Justin Case

Introduction

Today's rant concerns Justin Trudeau and Covid cases, but this little essay is NOT ABOUT COVID. I understand that Covid is on everyone's lips; that is why we are asked to wear masks and stay under mandatory house arrest. It's just that Covid is the one thing that the global population agrees on, when they should in fact be disagreeing. And who better to muddy the waters than our dear Great Leader.

The background: My regular financial world has been turned upside down by three recent events:-

(1) The rogue insurance company mailed me a cheque for $3,500 which was waiting for me in my Box on December 31st. I paid the lawyer $138 (which included taxes), so I leave it up to you to calculate my ROI before you salute me as the financial wunderkinder of Bonavista.

(2) "CANADA FPT", whoever they be, dropped $553 unannounced into my Bank of Montreal account on January 5th

(3) The same party dropped another $1,747 unannounced into my Bank of Montreal account this foggy morning of January 8th

I do a lot of off-shore banking since I moved to this island of Newfoundland, because I hate the BMO with passion and love the ladies at the local bricks and mortar of the Scotiabank, so on three separate occasions I have had to email from BMOC to SB, wait thirty minutes for the email to travel along the copper wires, and then divvy the ill-gotten gains between paying down my loan and the high-interest savings account. That last transfer takes five business days because that bank uses a lower-grade copper ore for their wires. That seven-day delay (because there will always be a weekend in there, right?) means that I can't actually DO anything for another week.

Three seven-day delays in nine actual days and you can see how my banking accounts are in a tumultuous state during this period.

The Protection Racket

This $5,800 background prompts the question "Where does all this corrupting king's ransom come from? And the answers are "The Protection Racket" and "the Government (twice)". " The Highest Duty of Any Government is to Protect Its Citizens ", and the Insurance Industry says "Now you should feel safe and secure" as it rummages through your pockets for that $100 premium on the first of each month.

Protection is the name of the game.

Remember that "Management Measures", using four quantifiers: Numeric, Date/time, Geographic/spatial, and Boolean, and the management of practically all piratical schemes measures its success by the same quantifiers.

Governments (which are by definition geographically quantified entities) especially like to use and mis-use numbers.

Which brings us alarmingly to the "Number of Cases" under a government's watch. The insurance racket also uses "number of cases", but these are not Covid cases, they are "settled out of court" cases. The same principles will apply.

So it is that every day your regional newspaper will boast "No New Covid Cases For The Past 23 Days" or similar. When there is a new case, the headline is modified by insertion of special words, hence "No new community-transmitted Covid cases for the past 23 days" or "No new transit-based Covid cases for the past 23 days". You have been reading those headlines for months now. Often enough international travelers (foreigners!) are blamed, although nowadays these travelers are mainly citizens returning home on specially-chartered flights.

A Case in Point

Here is a classic example from my home state: " … 250 days, as of this writing, without a community-based COVID-19 infection ". This is an egregious statement to make, as Western Australia is conspicuous in having only two road crossings in its 1,800+Km land border. Satisfy yourself by visiting Google Maps and seeing the two highways that cross at the northern and southern extremities of that border. Zoom in to find other tracks that cross that border to get an idea of how isolated Perth is. Yes, there are tracks that cross the border, but Google Street View doesn’t go there, because the Street View is "sand" for 1,800 kilometres, so why film it?

Western Australia can seal its borders with just four police officers, two on each highway. (OK, maybe three cops on three shifts. Still and all we are talking 24 cops tops). Otherwise you have to arrive by aeroplane (lots of control there) or the only train - plenty of time to be inspected on the world's longest straight stretch of railway line .

Now go inspect the road borders of, say, California. And speaking of California: " More than one in five people are testing positive ". "More than one in five people tested … returned positive tests". But how were these people channeled into the test centre? Was it a random sample one in every hundred cars crossing a check-point? Every car? And how many people were tested. You can check every one of five people in a single car, detect one who tests positive, email in the results, and then pack up and go home. You still have "one in five", right? Did everyone with a runny nose get tested? Or did a local pharmacy encourage people to be tested "Free tube of toothpaste if you get yourself tested".

Streets deserted in Brisbane as Queensland records no new local cases and here we are treated to a new quantifier "New, Local, Cases". This is not the same quantifier as "cases", or "local cases" or "new cases" or "locally transmitted cases" or "non-local cases", or … and in case (nice one Chris!) you think I am splitting hairs, if you wanted to publicize how well you were protecting the public, would you choose a quantifier that allowed you to minimize the numeric quantity?

Now if you are in agreement so far, and you are familiar with the headlines that assault you daily, then you are in a position to question public terminology. In particular you should ask "What is a Case?".

Cases

Each municipal, state and national authority is a law unto itself and as such can use its own definition of "Case". Nowhere in the public press will you see a definition of "Case", which is now globally accepted as a unit for numeric quantifiers. Each authority brags about or bemoans its number of "Cases", yet no authority tells you what a unit of Case is. I told you above that I had raked in 5,800 dollars in nine days, but if I had told you that I had raked in 5,800 Frumblatos in nine days what would you know? Is that insufficient funds for a mug of coffee at Walkham’s Gate Café Pub, or can I splurge and ask for ketchup with my fish-and-chips down at PK's?

So unless you know what a "Case" is, you can't really judge an authority by its number of Cases, can you?

Of course, you are not stupid; you know what a case is, don't you?

So how do the following terms relate to your understanding of a unit Case: Contracted, Exposed, Infected, Fought Off, Had Symptoms, Had Signs, …

What is meant by "testing positive"? Is that a case? And if so how does San Bernardino County define "positive", and how do they "test"? More importantly, how do they collect people to be "tested"? The same argument applies to Contracted, Exposed, Infected, Fought Off, Had Symptoms, Had Signs, …, and you will not find any of those terms defined in the press reports.

If you can not be certain what San Bernardino County is talking about, then you can not be certain of their statements. That's just another way of saying that you should distrust their statements, or that you should be skeptical about their statements, or that you should be cynical regarding the San Bernardino County authorities.

In four years, the only time I could agree with President Chump's logic was when he said "of course we have more cases; we are testing [your favorite multiplier here] times as many people as any other nation". I agreed with his logic, but not his data.

If The Yukon tests 50% of its population (35,874) and Nunavut tests 5% of its population (35,944) we might not be surprised if The Yukon reported about ten times as many Cases as Nunavut. Both provinces are remote areas in The Great White North.

At this point you might want to compare the number of Cases for the states of Western Australia and Victoria, or you might want to compare the number of Cases for the states of California and Wyoming in the USA, or Birmingham and the Isles of Scilly in the UK. This last suggestion is from a list of 314 Districts in the UK, and a UK district is smaller than a UK County.

In a previous essay I hypothesized on Covid in Bonavista (population 3,800) by wondering what would happen if I went to the pharmacy for over-the-counter medication for a runny nose or a sore throat. The pharmacist would recommend a bottle of "StopDrip" or "CoughLess", but might surreptitiously make another stroke mark against "possibly Covid" on a sheet of paper. The pharmacist might suggest an appointment with Dr. Magrabi, who might recommend a blood-test at the hospital, and might surreptitiously make another stroke mark against "possibly Covid" on a sheet of paper. Up at the hospital Helen might take a blood sample, get it analyzed and note anything from "Live Covid stuff" through "Dead Covid stuff" and on to "Antibodies that might kill Covid virus at a later date". Helen might surreptitiously make another stroke mark against "possibly Covid" on a sheet of paper and would send the blood report back to Dr Magrabi who might then ask her to ship it off to St John's, where a government-funded laboratory might … might surreptitiously make another stroke mark against "possibly Covid" on a sheet of paper.

How many “possibly Covid” is that so far?

My annual runny-nose, obtained by wandering outside at 6am in my pyjamas to read the electricity meter, could raise the cases count by as much as four, just because I forgot to put on my slippers one morning last week. And definitely NOT because I had hopped on a plane and visited San Bernardino County.

Size Counts

So I have deep suspicions about reports of Cases.

I have very deep suspicions about any politician who brags "Ours Is Smaller Than Theirs" when discussing Covid counts. I am suspicious about politicians who brag about absolute numbers with no regard to the geography of the state, the climate of the state, the population sparseness of the state, or the state government's commitment to testing.

Which brings me back to Justin Trudeau, to name but one of millions of elected officials around the world.

If you were Justin Trudeau, or any one of the millions of elected officials around the world, what would be your best strategy to get yourself re-elected for another term (happened Sep 20 2021) (apart from changing your name by deed poll to something other than Donald John Trump)?

The answer quite obviously is two-fold:-

(1) Minimize any encouragement to be tested

(2) Apply very strict but varying guidelines to the definition of a Case.

In short, keep the definition of "case" flexible so that you could choose your own, ever-changing, definition of a "case" to make your numbers look good.

More Examples

Queensland has recorded zero new cases of corona virus overnight

What is the difference between quarantine and isolation?

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