A Journal of the Plague Year

Amidst the chaos, a ray of sunlight: in Germany and the UK, dogs have been found able to detect coronavirus in saliva or urine 94-95% of the time. That hit rate is so high, one suspects it may really be 100%--the dogs are simply more accurate than the tests they are being compared to.

If this turns out to work on sweat as well, we have a quick, reliable, almost cost-free test. A dog can sniff and give a result in 1.5 seconds. Station trained canines at all ports of entry, and at the entrances to any large public buildings, and we can all go back to work with a fair bit of confidence.

Combined, of course, with general mask-wearing, good sanitation, and Vitamin D supplements.

Teachers in the US are balking at returning to class in September; in Canada too.

This looks like a golden opportunity to bust the teachers’ unions—Scott Adams has declared them the root of all the problems in the USA. The national emergency can provide legal and political cover.

There are about seven times more graduates of teachers’ colleges than we actually need in classrooms. But more importantly, studies show that those who have not gone to teachers’ college teach better than those who have. The teachers’ colleges are only indoctrination factories.

The teachers have no bargaining power the government hasn’t given them.

I’ve downloaded the contact and tracing app sanctioned by the Canadian government. Since everything about it is voluntary, I doubt it will be very effective.

At this point, I think general despair is settling in. Fond hopes this would be just a temporary interruption, a bit of a lark, really, are gone. Fond hopes that we would all pull together, that the experts would have a handle on it, are gone.

In the meantime, the US military has in effect admitted contact with UFOs in the sense of off-world vehicles. And nobody is interested; in this time of uncertainty, nothing seems able to shock any more.

Now, as ever, dogs seem the only people we can trust.