MichaelBurjack

Being on the list makes it a bit more convenient when you go to vote. Since you're on the list, you only need one other piece of photo ID if I recall correctly.

If you're not on the list, the process is a bit longer, requires filling out an attestation and requires more ID. But even so, probably doesn't take more than an extra 5 minutes or so. But if everyone had to do it this way, would certainly slow things down.

So by doing it this way, it makes it fast for folks that aren't jeopardizing their safety by being on an electors list (whose distribution is supposed to be controlled, but I wouldn't count on it being fully confidential); while allowing folks that do need more confidentiality to not be on the list and still be able to vote without undue hassle.

Being on the electors list is optional, is something you can opt-in to (and opt-out of), and is not required in order to vote in Alberta.

There are many reasons an individual may choose to not be on the list (eg. domestic abuse situations).

Being on the electors list is optional, is something you can opt-in to (and opt-out of), and is not required in order to vote in Alberta.

There are many reasons an individual may choose to not be on the list (eg. domestic abuse situations).

Being on the electors list is optional, is something you can opt-in to (and opt-out of), and is not required in order to vote in Alberta.

Based on my (limited) understanding of RTRI, they have very specific items they fund and pretty low overall impact to the trade balance ($1M per org and $1B over 3 years program total across all industries). From [1]:

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Productivity improvement:

- investing in digitization, automation, or technology to enhance business productivity and competitiveness

- reshoring production, research & development (R&D) operations, recruiting highly qualified personnel (HQP) and expertise

Market expansion and diversification:

- developing and diversifying markets to help businesses find new customers

- business support, market development and diversification, and guidance services (e.g., advice for businesses from a sectoral expert organization)

Strengthening supply chains and trade resilience:

- optimizing supply chain logistics and ensuring compliance with standards to gain market access and/or enhance sales

- strengthening domestic supply chains and facilitating internal trade to increase the resilience of businesses and reliability of domestic markets

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This $1B program — even if it all went straight to subsidizing tariffs on Canadian imports — would be a pretty small rounding error out of the total $200B raised through tariffs from the article.

If anything, RTRI funds are largely about efficiency and pivoting to new markets. While there may be some outcomes that result in producers being able to lower their export costs, they're not "paying for" US tariffs.

Edit: formatting.

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1: https://www.canada.ca/en/prairies-economic-development/servi...

As a father of three amazing kiddos, what a wonderful sentiment stated so lucidly.

Thank you for sharing that quote.

You keep attacking the layout and formatting of the article, and not the substance.

Maybe this article works better for you, and if not, I'm sure you're just as capable at using Google as I am. There are many other high-quality studies that cover this topic in exhaustive detail.

https://www.cidrap.umn.edu/covid-19/commentary-wear-respirat...

That page has existed in one form or another for quite some time. I don't believe there's any AI slop in the substance of the content or arguments, and the rationale is presented in a balanced way.

In fact, the section "Are you going to wear a mask forever?" speaks directly to the OP's asking why I wear masks, and their short answer, that "masks are a tool we can use when and where it makes sense—especially indoors, in poorly ventilated areas, or when community transmission is high." is, if anything, a more concise version of my longer reply at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45973239.

The WHN has a very distinguished set of experts that review and vouch for the content on the site (https://whn.global/meet-our-team/).

I'm sure there are even better sources out there, but as I was looking to answer an inquiry without taking on excessive personal research time, I felt this was a good summary article. If you have a better source from a similarly credentialed team, I look forward to reading it!

I'm not here to debate the scientific evidence; labelling well-researched peer-reviewed studies as "paranoia" (your words, before editing your reply) because you don't like the outcome is absolutely your choice, and tells me there's little chance any reasoned reply will be meaningful as you've made up your mind.

For others that might be curious:

Your anecdote around acute infection recovery makes the common mistake of confusing acute infection (the period where you "feel sick") with long-term systemic (post-acute) symptoms.

The typical influenza (flu) only has an acute phase; once you're done "feeling sick", the virus has been eradicated from your body. And unfortunately, many talking heads keep repeating "Covid is now just like the flu" which ignores long-term consequences of repeated Covid infection, which does not behave like the flu (it is not an acute-phase only illness).

And this isn't unique to Covid, viruses with post-acute phases are well known and well studied:

- HIV is the acute phase that (years later) leads to AIDS;

- Epstein-Barr virus (EBV, or "mono") is a herpes-family virus that goes dormant after the acute phase and often later triggers ME/CFS

- Herpes virus in the form of chickenpox goes dormant after the acute phase and frequently later leads to shingles;

- and many others; Google is your friend.

Distinguishing between viruses that have acute-only vs. post-acute phases is a key input to my personal risk assessment stance. I value having as long and healthy a life as I can.

And just as I have, you're free to decide what risk tolerance you're comfortable with for your lifestyle and longevity goals. If you require the extra adrenaline kick of feeling morally superior by publicly passing judgement upon others' choices, have at it — genuinely! — and I hope you find all the missing joy you need.

Not in a way meaningful to assessing infectious risk, no.

I consider outdoor air to be unshared, except in cases of large dense crowds (such as say outdoor festivals or sporting events).

I consider risky shared air to be indoor air with one or more other individuals that are not known to be taking infection-prevention precautions.

One can measure CO₂ as a proxy to rebreathed air fraction.

For example, a CO₂ reading of 2300ppm (common in a small or medium room with a few others, or larger rooms with a crowd or conference room, or in a car) means 5% of your air is rebreathed (5% of your intake is output from another person's lungs).

A way to think about this is we take ~20 breaths a minute on average. So in that scenario, it would be equivalent to one breath every minute coming directly from someone else's lungs. If they happen to be contagious with an airborne contagion (such as Covid, or influenza, or RSV), there's a high likelihood that you will catch it if you're spending more than a short time in that environment.

There are nuances, such as maybe the air is being scrubbed (eg by a HEPA filter) which won't affect the CO₂ levels but will drastically lower the infectious risk of that environment.

More reading: https://www.energyvanguard.com/blog/what-a-carbon-dioxide-mo...

Not sure why you'd ask me that vs. use Google, feels like cornering a random driver to defend "Why do you use seatbelts?".

But I'll offer one reply at your word that it's genuine and not passive-aggressive.

1. I am currently dealing with the after-effects of a previous Covid infection that requires expensive, ongoing medical treatment. I'm not anxious to test what additional infections may cause.

2. Wearing an N95 respirator is a cheap and easy preventative measure that is highly effective.

3. I adjust my habits based on measured risk. In my part of the world (Alberta), the current risk forecast for November 8-21 is that approximately 1 in every 81 people are currently infected with Covid. I relax my masking when it's 1 in 10,000 or less (which is not an unreasonable number; it's been there in the past).

4. Recent medical studies suggest that repeated Covid exposure is particularly harmful for children. Long Covid is now the #1 chronic condition in children in the US (displacing asthma as the top chronic childhood condition). As a parent, I see it as my responsibility to give my children the best chance at a long, healthy, medical-intervention-free life.

A few links (or just use Google):

- Covid monitoring in Canada: https://covid19resources.ca/

- Long Covid overtaking asthma as top childhood chronic illness: https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jamapediatrics/fullarticle/...

- Rolling Stone on Covid's affects on children: https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/long-c...

- Remarks by Violet Affleck: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HBTjCqIxorw

- Tom Hanks: https://whn.global/youve-got-a-friend-in-me-tom-hanks-shows-...

- A longer answer than mine: https://whn.global/yes-we-continue-wearing-masks/

As someone who continues to mask in public shared-air settings for my own health, I am entirely unsurprised by that response and get it all the time.

Recently heard from a friend that also continues to mask when sharing air, they had arranged car pooling for one of their children. And just this morning the other parent texted saying "your child wearing a mask makes me uncomfortable so we can no longer car pool".

So … yeah. Entirely unsurprised by that attitude. "Every person for themselves but also not if it's something I personally dislike."

Now up to at least 11 known aquatic competitors [1]. And most teams aren't testing — for example, Australia brought their own PCR machine; nothing has been provided by the Olympic organizers.

[1]: https://swimswam.com/swimmers-pieroni-and-gatt-join-the-covi...

Sidestepping nomenclature bikeshedding, healthcare organizations are seeing an increase in patient load which seems like a reasonably tactical datapoint that there's a meaningful increase over the last couple months.

Google is your friend; this [1] is but one France-specific example of coverage. You can find many similar articles in jurisdictions across Western Europe raising concern specifically in the last month or two.

Edit:

Many jurisdictions stopped collecting and/or sharing robust datasets in 2023 (KFF even calls attention to this). This often means digging through opaque reports to get useful data.

Here's an example [2] from the UK government, in PDF format, but bottom of Page 10 looks pretty "surge-y" to me over the last couple months and not yet at peak.

Edit:

Another example of good data horrible to access. Scotland wastewater monitoring [3] I can't provide a direct link; have to click on "Respiratory pathogens" and the first chart is wastewater monitoring; July 2024 shows the highest "surge" in levels since 2022.

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[1] https://www.connexionfrance.com/news/covid-19-advice-for-tes...

[2] https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/media/66337699cf3b5...

[3] https://scotland.shinyapps.io/phs-respiratory-covid-19/

Covid is a highly contagious virus that spreads and lingers in the air, and we have athletes in close quarters without any virus control procedures [1] (other than the Olympic organizers providing hand sanitizer [2], which is an odd choice for airborne virus prevention).

Given lack of testing and that many countries (including European countries) are seeing Covid surges right now, I think it's highly likely that most competitors are competing with either current or recent Covid infections affecting their peak performance capacity.

Edit: I wouldn't suggest it's the sole cause of performance issues. But for an entire article on the topic of swim performance to completely ignore multiple reports of viral infection from top performers seems a glaring omission.

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1: "The 29-year-old does not have to isolate from other athletes and does not have to test negative before competing again": https://www.espn.com/olympics/story/_/id/40672610/olympics-2...

2: "For now, nothing has been put into place by the organizing committee … but hand sanitizer is available in its clinics and restaurants.": https://www.cbsnews.com/news/2024-paris-olympics-covid-cases...

In addition to physical issues raised (7ft depth, configuration of sides), I wonder if there might be any other reasons that aren't mentioned at all in the article…

Something causing these elite athletes to be a bit off their game? Whatever could it possibly be…

- https://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/olympics/2024/07/31/us...

- https://www.walesonline.co.uk/news/uk-news/team-gb-swimmer-m...

- https://www.theguardian.com/sport/article/2024/jul/30/paris-...

- https://svenska.yle.fi/a/7-10061397

Yup, no idea. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Then you haven't been talking to the right ad sales teams. Google and Facebook have entire product options built around this specific concept. You can run a "ghost ads" test on Google for as little as $20k in ad spend; it's relatively accessible even for smaller players.

Advertisers have many tools to measure "ghost ads" aka "people who haven't seen an ad but would otherwise have qualified for all your target criteria". See https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=2620078 as an example.

What makes you believe this to be true?

You define an audience. You split it. You test and measure the result.

What component of that strategy doesn't work for new visitors? Many eyeball vendors (Google, Facebook, heck traditional TV and other media!) are set up precisely to allow for such cases.

Truthfully, the only reason I had the numbers at hand was because I'd personally fallen for your "Lesson #1" before.

I spent my 20s far below median (which I knew), and my 30s far above median (which I didn't realize, at least not at first). Very different lived experiences :)

And I know many folks around me (friends, family, colleagues) look around (confirmation bias & availability heuristic, amongst others) and believe that $60k-$80k (or more) represents a "typical" lived Canadian experience. They are, to a person, universally surprised to see the actual median income (as was I when first tracking it down).

It certainly is viewpoint-shifting. Cheers!

You might have a skewed sense of what median Canadian income is. And your job might be further above that median than you realize.

Median Canadian individual income is ~$35,000 [0].

In B.C., your average 2019 tax rate would be 13.34% not including non-refundable tax credits (and so the effective rate would likely be a point or two lower). [1]

A median tax rate of 11.5% against a median Canadian individual income seems entirely reasonable.

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0: https://www150.statcan.gc.ca/t1/tbl1/en/tv.action?pid=111002...

1: https://www.ey.com/ca/en/services/tax/tax-calculators-2019-p...

Don't forget about SeatGuru (http://www.seatguru.com), a TripAdvisor company, which specializes in collecting and curating exactly this kind of data. They're not exactly n00bs at this kind of thing…