Matt Smillie

Cross of kewpie doll & rugby player. Less ornery Mark Ruffalo. Straight Capote.

Founder, Little’s Law Appreciation Society.

Not my fault if Slack is down.

[@[email protected] @jpaulreed]

Certain roles tend to just fall into playing canaries in your organizational coal mine (often unexpectedly... sometimes unwilingly).

Folks like dev rel, build/release engineers, incident analysts (if you even have them), QA.

Who else am I missing?

[T. Ryan Gregory 🇨🇦 @TRyanGregory]

Everyone has access to information about COVID evolution and ongoing impacts of the pandemic. It is not necessary to wait for word from public health officials or whomever the media interviews (more often than not, minimizers). Here is a list of resources you can check out. 🧵

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

If someone told you, on July 8 2020, months before clinical trial results, that the next two months would be the *safest time* for two more years, would you have believed them?

[Andrew Longhurst @alonghurst.bsky.social @a_longhurst]

Hello @GovCanHealth, where is vax for our littlest ones? We’re heading into the worst wave — BA5. No pop immunity, no fourth doses for adults, no isolation requirements (5days isn’t evidence based), no indoor air quality standards, no strategic testing, no public communication.

[Brishti Basu @brish_ti]

#NEW: People aged 12+ who feel they have "unique circumstances" will be able to call and request a 4th COVID-19 dose provided their last dose was 6+ months ago.

Dr. Ballem says province's campaign will strongly encourage people to wait til the fall.

@CapitalDailyVic #COVID19BC

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

One would normally look askance at a blog post about someone else’s outage while it’s ongoing, but this time I will make an exception, since getting anything useful out of @Rogers is… unlikely.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

@Rogers The @rogers chatbot, anthropomorphized as “Anna,” is where you’re directed to go to check for information about outages.

It’s been down all night with the most dispiriting message I have seen in ages.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

For all my incident response friends, a case study.

- outage is nationwide (as far as I can discern)
- total outage, no phone service at all
- this was the first public comms
- posted 8 hours into the incident (measuring from when I first noticed no service on my phone)

[RogersHelps @RogersHelps]

We know how important it is for our customers to stay connected. We are aware of issues currently affecting our networks and our teams are fully engaged to resolve the issue as soon as possible. We will continue to keep you updated as we have more information to share.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

Update #3 from @Rogers, they will contact you to reschedule service appointments 🤣

Only on Twitter, too, not the forum thread 😵 linked from on their own site.

https://t.co/IQFfTV1WnM

[RogersHelps @RogersHelps]

Dear Valued Customers - due to the network outage, if you have a previously scheduled service appointment booked with Rogers, we will contact you to reschedule as soon as possible. Thank you for your understanding as we resolve this issue.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

@ReneeStephen @axfelix I love how “record low unemployment” gets called a “labour shortage” instead of, you know, improving wages and working conditions to compete for labour.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

What sociopath approves a “get vaccinated” ad in a province where despite the advice of all federal authorities, WHO recommendations, the looming wave of the most contagious variant yet…

You can’t actually *get vaccinated*?

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

It’s been 5 months and a week since my last booster, and after weeks of warning, BA.4/5 is ramping up locally, and can I get a booster?

Fuck no.

And it’s not just a six-month eligibility schedule now, it’s wait until “the fall,” so between 8-11 months since my third shot.

[BC Government News @BCGovNews]

Boosters are the most effective way to restore your immunity and help prevent serious illness.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

@RogersHelps @dat_luna_doe I have tremendous sympathy for the situation, but it’s four hours since this, zero cellular service locally, indications of a country-wide outage, and no bulletin yet.

The lack of comms is really rough on those of us who need to activate contingency plans.

[Matt Smillie @notmatt]

These R values are in highly-vaccinated populations like Australia.

And R has a *very* intuitive meaning: a person with COVID BA.4 will transmit it to 18.6 people, averaged.

[Jess @MeetJess]

So just for context

Wuhan strain 👉🏼 R0 of 3.3
Delta strain 👉🏼R0 of 5.1
Omicron BA.1 👉🏼R0 of 9.5
BA.2 👉🏼 R0 of approx 13.3
BA.4/5 👉🏼R0 of 18.6

We still don’t know for sure what it is for BA.2.75.
The game has changed, make wise decisions and #WearAMask