21-1-5

 2021. Everything is going to be better, right? 

I've spent too much time on the SocialMedias™ and TheTwitters™ and, well, I do pay for NY Times access so I peppered some of that in there too.

Here's something; if everyone were to shelter in place, and not go out, and wear a mask if they needed to go out, and took extreme measures to social distance and not interact in any way, Covid would run out of steam in about 6 weeks. No vaccine necessary. And thousands of lives would be saved. Proof? New Zealand.  (I'm not sure how a live link to a current status will live on in a static blog entry, so more information here, and here.) I won't make you read all that. What you need to know is there are 62 active cases in New Zealand today. 62. Yeah, there's only 5 million or so people living in New Zealand. But when you do a "cases per million" population comparison, they have had 437 cases per million people over the duration of the pandemic ranking them 183rd in the world. In comparison, Canada has had 16752 cases per million people living here ranking them 81st in the world in cases per million population. And the USA is at 66600 cases per million people ranking themselves 7th in the world. 437 cases per million people looks pretty good in comparison. And Canada has 80288 active cases as of today vs. those 62 in New Zealand. Per million? Because that's the statistic needed to make the comparison properly, right? Canada has 2136 active cases per million and New Zealand has 13 active cases per million. Pretty stark difference.

How'd they do it? No vaccine. They shut down their border and everyone stayed home for a bit. Easy, right?

I'm writing this after the riots and domestic terrorist activities in the US Capitol, but that won't stop me from mentioning this one little thing because even though the storming of the Capitol hasn't happened yet, certainly the underlying tones of what Trump has laid out has been a theme for a while now. My favourite Tweet this week? "Is American Great Again yet?" 

I took a picture of a sink I might buy for my bathroom. That's the only picture I took today. It's white and ceramic and it looks pretty great. It's on sale; $16 off regular price. It's an efficient photograph that captures the bar code, the price, the dimensions, and the sink all in one image. The whole story is there. But it's not a picture worth looking at. I could probably post rationalize some artistic merit into it, but I'm not that interested in doing so. 

So no picture today. 

It's good to get the flaw of the year out of the way earlier. Means the rest of the year can only be better, right? Most mornings lately when I leave the house I will involuntarily say out loud, like a crazy person, "you can do this. it's going to be alright." I wish I was exaggerating.  But 2020 is in the past. There's a vaccine. Trump's days are numbered. Heck, he might even be in prison by next year. So, everything is going to be good from here on in, right? Sure. Why not? I've missed a day. The pressure is off. The rest will be easy. Right?