Vancouver

March 3, 2021

Hot on the heals (haha) of yesterday’s post about vaccines… what they might be worth to people if there were an option to pay for them… comes a revelation I wasn’t aware of. In Vancouver’s Downtown East Side, people are being offered $5 to get vaccinated.

On the pro side, these are people at higher risk, for a number of reasons. The argument would be that having all of these people vaccinated benefits us all, because it gets us all closer to herd immunity… and if people need a little convincing, what’s the harm.

On the flip-side, there’s something paternalistic about that $5. Like $5 should make a difference to someone, whether to get vaccinated or not? Five bucks? And yes, I realize 5 dollars is significant to some people, and that’s my point… we are manipulating poor people for the benefit of the greater good. It might make sense on paper, but it feels a little dehumanizing to me. But on the flip-flip-side, many of them would get the vaccine anyway, so give them the $5. They can use it.

The DTES is a well-known colossal mess, one which the present governments, both provincial and municipal, have been struggling with for years. Before Covid-19, most of us had never heard of Dr. Bonnie Henry, but she was around… a driving force behind trying to deal with the opioid/fentanyl crisis. She published a very thorough report about all of it in 2019, a year before everyone’s plans went all to hell, including what had been planned for the DTES.

Uncharted territory… it’s what we’ve all been dealing with, and for those who make the big decisions, it’s no different. Somewhere, in some meeting, someone put up their hand and said, “What if we paid them to get vaccinated?”. I always applaud thinking outside the box, and if a little bribe is what it takes… well, I think back to my visits to the dentist when I was a little kid. That treasure chest full of little plastic junk; by far the best part of the visit… always something to look forward to. Maybe the tipping point between going voluntarily… and going, kicking and screaming.

I moved on from my kid dentist decades ago, and I’m not sure my current dentist is reading this, but in case he is… suggestion… a treasure chest for the adults. You have no idea how popular it’d be. Not sure what you’d put in there, but I assure you, everyone would love it. Little travel toothbrushes and toothpaste? A pack of sugar-free gum? How about a Starbucks gift card… but for how much?

Five dollars sounds about right.

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By |2021-03-03T17:03:03-08:00March 3rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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March 1, 2021

I’ve been tuning in to the 3pm news updates pretty regularly, especially on Mondays or Tuesdays, so I can get the real weekend numbers. I used to stick around for the whole update, but find myself checking out early, because, like life itself for so many people these days, it’s the same thing over and over… and, when it’s not, it can be easily summarized in a few brief paragraphs.

Today brought news of the vaccine rollout and the AstraZeneca availability… which is a bit of a game-changer. It’s not recommended for those older than 65, but it’s perfectly and conveniently (room temperature) suited for younger front-line workers, and many of them will be getting the option of that vaccine sooner than later. To find out what the vaccine rollout looks like for you, check the BCCDC for the most up-to-date info… but, to summarize, the older you are, the sooner it’ll be. See you in the lineup in July… hopefully.

But what I want to write about today is a topic that came up in conversation recently… how every event these days held in a public place or on TV or anywhere with a microphone… is preceded by an acknowledgment that the event is occurring on unceded land… and names the relevant Indigenous peoples from whom the land was “improperly” ceded.

To be clear, “unceded” really means “stolen”. This is a vast, complicated topic, and to some extent, around here, steps are being taken to alleviate the damage caused by the “winning” side. In the meantime, it’s interesting to read history from both sides. They tell very different stories.

In Canada or the U.S., you might learn about the great Spanish Conquistador Hernán Cortés, who in the early 16th century undertook dangerous expeditions to the New World, conquered huge lands and brought back great riches. In Mexico, I suspect it’s taught a little differently… that this rapist, pillaging, genocidal maniac showed up with his fancy weapons and illnesses, figured out how to make friends turn on each other, caused the Indigenous people to fight each other… and ultimately conquered the Aztec empire.

You can change the names and dates, but that story has taken place from present-day Alaska to present-day Punta Arenas. And everywhere, there’s a different slant on what happened and how to fix it. A literal and figurative whitewashing of history.

To me, there’s something annoying about standing up and just saying those words, as if that’s enough. Actually, as if it means anything at all. We acknowledge we’re on stolen land, and by saying so that makes us awesome responsible outstanding generous and thoughtful people. Now drop the puck and let’s play some hockey.

This perhaps triggers me more than it should, and here’s why. Many centuries ago, I was a student at SFU… and to pass the time during boring lectures, I would read “The Peak” – the SFU student newspaper which was available for free, everywhere on campus. I’d grab one on my way into the lecture hall, much the way we all used to grab a free “Georgia Straight” on the way to our seats at the Capitol-6 or Vancouver Center theatres.

In the course of a one-hour lecture, I’d get through the entire Peak… every single word… I knew more about the Christy Clark Student Society election scandal than anyone.

Every word… including the entire masthead… contact info, phone number, address (some trailers on campus)… and the final little sentence: “Unfortunately, The Peak is not wheelchair-accessible at present.”

Week after week, month after month, year after year. It bothered me, this grandstanding… look at us, we care enough to be aware of something that might be important to someone… but we won’t do anything about it. I wrote letters, which were never published. I actually tried to take it up with the president: During my tenure at SFU, the president was Dr. William Saywell. There was a thing set up… called “Say it to Saywell” where, ostensibly, you could show up on a Wednesday afternoon in a small room in the AQ… where President Saywell would be available to hear student grievances directly. Except… he never showed up. I tried to go like 10 times, and 10 times he cancelled on short notice. And one day, a sign on the door (and an announcement in The Peak) said it was cancelled forever.

I knew only a few people in wheelchairs and none of them had anything to do with SFU, but it bothered me that much. This wasn’t some great cause I was championing. I was just annoyed at the smug hypocrisy of acknowledging something and not doing anything about it. If it’s worth mentioning, then do something about it. Or shut up. It clearly still bothers me to this day… perhaps my serious issue with people who blow a lot of hot air but never do anything started there.

Stop talking about it like you care, and just get it done. Sit down at the table, listen, and negotiate. Go out and sign some vaccine agreements that actually have some teeth. And just build a freaking ramp.

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By |2021-03-01T17:03:05-08:00March 1st, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 23, 2021

Imagine a big map of North America… now, take 100 pins and stick then on the 100 biggest cities. Now imagine trying to find the shortest path that visits every city exactly once. Imagining the problem isn’t difficult. Solving it is a different story.

To solve it, you’d create a table of all the distances from once city to another. Each city would have a list off 99 entries below it… Vancouver to Seattle, Vancouver to Portland, Vancouver to Miami… etc. The total number of distances to consider would be 100 x 99… and yes, even though Vancouver to Seattle is the same as Seattle to Vancouver, you need the entry twice in the table because, in the solution, you’re not sure from which direction you’d be approaching.

Setting up a computer to solve this is simple: Generate every version of path through all cities, add up the little distances, and keep track of the best one so far. Once you’ve cycled through all the combinations, you’ll have the answer. This is easy, in theory.

It gets a bit more complicated in practice.

How many combinations of paths are there? Starting in any city, there are 99 options for the next one. Once you get there, there are 98 choices for the next one. After that, 97. Therefore, the number of combinations is 100 x 99 x 98 x… all the way down to x 1. That’s 100 factorial (100!) which equals… a really big number. How big? It’s a number with 157 zeroes after it. The number of particles in the universe is a number with 80 zeroes after it. How long would it take to analyze every combination? A few zillion years. Not too practical. That’s how long it’d take to find the perfect solution… but how about a “good enough” solution? Not 100%, but how about 95%?

Back in 1993, when I wrote a program like this, it took about 20 minutes. With today’s horsepower, any home computer could do it in less than a minute.

That’s quite a difference, and for all practical purposes, good enough. The traveling salesman can spend a few extra days on the road and burn a bit more gas… not a big deal. Good enough.

One strategy to solve big problems down to a “not perfect but good enough” level is what’s called a “Genetic Algorithm”… it’s what I used, and it’s pretty cool, so now you get to hear about how it works.

Out of the zillions of possible 100-city-tours, imagine you generate a bunch of random ones… say 10,000 of them. Just create 10,000 unique paths through those 100 cities, totally randomly. Some, like the ones that begin Vancouver-Miami-LA-Toronto… will be awful. Ones that start Vancouver-Seattle-Portland are likely to look better. But… whatever they look like, out of the 10,000… take the best 100.

Now… here comes the cool part… you take those 100 – call them the “first” generation, and figuratively “breed them” to each other. You pretend they’re like parents having offspring… you splice half of one, splice half of another, join them together… and now you have a whole new potential solution. It might be better than one or both parents… it might be worse. Doesn’t matter… breed all the combinations… now you have a whole new generation of 10,000 possible solutions, and they’re almost all certain to be better than their respective “parents”. And now you take the best 100 of those and do it again, and create a third generation. This is like instant evolution… but it doesn’t take 9 months and lots of diapers. It takes a few milliseconds… and that’s the beauty of it… after less than 1,000 generations, which doesn’t take long at all, you have a surprisingly good solution. Already north of 90%.

Modelling 100 cities with nothing but the distances between them is very simple. Modeling the infrastructure within which a virus may live and thrive and propagate is a lot more complicated, but once it’s in place, searching for a solution might look similar. Here’s a random formula for a mRNA vaccine… was it effective? Try 10,000 random formulas, pick the best 100… splice them, mix them, test them… and do it again. And again and again. Pretty quickly, you will have honed-in on realistic possibilities.

This isn’t quite how it came about… but when people wonder how it’s possible to come up with an answer to a supremely complicated and unknown problem, it’s strategies like this… which have the capability of very-quickly zeroing in on viable solutions drawn from an unfathomably huge search-space of potential solutions.

Finding the perfect vaccine might take decades… if not centuries. But a vaccine doesn’t have to be perfect.

How long would it take to find one that’s good enough… say, 95% effective…?

That question has been answered.

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By |2021-02-28T16:42:42-08:00February 23rd, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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February 9, 2021

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Except… it was different.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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By |2021-02-09T17:03:00-08:00February 9th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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February 8, 2021

A brief word regarding the SuperBowl… it takes both teams to show up for it to be a great game. Tampa Bay, their defence and, of course, Tom Brady all showed up. The somewhat crippled Kansas City offensive line also showed up, but you can’t blame them… the balance of power when two powerhouse teams go at it is very delicate; it doesn’t take much to make a big difference. Accordingly, that, plus the entire KC offense not having a great day (two dropped TD passes are just a small part of it) equals a well-deserved rout by the Tampa Bay Buccaneers. And further cementing the fact that 43-year-old Tom Brady, the SuperBowl MVP, whether you love or hate the guy, is unquestionably the greatest QB the NFL has ever seen. And that is the last you’ll hear about NFL football from me for a very long time.

A brief word re the NHL and the Vancouver Canucks… here’s everything good to say about the team at present:

Moving on to what’s important… today we get a numbers “refresh”, and they echo the recent trend… and they keep right along with what I, and everyone else who watches numbers carefully, have been saying… it’s looking pretty good.

I was wrong about the SuperBowl, but so far have been right about the very simplistic assumption that “the worst will be over after the last week of January” – simply because the effects of the holiday season will already have taken effect, and now with warmer weather coming, things should improve… and with vaccines ramping up, and… etc etc.

So… the coldest weather of the year is coming this week. The hail and snow that showed up today is a good reminder… there’s a long way to go. The vaccine rollout has been disappointing; not what we expected. Family Day, Lunar New Year… and the effects of everyone who attended SuperBowl parties are two weeks away, and then some. And, of course, the far-more contagious variants now in our midst. Everything in this paragraph could conspire to wreck those beautiful downward trends we’re seeing everywhere… cases, hospitalizations, deaths.

For what we’re battling at the moment, and the way we’re battling it, it’s working. Some second-wave drop-offs (like in Alberta) have been as drastic as the rise that led to their peaks. But the key to that is that even though it’s working for now, there’s a nervous trigger-finger on harsher lockdown measures… because what we may end up dealing with is not a third wave of this pandemic; it would be a first wave of a new one… one that blows-up numbers far quicker. At least we’d have a huge head-start in fighting it, because we’d only be months (if not weeks) away from vaccines. A silver lining to this is that by the time most of us get a vaccine, it’ll likely be primed to be more effective for some of these newer strains.

All that being said, ideally, we don’t get to that point.

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By |2021-02-08T17:04:29-08:00February 8th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |1 Comment
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January 6, 2021

In April of ’86 (in this case, 1886), the city of Vancouver was established. A couple of months later, it all burned to the ground… but, they rebuilt it… better, this time… more brick, less wood… and here we are.

Eighty-six years later, a group of local businessmen set out to bring professional soccer to this city… and a couple of years later, in 1974, the Vancouver Whitecaps played their first game in the North American Soccer League. The highlight of that team came in 1979 when they won SoccerBowl, the NASL championship. Unfortunately, a few years later, the team (and the entire NASL actually), burned into bankruptcy.

In 1986, on its 100th birthday, Vancouver hosted the world… for a World’s Fair – Expo 86… which undoubtedly changed the landscape of the city forever. It was a big year for the city, and it was a big year for professional soccer. Like the city that itself had risen from the ashes, so did a team… the Vancouver 86ers, founded by 86 people who put up $500 each to get it all going.

It was an impressive team; they inherited plenty of Whitecaps firepower. Waiters, Valentine, Lenarduzzi to name a few… then, add to that the homegrown talents of Mobilio and Catliff…it was a great team right off the bat. Perhaps they were named after the 1886 founding/resurrection of the city. Perhaps they were named for the World’s Fair/100th anniversary. Or, perhaps they were named for the verb… to “86” someone means to eject, reject, discard or cancel them…. and the 86ers did plenty of that; that powerhouse team went on to win 4 straight league championships and finished at the top of the league 5 straight years. Their streak of 46 consecutive games without a loss is a North American professional sports record that stands to this day.

But the powerhouse 86ing I’m obviously going to discuss today is the one taking place south of the border. It was supposed to have been simple; eighty-six the Trump presidency by the established process that’s been in place for centuries. Instead, that ceremony was vocally, violently and frighteningly interrupted by a mob of domestic terrorists who overran the Capitol. They took over the floor of the senate where VP Mike Pence, moments earlier, was trying to do his part to certify the vote. They broke into Nancy Pelosi’s office and left a threatening note. Not since the War of 1812 has the Capitol been breached in this manner, when the Canadians did it (OK, the British…).

Well, what else can you expect. The president, that narcissistic psychopath, led the charge… of trying to 86 the very foundations of democracy. To 86 the very foundations of the United States. This was no little protest; this insurrection would’ve turned into a full-on coup, given the opportunity… the thing is, to successfully carry out a coup requires the support of the relevant armed forces. The police, the national guard, the army, the navy, the secret service, etc. There’s zero evidence to suggest support for this mob goes any further than those involved in their own self-delusion, and those aforementioned groups are doing their part to squash this. One could certainly argue they might have done it sooner and more violently had the mob had a different colour of skin, but at least they’re on the right side of the equation and the Capitol is once again secure.

Donald Trump doesn’t care… though I can tell you what’s really bothering him; his Twitter account got suspended and his last three Tweets were removed. For a narcissist to have their stage of tens of millions pulled out from under them; that’s severely traumatic. I can assure you, he’s screaming at everyone around him to get that fixed. Forget the riots and votes and election; get me my Twitter back. Now!

And, of course, he was nowhere near the actual violence. Like any good dictator… sitting far away, calling the shots from the safety of the White House. Most dictators know exactly what they’re doing, but I sincerely think Donald Trump is too mentally ill to actually get it. I don’t think he’s clear on just how much power his cult-like craziness holds on his brainwashed masses. It took his most trusted staffers begging to get him to release a statement or video, and even that was misguided. He told them the election was stolen. He told them to go home. He told them he loves them.

What a colossal, ugly mess he leaves behind. Two more weeks, and that’s it. Well, that two weeks could arguably get cut short if finally someone (collectively) has the guts to pull the trigger on the 25th amendment and forcefully remove him; he’s clearly unfit for office. The thing is, he’s been unfit for office for a long time, and nobody has done anything about it.

As I post this, the senate chamber is once again filling up so they can, as my father used to love to say, “Get on with it.”. They will resume counting and the vote will be certified tonight, and it’s one step closer to the inevitable conclusion that Trump can’t seem to understand. Biden’s inauguration and the security around it will be like nothing we’ve ever seen. But the entire country will indeed… get on with it. Two weeks.

Finally… appropriately… today, January 6th, 2021 – would have been my father’s 86th birthday. He was a big fan of this city, and he was a big fan of soccer… but he was an even bigger fan of watching violent, corrupt, demagogic world leaders getting 86’d out of existence. Happy Birthday, Dad.

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By |2021-01-06T17:04:19-08:00January 6th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , , , , |14 Comments
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January 5, 2021

There’s that old saying… “Never ASSUME, because when you ASSUME, you make an ASS of U and ME”. There’s an assumption I made a while back that’s clearly wrong… and it changes a lot of other assumptions that go along with it.

My assumption was that when a vaccine finally arrived, it’d be welcomed with open arms. You wouldn’t be able to plug it into people fast enough. Sure, there’s the fanatic “Bill Gates/5G/mind control/conspiracy” crowd, but I’d thought it’s a handful of people, similar in numbers to the tiny pockets of anti-vaxxers who cause measles outbreaks from time to time. But this was a very bad assumption, because it’s coming to light that a lot of people, for reasons that don’t make sense to me (but that’s not the issue), are choosing to not get vaccinated. These aren’t crazy people screaming and banging pots and pans in the streets. These are, for example, well-trained medical professionals. In California, something like, 20-40% of frontline workers in L.A. county have turned down the vaccine. Head inland a bit to Riverside County, and the number goes up to 50%. This is causing head-scratching confusion in what had been assumed to be a pretty straightforward process.

In some of those hospitals, those refusals were popping up so unexpectedly that the vaccines risked being wasted. Once thawed, there’s only so much time before it’s useless. Accordingly, some nurses were calling up spouses and other family members… come quick, there’s a jab here for you if you want it. This is a violation of federal guidelines, of course… but I’m all for it. That’s far better than chucking them in the garbage. And apparently, there are some so anti-vaxx, that they’ll purposefully destroy the vaccine, given the opportunity… like that hospital employee in Wisconsin who threw 57 vials of Moderna into the garbage.

The unfortunate nature of the feedback loop/echo chamber of social media is that if you were at some point questioning the new vaccine (not from a conspiracy theory point of view, but a legitimate concern… you just wanted to know more about it), after clicking a few things and then perhaps clicking on a few more questionable ones, you suddenly plunged yourself into the “question everything” camp. Accordingly, all you get now is story after story that make you skeptical of the vaccine. Is it safe, does it actually work, is it really necessary… and so on. Once you’ve thrown yourself into that rabbit hole, it can be hard to emerge.

I wrote something a while back, just before the vaccines became publicly available… here’s a link to it:

If you or someone you know is questioning the vaccine from the “there’s no way they could come up with something so safe and effective so quickly” point of view, it’s worth a read.

The flipside to all of this is how many people *do* want the vaccine but can’t get their hands on it, due to inefficient deployment plans. I’m going to give it some time before criticizing everyone; it’s early in the game and the kinks are being worked out, but jeez, it’s not like there wasn’t a lot of time to plan ahead. Perhaps the ultra-low temperature requirements threw a big wrench into it… but everyone is way behind.

Well, almost everyone. One place where the overlap of organization and forward-thinking and technology and urgency came together impressively is Israel, who, on a per-capita basis, are one or two orders of magnitude ahead of everyone else when it comes to vaccinating their population…

U.S. 1.52%
Canada 0.42%
Israel 15.14%

Wow. Instead of complaining it can’t be done, it’s worth looking at how they’re doing it. The notification/registration/reservation system was in place. The innovation to be able to transport the ultra-cold vaccine to remote areas was in place. Volunteers were in place. When the word went out to go online and book an appointment, there was a huge rush…but the website didn’t crash. People signed up, showed up and got vaccinated in 15 minutes.

And… a touching note; for those who showed up, they were given gifts to take away… of kids books and games. What an odd thing to be giving away, especially since it wasn’t little kids who are being vaccinated. That comes later… these injections were mostly front-line workers and the elderly. And that was exactly the point; here you go, respected elder – take your vaccination, and also take some books and games for your grandkids… because, we know… you haven’t hugged them in almost a year, and when you show up to do so, no need to show up empty-handed.

Israel has 9 million people and 150 vaccine clinics around the country and roving vaccine vans. It obviously helps that Israel is a small country (it’s about the size of Vancouver Island)… but they’ve so far managed to administer 1.4 million doses. For comparison, Ontario has 14.5 million people and 19 vaccine clinics. They’ve managed less than 60,000 doses so far. B.C. has a population of 5.1 million and has administered 28,000 doses.

Like I said, it’s early in the game… but these assumptions… that everyone would want it when it gets here, that it’d be easy to get once it’s here, that the infrastructure to deliver it would be in place… were all just plain wrong. As per the opening paragraph… Never ASSUME… but just in case, here are a few more:

– I assume vaccine distribution will become more streamlined and efficient as time goes on

– I assume people will see that those getting the vaccine aren’t growing a third arm, and that it’s safe, and they’ll go get their shot

– I assume we all want to go back to normal as quickly as possible and will do our part to make that happen

I assume I’ll be right about at least some of that.

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By |2021-01-05T17:03:27-08:00January 5th, 2021|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , |7 Comments
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December 26, 2020

Happy Boxing Day! Now that you’ve unboxed the gifts and boxed up the Christmas, you can relax… and hopefully Santa was good to you. Hopefully you got something meaningful that’ll last a long time; some gift that keeps on giving.

You know what’s an excellent gift that keeps on giving? It occurred to me while running up and down McDonald Beach with the dog… that great dog-beach near the airport.

The people who run the airport, the Vancouver Airport Authority, have never stopped charging the Airport Improvement Fee.

To backtrack a bit… back in the early 90s, YVR realized that with the projected passenger loads expected in the future, the airport was woefully undersized. Vast improvements were needed to deal with the post Expo’86 crowds… and the ever-increasing traffic to-and-from Asia. And they needed to get the money from that somewhere, because, believe it or not, the airport gets no government money.

So, they implemented a simple AIF… a little user-fee tax sort of thing. If you were flying out of YVR, you paid $5 to destinations within B.C, $10 within Canada and $15 everywhere else. These little kiosks popped-up, and you’d line up and wait and buy a little ticket that’d be collected when you went through security. A bit of grumbling ensued by an annoyed public who felt they were once-again getting shafted and wasting time.

Not soon after, they finally figured out how to integrate the AIF into the cost of an airline ticket. No more separate line-ups… it was all transparent. And, oh, how the money rolled in. Twenty million passengers a year times an average of ten dollars each equals a lot. More than $2 billion dollars and counting.

Where’s the money going? Well, it’s gone towards building the best airport in North America ten years in a row. A few years ago, some governing body voted it the best airport in the world. The fact is, whether it’s the new terminal, the new runway, the new outlet mall or just the quiet little museum piece you get to walk through if you land at one of those distant E-gates – the trees and birds and canoe on the water thing – it seems to be money very-well spent.

The AIF was supposed to be temporary but so was income tax during WW2. So were those ugly power-towers on Boundary, north of 1st Ave.

Income tax will never go away. Neither will those towers. And probably, neither will the AIF, and I’m totally ok with that. And by the way, the AIF has changed. Now it’s $5 for travel within B.C. and $25 for everywhere else. I’m totally ok with that too.

I guess that’s not really a gift that keeps on giving; it’s not a gift if it’s being extracted from you… but let’s call it a worthwhile extraction that keeps on giving… there’s a good random thought re Boxing Day, typically one of the busiest travel days of the year… but not when air traffic is down 90%. Maybe next year there will be more excitement on Boxing Day than just taking things out (and putting things back in) boxes.

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By |2021-02-28T16:27:17-08:00December 26th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Politics, Travel Stories, Our Dog|Tags: , , , , , , , , , |3 Comments
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December 20, 2020

No B.C. news to report till tomorrow, but here’s an assortment of other news:

The bad news is that there’s a new, apparently far-more virulent strain of C19. It’s up to 70% more transmissible.

The good news is that it isn’t around here… it’s in Europe, mostly the U.K.

The bad news is that who cares where it is, it’s still going to affect us… because many of us have friends and family over there, and, anyway, it’ll soon get on a plane and make its way over here.

The good news is that likely all of the current vaccines will be effective against it. Like… The Vancouver Sun, The Province, The Georgia Straight, The Courier, The North Shore News… whichever one it is, rip a page out of it and scrunch it up into a ball and toss it into the fire; it’ll burn. Unless someone is suddenly (and very surprisingly) publishing the news on asbestos, it’ll burn. Like all C19 new-strain mutations, given the vaccine.

The bad news is that there is a huge outbreak presently underway because of it… and whereas most people in London were expecting to be able to spend Christmas in town, with family… they’re all fleeing the city, leading to crowded, crammed trains as everyone bails to every corner of the country, where there are fewer restrictions.

The good news is that while this new strain is far easier to catch, there’s nothing to indicate that the illness it causes is any worse.

But the bad news is… as per all of the above… that this virus will soon have reached every corner of the United Kingdom.

I want to end this with good news… and it’s this: Vaccination programs are well-underway in many places, including the U.K… and as pedal-to-the-metal as they are already, they’re going to get a turbo-boost with the approval and quick distribution of the Moderna vaccine.

I’ll end this news update with the same one-word sign-off that Dan Rather used for a while: “Courage”.

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By |2020-12-20T17:03:13-08:00December 20th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19|Tags: , , , , , , , |6 Comments
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December 7, 2020

Numbers day here in B.C., which brings everything up to date… and not surprisingly, there are no big surprises. Perhaps the biggest surprise is that the weekend numbers added up to… 2020.

Everything is proceeding with clockwork consistency… which means, around here, a continual case growth of 1.9% — a rate at which cases would double in about 37 days, which would be January 13th… which coincidentally is about two weeks after New Year’s, and three weeks after Christmas. Also not surprising is that Dr. Henry extended all present orders until January 8th… because, the fact is, they’re helping.

The collision course of this latest effort – these recent orders, which are making a difference — will run straight into the holiday season, and your guess is as good as mine as to what will happen. As we’ve learned, this virus doesn’t usually transmit from 10 people giving it to 10 others. It’s more like one person giving it to 20. That’s why the usual family holiday gatherings can be so risky. One contagious person ends up being patient zero of their own, exponential outbreak.

The vaccine news is good, but requires a reality check. The good news is that the first 250,000 doses of Pfizer vaccine will be arriving in Canada next week. Since it’s a two-shot vaccine, that’ll be good for 125,000 people. The vaccine will be distributed on a pro-rata basis, which should mean B.C. will get around 34,000 doses… good enough for 17,000 people. Obviously, that’s not enough to change anything; it’ll be months before enough people have had it where it could make a tangible difference.

In fact, if you were to get the vaccine tomorrow, what would change in your life? If you’re following the orders, your chances of getting the virus were slim, and now they would go down to pretty-much nil. But gatherings are still banned, things are still closed/postponed/cancelled, and you would still be wearing a mask.

We’re nearing the end, but we’re still at the beginning of the end. At least it’s in sight; remember, not so long ago, the hardest part of this was not knowing how long it could possibly go on… I likened it to preferring a prison sentence of known length; lock me up for 5 years, with a definite date when I get to walk free. I’d prefer that to being locked up, and having someone every day tell me either it’s time to go home… or not. There’s great comfort in certainty, and with certainty I can tell you – as fuzzy as it is presently – that’s a finish line on the horizon.

Also, with respect to the finish line of former Canucks anthem singer Mark Donnelly’s career… shoutout to Mark Donnelly, the sportswriter from Northern England who covers Sunderland AFC and who knew little about hockey or Vancouver… until his phone blew up over the weekend, over which he received over 1,000 messages on Twitter, both public and private, both praising him and insulting him. Unfortunately, he doesn’t know our anthem and can’t sing (or skate), so he won’t be filling-in any time soon… but he does wear a mask, and advocates for their use. Cheers, mate.

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By |2020-12-07T19:49:19-08:00December 7th, 2020|Categories: COVID-19 Daily Report, Science of COVID-19, Life in Vancouver, Sports & Gaming|Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , , |4 Comments
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