Tag Archives: Covid-19

What the new year does and does not bring

The new year brings an end to a difficult year.

The new year does not bring any tangible changes as a result of our planet crossing an arbitrary point in our rotation around the sun.

The new year brings hope, for a heard immunity against Covid-19, thanks to a number of different vaccines.

The new year does not bring any immediate relief from the spread of Covid-19, with a greater threat of spread due to a more contagious new variant coming out of the UK.

The new year brings resolutions and promises of self-improvement and ambitious goals.

The new year does not bring any promise of fulfilling these new goals without a dedicated effort to change habits and behaviours.

The new year brings a political and ideological shift in power in the United States.

The new year does not bring a promise of less divisiveness in the American people who seem too ideologically divided.

The new year brings inconsistent approaches to dealing with the virus, from being scarily too open to being confusingly too locked down.

The new year does not bring any promise of clarity about how best to deal with the virus while we wait for widespread vaccine distribution.

The new year brings continued paranoia and conspiracy filled misinformation, shared virally on social media.

The new year does not bring any way to meaningfully combat the spread of bad ideas.

The new year brings anticipation for a better year than 2020.

The new year brings promise of post pandemic world.

The new year brings opportunity for positive change.

The new year brings us more of the same, unless we choose to think, say, and act differently.

Let’s be different, better, more loving, kind, and caring… to ourselves, our community, and our environment. We do not get to choose the world we live in, but we do get to choose our impact on it and those in our community we share it with.

Humanity – versus – Reality

I saw a video a few days ago of hundreds of unmasked protesters, packed together in a square in the United Kingdom, singing ‘Stick your poison vaccines up your ass’ to the tune of ‘She’ll Be Coming Round the Mountain When She Comes’. I wanted to write about it sooner, but I could only come from an angle of anger and disgust. It would have been a good rant, that would probably have made me feel better, but I’m done ranting with the purpose of making myself feel better. I’ve been seeking out joy, determination, fun facts, and when dealing with our current situation, humour, as sort of coping mechanisms for dealing with the discord that seems to be pervasive right now.

There is an epic battle going on. It is a battle on many battle grounds. It is a battle happening across the world. It is a battle that pits humanity against reality. Here are six of the battlegrounds:

  1. The Covid-19 Pandemic: Many people are dying – versus – Protests against the preventions and lockdowns to prevent the spread.
  2. Vaccines: They save lives – versus – They are dangerous (or they will be used to monitor and track us).
  3. Climate change: It’s the greatest threat we face as a species – versus – It’s a hoax.
  4. Science: Seeking objective facts – versus – un-objective and agenda-driven propaganda.
  5. Freedom: Government are here to serve and protect us – versus – Governments are corrupt and stripping away our freedoms in an attempt to control us.
  6. Civil liberties: Issues like racism, gender identity, pro-choice, freedom of expression – versus – Religious values, as well as both right-wing (QAnon) and left-wing (Antifa extremists) using hateful tactics to argue their points.

I purposely didn’t use the word ‘Truth’ before now. I believe that we are living in a post-Truth era (with an intentional capital ‘T’).  I’ll leave you with Stuart McMillan’s webcomic about Neil Postman’s book, ‘Amusing Ourselves to Death‘. I recently listened to both 1984 and Brave New World back-to-back. I was struck by the contrast between a world run based on fear – versus – one run based on pleasure. I think that things are so messed up right now that we are stuck in a dystopian novel where both worlds exist simultaneously. Many people live in constant fear based on ‘facts’ that are cherry-picked, on half-truths, and even made up completely. Many more are living in a social media based alternate reality where their truths are based on a ‘news’ feed designed to entertain with a confusing mix of facts and fiction.

I don’t know how so many people could be naive enough to believe that the world is flat and other ridiculous conspiracies; That vaccines will be used to monitor you; That so many people can confuse mask use with being a sheep; Or that so many people can believe one group’s fight for rights undermines their own rights? Yet, across the globe, millions of people are so sure they are right, that protests and propaganda based on ignorance are now commonplace.

We are living in an era where humanity has no grasp on reality. Fiction and fact are interchangeable. ‘T’ruth is subjective. And a common, collective plan for peace and prosperity seems further away than any worlds that Huxley or Orwell could fabricate.

Vaccinated from the truth

It’s great to see that the Russian coronavirus vaccine is showing very positive results. And both the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines look equally as promising. Like many other vaccines before these, the side effects seem insignificant, and that holds a lot of promise for 2021 getting off to a great start.

This is refreshing news after I spent a bit of time going down a dark rabbit hole of links about conspiracy theories and end of days religious idiocy last night. I don’t usually follow these paths, but I got a spam message that was so ludicrous in claims that I had to check it out for pure entertainment value.

The claims were everything from technology like this being secretly added to vaccines to monitor you, to God speaking directly to people about the divinity of Donald Trump, to signs of the apocalypse and the end of the world. What blew me away was how these completely different narratives would cross over and interconnect. Every crazy idea added fuel to the next crazy idea. It wasn’t enough to hold one conspiratorial idea, they had to be connected and somehow one ‘proved’ that the other was ‘real’.

I dug around in this rabbit hole and what I saw was videos with thousands of likes, where the lines between a kernel of truth and delusional lies was nonexistent. It was hard to grasp where reality ended and bat-shit-crazy fantasy began. There seemed to be random moments where new ‘theories’ just jumped out and ‘proved’ some other unrelated stupidity. For example, a video talking about how vaccines are being used, (by elites in a conspiratorial cabal led by Bill Gates), to input instruments of the devil in you, then shifted to how your DNA is being altered by Chemtrails that make you think less about God. My imagination is pretty good, but I couldn’t fathom trying to make these connections up.

And through these crazy narratives one thing seems to prevail: that the world is conspiring to take away personal liberties. These people will not get vaccinated, no matter how safe and reliable the vaccine might be. They are already vaccinated from truth.

I don’t agree to disagree

In Canadian fashion I will apologies for this, but I don’t agree to disagree. Sorry.

No I won’t say it’s ok for you to have a different opinion about Covid-19, it is not just a flu. It’s also not an infringement on your rights to wear a mask any more than it is to insist you wear a seatbelt, or not enter a store naked from the waist down… and no, this is not a ridiculous comparison.

No, it’s not ok for you to spread QAnon conspiracies any more than it’s not ok to share religious reasons to infringe on the rights of others. These are both wrong in an open, free, and democratic society.

Do you have a right to expunge stupidity in this open, free, and democratic society? Yes. Yes, you do… but I don’t have to accept it as something deserving an equal stance to science and facts. I don’t have to see it as an opposing view worthy of debate. You are wrong.

I don’t agree to disagree, not at all. Your sources are not reliable, your opinions are not facts. I’m not agreeing to disagree. To do so, I would be weighing fact to fiction like they somehow are the same thing. They are not.

The economy can stay open if people wear masks, socially distance themselves and sanitize appropriately. Some people might disagree with me, and on a topic like this we can agree to disagree.

However, with 40,000,000+ cases worldwide 1,118,443 deaths, and over 9,000,000 known active cases worldwide this is not just a bad flu, it’s a pandemic. And if you want to disagree with that well then sorry… you are wrong.

Put a mask on, and thank those around you for being respectful and doing the same.

Vitamin D and Covid-19

Have you ever heard of Pascal’s Wager?

Here are 2 videos about how Vitamin D is likely to reduce the seriousness of Covid-19 complications. This is not like a vaccine, preventing you from getting Covid-19. This is not a cure. What Vitamin D seems to do is reduce the likelihood of respiratory complications in people who have contracted Covid-19.

I’ve already shared this idea with you: ‘Vitamin D could save your life’. Now here are two videos sharing some more research.

The first video is on a very small study in Spain, and the details are shared in an easy to understand explanation.

The second video is more technical, but also looks at more than one study.

Back to Pascal’s wager: here are 4 scenarios based on Vitamin D working as the research suggests vs not:

1. Vitamin D can reduce the seriousness of Covid-19 and you don’t take it. -> You might catch Covid-19 and things could get much worse than if you took it.

2. Vitamin D can reduce the seriousness of Covid-19 and you take it. -> You might catch Covid-19 and have a much milder or less serious case. Even if you don’t catch Covid-19, most people are deficient in Vitamin D and so it still helps you.

3. Vitamin D won’t reduce the seriousness of Covid-19 and you don’t take it. -> No loss or benefit.

4. Vitamin D won’t reduce the seriousness of Covid-19 and you take it. -> As said above, even if you don’t catch Covid-19, most people are deficient in Vitamin D and so it still helps you.

It seems that the potential benefits vs no downside makes adding the supplement to your daily routine worth it!

Can you take too much Vitamin D? Yes. Google searches have given me a variety of results, but it seems that it would take excessive supplement overuse for a prolonged period to cause issues.

I’m not a doctor, I don’t pretend to be one. I just see so much upside to taking Vitamin D. Talk to your doctor or share the videos above with friends who are doctors. See what they have to say.

Wear a mask

The grocery store my daughter works at is finally asking all customers to wear a mask. My daughter started wearing one at work at the start of summer and at first she was only one of two employees doing so. Now all employees must wear them and customers not wearing them are provided one at the door. She has only seen one customer refuse to wear one since requiring them to mask up, and that person was asked to practice social distancing. My daughter says this person did so.

I recently unfollowed someone on social media that went on an anti-mask rant. I knew I wasn’t close enough to the person to make a difference to their opinion, (others had already tried) and to me, creating a ‘scene’ on someone else’s ignorant post only draws more attention to the post… Engagement makes the post move higher in the priority of it being shared on other timeline recommendations.

In BC, Dr. Bonnie Henry, our Provincial Health Officer, has done a wonderful job, and she is deservingly well liked. I admire the job she is doing too! My one complaint is that she seems to have an aversion to insisting on masks. When I look at statistics and see countries that are bigger than Canada and doing better than Canada dealing with Covid-19, it seems we are doing many of the same things, except for insisting on masks in public places.

People respect the yellow line in the middle of the road and don’t drive into oncoming traffic, because it’s not safe to do so. It took a while to happen when it first became law, but almost everyone wears their seatbelts, because they save lives.

Masks and social distancing should be mandatory in public spaces. These two things actively create a barrier between people to reduce the spread of Covid-19. It’s no harder to do than remembering to put your seatbelt on… once you get used to it, it’s just what you do.

Vitamin D could save your life

Let me start by saying I’m not a medical doctor and I don’t play one on the internet.

Now that’s out of the way, I’ve already touted the value of Vitamin D last September, and I’m here to do it again. Watch this clip of Dr. Rhonda Patrick on the Joe Rogan podcast: (full podcast here)


TLDR (Or actually Too Long Didn’t watch): Vitamin D has very significant correlation with reduced respiratory infections.

Will Vitamin D reduce your chance of getting Covid-19? Maybe. Jury is out, and while it may help prevent it, it is in no way a vaccine or a cure.

Will Vitamin D help reduce the consequences of Covid-19 after contracting it? Very likely!

Very likely!!!

Take your Vitamin D. Share the video clip above widely.

When bad ideas go viral

A decade ago viral videos went viral organically. People shared videos, these went into other people’s timelines, and they shared it too. This can still happen on Twitter, to a small extent, but not on Facebook. Facebook viral videos only happen through advertising dollars. Even that cute cat video doesn’t spread unless it is pushed through. The next time you see a viral video with million of views on Facebook, take the time to notice three things:

First, notice that he video was uploaded to Facebook. It’s not a YouTube or Vimeo embedded video, it’s actually a video that was saved on Facebook. This is so that they can fully track, and have advertisers pay for, engagement.

Second, notice that the video will have some branding on it: A website logo or emblem of some kind. It is being promoted by a company or organization.

Third, notice if it is from someone that you regularly see in your timeline. Your timeline used to be every post from every person you follow, now your timeline is curated and you see some people more than others… but when a friend that’s seldom seen in your curated list shares a paid-for/promoted video, suddenly you see their post in your timeline again.

This becomes dangerous when the information shared is false. Here are two specific examples where this is scary right now:

1. Anti-vaccination propaganda: vaccines have made our world a significantly safer place. Hopefully there will be a vaccine for Covid-19 soon, but the reality is that millions of people will likely opt out of taking it and the virus could linger for years, mutating and making the very vaccine useless. Measles have had a resurgence because less people around the world or vaccinating their kids.

2. False claims about Covid-19 cures and anti-mask groups are undermining the science behind fighting this virus. The most recent viral video, taken down by Facebook, has a doctor espousing how she has cured over 300 Covid-19 patients with Hydroxychloroquine. I wrote about this drug as a treatment for covid-19 here: Trying to find the Truth

It’s one thing to say a drug is useful in helping treat an ailment and yet another to claim it is a cure or somehow preventative (like a vaccination).

I’ve had an argument with some very smart people that think Facebook should not take down videos like this because ‘people should be able to watch them and make their own decisions’. Maybe I’d have agreed with them a decade ago, because the video would have to spread organically and people could share their concerns along with the video. But today, that video will get millions of viewers targeted through advertising dollars to promote bad ideas. And advertisers with their own agendas will feed the video to people most likely to agree and share it with support.

This isn’t an organic process. It’s marketplace advertising being used to market and sell bad ideas, entice anger, and polarize opinions and perspectives. Even the taking down of the video has become polarized with the ‘Leftist social media sites only taking down videos they don’t agree with.’ …suddenly this is about politics and not about the spreading of dangerous ideas.

There are a lot of bad ideas being intentionally spread right now. The scary part of this is that these bad ideas are going viral through advertising dollars spent with an agenda to create anger, divisiveness, and the polarization of people.

And while I’ve focused on anti-vaccines and Covid-19 cures, media outlets have used fake (or carefully edited) protest videos to entice anger and gain clicks and advertising revenue, and used language to specifically pander to specific audiences. The desire to share messages virally has made it so that almost any (newsworthy) viral video you see will likely be one that has an agenda, and that agenda is seldom to give you the truth.

Ask yourself who is behind the next viral video you see, then ask yourself what their agenda is?

It’s a little surreal

If you looked ahead at where you would be for 2020, any time in 2019, you were probably wrong. The word pandemic meant nothing to you outside of a dystopian science fiction movie. Yet here we are and I have to say that I slip into these bizarrely off-centre moments that seem quite surreal.

I’m walking on a sidewalk and decide to step onto the road to let someone coming towards me pass. I’m lined up to get into a grocery store as if I’m waiting to see a bank teller. I’m nodding to greet someone I’m meeting for the first time, avoiding a handshake. I’m leaving the room because I feel the urge to sneeze. I’m putting candles on my sister’s cake and wondering if this will be something we do in the future? I pass a children’s indoor playground facility and wonder if it will ever open up again? I push elevator and crosswalk buttons with my elbow, and wonder how long it will be before all public places have verbally operated buttons, and automatic doors?

These are small moments but they remind me of how much things have (and will change since covid-19 has snuck into the fabric of our society around the world… and sometimes it just feels surreal.

Ten Million

According to Worldometers.info as of today over 10,000,000 people have been diagnosed with COVID-19. Of those, over 5% or 500,000 (read half a million) people have died.

I don’t want to share commentary, I just want that to sink in.

This is a global issue. It has and will further impact the world. As we head into summer, be smart, be safe, stay healthy.