Provinces' new healthcare plan seems totally illogical

I'm no health expert but, from a purely logical standpoint, Quebec and Ontario's latest plan seems like a particularly daft idea. 

Desperate to keep as many healthcare staff as possible on the job, both provinces are apparently considering mandating that infected but asymptomatic health workers stay at work, even as they continue with daily self-testing. 

I understand that the provinces need all hands on deck at the moment, but this seems like a particularly short-sighted and counter-productive plan. Surely, in the era of Omicron, it will just lead to more transmission within the workplace, and more and more people infected, some of whom will be asymptomatic, but some of whom will be symptomatic. So, the healthcare sector will lose even more active personnel, and the provinces will be in a worse situation than ever.

Am I missing something?

Casu martzu and other disgusting ideas

I happened to read in a novel about a Sardinian cheese called casu martzu (or casu marzu, or a few other local dialect spellings), which I had never heard of before.

It's one of those unlikely local delicacies, along the lines of durian fruits, stinky tofu, monkey brains, etc, that give the impression that someone has gone out of their way to create something deliberately disgusting and offensive.

Casu martzu is a cheese, originally a sheep milk cheese similar to pecorino, that has been allowed to be infested with live cheese fly larva (okay, yes, maggots).  The digestive action of the maggots promotes an "advanced level of fermentation", so that the cheese becomes very soft, with some seeping liquid (làgrima, or "tears"). 

Of course, partakers risk the larvae surviving their stomach acid and infesting the eater, so casu martzu has been banned for some years by the European Union on health grounds, but that hasn't stopped a vigorous black market in Sardinia, Corsica and a few other areas of Italy, and production is believed to be worth around €2-3 million.

People are weird, right?

Canada's infrastructure planning process is the worst - it's official

It should probably vome as no surprise, but it still smarts nevertheless. A study comparing the infrastructure planning processes in Europe, Switzerland, USA, Australia and Canada, has marked the Canadian system as the least rigorous and most ad hoc.

The study concludes that Canada is the only one of the countries under consideration in which major transportation projects are not planned as part of a national long-term strategy. Furthermore, there is little coordination among the various different levels of government involved (leading to second-rate projects being undertaken, and huge time and budget overruns), and no discernable system for performance monitoring and evaluation after projects are implemented. Sounds about right.

And we can't just blame it all on our size and our decentralized federal system: the USA, Australia and Switzerland all have similar federal systems, and they seem to be able to make it work. It particularly smarts that (what we think of as) dysfunctional America performs better than Canada. 

This study, which comes from the unlikely source of the European Court of Auditors, should be a wake-up call for all levels of Canadian government. But, somehow, I'm not expecting anything to come of it.

Toronto's worst COVID numbers are now in the affluent areas near the lake

In the early (and even middle) days of the pandemic, all the talk was about how the areas in Toronto with the highest COVID cases were the poorer area in the north of the city, largely populated by immigrants carrying out essential services, and how the virus was - yes, I actually saw this written! - racist. At the very least, it was said, the pandemic was accentuating the polarization of the city, and highlighting existing inequalities.

Well, nearly two years later, an analysis of where Toronto's cases are being recorded now paints a very different picture (here's a link to the original interactive map by Toronto Public Health, part of a treasure trove of information on local COVID stats). Neighbourhoods like the downtown core and the Beaches, where I live, which had very low case counts last year, are now leading the pack, and the Rexdales and Agincourts of the city are now doing relatively well. The Toronto Islands and the Downtown Waterfront is the current hotspot with 625 cases per 100,000 residents, followed by The Beaches with 612. These rates have tripled in just the last two weeks. 

I have not seen any good explanation of this turnaround, either medical or sociological, although suggested reasons include unequal access to testing facilities, post-infection immunity in the early hotspots, or excessive social gatherings in more wealthy areas. But all those outraged race activists have certainly gone very quiet.

Canada is so predictable and that is maybe not a bad thing

Invest Canada, a government agency established to attact overseas investment in Canada, is running an advertising campaign abroad which culminates the tagline, "Canada is so predictable", suggesting that Canada is a safe and cautious, even if unexciting, place for foreign investors to park their money. It has a stable macroeconomy and safer-than-safe banks, and you may not make a killing here but you won't lose your shirt.

Some Canadians in the financial industry, though, are incensed and shocked - shocked, I tell you! - that Canada would sell itself short in this way. They argue that Canada's advertising  should be all about innovation, entrepreneurship and ambition, as well as equal opportunities, multiculturalism, tolerance and respect.

Well, I haven't seen the ad, but it seems to me that Canada could do a lot worse than portray itself as a safe amd reliable country, especially after the roller-coaster ride of the last couple of years. Some people thrive on stress and risk, but many more don't, and, particularly as I get older, I am right there with them. 

There are still many risky places where you can gamble your money - you could go into tech startups, cryptocurrrencies or the developing markets. But there are not that many places where you can mitigate your risk while still making a respectable profit, and I can well believe that there is quite an appetite for that kind of thing at the moment. Canada is one of those places and I for one, am more than happy to be considered polite, boring and pedictable in these perilous and precarious times.

Joe Manchin is a Republican in everything but name

What a strange beast is Joe Manchin. The West Virginia senator is nominally a Democrat, and yet he has repeatedly voted against the Democrats' every move. 

The latest is his decision to vote against Joe Biden's sweeping $1.7 trillion social and climate spending bill, the so-called Build Back better Act. He admitted this during an interview on Republican mouthpiece Fox News - well, of course he did - despite previous promises to toe the party line, and his private discussions this week with President Biden. Nobody really knows why Manchin is taking this line on this particular bill - he muttered something about inflation, and something about Joe Biden knowing the "real reasons" (something to do with White House staff, maybe)- it would be too much tonm expect him to justify himself.

With the Senate equally balanced (nominally), a vote anywhere other than with the Democratic caucus is essentially a vote for the Republicans. Indeed, the Democrats have lambasted Manchin, almost to a person; the only support he has received is from Republicans. Go figure. The Republican Party has repeated tried to get Manchin to cross the Senate to the GOP side and, for whatever reason, he has chosen not to. But if he continues to consistently oppose the Democrats, then he is a de facto Republican anyway, wherever he sits.

The Democrats have now had enough of Manchin. He has now gone past the stage of being a thoughtful, independent and principled maverick; he appears to be deliberately sabotaging the Democcrat agenda. You have to wonder whether someone isn't paying the man. Certainly, West Virginia is the centre of America's beleaguered coal industry, so that wouldn't surprise me at all.

The important bill is not quite dead in the water yet, but without Manchin's vote in the ultra-polarized political landscape of modern America, it will be very hard to pass it.

Quebec company's concrete alternative absorbs rather than emits carbon dioxide

Good news is in short supply these days, so lets celebrate the possibility that concrete, one of the most carbon-intensive and ubiquitous building materials we have, might be approaching its end-days.

Concrete is everywhere, and it's manufacture is responsible for at least 8% of the world's greenhouse gases. If the global concrete industry were a country, it would be the third largest carbon dioxide emitter, after only China and the USA. Most of concrete's carbon footprint comes from the manufacture of its binding agent, cement, which involves heating limestone to 1,400°C (usually using a fossil fuel). As the limestone breaks down, it releases another dose of carbon dioxide. Double whammy!

What, though, if we could do away with cement completely? Well, Quebec start-up Carbicrete's product not only eliminates cement completely (and its GHG emissions in the process), but it uses steel slag, a by-product of the steel-making process, as a binding agent, which can be injected with carbon dioxide from industrial plants, thereby converting it into a mineral (a kind of carbon capture and storage process). So, it turns the manufacture of concrete from a CO2-emitting process into a CO2-saving one - negative carbon emissions! - while, at the same time, utilising the steel slag waste. What's more, Carbicrete is 30% stronger and 10-20% less expensive than traditional concrete. Win-win-win!

Carbicrete's process can easily be incorporated into any existing concrete production plant, and a collaboration with Quebec comcrete manufacturer Patio Dummond is already going ahead. Let's hope this one takes off.

Hamilton-Verstappen rivalry a little too ... entertaining

I will confess that I don't really care much about Formula One (F1) motor-racing. My Dad used to love it, so I was forced to sit through hours of it as a kid in England, but I never progressed past finding it noisy and tedious.

It is still very popular in Europe and particularly in the UK, especially in this era of local hero Lewis Hamilton, and I have in-laws that are obsessed by it. It is also becoming increasingly popular in North America, not least, it has to be said, as a result of Netflix's behind-the-scenes series Drive to Survive. Some observers wonder, though, if it's not becoming less of a sport and more of an entertainment, similar in some says to (dare I say it?) professional wrestling. The grand finale of the latest season makes that suggestion even more plausible.

Lewis Hamilton was the favourite to win this year's championship, giving him record-breaking eight title (he is currently tied with all-time great Michael Schumacher). That was the expected fairy tale ending. But, enter the "bad guy", Dutch racer Max Verstappen. After a controversial race last week, in which Verstappen "brake-tested" Hamilton and was handed a penalty, the grand finale was just as controversial. 

Hamilton was comfortably in control of the race from the start until, with just five laps to go, another driver, Nicholas Lafiti crashed. After a combination of controversial decisions by the race control people, clever tactics by the Verstappen team, and some sheer blind luck, Verstappen pulled ahead of Hamilton on the last lap, and won the race and therefore the championship. Hamilton's team objected, Verstappen thanked his lucky stars, and the media was chock full of reports, explanations and heated commentary.

Heady stuff, and heaps of excitement for F1 fans. But, perhaps a little too ... dramatic, do you think? I'm not saying the whole thing was fixed, but all the necessary ingredients for such a convoluted, stirring and edge-of-the-seat finish to the season were hard to imagine. 

Anyway, like I say, I don't really care that much about F1 racing. But lots of people do. And now many more are hooked on the sport.