COVID Update: Life Expectancy, Long Covid, and World Immunization Week

We got our semi-annual booster today so Covid is on my mind tonight. 

It's still hard to grasp the impact of the Covid pandemic worldwide until you realize how many millions have died, with millions more left to mourn. 

In Forbes magazine, healthcare analysis Joshua Cohen writes about Covid 19's enormous death toll:

Thus far, recorded Covid-19 deaths worldwide are at 6.86 million. This is likely an underestimate, given the underreporting of fatalities in countries, such as China. More importantly, based on excess mortality calculations there’s mounting evidence that the Covid-19 pandemic has taken a massive toll on global life expectancy. Not since the famine in China in 1959, have we seen such a sharp decline in life expectancy worldwide.

...In sum, the Covid-19 pandemic has led to global increases in mortality and declines in period life expectancy that are without precedent in modern times. Historically, countries have generally recovered within two years from mortality shocks, such as the 1918-20 influenza pandemic and the two world wars. And so, we can expect many countries to soon return to pre-Covid-19-pandemic life expectancy. However, each country’s ability to bounce back differs, and some, like the U.S., will likely have more trouble than others because of underlying health trends that had been in place before the pandemic. 

“Global life expectancy has dropped two years in a row for the first time since 1959, and if it drops again in 2022 this will be historically unprecedented in modern history.” pic.twitter.com/jFEX68wahI

— Dr. Lucky Tran (@luckytran) March 4, 2023

2) Life expectancy of Canada 🇨🇦 vs US 🇺🇸 during the early pandemic. One failed miserably in 2020 and 2021 pic.twitter.com/AviNyvirke

— Eric Feigl-Ding (@DrEricDing) March 9, 2023

Though Canada's life expectancy also declined in 2020, it didn't plummet like the US did.

Weekend funnies: From steam-punk to Ted Lasso to a golfer dog

An historian Craig Baird is using AI to generate "steam-punk" versions of Canadian legends. Here's a couple:

4. Farley Mowat

One of Canada's most beloved writers, his books have been transl

5. Rita Joe

Called the Poet Laureate of the Mi'kmaq People, Rita Joe survived Residential School and relearned her language & culture. Her poems often outlined her experiences at the school.
Rita Joe Day is celebrated in Nova Scotia every Feb. 20.

🧵5/10 pic.twitter.com/GcF53hwZYD

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) April 23, 2023

ated into 52 languages and sold 17 million copies. His best known books are People of the Deer and Never Cry Wolf. His books often had an environmental focus.

🧵4/10 pic.twitter.com/Ea7ABY8q7z

— Craig Baird - Canadian History Ehx (@CraigBaird) April 23, 2023

And Peggy Atwood loved hers:

This is pretty wonderful! Who did it? Artist or a i ? Where can I get one? :) love the ticking hat… https://t.co/xEhprF6uCz

— Margaret E. Atwood (@MargaretAtwood) April 23, 2023

I loved this one, too:

This is the Twitter content that I am staying here for 👇 https://t.co/7A0wTx8viw

— Dr. Fiona Mattatall 🪩 (@FionaMattatall) April 22, 2023

Today's edition of "Christ, what an asshole"

So today our hero Elon Musk struck a blow for the working man by taking away those elitist blue verification checks!

Sort of.

I'll never be as rich as this man, but at least I'll never be as pathetic either pic.twitter.com/g7ulABeWbo

— Mike Drucker (@MikeDrucker) April 20, 2023

this is honestly the most comically ridiculous thing ever. paying? please. there's still verification, only now it's some kind of weird passive aggressive thing Musk personally decides on? https://t.co/Y8JhC2U9Bb

— Josh Marshall (@joshtpm) April 21, 2023

Musk is pretending that celebrities like Stephen King and LeBron James, who said they would not pay for Twitter, are paying for Twitter, got called on it, and admitted he is paying their fees.
Feel like they should be labeled "Musk funded media" pic.twitter.com/2xFbEqWpLz

— Don Moynihan (@donmoyn) April 20, 2023

There used to be actual value to the blue marks, like showing people who to listen to when they needed help. 
Like, for instance, the City of New York. 

But Musk has once again demonstrated he doesn't understand what he is doing:

The Elon clusterfuck is ON pic.twitter.com/4dRlYq8GLz

— Kara Swisher (@karaswisher) April 20, 2023

Around the Substacks: from Van Gogh Sneakers, to Delaware courts, to Pierre Poilievre and the CBC

First up, here is an example of the type of creative thing that AI can now do: Van Gogh Sneakers! 

For anyone interested in creating fascinating stuff via AI (Artificial Intelligence),  Ethan Mollick has written a One Useful Thing article: How to How to use AI to do practical stuff: A new guide. Here is his introduction

The first thing people try to do with AI is what it is worst at; using it like Google...

Second, they may try something speculative, using it like Alexa, and asking a question, often about the AI itself. Will AI take my job? What do you like to eat? These answers are also terrible.

If people still stick around, they start to ask more interesting questions, either for fun or based on half-remembered college essay prompts: Write an article on why ducks are the best bird. Why is Catcher in the Rye a good novel? These are better. As a result, people see blocks of text on a topic they don’t care about very much...They usually quit around now, convinced that everyone is going to use this to cheat at school, but not much else.

All of these uses are not what AI is actually good at, and how it can be helpful. They can blind you to the real power of these tools.

To find out more, read the whole article - https://www.oneusefulthing.org/p/how-to-use-ai-to-do-practical-stuff.

Weekend funny stuff: Some stories, some writing, and some animal crackers, of course

Here are some interesting stories for your weekend.

First, this is an absolutely wonderful story:

Last year, a coworker randomly asked me to hand-deliver an antique violin across the country. I said yes, because why not. I had no idea what I was getting into, and now I need your help. A 🧵

— Latif Nasser (@latifnasser) April 15, 2023

Next, this is absolutely terrifying:

Today in 1969, an incensed and intoxicated President Richard Nixon ordered the Joint Chiefs of Staff to attack North Korea with a nuclear weapon after its fighter jets intercepted and shot down a US EC-121 reconnaissance plane over the Sea of Japan, killing all 31 crew members. pic.twitter.com/NceuVmWrNg

— Stephen Schwartz (@AtomicAnalyst) April 15, 2023

Don't we all identify with this guy?

This guy is a legend. pic.twitter.com/DdvhgrP4ng

— 🇺🇲 (@MrRJNKNS) April 15, 2023

Just another "friendly sausage maker"?

The US media reaction to the news about 21-year-old Jack Teixeira, a National Guard technology support staffer who leaked dozens of secret US documents - such a nice boy! patriotic! a devout Catholic! - reminds me of how Canadian media developed a "friendly sausage maker" meme back in 2020. 

Remember that in July 2020, a heavily-armed military reservist named Corey Hurren from Winnipeg drove 2,000 km to Ottawa with the idea of “arresting” our prime minister and he actually rammed through the gates to the grounds of the prime minister’s residence and wandered around looking for Trudeau before the RCMP finally noticed him and negotiated a surrender. 

Luckily, neither Trudeau nor Governor-General Payette were there at the time. 

The Canadian media turned this guy into “just a friendly sausage-maker” who didn’t really want to hurt anyone, not really, he just wanted to talk to someone about how hard it was to make a living during the pandemic and really, couldn’t we all just give this guy a break? 

It was a really bizarre reaction it has now become a meme among the Canadian left. 

And I still believe the media adopted this view as a way to minimize the errors made by the RCMP.

The incident itself was terrifying. The media’s handling of the incident was worse!!!

— Graham Barker (@sob_er2dayz) July 7, 2020

Armed "friendly sausage maker" who stormed Rideau Hall to confront Prime Minister has his 6 year sentence upheld by Court of Appeal. https://t.co/iAJk75mgEl

— Stephen Lautens (@stephenlautens) March 17, 2023

And the meme goes on:

This downplaying by @DeanBennettCP @CdnPressNews, of the seriousness of the charges against former Russian organized crime operative, Pawlowski, is yet another absurd “friendly sausage maker” level of excusing the seriousness of what both Smith & Pawlowski have done. #ABpoli

— @HeatherMoAndCo@mastodon.online (@HeatherMoAndCo) April 10, 2023

And now in America we are seeing the same thing today, a determined effort to minimize the danger:

The lemmings have all gotten their cues from the cult leaders.
Jack Teixeira is going to get trustwashed like Manning and Snowden and portrayed as some kind of whistleblower.

He is decidedly not. He’s a traitor and a groomer. https://t.co/RSbzWttv3t

— Jim Stewartson, Anti-disinfo activist 🇺🇸🇺🇦 (@jimstewartson) April 13, 2023

Tonight I am wondering if the motivation is the same, downplaying the problem to protect the reputations of military who apparently let this guy gather up, take home, and copy so much classified material.

Today's Comments: Just wondering who will be next on the hit list?

Canada continues to watch Poilievre and the CPC shoot themselves in the foot every time they open their mouths. 

And funny, isn't it, how hostile they are toward journalists?

In the midst of a flare-up over a 2016 Chinese donation to the Trudeau Foundation in 2016, the Leader of the Opposition is asking a foreign-owned (incl Saudi prince) social media co to discredit 🇨🇦’s national broadcaster.#cdnpoli

— Sandy Garossino 🇨🇦🌻 (@Garossino) April 12, 2023

If Pierre Poilievre was a secret Liberal plant, I’m unsure he’d be acting any differently at this point

Are him and Jagmeet *trying* to re-elect Trudeau? https://t.co/LZoAQs37f5

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) April 12, 2023

Conservative/Corporatist/Republican operatives did a nice job of destroying WE. Now, they've set their sights on the Trudeau Foundation.

It's a rough ride for charities these days, as the worldwide fascist movement to dethrone moderates like Trudeau is gaining steam. #CdnPoli

— DerekZoolander85 (@dzoolander85) April 11, 2023

At this point, I just have to ask, who is going to be next? Twitter has some suggestions:

Next up on the Conservative’s hit list:
- PIERRE Cardin
- ELLIOTT Group
- TRUDEAU Corporation
- JUSTIN Timberlake
🙄🥸🤣🤪

— Douglas B. Rogers 🎣🏌🏻‍♂️ (@Rogers26B) April 12, 2023

And what about the Pearson College of the Pacific. That sounds like a Liberal charity.

— Bruce Barnett (@blbarden1) April 12, 2023

If the media is looking for another charity to take down, I recommend the Fraser Institute. They are nothing but foreign influence in our society. They exist to funnel republican money into Canada to screw us out of our healthcare. #cdnpoli

— DJ Chocolate Milk (@DJChocolateMLK) April 12, 2023

Today's Random Comments: from Liberals to Conservatives, from Tennessee to Twitter, plus a little Joan Baez

I'm seeing a lot of good comments lately on the substacks and on Twitter - here's a selection:

First up, here's Scrimshaw on why the NDP and the Liberals need to remain as separate parties:

The left benefits from being able to pitch two visions in two different parts of the country to two different sets of voters. The NDP gets to use their anti-establishment message to win regional cities and towns, and the Liberals get to use the NDP as a rhetorical triangulation point to seem moderate in the suburbs. It’s a relationship that maximizes the left’s vote share, which given the two parties have 50% of the vote and 54% of the seats, is a win.

A merger is an unserious proposition that even on political terms would fail, ignoring all the policy ramifications and the political fallout of a party that would be at war over internal control at the start.

Moving on to the US:

CANADA WATCHING US NEWS pic.twitter.com/l6QO7pqRwe

— Brittlestar (@brittlestar) April 4, 2023

Atrios comments on the liberal tendency to try to find so-called "reasonable conservatives":

A mystery to me is why so many liberals are desperate for there to be good conservatives, and often became very angry if you inform them that their favorite good conservative it not, in fact, good.

Here is Jonah Goldberg, at The Dispatch, about today's young conservatives:

With no other frame of reference, young conservatives are starting to think it’s normal to be jerks.

...Because they have no frame of reference, no meaningful political experience or memory of politics prior to this shabby era, they think being shabby is normal and smart. Last week, the New York Republican Club issued a moronic and monstrous statement in solidarity with Donald Trump. In response to my criticism these domestic birds of prey behaved monstrously and moronically. (I won’t link to it because attention is the currency they covet.) I’ve since learned that the D.C. chapter of the Young Republicans is equally asinine, embracing the goons and dupes who stormed the Capitol as martyrs and political prisoners.

Indeed, they’ve literally ditched the Republican elephant in favor of a silhouette of Donald Trump.

I don’t call attention to this because I think they are somehow worthy intellectual adversaries or anything like that. Rather, I call attention to it because it’s evidence that the corruption of conservatism isn’t just bad for conservatism—which it obviously is—but because it’s bad for these kids. Surrounding yourself with people who think it’s a sign of courage and strength to be coarse or bigoted is how you become coarse and bigoted.

Missing the Boomers

So here is the problem:

My latest article....Canadian troops in Poland not being reimbursed for meals https://t.co/GCKdKM4T84 via @ottawacitizen

— David Pugliese (@davidpugliese) April 3, 2023

The Line offers this commentary on the story:

This military fiasco is alarming because it’s a sign that our state-capacity issues are now extending into areas that previously worked. Not only are we struggling to do new things, we’re forgetting how to do things we used to be able to do. This goes beyond what our typical gripes about state capacity. This is something else. This is state atrophy, or rot.

Now that the public is paying attention, we suspect we’ll see some reasonably rapid progress. The government will throw bureaucrats and maybe consultants at the problem until it goes away. This is how they have reacted to similar issues: we hurled ground staff at airport delays until they cleared, and bureaucrats at passport offices until the backlogs eased.

But we have to ask why we now require exceptional redeployments of staff to maintain typical levels of service. And we don’t like the answers we can come up with. Ottawa has added tens of thousands of civil servants, at an annual cost of tens of billions, in recent years. During that time Ottawa has also sharply ramped up spending on consultants; the annual cost now surpasses $20 billion.

And yet.

What the hell is going on?

I'll tell you what's going on.

I retired.

And of course its not just me. Its my sister and my brother and my husband and my neighbour and my friend and thousands of other Boomers just like us.

We worked as civil servants for 40 years, from Trudeau Pere to Trudeau Fils, and we knew how to get things done within a government bureaucracy that always had changing priorities, newly announced programs, shuffled deputy ministers, temporary program directors, acting managers, part-time technicians, job-sharing leave replacements, and out-of-date technology.

We knew how to walk a requisition through a dozen required signatures in an afternoon, persuading the technical and financial staffers with smiles and donuts, to get something authorized and get the cheque issued.

We knew how to phone up a director and tell him that something was going haywire and he'd better get on top of it before some reporter noticed. And his assistant knew who to call to get the problem fixed before it could explode all over everyone's desks.

We knew how to jury-rig the new improved systems so they would work the way we knew they were supposed to, after the consultants and technical experts had set it up and gone home.

Then we retired. 

And now, the people who have only ever worked with computers are trying their best to do the job. They're great people, and they're working hard, but they don't know the systems like we did, and more importantly they don't know how to get around them like we did.

Its not easy to cajole a computer into working a little overtime, just this once, to help out our brave troops in Poland.

"Beer, bedrooms and bathrooms"

I'm reading lots of tweets and comments these days about how banana-pants crazy some Republicans are these days, and it worries me that Canada is trending in the same direction. Seems to me our politics has usually been about two years behind the US.

Conservatives around the globe have lost their fucking minds.

— Andrew (@AndrewCote91) April 6, 2023

When I was drawn to the Republican Party, the enemies were the Soviet Union and totalitarianism. Now it’s beer, bathooms and bedrooms crusades run by the angry and maladjusted who are afraid to drink Budweiser, wear Nikes or go to Disneyland https://t.co/EVwZ2BHZNc

— stuart stevens (@stuartpstevens) April 7, 2023

Kinda hilarious that some of these fragile anti-LGBTQ conservative men think beer and liquor companies marketing to the queer community will somehow result in a loss of revenue.

Do y'all know how much we drink, especially in this moment?

— Charlotte Clymer 🇺🇦 (@cmclymer) April 6, 2023

"Florida man charged"

I didn't bother watching any of the White Bronco chase yesterday, the Manhattan court proceedings today, or the Mar-a-Lardo speech tonight. 

But I have seen some great tweets and comments so I have to share:

How it’s going …pic.twitter.com/sXrmkMEPQO

— George Conway🌻 (@gtconway3d) April 4, 2023

My new cover for TIME magazine.
Art director: DW Pine @dwpine pic.twitter.com/NtaUY5zL5Q

— Edel Rodriguez (@edelstudio) April 4, 2023

Executive summary of tonight’s speech from Mar-a-Lago: pic.twitter.com/IXwoPYZ3Ie

— Michael Beschloss (@BeschlossDC) April 5, 2023

More like elderly man from Queens now residing in Florida charged with business fraud crimes.

— So many humans, so little humanity (@JACochran29) April 4, 2023

LawFareBlog has an analysis of the indictment including some comments on what might happen next. They say "Trump will throw a lot of spaghetti at the wall in an effort to get the Supreme Court of the United States to take a look". 

Much of the media coverage has been grim and ponderous and oh so serious. But over on the substacks, the people I read are cheering.

Substack Roundup: "Don't Panic"

Before the news became completely dominated by the Orange Turd being hauled into court, I saw some interesting substack columns that are worth sharing.

First, Justin Ling asks us to consider how big is the Internet now, and he says its time to figure out how to recreate it in a more human scale.

The internet is big.

The internet is a really big thing.

If a week’s worth of Youtube videos were put on film reel, laid end-to-end, it would wrap around the world, I don’t know, at least twice. All of the words that get written on Tumblr in a day, if printed out, would fill all the world’s Olympic-sized swimming pools, probably. If you committed all of ChatGPT’s responses to hard drives, it would fill every floor of the Empire State Building, I guess.

We used to love thinking about the internet in these arbitrary physical terms — how many football fields, how many Libraries of Congress — but this is all impossible now. By the time you finish calculating the metaphor, so massive and abstract so as to be meaningless, it’s out of date.

....If the old internet was a series of small outposts in the middle of a barren wasteland, the current internet is a series of giant sprawling mega-malls, then perhaps the next internet is a medium-density city, with strip malls and apartment blocks, marked by plenty of wayfinding and readable maps.

This reminds me so much of The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy:  

So maybe its time to start writing "Don't Panic" in large friendly letters, isn't it. 

Today's Random Stuff: News, views and pizza

Lots of news this week -- in Canada, the Mass Casualty Commission report was released:

Here is the essence of the Mass Casualty Commission 3000-page report: https://t.co/HYx1JuU2qC

— Cathie from Canada 🇨🇦 😷🏳️‍🌈 (@CathieCanada) March 30, 2023

in the US, the Trump indictment was announced:

First they came for Trump, and I did not speak out because lol, lmao even

— George Kolokotronis (@georgejk720) March 30, 2023

Love our Opening Day lineup:

Leading off:
Alvin Bragg
Stormy Daniels hush money.

On deck:
Fani Willis
Georgia election interference.

In the hole:
Jack Smith
Stolen Top Secret documents.

Batting clean up:
Merrick Garland
Incitement of an insurrection.

Play ball !!! ⚾️ pic.twitter.com/QLu2kbAjgF

— Billy Baldwin (@BillyBaldwin) March 31, 2023

And Thursday was when we found out that Disney had quietly emasculated Ron DeSantis, because he hadn't bothered to pay attention to what Disney was doing to protect its Florida properties. As Josh Marshall says, its Disney 1, Meatball Ron 0.

DeSantis’ expensive taxpayer-funded Reedy Creek board says Disney attorneys stripped them of power to do anything but road maintenance.

Beaten by a mouse!🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣 pic.twitter.com/JXybfns9Dp

— 🏴‍☠️ Bob Lawrence --Obama is #1 (@TrumpluvsObama) March 30, 2023

Today's News: The Absolute Worst

The school shootings are the worst, the absolute worst. 

Here is an incredible photo -- a child weeping as she is being transported away from The Covenant School shooting in Nashville this week (photo credit Nicole Hester) 

I don't know how parents in the United States can deal with their own fear every day, much less how afraid their children must be. 

Worse still, their political system is paralyzed, unable to deal with it. 

The AR-15, along with the AK-47 and their ilk, are evil weapons, simply evil -- last night the Washington Post has an outstanding article called The Blast Effect which uses effective graphics to show why the AR15 bullets kill -- they blow a human body apart.

The AR-15 fires bullets at such a high velocity — often in a barrage of 30 or even 100 in rapid succession — that it can eviscerate multiple people in seconds. A single bullet lands with a shock wave intense enough to blow apart a skull and demolish vital organs. The impact is even more acute on the compact body of a small child.

“It literally can pulverize bones, it can shatter your liver and it can provide this blast effect,” said Joseph Sakran, a gunshot survivor who advocates for gun violence prevention and a trauma surgeon at Johns Hopkins Hospital.

During surgery on people shot with high-velocity rounds, he said, body tissue “literally just crumbled into your hands.”

The carnage is rarely visible to the public. Crime scene photos are considered too gruesome to publish and often kept confidential. News accounts rely on antiseptic descriptions from law enforcement officials and medical examiners who, in some cases, have said remains were so unrecognizable that they could be identified only through DNA samples.

As Sakran put it: “We often sanitize what is happening.”

The Washington Post sought to illustrate the force of the AR-15 and reveal its catastrophic effects.

...The records and interviews show in stark detail the unique mechanics that propel these bullets — and why they unleash such devastation in the body.

Whatever anyone thinks about our gun laws in #Canada. Did you know we’ve had 15 school shooting deaths? Not this month or this year, but total, in history. And absolutely no deaths in elementary schools. Why? Because gun laws save lives." https://t.co/LhfcUSCBcf

— 🇺🇸 OneOfTheSmiths 🇨🇦 Vaxxed & Boosted x5 👍 🍻 (@OneOfTheSmiths) March 28, 2023

This is the way the Han Dong smear ends: not with a bang, but a whimper

 

The accusations against Han Dong are falling apart. 

Watch everyone nodding along as the translation error story was reported on Sunday:

Boom. Rob Benzie’s comments on @ctvqp this morning regarding recent media coverage of the Chinese foreign interference story: pic.twitter.com/z2EGS17Vi4

— Greg MacEachern (@gmacofglebe) March 26, 2023

Scrimshaw notes that Global didn't even cover the story themselves in their weekend show:

So, Global didn’t repeat their accusation about Han Dong on The West Block this morning? They broke the political story of the week and didn’t cover it on their own show?

That’s very odd

— Evan Scrimshaw (@EScrimshaw) March 26, 2023

The tide is going back out. It's fucking hilarious to watch pundits, competing media and conservatives alike begin to back down on Han Dong because of reckless reporting by Global News.

— Raoul Duke's Salt Shaker (@RodKahx) March 26, 2023