Pandemic Scrapbook

Welcome to my cathartic pandemic scrapbook, I started it many months into the pandemic – most recent things are on the top 🙂 If you’re looking for chronological order, the bottom is the place to start!

There’s no overarching storyline (despite common trends), this is just what popped up in our day to day lives (via the internet, so almost our entire lives at that moment) as the pandemic continued on, it wasn’t sought out, honestly most of it was presented to me while passing time on the toilet.

As some people in this world get nervous about the collapse of various unsustainable economic systems they’re taking small slices of their wealth and storing it somewhere they hope isn’t effected. Then they’re spending another slice of their wealth to promote others to do the same thing, promising that if they invest their life savings (which they should do! because it’ll all disappear!!) they can skip rungs in the social economic hierarchy and they too won’t have to worry about life paycheck-to-paycheck.
The very fact vast amount of human resources are being spent purely to worry and prepare for these “doomsday” scenarios is yet more evidence that we have the resources to solve a lot of problems people are having today, but instead choose to spend that energy on anxiety over some imaginary wealth scoreboard.

I’m sure someone was very proud of their… clever solution

It was explosives at a gender reveal party (what even is this party? when did that become a thing? get off my lawn) that set most of California on fire in 2020. This just passed my news feed 😦

Been trying to take some downtime from the constant bombardment of horrible things in the world, but I couldn’t let this one slide. Throughout the pandemic the BC Government has pushed advertisements of a particularly dystopian flavor (if the fella hadn’t already passed I’d of thought they contracted out George Orwell to write the script for their “Please go to community centers!” video), and this… I wonder what future me will think of this.

I think I’ve been slowly desensitized to… whatever this is. From the paragraph of a name to the fact this exact product was pushed explicitly to me through whatever machine-learning nonsense they’re using.

Wondering how future me (or friends) will think of this, so leaving it here.

“IDEAL GIFT FOR HER” – oh wow! finding the ideal gift is so hard and they made it so easy!

It’s a Tuesday, welcome to February 2021 – pandemic wise, two new variants are confirmed in our province and spreading rapidly (one dubbed the “UK” variant, the other “African”). Meanwhile, entitled assholes are feeling oppressed, and you know you’re really really oppressed when your show of defiance is… a house party featuring 100 McDonalds cheeseburgers.

“I’m as good at hiding my face from cameras as I am at being a decent human being”

It’s pictures of mostly text

One of the leading narratives around schools this pandemic has been “Children need to be in schools for their mental health”. While I’m sure this is very true in some communities, it seems like when school is brought up as a topic with most of my friends it’s usually associated with some kind of trauma.

It’s gone so far that our provincial health officer and premier have both – on camera – stated that Children do not spread the virus, so schools are safe. This is a lie. On camera. With full confidence. My rage is getting me off-track so I’ll just paste the image.

I won’t give them money to get past their paywall so all I’m left with his this bleak clickbait

My button would have been for a cup of Swiss Chalet Sauce

Oh no. So I looked at a news site (I wanted to read the below article, but not from my phone) and saw this

This only needs to be said if both of these things are true
A: This reckless monstrous profiteering exists
B: People are falling for it and that’s heartbreaking

The words I would apply are significantly less charitable, but I appreciate the sentiment

America has a new president, we watched the video, it was a very fancy inauguration. Despite appearances by celebrities such as Lady Gaga, Jennifer Lopez, and Garth Brooks… this is the person that stole the show for me

Conspiracy nuts are starting to realize they’ve been lied to. That’s also bombarding my social media – unfortunately it’s not all of them, this one (WTF @ the upvote/downvote ratio) seems to be trying to stoke some fires

One of the first provincial ads (supported by the government of BC) I saw after March 2020 (the period of time that the realities of the pandemic started setting in, and people started dying here) was an ad for Tourism BC.
Since then tourism in BC has been pushing hard against pandemic restrictions

The Canadian Atlantic Bubble already coordinated multiple provinces to enforce a provincial ban, but y’know, we need to look into the “legalities” here to stop spreading the virus at the root of a deadly pandemic that has nearly killed 2 million people worldwide in less than a year

“Oh golly gee, compared to all our international peers Canada and even BC in particular is doing very poorly, but y’know what, tourism is just such a constitutional right that those chains of transmission need to just keep on keepin’ on!”

It’s the morning of January 12th and I’m gettin’ ready to shut off the social media tabs as the coffee slowly forces my brain into moving. I think it’s relevant to say that this morning ritual (back in the before-days) used to yield hilarious or heartwarming things that I’d send on over to Angel. These days it’s flooded with… well, this, and instead ends up in this strange scrapbook.

If you started chronologically from the bottom, here’s the follow-up to an earlier post…
…if you’re starting here, spoiler alert

“Help we’re having such a hard time locating these mysterious suspects”

Me: “Didn’t there used to be fun, light-hearted things that could trend on twitter?”
Angel: “Yeah and now it’s dominated around some asshole”
Me: *clicks Explore*
Me: “Ooohhh! Grindr is trending but didn’t make the top trending dealie! At least that should be fun
…scrolling…

You know you acted way out of order when the gay hook-up app bans you

Update: Right now it’s impossible to tell if Grindr was in the original broadcast (but at a different time) with whatever Starplay and V Live are, or if they were photoshopped over Spotify, Twitch, and Youtube. I don’t care enough to check further than googling “did grindr ban trump” and getting a whole bunch of weird related results where the trump administration forced Grinders previous Chinese “owners” to sell to Americans 🤷‍♀️

Vaccines are on their way, we (our household) probably won’t see them and be immunized for another half a year (no essential workers, no healthcare workers, no seniors, etc), so I haven’t been paying too much attention…
…but I have been paying enough attention to see that our province has decided to go against Health Canada and the manufacturers instructions around the second dose. The health officers in my province have decided that a vaccine which takes 2 doses has the second dose delayed so that more people could get the first dose. Kinda glad I’m not the Guinee Pig in this mass experiment.

This is a reporter, and they’ve contacted the manufacturers of the vaccine who strongly recommend *not* doing what our province is doing, there’s no data or testing to show if a delayed second shot will work at all or if it would even invalidate the efficacy of the first shot

Due to yesterdays performative coup there’s a dominant topic in this morning’s social media and news. This is basically the big take-away.

Translation: The behavior is supported by the party leaders, things will get worse before they get better.

Welcome to 2021, Jan 6th

This is the second thing I saw that informed me what was happening, the first was Trade Chat in World of Warcraft

It may be an awkward and confusing coup for everyone involved

The photographer who stuck it out to get crisp shots stole my eye from whatever nonsense they were photographing

Just wanted to point out this same crowd got real angry at pandemic ‘lockdowns’ (Note: in many cases, businesses were asked to close down, there were very few lockdowns in western countries – and absolutely 0 happened in Canada)

If you’re going to join an insurrection at *least* be cheerful about it?

A compilation that appeared on my social media

Meanwhile 😦

A significant slice of the tragedy pie from the “reopen the economy” or conspiracy nutbars that encourage spreading the virus is that chances are they themselves do not directly suffer consequences for their actions. They tend to only serve as a link in the chain of transmission to a vulnerable person or encourage others to do so

This is a rare, rare case of direct consequences

For the record, New Zealanders enjoy full-time jobs in person, and many wonderful crowded events – it’s not “economy vs. the virus”, it’s bad policies vs. good policies

It’s been December and if you’re watchin’ for the dates you may notice I’ve stopped contributing to as much in here, that’s due to a very conscious effort to avoid social media (though I do peek in every now and again)

This is what today’s (28th) peeking revealed, the context added after the image. Now back to closing those tabs.

I found this to be a pretty condensed summary of the bombardment lately – it doesn’t get more real-life-super-exploits (and pay-to-win) than this

I promise I don’t go out of my way to look for American news, this was snipped from Twitter and posted on Facebook from someone, at which point I brought it here

Reminder that this is stuff that just crops up, not seeking it out. Started following this person who seems to embody their persona in a show called Brooklyn 99 that Angel and I really enjoyed. Her response is on point.

They’re a party promoting that the pandemic is a ‘democratic hoax’, embracing racism, and are basically okay with people dying if they’re old or poor – but hey, even an entire group holding up values closely aligned with **fictional** **super villains** need a bone thrown their way?
no

This is either
A: Accurate and a portrayal of the most disgusting type of human
B: Embellished to sell a product which is also a portrayal of the most disgusting type of human

Current global count, note – there have already been many studies in the world (in places that got hit bad, like Italy) where deaths are anywhere from 4x to 8x higher than regular looking at average deaths over the last decade during that time period. Covid only accounts for a fraction of those higher-than-average deaths

December 14th, 2020
Speaking of countries who showed the world how to do it right, New Zealand and Australia can party together while thousands of people are dying of the pandemic virus daily in North America.

2020 has not been a good year for a lot of people. A lot of unnecessary hunger, pain, and even death is rampant in many countries (not Australia or New Zealand) due to an argument of putting “the economy” before peoples lives – when you put “the economy” first these are the kind of people who benefit

Related to below – basically a group of politicians is refusing to move forward in Pandemic Relief aid to citizens unless corporations are immune to any covid related liabilities (continued to operate in an unsafe environment resulting in more spread/deaths)
This is the kind of plot point where you expect some super hero to come in and defeat the bad guys, instead all we get is a couple of “renegade” politicians whose own party is working against them

Totally predictable thing happening, zero accountability for the politicians that refused to acknowledge it as a potential problem (not just refusing to acknowledge, but mocking anyone who brings the topic up)

This directly effects a family member who’s one of those (quoting the letter itself) “lowest paid frontline workers”
Note the date. MERRY CHRISTMAS! We’re keepin’ yer Pandemic Pay!
…the “We” in this case, is our provincial government, it’s *their* frontline workers.

On December 3rd I decided to have some fun in this facebook group, special shout-out to my friend Keven who had no idea how many people were awaiting his anonymous response

December 2nd! We made it to the last month of 2020!
… oh no, Alberta why

I just can’t even today

It’s impossible to avoid being made aware that it’s “Black Friday” today, stuff like this is threaded into every internet moment on our slide towards idiocracy

Christmas is approaching! A cozy Christmas with the core household, looking forward too…
…oh wait, what’s this? complaining about your children in the household?

Things like this have been circulating on Angel’s social media in the mom circles. Nevermind that there are a number of highly accredited studies showing that children are critical in the circulation of the virus – no no, these moms have spent the entire pandemic complaining about their children and demanding schools be open.

Thanksgiving approaches in America

To bring context to the below – note, I’m using Positivity as the metric because as cases skyrocket in BC testing is not increasing – check out that number on the right, we’re (per population) half the testing throughput from the rest of Canada. This is BC CDC’s own data.

The reality of this is that we have absolutely no idea what our real infection numbers are, today we have 277 people in the hospital, 58 in the ICU, just over the weekend 17 deaths were reported in BC. If you extrapolate from that (the low % of people who suffer dire consequences touted by anti-pandemic-measure doorknobs) our actual infection cases are dramatically higher than what manages to successfully get caught by tests and reported, and despite current restrictions it is growing dramatically.

So I give you positivity, because when you don’t increase testing the percentage of people who are testing positive is as close as we’ll get to seeing the actual trend. Oh, and that purple, with the highest positivity? My region, the same region as that nail salon below.

Topic continued, won’t anyone think of the nail salons?!

It’s Nov 24th and I’m having an incredibly grumpy day, and then I see this hypocrisy – Canada’s own politicians promoting conspiracy garbage, but also please oh please stop auditing businesses that may have been taking advantage of “free money” (additionally rage-inducing as the same political party has been spreading baseless propaganda about businesses not being able to “keep employees because of government relief money” when in fact, maybe, just maybe, we’re in a global friggin pandemic so maybe no one wants to risk their family members over a minimum wage job?!)

Note: “Conservatives” and “Tories” are one and the same, the party changed their name some time in the past but some people hold on to the old one

While more than half the population of the world is struggling with a pandemic, China (who it hit first) locked it down and stopped transmission. They got to continue their internment camps of millions of Uighurs, continued suppression and indoctrination in Hong Kong, and oh! They’re planning massive space missions.

Oh this is special. To any conspiracy spreader this is only one small reason “The Great Reset” is a conversation topic. We are in the middle of a pandemic that has today verifiably (and the actual number is much higher, many, many unaccounted for deaths orders of magnitude higher than previous years) killed 1,383,353 people in under a year.

Clearly a global problem, that needs coordinated solutions. Testing is one of those methods to help understand a greater picture, understand what actions to take to help lower the spread.

So today in BC for just $75 you too can contribute to that data that could save lives! 🤦‍♀️ (note: Countries that are successfully enjoying low spread and closer-to-what-we’re-used-to-lives just… test their people)

A friendly sign reminding you that masks are mandatory while on the ferry

Elections Canada… why? I mean, I completely registered a business, did my taxes, and managed everything to do with well, me, as a Canadian Citizen online safely and securely and have for years.

In our last federal election we had messages on WeChat and QQ social media offering to pay people to vote for a specific party (not the party that won) – how is that not being addressed while we… brag about manually counting marks on paper by hand like they did back when we didn’t even have color photographs?!

Date: November 17 – and this is something that’s getting more and more attention

So uhm, groups of people (some of who claim to represent very large groups of people) are having very obvious lies called out, so they… all congregate in a safe digital space to spew their garbage without being harassed for it

I guess with religious extremism showing up in the news less we needed some new form of extremism to fill the void?

I censored some of this because I worked with this person for years, and I would’ve never expected, well, this from them (I’m taking you with me on my journey on this one, so it may be tl;dr, sorry not sorry!)

Anyway, I *had* to google this and story checks out, there’s a group of humans that looked at what’s going on around the world and realized, hey, stuff is really screwed up, we need some kind of strategy to recover

Okay, so I found the Context and the Opportunity statements for this “Great Reset” proposition, so it does exist

Err, wealth inequality (one of the biggest problems at large) rapidly escalated over the last couple decades, y’all wanna claim credit for that? Eh, your bed, you lay in it, but I’m starting to see where the conspiracy nuts uh… fuel is coming from

So I kept digging, funny thing about big broad sales-pitches like “The Great Reset” – if you aren’t clear about what that means you leave it open for people to interpret it however they please and run with it. So can I really blame that dude I worked with for his incoherent rant?

I FOUND IT! THE BIG SINISTER… erm… sensibly sinister? agenda? Well, they do have *an* agenda, so I guess that part’s true

Ah, the scrapbook did not exist back when the president of america suggested people find a way to inject cleaning fluids (like bleach) to combat the corona virus – the follow-up was a huge increase of ER patients who had ingested cleaning fluids
Clearly, as a people, we do not learn – at least it’s not bleach (mouthwash to combat a virus that attacks internal organs? C’mon)

The race is on for a vaccine, one claims 90% effectiveness and just today a new one announced 95% effectiveness – so hopefully these brutal anecdotal stories have a light at the end of the tunnel

Aaaand back to the insanity of the world. Coordinated spamming of conspiracy garbage seems to have its eye on Canada now – and no, that video did not mention any kind of “great reset”, it had the word “reset” in it within the context of resetting our efforts to hit 2030 targets for Canada

November 15th, 2020

In front of the white house, November 13th

Different perspective

Nov 11th, won’t anyone think of the tourism industry?! (during a… global… pandemic…)

Further Context – just months after the Pandemic started BC launched a Tourism campaign to get people moving around…

Province refuses to acknowledge aerosolized transmission or that children can spread to other children, put out orders to stop in-home socializing… but also no plan to enforce order (?) while ignoring exponential spread since schools opened

Went to reply to a comment:

Amazon Fulfillment Jobs,

“I’m still wrapping my mind over a proper letter-format comment that doesn’t capitalize mid-sentence i’s.

– Sincerely, an observer”

Except… all comments were deleted before I could! So what I was replying to no longer existed

Finally Nov 10th!
The Secretary of State for America in a news conference just… welp:

And also, while I’m sure that data isn’t scientifically accurate, I’ll forgive it for the rest of the message (bizarre overlap between believing crazy conspiracy theories with support for the old regime)

Follow-up to that 2020 joke about the landscaping company, they pivoted for profit right quick

This is a Canadian news station, I saw it cause Walter (kids step-dad) posted…

Also, optics, not good

…still… Nov 9’th…
(some commenters are pointing out that the optics on firing the head of the country’s defense after refusing to acknowledge the results of an election are… not good, not good optics)