning, which pleases some liability lawyers tremendously, but does little to instill public confidence in vaccines, a topic where there’s still a lot of uncertainty and hesitancy. “Just in case, until we figure this out.”

I’m not sure what they’re hoping to figure out. This started in Norway, where “a number” of cases of blood clots were discovered in people who’d recently received the AstraZeneca vaccine. That number was 4… out of hundreds of thousands of shots. Italy banned a particular batch of AZ vaccine following the death of a serviceman in Sicily… who died of cardiac arrest one day after his shot. Cardiac arrest, blood clots… same thing. It must be the vaccine.

When you look the actual large numbers, 17 million people in the EU and UK have received the AZ vaccine… and the number of people who’ve developed blood clots, some number in the hundreds, is actually lower than the expected number out of a random sampling of the population. The number of people who’ve unexpectedly dropped dead shortly after getting the vaccine is probably similar to the number of people who unexpectedly dropped dead after drinking some coffee. Or yawning. Or breathing. But… that’s unacceptable; there must be something to blame.

I get it; in this day and age of lawyers ready to pounce, it’s easy to see where the abundance of caution comes from. I wonder how long it’ll be before they all realize there’s much ado about nothing here… except preventing the rollout of the vaccine to areas that now, more than ever, need it; Italy is suspending the vaccine at the exact time they’re seeing a frightening, exponential growth in cases. Because one person died, of causes almost certainly that have nothing to do with the vaccine.

They might tell you “better safe than sorry”, and with that, I agree… except I think their implementation of the concept is backwards. Far more people will die of C19, having not received their shot in a timely manner, than might be “saved” by an issue that’ll turn out to have been non-existent to begin with. It’s really that simple… as simple as apple… strudel.

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By |2021-03-14T17:04:15-07:00March 14th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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March 13, 2021

There’s a lot to be said with meeting someone in person, looking them in the eye, giving them a firm handshake and knowing that you’re not leaving the room till you get what you want. Obviously, a lot more can be achieved in person than online.

As introverted as I may be, I miss those in-person meetings… in the same way I miss being able to properly hang up a phone. A real phone. At the end of an unpleasant conversation, there was nothing more satisfying than slamming the receiver down onto the cradle. Those Bell phones were made of nuclear-war-resilient plastic. Unbreakable. My uncle in Chile a few times lost his temper on whatever was on the other side of the call and flung his phone out of a second-story office window. The cord ripped away, but the phones always survived. Clicking the [Leave Meeting] on Zoom angrily is a far cry indeed.

Speaking of Chile and doing business, specifically the sort of business that has them pretty close to the top of the list of vaccinations… perhaps my post a few days ago seemed to allude to the fact that perhaps there was some sort of funny business that may have occurred when those Chileans flew out for those in-person meetings and got those vaccine agreements. A little nudge, a little bribe, a little kick-back. I didn’t mean to imply that; I meant to state it unequivocally. Of course that’s what happened. I don’t have any proof of it, of course, and what does it matter… it’s just my opinion. But I also understand what greases the wheels… what gets slow-moving government bureaucracy going in a hurry. What jumps the queue. What gets it done.

My first experience with government corruption occurred when I was quite young… 12 or 13. I had a friend who lived nearby, and his dad put up a basketball hoop in the back lane, hung up over the garage door. The lane was flat and paved… and it was great. We were out there for hours the first week… playing one-on-one and every variation of P-I-G and H-O-R-S-E you can imagine. One day, the neighbour’s wife came out to see what was causing all this racket. The next day, her husband came out to have a look… watched us play a bit… didn’t say much, just went back inside. Oh, did I mention that guy was an Alderman for the city of Vancouver?

Two days later, when we got there after school, there were two freshly-laid speed bumps in the lane, perfectly placed and wide enough to completely destroy our basketball court. It still smelled of freshly-poured tar. Not a single other speed bump in any back lane for 10 blocks around. And not like there were ever any speeding cars there to begin with. What the hell. Is this how things work?

Needless to say, we weren’t happy. Our version of petty revenge lasted years. That guy ran in two subsequent elections, and every time an election sign (with his name, of course) popped up in front of his house, we’d replace it with three different ones from various opposition parties. We’d have to venture deep into East Van in the middle of the night to collect all of the colourful alternatives. Totally worth it.

Ok, where was I… yeah, governments. I think it’s no big surprise to learn that there’s corruption at every level. Screwing up a couple of kids’ fun just because you don’t like the sound of a basketball is a small example. Bribing officials, peddling influence, making big promises, forgiving crimes, throwing huge money at certain people and, ultimately, lying… were things Abraham Lincoln did to push through his Emancipation Proclamation and ban slavery in the U.S.

Ah, didn’t see that coming, did you… yes, indeed… sometimes, that corruption is for the greater good… and for those crimes that today would’ve gotten Lincoln jailed for life, he’s instead considered the greatest president in history. Quite a fine line, isn’t it. I don’t know what those Chileans did, and I don’t care, and certainly, the well-vaccinated populace of Chile doesn’t care either.

If you want to argue that Canada should be above that sort of thing, name me a Prime Minister and we can discuss his corruption scandal. Chretien’s helicopters, Mulroney’s Airbuses, Trudeau’s SNC-Lavalin. Closer to home, Glen Clark’s deck/casino, Harcourt’s BingoGate and Vander Zalm’s Fantasy Gardens.

Government corruption has been around forever, and it’s never going away. At the very least, they could put it to use for the greater good… not just individual gain.

Lincoln? Awesome. Chile? Same. The rest of my examples? Brutal.

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By |2021-03-13T17:03:30-08:00March 13th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 10, 2021

There’s a lot to learn from looking at the list of countries who managed to secure significant doses of vaccine early in the game, because it begs a lot of questions. Why are they doing so well? Where did they get it from? Why did they get it and not us?

Starting at the top of the list and sorting by Doses… either by “population percentage with at least one dose” or simply “doses per 100 people” – the results are pretty much the same. There, it makes sense to remove the “big” names because the answer is obvious… those that are making the vaccines are using it for themselves as much as they can. The U.S., the U.K, China, Russia. Also remove from there places whose numbers are skewed because of low populations. The Maldives, the Seychelles… tiny populations, mostly vaccinated.

The top of the list now is of course Israel, who was on top of the list before anyone else was removed. They have a population of 9,000,000. They’ve administered 9,000,000 doses. They’re not all first doses, but most are. I saw a picture of a café in Tel Aviv yesterday… and outdoor patio, crowded, no masks, people having a blast. We’ll be there one day… but they’re there now.

How did Israel do it? A pretty sweet deal with Pfizer – one that worked out well for everyone. Lots of data, lots of healthy people. There are plenty of articles to read about how it all came about.

But who’s next on the list now? A terrific outlier to study, as far as I’m concerned.

Chile… and I’m interested because I was born there. Because I have friends and family there. Because I used to travel down there on an almost annual basis, and I know how things work; I know more about doing business with Chile than anyone would ever want to know… which led me to ask the relevant question… who’d they hustle and how’d they do it? Their population is about half of Canada. 22% of those people have had at least one dose. We’re at 5%.

May of 2020 was a bad month down there… 100,000 new infections and almost 1,000 deaths. That’s when they began taking their vaccine plan seriously. Their ministry of health set up meetings with 11 labs around the world, a number that went down to 5 as talks progressed. Internally, it was agreed that when the health regulators of those jurisdictions approved those vaccines, they’d be auto-approved in Chile. To lock in those supplies, meetings were scheduled *in person*. The Chileans flew out to numerous places, including Abu Dabi and the UAE, principal operational hubs for Pfizer and BioNTech. And this is where the Chilean way of business kicked in. I wasn’t in those rooms, but what I know is that those Chileans did not leave without firm deals to receive vaccine; letters of intent, confidentiality agreements… and, probably, agreements not so different from Israel – yes, for sure, we’ll give you the data… we’ll red-line vaccinations… whatever you need… just get us the stuff, AND, if *you* don’t comply with your end of it, there will be hell to pay, as enforced by whatever international laws apply.

I’m speculating a bit and drawing on my knowledge on how things work, and what sort of leverage (the only sort that could possibly be applied) might have worked… because it ultimately worked, and worked well. Very early in the game, Chile was already ahead. By September of last year, Chile was setting up clinical trials for Sinovac and Janssen. Some 3,000 Chileans happily volunteered between October and November. And, for doing so, Chile locked in a $14/dose cost of vaccine and top of the delivery schedule. Chile stuck to their end of it, and the manufacturers have stuck to theirs. Win-win.

Around here, we’re paying $35/dose, when we can get it. Yes, I know – we’ve all read the same news – we will get it all in due course, and just because we keep getting dropped down the list it doesn’t mean anything. Patience, etc. By the time our anger and head-shaking subsides, the pandemic will be over and we’ll have moved on and nobody will care. But allow me to put it in writing; our government let us down. Good intentions are not good enough. Intention to have enough vaccine in a timely manner. Intention to have an infrastructure for booking appointments. Getting up in front a podium and TV cameras isn’t worth anything if you don’t deliver. Nobody is interested in finger pointing and lame excuses, especially how it’s “out of our control”. Your job as our leaders is to find a way to put it into *your* control. Our control. Many governments around the world, with far less resources at their disposal, managed to navigate this process far better.

Ultimately, I’m familiar with the Canadian way of doing business too. The 300,000,000 doses we’ve procured – in the same way Seinfeld “procured” a car reservation in that famous episode – was done with lots of emails, phone calls, Zoom meetings. Whiteboards and PowerPoints. Lawyers and contracts and back-and-forth mark-ups, with nothing in there that could incur any liability. And with nothing to offer in return, very little teeth in those agreements. How can we be sure they’ll hold up their end? It doesn’t matter… and don’t worry about it because with all the “best efforts” language in there, we have zero recourse anyway. Let’s just hope for the best.

Chile started at the finish line. They simply asked, “What is the fastest way to get vaccines into the arms of our population?”… and assigned a group of intelligent resourceful people to just get it done. And they did. Pisco Sours all around. Salúd.

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By |2021-03-10T17:03:18-08:00March 10th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |9 Comments
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March 9, 2021

From now on, every day will mark a one-year anniversary of something pandemic-related. Today happens to be the day that marks exactly one year since the first death of C19 in Canada… at the Lynn Valley Care Center. On this day last year, we were all wondering… how many more will it be before this is over…? How bad will it get…?

It’s unlikely to get any worse than it’s already been, so that part of it has probably been answered… but the slow descent to the finish line – the rate of it getting better — is still undefined… because there are plenty of unknowns. For example, how and when can you book your appointment for a vaccination…

A year ago, I knew very little about pandemics. But I knew a lot about computer infrastructure and computer systems and IT designed to handle thousands of people and millions of transactions per second. Accordingly, if a year ago you’d asked me to put together a system to handle vaccine bookings… from top to bottom – log in, identify securely, book an open slot, have that info make its way to the proper health authority, send reminders, integrate an app, use a QR code, etc etc… off the top of my head, I could have it designed on paper in a week, built into alpha-testing in six weeks, beta-tested it in three months and have a fully bug-free system – reliable enough for release into the wild — in six months. Then another six months waiting for the actual vaccines to materialize. And that’s conservative, and that’s just me. There are people far more knowledgeable with the present-day infrastructure possibilities (I was doing this 20 years ago), so it’s likely far easier these days.

The key to projects like this is to not re-invent the wheel. This isn’t complicated, but it has to be reliable… and, these days, chances are… no matter what you’re doing, someone else has already done it, and done it well… and so you take that, and you customize it instead of re-creating it. We have been booking online for decades. The only thing that needs any sort of customization is the B.C.-friendly user interface, and hooking it into the existing health network. The rest already exists; just because it doesn’t exist here, it doesn’t mean somewhere else in the world hasn’t been doing it for ages. The guts of it are out there and have been well-battle-tested. Attach to it whatever localization is needed and expected… need to be able to book online, need to be able to phone in, need to be able to handle FAX requests, need to be able to accept telegrams. Check check check & check. Integrate it all. Whatever.

It boggles the mind that Vancouver Coast Health, having had exactly a year to prepare for this day, managed to create a system that allowed exactly 369 vaccination appointments to get booked. A “phone-only” system. That system saw 1.7 million attempted calls in the first 3 hours… and more than 3 million by the end of the day. I’m pretty sure it was the same 30,000 people calling 100 times each. There were countless stories of people trying to get through all day: Most of them were met with busy signals and/or dropped calls… and for those that got through, many waited for hours on hold before the call vanished into thin air. Queue the finger-pointing… the government, Telus, whatever. Who could possibly have foreseen this demand? The answer is… everyone.

Excuses are fair to serve up when something unexpected enters the picture, but there was nothing unexpected yesterday. It’s unacceptable and inexcusable. Fishing around for the silver lining, I can come up with only one thing: It can only get better.

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By |2021-03-09T17:03:21-08:00March 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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March 8, 2021

Setting aside the vaccine optimism for a moment, let’s remember we’re not quite there yet… although, slowly, things will trend in that direction. It depends where you are and it depends how things are going. For example, today, New Brunswick shifted from level “orange” to level “yellow”… which means, for them, bubbles can grow to 15 people, sports teams are allowed league play across zones and in larger tournaments, formal indoor gatherings are allowed (with some restrictions) and informal outdoor gatherings of up to 50 people are also allowed.

But we are far from New Brunswick, in more ways than one.

B.C. is the only province in Canada where our 7-day rolling average of new cases has been consistently going up. Every other place has seen it bounce around, a little up and a little down. Ours is very consistently a little… up. A month ago, our 7-day average of new cases was 436. A week later, 452. A week after that, 482. Today, it’s 557.

So what, that’s just testing… but what matters are hospitalizations, ICU admissions and deaths, right? I’d argue that’s not quite true, but even if that’s what you believe, then all I can tell you is that all of those numbers, over the last month, are virtually unchanged. Around 250 people in hospital, 65 of them in ICU… but 136 people have died since then, so there’s a consistent pipeline. It’s neither a downward spiral nor an upward spiral. Just a churn.

It’s easy to fiddle with the numbers, but let’s remember these are real people, not just statistics. Every one of those 136 people have family and friends deeply affected. As do the 136 presently in the system. And as will next month’s 136 if nothing changes.

Things, fortunately, are changing… just more slowly around here, for the usual reasons. Like staunch Republicans who are still supporting Trump, we are now well past the point of changing people’s minds. If you were never into masks and social distancing, you’re certainly not about to change your tune now. If you’re adamantly against vaccines, that won’t change either. The flipside of that is that today was the first day to call in and book for vaccine appointments for the general public, starting with those aged 90+. The phone lines were flooded with calls… like 1.7 million calls for only 40,000 or so eligible people. That’s actually pretty encouraging. We’ll get there, but the impatience is evident… everywhere.

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By |2021-03-08T17:05:11-08:00March 8th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |5 Comments
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