Advantage of Canadian Healthcare System in Pandemic

 Canada's healthcare is administered by the provinces. Healthcare is not free, contrary to popular belief. It is tax payer funded. Most provinces collect health tax with personal income tax. The rate is depended on individual tax bracket and there is a maximum amount one has to pay as health tax.

Provinces play the role insurance administrator and regulator. They also owns the hospitals. Provinces' operation is non-profit. All other aspects of healthcare is for profit. Doctors have their own practices, with or without affiliation to hospitals. Labs and test centers operates on for-profit basis and they all bill the provincial health insurance. Patients usually never see the bill. The advantage of that is when patients come out of hospital, they are usually very generous in donating to hospital foundations. That money is used in improving the hospitals.

Some expense of healthcare are payed by the citizens. Prescription cost, ambulance are out of pocket expenses. Usually employer funded insurance covers those costs along with dental plan. Public plans are also available to low income and senior citizens.

Healthcare is a big portion of provincial budgets. Provincial governments are always eager to save money on healthcare. When pandemic came upon the population, it put a tremendous pressure on healthcare. Provincial leaders started a all out campaign against the spread of virus. The federal government worked in unison with provinces, because pandemic was having a toll on economy. The provinces and cities were asking for help from federal government, both on economy and in healthcare. There was no political conflict among three levels of government on fighting the pandemic. Science based advices was strictly followed. When frequent hand washing and social distancing was advised, all three government promoted.it. When wearing mask was advised, all three government campaigned together. 

Interprovincial co-operation in fighting the disease was also praise worthy. Province of Alberta had excess PPE in the early days of pandemic due to the proactive action of a procurement officer. Alberta shared the excess inventory with other provinces.

Unlike in the US, the pandemic was never politicized in Canada. In the US, Trump downplayed the seriousness of Covid 19. He did not want Americans to panic. To him economy and stock market was more important than public health. He made not wearing mask a symbol of Republican party. Republican governors, senators and congressmen embraced it. There was clear lack of co-operation between republicans and democrats in fighting the pandemic. This sort of political scenario is almost unimaginable in Canada.

In the US healthcare is mostly run by for profit corporations. Health insurance providers are profitable companies which are always looking after their bottom line. A major portion of Americans do not have health insurance. And if someone does not have health insurance, they rely on county hospitals. Government run hospitals has long wait time. And, when pandemic hit. those hospitals just became overrun.

Natural Way to Disinfect N95 Mask

Leave the mask in the sun. The UV rays of the sun and the heat will do the job in a natural way.

A City Underneath a City

Toronto's PATH Network should be made more systematic and easy to navigate. Paths should either be named or color coded. Detailed maps should be available in all subway stations, just like TTC maps. This will make it more user friendly to not so frequent users and tourists.

Upon completion of Eglington Crosstown LRT, the PATH network will most likely be expanded. More publicity of the PATH will help generate more revenue for the businesses in the PATH network.

Ottawa Senators should be renamed Ottawa MPs

Both Stephen Harper and Tom Mulcair, are talking about abolishing the Senate. If they have their way, there will be no Senate in Ottawa. Canadian Senate, a copy of British House of Lords, does not have any function. The Senate is just an ensemble of political cronies of ruling parties. Occasionally, their activities are political liabilities to political parties. On the other hand, US Senators are elected and they play a major role in US politics. So, Canadian Senate and US Senate are just two different species. Naming a Canadian NHL team in copy of Washington Senator is just the work of a bad copy cat. It is about time we show some originality and name our capital's hockey team in honour of our MPs who do all the heavy lifting of Canadian politics.

It's time for a International Lunar Station

The moon is a God gifted permanent satellite to us. So far, the piece of of real estate was not utilized at all. Over all these years of our civilization, we became sophisticated enough to have a second look at moon.

International Space Station is about 350 kms above earth, rotating at a speed of 27.744 km/h. It takes about 92 minutes to orbit the earth and it does so 15.7 times a day. Compare these stats with that of moon. The average distance of moon is 384400 kms from Earth. It orbits the earth in 27.32 days. It has a thin atmosphere of Ar, He, Na, K, He and Rn with pressure ranging from 10 to the power minus 7 to 10 pascal. Landing a rocket ship would need at least ten times the effort needed to reach ISS. But building a base on moon definitely has some advantages over ISS. First of all, it will be on solid ground. Unlike ISS, which is purely experimentation, moon exploration can be financially rewarding if we can start a rear earth mining activity.

Because of the thin atmospher of moon, astronomical observatories on it will also have an advantage over those on earth. Because of its low escape velocity, moon can act as stepping stone for future space probes.

Developing greenhouse agriculture on the surface of moon can have multifaceted benefit to us. It can be a source of  food for astronauts. Due to an abundance of sunlight, it can be a source of oxygen. The carbon dioxide the astronauts breath out can be used by plants to produce food for itself and oxygen as byproduct using sunlight. If you're ambitious and over imaginative , you may think agricultural on moon as a solution of evergrowing shortage of food for the evergrowing population on earth. If you wantt to extend your imagination, how about letting loose a couple of rabbits in our domed garden on moon and see how mammals reproduce when their weight is one sixth of what it is on earth. Let's find out how their offspring evolve in lunar gravity. All these experiments will help future colonization on other planets if need arises.

It is about time that we positively conclude that we are alone in the solar system. If that's the case, why not come up some system of co-operation amongst nations in space exploration and colonization. Let the United Nation be involved. We shouldn't shun the biggest and most successful inter governmental organization from space exploration, which we had been doing for so long. Let's equip it better to deal with both conflict and co-operation in outer space. Let it play the role of Federation of Star Trek. Let it lay the foundation of International Lunar Station. And once we have our astronauts at home on moon, we can always make special request to Elon Musk to drop some holiday turkey for them. Or, maybe ,ask Chinese or Indians to drop off a astronaut or two once in a while.

Retailing Online

The. volume of online commerce is increasing everyday. The question arises, whether it all coming at the expense of brick and mortar stores. Or is it coming mostly from a century old media, the mail order catalog industry? Online industry is competing against a format of retailing which was in existence for thousands of years. But, in terms of economic sensibility, how much should online retailing should expand on?

Big box retailing is labor intensive. Starting from front line salespeople to warehouse employee and management, retailers have to deal with a huge payroll. But is online retailing a whole lot less labor intensive? It is true they don't need front line salespeople, but they need to support a bigger IT department and shipping operation.

From customer perspective, websites gives the opportunity to see who is offering what and at what price. You can save yourself from the trouble of going to the shopping mall and walk in the Isles by ordering online. But remember someone else is doing it for and somehow you are paying for it. There is a environmental impact of that too. Each time delivery person come to home to deliver that item, he or she come in a big truck and sometime make several attempts to deliver it. That's green house gas delivered to the environment alongside your item to your door. Now, if drones deliver the order, it will have a bigger environmental impact. Drones will probably not be emission tested like lawnmowers. Besides, we'll probably be walking around with umbrellas all the time in fear of accidental falls of parcels from the sky or crash landings of drones.

Meanwhile, I urge everyone to take a break from clicking, get off the desk and go to a mall. Get yourself the exercises that you need. Enjoy the movie and the food malls offer. Pick up a thing or two from the stores. Rest assured, you'll be doing the same thing a Egyptian would do on a break from building pyramid four thousand years ago.

Can Solar Panels Save The planet?

Solar panels are playing a major role in powering International Space Station, space probes, communication satellites, space telescopes and rovers roaming on Mars. But here on earth, not so much.

Big cities should be flooded with solar panels. All the highrises must have solar panels on the roof, batteries and inverters in the basement. The electricity generated can be consumed by the building or sold to the local grid. Imagine, if every building generated its own electricity, the amount of relief the local grid will enjoy. Imagine the amount of fossil fuel that will be saved, sparing the atmosphere of tons of green house gas. Big cities are jungles of highrises, consuming huge amount of electricity. Solar panels on a highrise can be compared to leaves on tree. As leaves produce nutrition for the tree using sunlight, solar panels can generate electricity for the building. So, bigger the building, the more solar panels (leaves) it should have.

By the middle of this century, most cars in the streets will be electric car. It is in itself a good news in combating global warming. However, such a large number of electric cars will exert a tremendous pressure on the local grids. Here, solar panels on the roofs of cars can come to the rescue. Auto manufacturers should look into integrating high efficiency solar panels in their autobody desingns. As a matter of fact, any electro-mechanical device roaming the the earth under the sum should have solar panel.

Coming back to present, we should all play our part of letting solar panel generate a part of electricity consumption. Whether we live in a highrise or a house, we should have some solar generated lighting in our home.