Canada's Freedom Convoy

 Catching up on this old story. 

So a lot of truckers in Canada got together to protest mandatory covid vaccination in late January. They convoyed across Canada and descended on Ottawa to protest at parliament. Like a lot of anti-vaxxers, they were long on shouting conspiracy theories and very short on data and realism. They ruined the quality of life in the neighborhoods where they lined the streets with their trucks idling and polluting, blowing their horns at high volume, and generally being annoying to the point that murder was conceivable. 

Of course they were cheered on by US anti-vaxxers. Their fundraising may have been largely from Americans. But at some point, the government shut down their fundraising and seized the money, if I remember correctly. 

This was perhaps the biggest showdown between anti-vaxxers and a national government, so the whole world watched. I hoped it would fail so that US truckers weren't encouraged to pull the same shit here. Eventually, the mild-mannered Canadians got fed up with the US-style raucous rednecks, and clamped down hard. Some police sabotaged extra vehicles, Police surrounded them and managed to get them to disperse. Oh, yeah, Trudeau (the baby prime minister son of a former prime minister) invoked some emergency powers to have the legal tools to arrest scofflaws and throw them in jail. After a bit of grandstanding, he won a vote backing the powers. 

So it went from a cause celebre to a fizzle. Americans tried to copy it, but it never ascended very far and then fizzled. The Canadian protest didn't launch an Arab Spring or anything close to it. But we didn't know if it might. Remember this as only a year after the Jan. 6 coup attempt in Washington DC, so rebellion was still in the air. It could have ignited, but luckily it didn't. No one needs a rebellion based on stupidity and ridiculous internet claims. Also, Russia invaded Ukraine a few weeks later, so Canadian idiots were no longer the biggest news story in the world. Real issues took over. 

Sources: Aggrieved entitlement. White nationalism among the protest leaders. The emergency declaration. The police tighten the circle around the protesters. The biggest outrage was a woman being trampled to death by a mounted officer, but that was a huge exaggeration of the incident. Not even a serious injury. I recognize this blowing issues out of total proportion. 

Image: nbcnews.com

How the US dropped the ball with this pandemic

Hahahaha. This is way out of the area of my expertise. I see lots of people that don't let that issue stop them though as they weigh in forcefully on whether Trump disbanded a critical task force or reasonably 'streamlined' it. I couldn't say which is more accurate so I won't try.

However, I can look back and try to detect signs or significant information. Using Google with a limited window on dates showed me that school closures were considered well before social distancing became the watchword. This was true in Massachusetts, but also true in Italy, where schools were closed on March 4, but orders to avoid contact weren't issued until 3/9, if I'm not mistaken. By that time, Italy had had 366 deaths due to covid-19 and the hospitals in Lombardy had been slammed.

The school closures in Italy should have been on the radar in the US, but they weren't. However the lockdown in northern Italy did finally penetrate the thick skulls in North America, and the topic of the week from 3/9 - 3/14 was closures--colleges and universities closing, schools closing, sports events cancelled, etc.

But how about before that? What was on the radar in January and February? Too much confidence, like this:

In coming weeks, if the virus begins to spread through U.S. communities, health authorities want to be ready to adopt school and business closures like those undertaken in Asian countries to contain the disease... The CDC is taking steps to ensure frontline U.S. healthcare workers have supplies they need, she added, by working with businesses, hospitals, pharmacies and provisions manufacturers and distributors on what they can do to get ready.

The reality was quite different. Local entities and governments took the lead, with governors announcing closures without guidance from the CDC. Leadership at the federal level was sorely lacking.

Trump suddenly changed tack on 3/16, having daily press conferences starting then. But his lack of leadership had already been demonstrated. There will be plenty of time to dissect what Trump did wrong though of course it's already started. The head of the CDC is a political favorite of religious conservatives. And here's a blistering account of how the Trump administration disrespects scientists, again and again and again and again. I couldn't read it all.

Italy was a wake-up call to me. However, the federal government is supposed to be more aware than a single individual, what with all its resources and intelligence gathering. This has been quite a failure, even worse than 9-11 because the virus wasn't hiding. Thank God for the governors who did take the lead. They are more the model for our next president.

Image: ourworldindata.org

Extras. A resource of states' healthcare capacities, and how they are likely to fall short. I switched my dashboard to this one.  Also, I only look at deaths. The number of cases is too dependent on test availability, whereas deaths are more solid. However there can be undercounts (for those who die at home with no test) or even overcounts (attributing deaths to covid-19 without ample evidence).

Update 3/30/20. While New York City is slammed, ICU usage in Los Angeles doubles overnight. LA appears to be managing it thus far. How Congress was distracted in January and February. Trump has a short attention span when he's supposed to be saving the country. But he gives up and takes the experts' advice. These are the times that try men's souls ... especially libertarians. A supermarket chain that carefully prepared for a pandemic.

Update 4/2/20. I started wondering about the cruise ship overrun by covid-19, and found this overview of several cruises and this firsthand account from a worker. The story of another cruise ship and one of its passengers who died.

Herd immunity wasn't ever the plan in the UK--it was bad communication and maybe someone picked up on the wrong term. Well, maybe. I'm not convinced because it looks like the plans got changed rather swiftly to 'shelter-in-place.' One of the big names in the confusion thinks there's some good news. Been there, and then tomorrow came and smashed it. Canada did good! Hungary declares Orban as dictator indefinitely. Wisconsin's governor won't/didn't take the fucking step to postpone the primary. Uhhh, clueless. (I got this wrong. It was the GOP-led legislature that wouldn't act. They put partisan power above the good of the citizens.) And don't have a cardiac arrest in New York City right now. You won't be going to a hospital. However, bear in mind that the survival rate is less than 10% in these circumstances in the best of times.

I'll check back here when I want to compare covid to the flu.

October links

(And a few left over from September. Oops, it's November already.)

Hating on climate change. It's no surprise to me that nasty conservative trolls would hate on teenager Greta Thunberg for her message that the people currently in charge of the world aren't doing enough. I've written elsewhere that models for climate change haven't been strong, but there is also enough solid data to be very worried.

Intolerance on campus. I hear screeching about it, but here is a solid court case about bullying of Christian groups by campus officials.

The fear among the conservatives. They fear being overwhelmed by the left and forced to give up their religious beliefs. Considering the disrespect for religious beliefs on the left, I have to say it seems like a rational fear.

Why Trudeau almost lost. Canada is in good shape, which allows lesser issues to create more fractures than before.

Iran and Russia interfere. ... in the US via Facebook.

Tough politics in Texas. The Texas House speaker is out after being stabbed in the back while conspirimg to stab other Republican reps in the back. Do I like anyone in this mess?

Image: edenpoliticalcartoons.com

Links (2 of 2)

I lost 1-2 of the links I planned to show. Drat. But I also found others.

Final love letter to a spacecraft. The Cassini exploratory probe finished its life and mission, which was to send us data about Saturn and its moons. The craft was remotely instructed to crash into Saturn to be sure that it wouldn't contaminate the moons where native life might be possible.

Americans and their white president. A tour-de-force essay by Ta-nehisi Coates. He writes that whites of all kinds, not just working class, gave support to a candidate who reflected bigotry. The essay shows one way to view race relations, but I don't agree with it's the whole story. It's still significant that a black president was elected twice, and with more support than Trump got. Coates does present some chilling facts, however, such as a white felon running in the presidential primary against Obama, and getting a surprising number of votes. The Obama presidency has been difficult for many blacks because they've had to endure heightened disrespect.

More about North Korea. North Koreans have been completely immersed in the propaganda that their only purpose is to serve. That complicates both war and diplomacy. A high-ranking ex-officer suggests a naval blockade to change the dynamic. The comment section is a must-read.

Did voter fraud change this Senate election? That's a good question raised here. There are known weaknesses in New Hampshire election law. The numbers of people using out-of-state IDs were high enough in this very close election. This is plausible, but not enough evidence to say it happened.

US spending. Where the federal spending goes. I'm always looking for this info, so here's a link to a handy graph.

Driverless car crash. This summary and analysis points to the technology not being able to handle complex situations. The driver, however, was lulled into depending on the system. That would happen so easily.

Susan Rice, target of conservative smears. A lot of ugly accusations swirled around her as conservatives tried to win the news cycle when lots of Russia news was coming out. Now she's been cleared, but that information is mostly buried. Blowhard conservatives won't even remember that they defamed her. Amnesia is rampant there.

Migration issues confront Canada. Perhaps for the first time, Canada is dealing with mass migration that is poorly controlled. Will it be too much for this generous, empathetic nation?

Image: bloomberg.com