PONDERABLE
What are the odds that COVID-19 is the result of a Chinese germ warfare experiment gone wrong?
TRUDEAU GOVERNMENT AND COVID-19
The Trudeau government has finally gotten its act together and is now acting and communicating appropriately.
Prime Minister Justin Trudeau was seriously late off the mark on containment and mitigation and was stumbling and imprecise in his early pronouncements. But by this past Wednesday he and his ministers appeared to have finally bowed to expert advice on both action and transparency. In addition to his containment and mitigation announcements, Trudeau and Finance Minister Bill Morneau outlined some sensible government decisions on the economic front. I suspect, however, that the lion’s share of the credit for these must go to deputy ministers and their staffs because over the last five years both Trudeau and Morneau exhibited precious little economic judgement or expertise.
Prior to this week Health Minister Patty Hajdu, who should have been the leader on this file, was a dismal failure. It’s apparent that she also has accepted effective coaching and direction because she’s stopped being a bull in a china shop. In the early days of the crisis she made Chicken Little look like an optimist. Her off-the-cuff public comments a couple of weeks ago were a main contributor to the panic shopping tsunami that’s still plaguing us. Then last week, while testifying before a parliamentary committee she quoted a University of Toronto study that said the Canadian infection rate could be as high as 70%. That figure was based on a World Health Organization prediction of what could happen if absolutely no containment or mitigation steps were taken, a fact which she apparently forgot to mention.
A CONSISTENT FEDERAL RAY OF LIGHT
Deputy Prime Minister Chrystia Freeland has been consistently effective since being appointed to the role, including during the COVID-19 crisis. She continues to outshine the prime minister in every respect, to the point where one has to wonder if Justin Trudeau is looking over his shoulder. If he isn’t, he should be.
CRIBBAGE STRATEGIES
In a recent Musings I outlined some strategy for playing hearts. It proved to be popular, so to lighten the mood somewhat I’m going to try another card-strategy item. As enjoyable as gin rummy is, I think cribbage is the better game for two people. (It’s also an enjoyable four person game.)
I started playing crib when I was seven years old and have no idea how many games I’ve played since then. But I do know that, over a period of about thirty years, my late good friend Gil Collins and I played almost 6,000 games during summers at our cottages at Lakeside, PEI. (Yes, we kept track. Gil won about 51% of the games but, to his chagrin, because it’s the result of pure luck and no skill whatsoever, I had the only perfect hand.) Following are some crib strategies I picked up over the years, a lot of them from Gil, who for our first hundred games or so routinely cleaned my clock.
When deciding which cards to throw to your opponent’s crib it’s best to throw cards that cannot easily be turned into runs (sequences of three or more cards) so always keep your discards at least three cards apart. A king with anything from a 6 to a 10 is very good. When discarding to your own crib keep the best four cards you have in your hand and throw the other two. A run of three cards should never be broken, and a double run should be kept even if it means sacrificing some fifteen-counts. If you have a poor hand, keep low cards because they help you peg points during the play. The average number of points pegged in a hand is about 4 or 5, so when both you and your opponent are within five points of winning it’s fine to make risky discards in order to keep good pegging cards. So, when it’s your opponent’s crib, decide which cards you’re going to throw, but when it’s your crib decide what you’re going to keep.
The lead is important. The safest lead is a 2, 3, or 4 because your opponent can’t make a fifteen. I don’t like leading an ace because it might earn two points during the play of the hand by bringing the count to thirty-one. The most dangerous lead is a 7 or 8, unless you have two of one and one of the other, for example 7,7,8.
As I write this I’m reminded of the wonderful contribution that the deck of cards has made to our lives.