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]:
----------
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
----------
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.
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."
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.
> One can measure CO₂ as a proxy to rebreathed air fraction.
On this topic, I got a CO₂ meter fairly recently and was shocked how quickly it spikes with a couple of people in a car with the windows up and on recirculate. Easily over 2000 after a few minutes. I have to remind myself regularly when it's really hot or cold outside to keep the vent setting on fresh air.
I had a Jaguar that had an air quality sensor that would switch to recirc based on particulates and then back to fresh air when the threshold indicated.
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.
Thanks for sharing. I tend to think people wearing masks these days are a little loony, but these are solid reasons for specific cases and environments. I wouldn't shun someone because they're wearing a mask, though. It seems like a significant discomfort so I don't partake (and I get sick extremely rarely and stay home those few times).
I genuinely didn't think to use Google for this. I had no idea about the list of reasons. It wasn't passive aggressive, I was curious. Thanks for sharing this.
It's nice to see that my family is not alone in taking these precautions.
However as with the bright headlamps, there's no real solution coming anytime soon. I mean there are solutions - nasal vaccines and proper NHTSA regulation, but I have no hope in any of those to materialize.
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.
> 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.
A web page about why people are still wearing masks when the risks to most people is extremely low is paranoia and is not "well research peer-reviewed studies". It is people cherry picking things because to justify their own neurosis.
As I said I've had to deal with someone that behaves exactly like you do for my entire life. I hope your children don't resent you for it, because I still have a hard time dealing with my mother as a result.
You are doing exactly the same thing as she does. Whenever anyone points out that she is being paranoid (which is everyone because she is), she will just get angry and demand you do it. Which is pretty much what you did here.
> 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 vast majority of people do not suffer this with COVID.
> 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).
For the vast majority of people they get it, they recover from it and they get on with life.
> Google is your friend.
It is actually better to talk to a medical professional. As they actually know what they are talking about.
> 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.
That is what you did and are continuing to do. You are the one who likened it to seatbelts that have a tangible and demonstrable safety record to a virus that often most people catch and shake off after a week. It allows you to feel morally superior and every reply you've written so far is essentially nothing more than morally grandstanding.
> The vast majority of people do not suffer this with COVID.
How do you know? The vast majority of people don't check. (The plural of anecdote is not data.)
> As I said I've had to deal with someone that behaves exactly like you do for my entire life.
Baseless worry and justified concern are behaviourally quite similar, apart from the actual existence of the phenomenon that is the subject of concern. Identifying a behavioural similarity does not help you distinguish between legitimate risk and hypochondria.
> I skimmed read a bit of this (pretty sure I've read it before a few years ago). This is all Germaphobe logic.
Worse, that page is AI slop. There are good reasons for some people to wear masks. You won't find them on that page, at least not as believable arguments.
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 don't know what to tell you, man. It's classic ChatGPT output, with its weird italics, sometimes-bolded bullet point headers, oddly placed and oddly frequent em dashes, and generally really distinct voice. I didn't recognize it until I started to use ChatGPT myself, and now I see it everywhere.
I also distrust it immediately, because I know how often ChatGPT bullshits me, so I can't help but assume it's bullshitting here too.
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.
This is an FAQ where each entry has a TL;DR. For question 9 in particular, the list consists of items and explanation, where the author chose to use <ul> / <strong> instead of <dl> / <dt> / <dd>. This is one of the situations where the "sometimes-bolded bullet point headers" formatting is appropriate. (The most semantically-correct formatting would be paragraph headings, as seen in LaTeX; but HTML doesn't have these.)
The <em> tag is used to indicate stress emphasis. This is the intended purpose for which the tag was added to HTML, not "weird italics". (I type by transcribing my speech, so I tend to overuse this: one of my editing passes is removing unnecessary <em>s.) This article only contains 9 <em>s in 10 questions: of these, I'd remove the emphasis from two of three "well-fitted masks", and reduce the other to just "well-fitted".
Unspaced em-dashes are often used to offset parentheticals – though I prefer spaced en-dashes myself – and these are both long-standing conventions (see https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E2%80%94). Parenthetical dashes are common in formal writing, and this is formal writing.
As someone who frequently wrote in more-or-less this style (where appropriate) before GPT-1 was even made, who's also fairly decent at spotting ChatGPT output, I don't think this is ChatGPT at all. Apart from superficial formatting considerations, it's not the distinctive ChatGPT voice; and the most distinctive part of ChatGPT output is its inappropriate use of voice and formatting, whereas all of these stylistic choices are easily-justified. Perhaps most importantly, it actually says something.
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…
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.
To be clear, there is no scientific consensus on the term "surge". It is purely editorial, in my view. Iff you believe KFF.org, there trend lines show a sharp fall in the last six months here: https://www.kff.org/coronavirus-covid-19/issue-brief/global-...
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.
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.
That's of course possible to measure in theory. I meant it as a response to "Facebook, Google and others make these tests possible in their platforms" since I haven't seen it exposed as an explicit option on either.
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.
For Facebook, Reach ads have a brand lift objective that will estimate for you. If you spend large amounts they have a measurement team that will run the actual study for you. Source: I'm running one right now for a CPG brand.
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.
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.
That 35000 number includes retirees (though I don't know to what extent retirements are income-funded in Canada) and kids still in high school and college (and possibly post-graduate education).
The median income for 45-54 year olds from that site seems to be $49,100. Median for 35-44 is 48,000. It's not $60-80k as you say below, but not $35k either.
One other interesting note is that there is a pretty big difference by gender. Median income for _males_ 35-44 is $56,300 while females are at $41,400. For 45-54 year olds those numbers are $58,000 and $42,400 respectively.
Those differences are big enough that I wonder whether this is being affected by the relative incidence of part-time vs full-time work. The statistics here seem to be looking at people with any income at all (including investment income), not "salaries"... Depending on the demographics of the people you talk to (full-time jobs, 35-55 years old, maybe toss in "male"), $60k is not an unreasonable thing for them to feel a "typical" experience is.
I agree that people with educations and in "good" jobs tend to over-estimate the median income, but I also think that once you account for lifecycle effects the median income of what people think of as a "typical worker" (which is not a 17-year old nor a 70-year old) is higher than the summary statistics suggest. And of course the thing that can really hurt is if you can't find full-time work at all....
It seems you're right. I know I was close to the average for my region, but that's a high cost-of-living city with a much higher median income than 35k. I may have also been conflating household and individual income.
Lessons: 1) I have no concept of the median experience in my country, 2) a single number can't answer the question "does this country have high taxes".
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).
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…
Seatguru can tell you "the 777-200 config version 1 looks like this", but can't tell you "the flight you're booking will have that aircraft in that configuration". They can tell you that historically it often is that aircraft/configuration, but that's not actually enough to project forward into the future with full reliability.
And that's the hard part. It's even worse for the more common case of domestic flights, because those get swapped way more often than long-haul international.
----------
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
----------
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.
--
1: https://www.canada.ca/en/prairies-economic-development/servi...