Sunday, November 13, 2022

"Good morning" is the email salutation you're looking for

Dear Miss Manners: Or should I say “Hi, Miss Manners!”?

I have noticed that all email, and lots of snail letters, even business ones, start with “Hi” instead of “Dear.” I don’t like it, especially from strangers or when it concerns business. But if I continue to write “Dear,” will people think I am sending them love letters?

Or spam. Miss Manners has noticed that spammers have adopted versions of “Dear one” as a salutation, sometimes ratcheting it up to “Beloved.”

They, too, seem to be interpreting it as ingratiating affection, rather than a neutral convention.

Miss Manners is not quite ready to let go of the conventional “Dear” salutation, and agrees with you that “Hi!” seems cheeky. But she is open to ideas if anyone can think of something simple and dignified.

 

The answer Miss Manners and her correspondent are looking for is "Good morning" (or "Good afternoon" or "Good evening"). 

It is simultaneously formal enough (you could totally say "Good morning" to the Queen) and informal enough (you could totally say it in any casual verbal conversation). 

It doesn't have any connotations of affection, or of any emotion stronger than "polite greeting".

For some audiences, acknowledging the time of day can do the same general type of interpersonal work as "How was your weekend?"-type small talk, so it might add a soupçon of warmth to the interaction.

And, at the same time, it comes across as so utterly neutral that your correspondent is almost certainly not going to give it any thought, instead moving right on to the business of the email, which is what you want them to be doing in the first place!

Saturday, November 12, 2022

Why I'm more worried about COVID now than I was in 2020

Sometimes I hear people say they're less worried about COVID than they were in previous years. That surprises me, because I'm more worried.

Here's why:

1. I now know more about Long COVID, in particular its potential cognitive effects. In 2020 and 2021, my biggest COVID-related fear was spreading it asymptomatically and inadvertently infecting someone more vulnerable than I am. Now my biggest fear is expediting my dementia.

2. I now know that reinfection is possible. And each reinfection increases the risk of Long COVID. In 2020 and 2021, I figured if I caught it, I'd be in for a couple of weeks of misery and then either die or get on with life. Now I know that it's a perpetual risk.
 
3. With the removal of the required isolation period, the likelihood of any random person being contagious has increased. Unlike 2020 and 2021, people are now far more likely to be incentivized to work while contagious, thereby increasing the risk of contracting COVID in any random interaction or contact.
 
4. With the removal of mask mandates, these contagious people who are out and about are far more likely to be unmasked.
 
5. I now know that COVID is aerosols, not droplets, which means that the virus exhaled by these unmasked contagious people who are out and about can linger in the air for long after they have left the room. I now know that I have no way to tell whether a space is safe. 
 
6. Hospitals are under more pressure now. We didn't have ERs and ICUs closing in 2020 or 2021! We didn't have 41-hour ER wait times in 2020 or 2021! This puts everyone at risk in ways that go far beyond contracting COVID - what if you get hit by a car? What if your appendix bursts?
 
7. There's no more feeling that those in power want us to be safe, or even want society to continue functioning. There's no more "All in this together", there's no more "We'll get through this". Which is even more disheartening when we know what to do, we just have to do it! 
 
8. Given the uncontrolled spread and potential for reinfection and increased risk of Long COVID and its potential cognitive effects - and given the dearth of treatments and supports for people with Long COVID - I fear a world where people with brain fog are driving trucks and performing surgery and important things like that. 
 
9. 90% of the people I love in the world are high risk. 90% of the people I love in the world have already had COVID at least once. There is significant overlap between the two groups. Not everyone got through it okay. I fear being the last one standing. Maybe with dementia myself, and no one left who cares about me. 
 
10. In 2020, we hardly knew anything, but we took a bunch of measures. It felt like things could only improve as we learned more. Now we know way more, and we aren't doing any of it. A world where we haven't figured out how to solve the problem is nowhere near as scary as a world where we have figured out how to solve the problem, but refuse to do so.

Monday, October 31, 2022

Books read in October 2022

New:
 
1.  Working with Difficult People: Handling the Ten Types of Problem People Without Losing your Mind by Amy Cooper Hakim and Muriel Solomon
2. Such a Fun Age by Kiley Reid 

Reread:
 
1. Delusion in Death

Thursday, October 27, 2022

In which I do unspeakable things to sushi

As I've blogged about before, spicy food doesn't work for me. It's physically painful in a way that drowns out the underlying flavours, so I feel nothing but discomfort and experience none of the pleasure of the food.

An example of a food that is painfully spicy for me this way is wasabi.

But whenever I mention that wasabi is too spicy for me, pedants come swooping out of the woodwork saying "Wasabi isn't a spice, it's a mustard!!" (Often as though they're trying to make the argument "Wasabi is a mustard and you like mustard, therefore you actually like wasabi!")

After hearing this pedantry one too many times, I had an idea: if wasabi is so important to the sushi experience and wasabi actually is a mustard, maybe my sushi experience would be enhanced with one of the many other mustards I actually enjoy? 
 
So the next time I had sushi, I tried it with various mustards I have on hand. Regular yellow French's mustard, honey mustard, dijon mustard, that mustard in the jar from the Polish deli...

And in each case, it tasted like the mustard. With gentle undertones of the sushi.

Which was delicious, because mustard is delicious! But the flavours didn't enhance each other or harmonize in any particular way that was greater than the sum of its parts.

So I see no need to put mustard (or wasabi) on my sushi, but I wouldn't object if, somehow, my sushi arrived with mustard (but not wasabi) on it.

And if you're thinking "But sushi isn't sushi without wasabi," you can have my share of the wasabi.

Friday, October 14, 2022

Things that are getting worse

A strong narrative early in the pandemic was also if we do the right things, we'll be okay. Mask up, stay home, be kind, we'll get through this.
 
I've been noticing lately that this element of reassuring people it will be okay is gone from the narrative. They're removing protections, but there's no "It's okay now" to it.
 
I fully realize there was a propaganda element to the messaging that everything will be fine, but now it isn't even an element of propaganda. There seems to be no more interest by those in power in having people think we'll be okay. Early in the pandemic, much of my translation work was morale-related. I haven't seen any attempt to boost or maintain morale in a very long time.

***

A similarly strong narrative when I was growing up was the idea that if you do what you're supposed to, things will turn out well. Go to school, get good grades, get a good job, you'll be able to support yourself and build a better life for your family. 
 
I'm not seeing this narrative around lately. I've even seen some voices acting like it's unreasonable to expect to be able to raise a family or even support oneself on a given job. Those in power complain that no one wants to work, while disavowing the employer's end of the bargain.

Again, I know there's an element of propaganda to the messaging that if you work hard you'll be successful. I know from Thomas Piketty that the economic success this messaging promises is specific to a brief period in the mid-20th century. But, again, it's telling that they aren't even attempting this messaging any more, aren't even hinting that there might be something better or different. It's just "Work or you're Bad and Wrong."

***

Another mid-20th-century narrative, often used in WWII, was the notion of sacrificing for the greater good. I keep thinking about this, thinking about how they used a sort of WWII narrative early in the pandemic, and how that contrasts with the current state of removing protections and asking people (especially school children!) to sacrifice for . . . nothing. 
 
Nothing is gained by allowing COVID to rip through society. It doesn't make anything better for anyone. Some people say that they're doing this for the economy, but it doesn't help the economy to have millions ill or disabled (or dead). They're actively removing protective measures that actually help the greater good, and instead making people sacrifice for nothing.

***

As a second-generation Canadian, the very premise of the origin story I was raised with was a better life for one's children. My grandparents' jobs were worse, my parents jobs were better. My grandparents' houses were smaller and older, my parents' house was bigger and newer.

But that dream stopped with my parents' generation. I've never been able to afford a house like my parents', even out in the small town where we lived. I was, for a brief period of time, able to afford a house like my grandparents', but in today's market I no longer can.

In fact, in today's market, I could no longer afford my actual condo that I actually live in if I didn't already own it. My salary is 25% higher than it was when I bought my condo preconstruction 10 years ago, but the prices of condos in my building have nearly doubled in the same period of time.

I was looking at a Twitter thread about this - people who can no longer afford to live in places where they previously lived, even though they now make more money. And there were some comments - which, as far as I can tell, were from regular people, not, like, real estate speculators - to the effect of "Welcome to real life, suck it up and get roommates."

So not only is a better life for one's children implausible, but a not-constantly-getting-worse life for oneself is so implausible that there are regular people who think it's unreasonable to be able to afford the same home you lived in when you were making less money.

***

Years ago, after I missed an unprecedented and never-since-repeated Eddie Izzard work in progress show here in Toronto, I set up a Google Alert for Eddie Izzard. I deliberately have it set to "all results" rather than "best results", which means the signal to noise ratio is not so good - it includes casual passing mentions of Eddie, not just items about her. (This blog post will probably show up in it.) But it only takes a second to scroll through in my feed reader, and I now don't have to worry about missing anything.

Recently, there has been a massive surge in transphobia in this Google Alert feed. When I started out, it often went months without any transphobia whatsoever. Now I'm seeing transphobia almost every day. Same transgender public figure, same wide-scope Google Alert, but tons more transphobia than a decade ago.

In 2010, advice columnist Dan Savage started the It Gets Better Project, with the goal of preventing suicide in queer youth by talking to them about how life will improve in adulthood. I agree with his thesis and it aligns with my experience (I can walk down the street and people ignore me!), but it also seems like it isn't happening any more, at least not on a societal/longitudinal level. Discourse is reaching me where queerness is being equated with pedophilia, which is not something I've heard since the 20th century.

This kind of thing should be an appalling horror story of the olden days that Kids Today cannot fathom, not an actual thing that's actually happening in reality!
 
***

There's a conventional wisdom that people's mental health is worsening. Some people are quick to blame remote work or online school, as though proximity to random people without regard for compatibility is some kind of mental health panacea.

But the more I think about it, the more I wonder if the root of worsening mental health is that so many things are getting worse that the idea of things getting better has become so implausible that it isn't even part of propaganda.

Friday, September 30, 2022

Books read in September 2022

New:
 
1. Dancing Through the Snow by Jean Little
2. City of Dragons: The Awakening Storm by Jaimal Yogis & Vivian Truong
3. In the Silhouette of Your Silences by David Groulx

Reread:

1. Celebrity in Death

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Books read in August 2022

New:
 
1. How To: Absurd Scientific Solutions for Common Real-World Problems by Randall Munroe
2. The Madness of Crowds by Louise Penny
3. Peter Lee's Notes from the Field by Angela Ahn

Reread:

1. New York to Dallas
2. Chaos in Death

Monday, August 15, 2022

Defining the intersection of walkable and accessible

A Venn diagram of two circles. One is labled " walkable", the other is labled" accessible", the overlapping area is labeled with question marks
I keep running up against the problem of not being able to find a good word for the overlap between "walkable" and "accessible". So I'm writing it down in a whole lot of words here, so I can point to it next time I'm trying to articulate the concept.
 

Why won't the word "walkable" do?
 
Some people interpret "walkable" as "accessible only to people who can walk, and therefore inaccessible to people in wheelchairs etc." That is never what I mean, so I clearly need a better word.

Why won't the word "accessible" do?

Some people interpret "accessible" in a way that doesn't necessarily include walkable. For example, they might say the grocery store is accessible if you can drive up, park in the disabled parking spaces right in front of the door, and roll your wheelchair in the door unimpeded - even if the only way to get to the store is by driving on a highway that has no sidewalks.

What concepts does this word need to encompass?
 
- Proximity: Things need to be close enough that walking/wheeling/otherwise going without a vehicle is easy. Your destination is close enough to your point of origin that you don't need a vehicle. (Q: Close enough for whom? A: The end users, whoever they might be.)

- Safety: You aren't going to get hit by a car. You aren't going to slip and fall on the ice. You aren't going to get harassed by creeps on the street.

- Lack of obstacles: There are no cobblestones that would make it difficult to use a wheelchair. You don't have to go out of your way to find a crosswalk. There is a clear, suitable path to wherever you are going.

- The "no-brainer" factor: I walk to the grocery store because it's across the street - using any sort of vehicle (even a bike) would be ridiculous. If you're going to multiple stores in an indoor mall, you aren't going to go outside and get into your car and drive your car to the next store. If you're going to multiple destinations on the same city block, you aren't going to drive between them - even if you drove to the city block, you're going to park your car once and head to all your destinations on foot or in a wheelchair or otherwise without a vehicle.

Anyone know a word that does all this and is clear and common enough for me to use in translations?

Monday, August 08, 2022

How the universe is mocking me

From time to time, charities I've donated to send me a fundraising letter with a small free gift, in an attempt to entice me to donate more. Usually the gift is something I can use, like a pen or address labels. But a while back, a charity sent me this reusable shopping bag.

Somehow, every single aspect of this shopping bag was irritating! It was too big to fit in my purse, while somehow also being too small to carry a package of toilet paper. The handles were simultaneously too short to comfortably put over my shoulder and too long to comfortably hold in my hand. The material had a particularly icky plasticky feeling while also not being properly waterproof. And the design contained butterflies that were unpleasantly realistic and detailed. In short, it had no redeeming qualities and I was rather resentful of the charity for sending me such an unhelpful object.

So I put it at the back of my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and proceeded with life.


Fast-forward to yesterday.

I had a few things that I wanted to take over to the charity box, and they didn't fit in the kind of plastic bag I'd normally put them in. So I dug into my pile of unwanted reusable bags, and came up with this one.

Perfect! I'd put my charity stuff in it, carry it over to the charity box, and dump the whole thing in the box, bag and all!

So I loaded up the bag, irritated once again at how it managed to have such an inconvenient shape and size and such an unpleasant texture. I carried it over to the charity box, irritated once again at how the strap is exactly the wrong length. And I dumped the whole thing into the box, bag and all, and returned home, rejoicing in the fact that I'll never have to deal with these irritants again!

 
On my way back up to my apartment, I detoured into the mailroom to check my mail. It contained a large envelope from a charity I'd recently donated to, likely containing another fundraising letter. But I opened the letter on the off-chance they'd sent me some address labels, and found...

...another reusable shopping bag, identical to the one I'd just gotten rid of!
 

(🎵 The bag came back, the very next day...🎵)

Sunday, July 31, 2022

Books read in July 2022

New:
 
1. When Stars Are Scattered by Omar Mohamed and Victoria Jamieson
2. The Bomber Mafia by Malcolm Gladwell
 
Reread:
 
1. Indulgence in Death
2. Possession in Death 
3. Treachery in Death

Friday, July 15, 2022

How to get people to have more children

 
That will never work.
 
Here are some things that will work:
  1. Fix the formula shortage, and prevent it from ever happening again. Less than 100% of parents can produce enough breast milk to meet 100% of their baby's needs, and you can't be certain that you'll produce enough milk until you're actually doing it. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child won't end up spending their whole short life starving to death.

  2.  Stop COVID, and/or cure Long COVID. We're in a pandemic with a novel airborne virus that causes a post-viral syndrome that turns out to be worse than we thought with every study that's released, and public health protections are constantly being removed despite surging case numbers. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident the child will live a healthy and comfortable life, rather than spending their whole life stymied by fatigue and vascular damage.

  3. Stop climate change. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the world will remain habitable for the child's entire life.

  4. Fix the ratio of salaries to housing costs to education costs. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that they will always be able to provide the child with a suitable home and suitable education - and that the child will be able to afford those themselves when they grow up.

  5. Make family life affordable on a single paycheque. If you aren't able to provide a good life for a child on your paycheque alone, then you have to wait to have a child until you find someone who a) would make a compatible lifelong partner for you, b) who is compatible not just as a partner but as a housemate and c) makes enough money to make up for your paycheque shortfall. Each of these alone is a major challenge - it's a wonder anyone in the world can find anyone who meets all three requirements! However, if it's feasible to provide a good life for your child singlehandedly, you can have a child without having to worry about your partner's earning potential, or with a partner who wouldn't make a compatible housemate, or even with someone who wouldn't make a compatible lifelong partner. That would open up a lot more options for people who wouldn't otherwise be willing to bring a child into the world!

  6. End hatred. Things like racism, homophobia, transphobia, etc. are on the rise, with the haters becoming bolder and more influential. People would be much more willing to bring a child into the world if they could be confident that the child isn't going to be subjected to hate crimes!

  7. Make sure the terms and conditions of existence never get worse. After Roe vs. Wade was overturned in the US, a lot of people were talking about how shocking it is to suddenly live in a world where your children have fewer rights than you did at their age. Many people who chose early in the pandemic to carry a pregnancy to term likely did so on the assumption that those in power would continue doing what was necessary to protect us from COVID. When my parents made the decision to have kids, they had no idea that their children would not be growing up in the same economy they'd lived in their entire life.

    Like many people, I grew up constantly being told that everyone wants a better life for their children, so the idea that the terms and conditions of existence can change for the worse like this is terrifying. If those in power could prioritize preventing the terms and conditions of existence from changing for the worse, a lot more people would be willing to bring children into the world.

Thursday, June 30, 2022

Books read in June 2022

New: 

1. The Girl Who Speaks Bear by Sophie Anderson
2. The Menopause Manifesto: Own Your Health with Facts and Feminism by Jen Gunter

Reread:
 
1. Fantasy in death

Tuesday, June 28, 2022

Things They Should Invent: kitchen catchers shaped like grocery bags

As I've mentioned before, I routinely use plastic grocery bags as garbage bags. However, as I've been streamlining my shopping during the pandemic, I found myself running perilously low on plastic bags, so I bought some kitchen catchers.

Turns out they're inferior in every way!

They don't fit as nicely in my kitchen garbage can, and it's harder to get the top of the bag to stay hooked over the top of the bin. The absence of handles makes it harder to tie off (even with those thingies at the top that are supposed to be for tying it off) and makes it harder to carry to the garbage chute on days when I have multiple things to carry (which is most days, because my building has a tri-sorter chute). The perforation between the bags on the rolls is imperfect, so sometimes they rip open. Also, there are sometimes manufacturing flaws so a specific bag on the roll won't open up properly, or is cut crookedly and therefore unworkable.

In short, there is nothing that kitchen catchers do that grocery bags don't do better!

Grocery bags are already being manufactured and mass produced and put in boxes and sold to grocery stores. Why not put some of those bags on the shelf for consumers to purchase at retail price as well?

Sunday, June 26, 2022

Not that there's anything wrong with that

The other day I saw someone tweet that cis Gen Xers need to talk more about how homophobic society in general was in the 80s and 90s. So my Pride post this year is a story from my small town adolescence in the 90s.
 
This story does not contain any violence, hate crimes, or actual homophobic acts, but it does contain extensive descriptions of my own thoughts and feelings from back when I knew nothing other than that culture and environment, and these thoughts and feelings do not age well.
 
***
 
In the Seinfeld episode "The Outing", Jerry and George are mistaken for a gay couple, and spend the episode flailing about vociferously denying being gay, each time qualifying their denial with "Not that there's anything wrong with that!"
 
When I saw this episode at the age of 15, I was super confused: why are they saying "Not that there's anything wrong with that"?? Surely if you suggest that there's nothing wrong with being gay, people will think you're gay, and then Bad Things will happen! Why wouldn't they just say nothing??

That was literally the very first time in my whole entire life that I had ever been exposed to the idea that a person might not want to come across as homophobic. I'm not even getting as far as the fact that there's nothing wrong with being gay - I had never, not even once, been exposed to the fact that there are people in the world who might perceive you negatively if you're homophobic.
 
Absolutely 100% of life experience to date had suggested that the strategic thing to do in any situation would be to come across as homophobic. After all, my life experience suggested, if you don't come across as homophobic, then people would think you're gay! And then Bad Things would happen!
 
(I wasn't clear what these Bad Things were, but the way my classmates talked about the idea of Gay left no room for doubt that it was Very, Very Bad.)

I hadn't even thought as far as deciding whether or not to be homophobic myself. All I knew was that 100% of the empirical evidence to date suggested that it was unsafe to not be homophobic. So I proceeded accordingly.

When the Seinfeld episode ended without anything bad happening to Jerry and George, I was completely baffled. This was completely outside of my experience or frame of reference. The story seemed completely unresolved. I literally could not understand it.

And that's what 90s small town homophobia was like - it left a sheltered 15-year-old unable to comprehend a situation where people can just . . . not be homophobic, and that's okay.

***
 
What's interesting is how 15-year-old me reacted to this after giving the matter a little thought.
 
Jerry and George acted as though there wasn't anything wrong with being gay, and nothing bad happened to them! Furthermore, no discourse about this had reached me - no one was talking about how it was bad or horrible or shocking that nothing bad happened to them for acting as though there wasn't anything wrong with being gay.

This meant that maybe, for some people, in some parts of society . . . it's okay to act as though there isn't anything wrong with being gay? The characters on Seinfeld were clearly cooler than me, so maybe the parts of society where it's okay to act as though there isn't anything wrong with being gay are cooler than me?

Now, if, like 15-year-old me, you're an awkward, dorky, bullied teenager living in a small town, it can be strategic to give the impression that you have hidden depths, aspects of yourself that are way cooler and edgier than even have an opportunity to become apparent in such a limited and uncool environment than school.

This (brand new! unprecedented!) notion that there's nothing wrong with being gay provided this very kind of opportunity. Next time the idea of gay came up, I could proceed as though there's nothing wrong with it, as though it's unremarkable and not worth mentioning! Maybe I could even pretend to be confused about why people think it's a problem! Surely that would be a super edgy thing to do that vastly exceeds the cool potential of our small town!

So I tucked the idea away in my metaphorical toolbox, and proceeded with life.


The opportunity to use it arose a couple of years later.

I was sitting in the library doing my calculus homework and listening to my discman when a classmate sat down across the table from me.

I didn't know this guy very well. The periphery of his social circle overlapped with the periphery of my social circle, but we had very little in common. He had a beard, drove a pickup truck, seemed like he'd know where to buy drugs - way cooler and edgier than me, and the very demographic who is likely to bully me! But, despite these demographic indicators, he had never been unkind to me, and sometimes had been a touch more kind than strictly necessary.

He sat down across from me, pulled out his own homework, and asked me what I was listening to.

"Ani DiFranco," I replied.

"Did you know she's very popular with the gay community?" he asked.

I didn't actually know that. In fact, I hadn't the slightest clue! (My first Ani DiFranco album was Dilate, and I hadn't yet discovered the online fandom.)

I briefly panicked: Oh shit, now he's going to think I'm gay! And if I deny it, he's going to think I'm hiding being gay!!

Then I remembered: when you want to be cool and edgy, act like there's nothing wrong with it.

So I looked him dead-ass in the eye and said, "Yes, she is."

Then, with a level of savvy I didn't even know I possessed, I offered him an earbud. "Would you like to listen?"

He accepted the earbud, and we sat there doing our math homework and listening to Ani DiFranco. And no Bad Things happened.

And, in that small town in the 90s, that was what passed for progress.

Monday, June 20, 2022

The Boy Who Cried "No Wolf!"

I was talking to my doctor about the risk assessment of getting dental care (given that I'd need to remove my mask to do so), and he said that the hygiene and air quality standards for dental offices are actually high enough that it would be a safe environment to be unmasked in.

My immediate, visceral reaction was a shockingly strong "That can't possibly be true!!!"

I had in fact looked up the standards for dental offices and they did seem to have plenty of air changes, I looked up the specs of the hepafilter system the clinic I was considering going to had installed and didn't even know that level of air changes was possible, my doctor is better positioned than I am to determine what ventilation measures are sufficient . . . so why do I feel so strongly that it cannot possibly be safe?

After thinking this over a bit, I realized it's because there have been so many instances where they removed protections when it wasn't safe to do so (including, most recently, when they removed mask mandates and 90% of the people I love in the world promptly contracted COVID) that we have a critical mass of cumulative empirical evidence that "meets requirements" ≠ "safe".

It's like the opposite of Aesop's fable of the Boy Who Cried Wolf. 
 
In the fable, a boy repeatedly comes running into his village shouting that there's a wolf when there's really no wolf. Then, eventually, a wolf does come, and no one believes him.

What's happening here in Ontario is they're repeatedly telling us it's safe when it's clearly not. And if, one day, it ever is safe, I will have a very difficult time believing it.
 
 
The thing is, if everyone started doing absolutely everything absolutely perfectly in terms of COVID response, all indoor spaces would be like a dental office, with ventilation that makes it impossible for COVID to spread. And, unless something changes drastically, I don't see how I will ever be able to believe this and feel safe.

Now, you're thinking, if all environments become safe and make it impossible for COVID to spread, COVID numbers will drop! We'll see it in the data!

Except governments are publishing less and less data, even though the data is still necessary! We're left here squinting at the low-precision Y axis of the wastewater signal charts and trying to figure out how flaws in government-issued data might be affecting the results on various automated amateur data-viz websites. 
 
They never even restored PCR testing criteria to where they were pre-Omicron, so official R-value data is a big asterisk with "Currently, R(t) based on cases cannot be estimated accurately"
 
I think what they're trying to do is induce a feeling of "no news is good news!" in the public, but what's actually happening is they're creating a situation where promising numbers are increasingly implausible. Are case counts actually low, or is it just because of restrictions on PCR testing? Are active case numbers actually going down, or was there just not a data drop today?

***

I do realize this makes me sound like a conspiracy theorist, and that brings up something else:

It's super weird that the existing conspiracy theorists aren't thinking this way!

Long before COVID, there were plenty of conspiracy theorists who thought there was a vast government conspiracy to kill or harm people.

And, somehow, they seem to look at the current situation where the government is changing policies in a way that increases the number of people killed or infected, and . . . don't think this is part of the conspiracy?
 
 
I do see why someone might not believe there's a government conspiracy to harm us. Maybe, from where you're sitting, you don't see any evidence, and it is quite the claim to make without evidence! Maybe you find the idea just too frightening to contemplate! Maybe you look at the people who do think there's a government conspiracy to harm us and think "Those are unpleasant individuals and I don't want to be like them!"

But if you've come into the situation already believing that there's a conspiracy, how do you arrive at "But this current situation where people are being killed and harmed because of government inaction is, of course, unrelated to the government conspiracy to kill or harm people!"