Vancouver

Day 35 April 20, 2020

On the evening of March 23, 1989, Captain Joseph Hazelwood retired to his stateroom for the night, leaving his ship, the 987-foot, 240,000-ton Exxon Valdez, in the less-than-capable hands of his (unlicensed) 3rd mate. Shortly after midnight, the oil tanker fetched up on Bligh Reef, cracked open and, over 3 days, spilled almost 11 million gallons of crude oil into the pristine waters of Prince William Sound, contaminating more than 1,000 miles of coast line, 200 of it very badly… damage still evident today. Hundreds of thousands of animals — fish, birds, otters — lost their lives, in what must have been viewed from their eyes, their own hellish pandemic. A literal Black Death oozing towards them, like some Stephen King horror swamp creature brought to life.

Captain Hazelwood was crucified in the press and public opinion. Every bad story needs its villain, and he took the hit. Ultimately, the captain is responsible for his ship, period… but for things to go so wrong, there’s usually more to it… and there was, but that didn’t stop the finger pointing, and all of those fingers pointed to him.

More recently, like yesterday at around 4:30pm, The Spirit of Vancouver Island, a B.C. ferry, had a bit of a hard landing in Tsawwassen after its 90-minute journey from Victoria. The ship was slightly damaged, but no oil was spilled and no injuries were reported, and other than the hassle for some people having to wait up to 4 hours to disembark (and completely wrecking the day’s schedule for sailings), that was pretty much it.

I wasn’t on that ferry (and unless you had some urgent business, you shouldn’t have been either), but I can imagine what was going on after that happened. An announcement… “Sorry folks, as I’m sure you realize, blahblahlah, we’ll sort it out”. After that, for the people who were stuck on board, more “sorry” and free juice. At the time it happened, on the bridge, right after that veritable “Oh… shit” moment, someone saying “Sorry… so sorry, my bad”. As the last cars and trucks finally drove off, I’m sure there were more waves from the crew, and “sorry”. After the fact, B.C. Ferries put out at statement saying… yeah, you guessed it.

It is such a Canadian thing; we are known as the kings and queens of sorry, to the extent it may have lost its meaning. You might be standing in the street minding your own business, and some idiot buried in his phone will walk right into you, and you will find yourself saying, “Sorry!” You might be standing in some grocery aisle trying to decide which brand of maple syrup to purchase, and some fool will run his shopping cart into you, causing you to drop your maple-leaf-shaped bottle… but for some reason, you will say “Sorry!” Not too long go, I found myself saying sorry to a door that I’d just bumped. How very Canadian.

But Captain Joseph Hazelwood… he didn’t say sorry. I remember watching an interview when this happened more than 30 years ago, this guy getting grilled by the reporter, and the last question… “Are you sorry?”

You could see it in his eyes, his quivering lip… he desperately wanted to, but couldn’t. Like, of course he was sorry. That’s what he wanted to say… a long, heartfelt apology to the people of Alaska, to his family, to Exxon, to the planet… for screwing up, at least to the extent that he was responsible. But no, because no doubt… some lawyer, before the interview, told him… no matter what… no matter what, Joseph… do not say sorry.

The reason is pretty straightforward… the legal implications. Sorry means: “I know I messed up and therefore it’s my fault and therefore I’m responsible and therefore you may sue me.” This is in the United States, where most certainly, when you screw up and when you’re liable, you will get sued.

Around here, we actually have a law… we needed a law… to allow us to continue to be Canadian, and say sorry, and not incur any liability in doing so. It’s so Canadian, you’d think we’d cover it federally, but we don’t. Each province and territory (except Quebec and the Yukon) have their own version of an Apology Act, which basically lets you say “Sorry!” to anyone and everyone, and not incur the sort of blame that would stand up in court.

South of the border, though… not many apologies and lots of lawsuits. As things continue to go… south… in certain jurisdictions, the finger-pointing will get more aggressive. The blaming will get louder. The alternative-facts will become entrenched and indistinguishable from reality. And there will be lawsuits; many of them. As people die and businesses fail, someone is going to have to take the blame, and it’s always someone else. Cities will blame counties, counties will blame states, states will blame the federal government. But the leader of the executive branch of the federal government is not well known for apologizing or taking blame; indeed, he’s well known for lashing out at anyone who blames him for anything… so where will it lead?

I have no idea, culturally, what “sorry” implies in China. But I do know that a class-action lawsuit (based in the U.S., of course) involving 10,000 claimants from 40 different countries is seeking 6 trillion dollars in damages from China, because the virus is, you know, all their fault. Maybe if that goes through, we can all go after Spain next. With 100 years of interest on top of it.

Six trillion dollars.. I can’t even begin to describe how much money that is, but here’s a visualization. Take a stack of $100 bills… we can all visualize $1,000… just 10 bills. A thousand of those stacks is a million dollars. That stack would be about a metre tall. So a billion dollars would be a stack 1,000 times bigger… a kilometre. And by the way, that’s a pretty good “wow” of just how much bigger a billion is than a million. But a trillion? That’s a stack of bills 1,000km high. That gets you to the International Space Station and back again to the ground and then another 200km back up. Oh, and it’s 6 trillion… a 6,000km stack of $100 bills.

Apologizing went out of style with President Trump, and lawsuits have always been in style… and nobody wants to be the one holding the bag at the end of colossal losses being incurred by a situation that, ironically, perhaps has no nexus of blame. Which means lawsuits, for decades. And no apologies.

For what it’s worth, 20 years later, in 2009 (after all the legal entanglements had been unravelled, and whatever relevant statutes of limitations had expired), Captain Hazelwood did indeed offer a heartfelt apology.

OK, while I’m here… an update on numbers… B.C. is really looking good, on track for some of the mid-May relaxations we’ve been told about if these trends and numbers hold. Let’s wait till 2 weeks after the long weekend to make that judgement. So far, so good… keep at it… that finish line, in whatever form it initially takes… is getting closer.

Finally… like I’ve said before, when I sit down to write this… the intention is to talk about some relevant aspect of the pandemic, but sometimes I’m not really sure where it’s going to wind up. Sometimes it’s current and sometimes it’s thought-provoking and sometimes it’s relevant and sometimes it’s… well, what can I say if it’s none of the above… if you read all that and now wish you had those few minutes of your life back………. sorry!

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:52-07:00April 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |21 Comments
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Day 28 – April 13, 2020

Once in a while, we have a movie night here at home…. who are we kidding, every night is movie night these days… and recently (well, before Tiger King), we saw a movie that could best be described as a combination of Groundhog Day and… Alien? Predator? War of the Worlds? If you’re not familiar with Groundhog Day — you should see it. To some extent, it feels like we’re living it these days… but to summarize (spoiler alert), in the movie, a normal guy (well, Bill Murray) is caught in a time loop where he lives the same day over and over until he’s finally lived it perfectly and then his life can go on.

Those SciFi movies I listed all have in common the good-guy-humans vs. the bad-guy-aliens. In all cases, the good-guy humans prevail, with varying degrees of importance… saving themselves, saving the world, saving the universe.

Mix the two together, and what you get is humans vs. aliens, but with an interesting twist. Typically, our hero goes from battle to battle, close call to close call… until finally, he prevails. But in this movie, our hero keeps dying… because these aliens are seriously powerful. He doesn’t last more than a few minutes the first time. But as time goes on, he gets a little further along in his quest to kill the aliens — before he’s killed, and then wakes up the next day, and starts all over again. It’s a Hollywood movie (Edge of Tomorrow) with a Hollywood A-lister (Tom Cruise), so (spoiler alert) you can guess the ending… but here’s the takeaway of the whole thing… when he finally gets it right, when he finally — after brutally and painfully dying hundreds of times — is able to extinguish the aliens and life can go on and humanity is saved… nobody knows. It’s like nothing ever happened. It’s like the aliens never even showed up. All of humanity benefitted from the suffering this guy endured, but no one will ever know.

As we starting emerging from lockdown and navigate the complicated plan of getting back to normal, more and more of the crazies will emerge. There was a protest over the weekend where some people with “Fake News” and “CON-VID-19” signs showed up. Apparently, this is all a big conspiracy to… to… well, to what? These guys typically bundle-up all of the current conspiracies, so it’s difficult to unravel a logical narrative that might even make sense. The Chinese created it and activate it with 5G and have the vaccine but won’t give it to us but killed thousands of their own people to show it’s real but Deep State and Illuminati and government power-grab and… and… well, even if that mess of insanity were true, how exactly does Canada figure into it?

Locally, Kennedy Stewart, mayor of Vancouver, is getting increasingly worried that this city is reaching insolvency… and it’s a serious concern. As this goes on, fewer and fewer people will easily be able to pay the their mortgages or rents; where and when they can, they will. That’s the priority. Property taxes, which greatly fund this city, are lower on the list, and the many people who will throw their hands in the air and say, “What exactly do you want me to do? You know I haven’t worked in 3 months” have a good point. These taxes may be deferred and eventually will probably get paid (“deferred” is very different than “forgiven”) but the city needs money now. So they asked the provincial government for $200 million. And Victoria isn’t themselves rolling in cash these days either, so they will have to ring up Ottawa with a similar request. This then gets into a more complicated discussion at the federal level regarding literally printing money vs. inflation vs. stimulus vs. many other things, none of which are great for this country in the long run… which begs the question — to what end? To what end might the Canadian (or provincial or municipal) government be involved in some giant conspiracy? Not that you can ever intelligently argue with these people, but I’d love to hear that particular answer. We have created a big massive hoax which hurts everyone… across the board, everyone is suffering, including every single one of those government workers and officials… it will take years for us all to recover… because WHY?

I’ve made the mistake of answering a few of those sorts of messages privately, and my well-reasoned arguments are simply answered with “You just don’t get it.” On that, we can certainly agree. No, I don’t get it and I never will… but what I will point out is that all of those idiots will end up benefiting from the sacrifices we’ve all made, and it sounds like they won’t even be able to recognize it. We are all Tom Cruise.

And when the pandemic doesn’t get out of hand here, because of all of the intelligent and necessary measures that were put in place and that were followed by most of us, these are the idiots that will proudly be announcing to everyone, “See? There was nothing to worry about. This was never a concern, never a problem, and all of you bought into it. Sheeple!!”

That’s ok. You, like Tom Cruise at the end of that movie, can just sort of chuckle to yourself. You, me, we all took the hit for the greater good, and it was an expensive one… but we will recover.

And when and how exactly do we start that recovery? I’ll be happy to offer my completely-non-expert opinion in the coming days, and there are some encouraging signs to guide that. One is that the numbers really do look good. If you scan down the columns labelled “Cases Increase”, they tell an optimistic story, and not just in B.C.

Also… here in B.C., serological antibody tests are just around the corner… within the next couple weeks. This is the test that can tell you whether you’ve ever had the virus, symptoms or not. I don’t know what the rollout looks like… in a perfect world, we’d all get one instantly and we’d know our own status and that would obviously guide a lot. That’s not how the world works, but whatever way gathers the most information quickly and efficiently — that’s what we’ll see.

Until then… it’s working. Keep doing it. That light at the end of the tunnel is not a train screaming towards us.

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By |2020-10-08T01:24:56-07:00April 13th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Business & Economics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Space & Astronomy, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Day 26 – April 11, 2020

For the sake this example, I’m about to virtually kill a lot of people. Please don’t feel bad — they never existed.

Let’s imagine you want to drive from Vancouver to Seattle… and let’s further imagine that there’s a winding road that follows the coastline all the way down. Sidenote — for part of it, there is… there’s a 20-mile winding road from Bellingham to Burlington called Chuckanut Drive that’s well-worth the detour. Spectacular views and much more.

So… there’s the imaginary coastline road, and there’s Highway 99/I-5 which actually exists.

And you’re a new driver, kind of nervous… the thought of the fast-moving traffic on the highway scares you a bit. But you also know the coastline road is very winding, and you’ve heard of cars losing control and going over the cliff. You do your research and quickly find a report that tells you that over the last two years, accidents killed 45 people on the highway and 24 on the coastline road. Again, I’m making this all up. Nobody was hurt in the creation of this posting.

No brainer, you think, the coastline road is twice as safe as the highway… because that’s the ultimate measure of safety, and there can’t be too much more to it…

Well, there can be… and if you keep reading down my imaginary report, you’ll find that the coastline road seems to have about one accident a month. Like clockwork, once a month, a single-occupant vehicle loses control, rolls down the 100-foot cliff and kills the driver. That accounts for the 24 deaths.

On the highway, as it turns out, some idiot last year was celebrating something… and rented out one of those monstrosity stretch Hummer limos, filled it with 43 of his closest buddies… and apparently everybody, including the driver, got drunk… and the limo, with its full tank of gas, crashed into a telephone pole, exploded into flames and killed all 45 occupants.

That changes things a bit, doesn’t it…

Those 24 single-car accidents each have a little circle around them. The HummerLimo has a single, big circle around it. Around here, the Lynn Valley Care Centre has a big circle around it too, as does the administration office of Lions Gate Hospital. The Mission Institution. The Okanagan Correctional Centre in Oliver. The Blueberry River First Nations community near Fort St. John. All of them have their own little circles.

So… let’s talk about clusters.

From an epidemiological point of view, a cluster is defined by infections that are grouped by where and when they happened. If those two things are close to each other, they’re part of the same cluster. Infections can be clustered, deaths can be clustered. Really, any statistic can (and usually should) be associated where it’s relevant.

In B.C., the Lynn Valley Care Center (where the average age of residents is 87) recorded Canada’s first COVID-19 death on March 8th. Since then, it’s accounted for an additional 17. Here in B.C., our mortality rate per resolved case is 6.0% when you count Lynn Valley, and 4.3% when you don’t. This is in no way minimizing the importance of each and every one of those people; rather, it’s just to point out where they should fit in statistically.

Treating those unfortunate 18 deaths the same as any random 18 in the city would skew things significantly; there’s clearly a lot more to learn about those 24 individuals that drove off the cliff than by analyzing the demographics of the 45 people in the limo.

This is all something to keep in mind when reading reports that tend to favour skewing data towards their intended conclusion… something I’m saying for my own benefit as much as yours, because these days I’m being bombarded with articles and reports and opinions, many of which are diametrically opposed to each other. All of them claim credible evidence. I’m trying to keep a level head, and you should too.

As for today’s numbers… well, it’s green all the way across the bottom. From a purely aesthetic point of view, that’s as good as it’ll ever get… and it’s what I consider great evidence that what we’re doing is working. Let’s keep at it, and let’s hope those people that aren’t such good listeners don’t become clusters of their own once this long-weekend is over.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:03-07:00April 11th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Politics, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Travel Stories, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |10 Comments
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Day 11 – March 27, 2020

To circle back a bit on something I said yesterday… with a bit more detail…

The incubation period of a virus (which is up to 14 days in this case) indicates the period of time where someone might be infected, but not show any symptoms. Some viruses can be contagious during that time… as is this one.

In B.C., we were told to go home (and stay home) sometime around March 16th — 11 days ago. It was a bit of a loosey-goosey following to begin with… but it tightened up a few days later… 19th or 20th. Let’s call it 8 days ago.

With an incubation period of max 14 days… and without a serious lockdown until 8 days ago, we have a trailing 6 days where we were all going about our daily business, feeling fine and possibly not too concerned about the possibility of either passing this off or getting this from — someone else. Unfortunately, during that time, both of those things could have happened.

Which means, at this moment, we have this big unknown for the next 6 days… where we might see a spike in cases. The degree of that spike remains to be seen. That’s the potentially bad news.

The potentially good news, however… is that not all cases take to the last minute to show up, so we can learn a bit about what’s happened so far. During these 8 to 11 days of isolation, cases have certainly shown up… and our (for the moment, and hopefully forever) very capable medical infrastructure has been dealing with them.

Also, every single case that developed during that time in (proper) isolation, infected, at most, the people isolated around them. Let’s say that person is isolated in a home with 2 others. The N went to, at most, 3N.

What would have happened if that person were wandering around, not isolated?

R0 (“R nought”) is the number assigned to describe on average how many people someone who’s infected is likely to themselves infect. COVID-19 seems to have a R0 of around 2.2.

So… that one person, instead of infecting just those closely around them, might be outside somewhere infecting 2 or 3 random people. And those people might each infect more people. And if that’s happening every few days, after 3 weeks, that’s repeated 7 times… and now there are 250 cases. All from that one person, if they, and everyone else below them, infected an average of 2.2 others.

That is exponential growth. That is that scary growing curve we’re seeing in many places, like the U.S. That is why you always try to pay-off your entire credit card. That is why you try to keep your money where it’s earning interest that’s compounding. That’s why you’d better know what you’re doing if you’re breeding rabbits. And that is why physical isolation is so ridiculously important… and, when done correctly, effective. One person can make a colossal difference.

Guess what — that one person may have been you, and you didn’t even know it because you never developed symptoms. But by being responsible and staying isolated and not passing it along to someone else… well, one or more of those 250 could have developed serious (even fatal) symptoms. But they didn’t, because you’re doing the right thing. You may actually have saved a life.

And a bit of further potentially good news… at least here in B.C., there is most definitely a flattening of that curve. The numbers are certainly growing, but the growth is linear, not exponential. Like that N that turned into 3N instead of 250N. It’s growing, but not as steeply as the scary scenarios. Including a spike of 83 new cases 11 days ago, the average increase in cases in B.C. during that time has been 63 daily. Today was 67. Yesterday was 66. That yellow line is so linear you can put a ruler to it. For now.

As for all of Canada… well, there’s a definite separation between us and the U.S. We have had 4 straight days of decreasing growth, on a percentage basis. For now, that national curve is also flattening, and gapping notably with the emerging disaster south of the border.

I find myself saying “for now” a lot, and it’s because we’re dealing with a lot of unknowns. Like what the next week may bring. But if you want to be cautiously optimistic, it would appear that just one week of physical isolation is having a very measurable, positive effect.

And if that is the case, now is the perfect time to not go out rejoicing in the streets. The thing to do is what you’re doing. Stay home. What else are you going to do, anyway… it’s rain for the next several days. Yay Vancouver weather!!

That’s it. It’s not too much to ask. You’re not being called to charge Vimy Ridge. You’re not being called to storm the beach at Normandy. You’re being called to sit on the couch and watch Netflix. I have all the faith in the world you’re up to the task.

 

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By |2020-11-08T17:11:10-08:00March 27th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Business & Economics, Life in Vancouver, Philosophy, Art & Literature|Tags: , , , , , , , |0 Comments
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Day 6 – March 22, 2020

I don't like posting incomplete data, so stick a huge asterisk next to this… because there was no BC update today, so the Canada number is incomplete. Nevertheless, the other numbers are accurate, so here it is… and with tomorrow's update I will back-fill what's missing from today's and we'll see where we're at.

Hope you all got out for a bit of outside social distancing! Because most of the rest of the week is miserable rain, and for once — Vancouver rain — if that's going to stop people from clustering outside on the White Rock pier or the basketball courts at Kits beach… good.

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By |2020-10-08T01:26:39-07:00March 22nd, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, The First 100 Days, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , |0 Comments
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