Tea & Two Slices is a long-running local news round-up by NEEDS frontman and veteran dishwasher Sean Orr, who lives and works in Gastown, deeply aware of his privilege.

Well,it’s a brand new year and everything is completely back to normal again, right? Or is the skull-numbing drudgery that is the complete inability of late neoliberal austerity capitalism to handle a multiple clusterfuck of crises still a thing? Because so far 2021 looks suspiciously like 2020, only with a different name.

While 2020 ended with the media refusing to call the Nashville suicide bomber a suicide bomber and Park Rangers in New Mexico tasering an indigenous man (see also: A-Z of things 2020 killed), 2021 seems to be picking right where 2020 left off, especially if the unofficial torch bearer of 2021, Bean Dad, is any indication.

The mass delusional collective dumpster fire continues unabated down south with a president who somehow is still not in jail busted for coercing election officials; protesters larpers domestic terrorists have stormed the Capitol building with the help of police and a woman has died; the CEO of Whole Foods said Americans wouldn’t need healthcare if they’d eat better; and, just for fun, Bird Flu is back.

Meanwhile, in Canada we have vaccines sitting in freezers, Air Canada hiring influencers to promote vacation travel even as federal guidelines urge people to stay home, and politicians vacationing everywhere from St. Barts to East Africa. Do as I say, not as I do:

BREAKING: Canadian government urges you to avoid travel so you don’t bump into them travelling

— Andrew Barr (@AndrewBarr8) January 2, 2021

Maybe we can pay those influencers to promote our depressed cultural workers to mobilize en masse and administer the vaccine in all of our empty music venues…

Because apparently BC alone has only done 28,000 vaccinations so far and according to Justin McElroy we’d need to be doing that number every single day if we’re going to see a semblance of normal by the summer. But never fear, Justin Trudeau is “frustrated“.

Imagine if care was an organizing principle in society? Imagine if our governments could mobilize a massive pool of civil servants in any given emergency? Imagine if governments could provide quick, clear and comprehensive data to its constituents instead of relying on literally one journalist to scrape together various twitter feeds and announcements to create easy-to-read charts and graphs? What we know — and don’t know — about surging COVID-19 cases in B.C.’s long-term care homes. “As the numbers increased, the actual person power to get that information every day and collate it was taking hours and hours of epidemiology time.” Yeah, if only there were people that actually needed jobs right now…

I mean, up until 6pm on Tuesday the government still had misleading information on airborne/aerosol transmission on its website:

Finally. A late admission that #Covid19 can be transmitted through aerosols ie. airborne. They’re specifically clarifying their use of “droplets” now to include aerosols. This is new. #covid19bc #bcpoli https://t.co/DQfWoDi7p1

— Lindsay Brown (@Lidsville) January 6, 2021

So relentlessly shaming officials into adopting the best practices on Twitter is the only thing that works, you say? Got it.

We didn’t even know that the DTES had the highest per capita COVID-19 rate until Justin crunched the numbers. This is totally irresponsible and instead of being pro-active and vaccinating our most vulnerable residents we’re totally just going to blame them, because that’s what we do: Downtown homeless shelter in Chilliwack hit with dozens of COVID-19 cases. “But they don’t trust the government to deliver the vaccine.” Yeah, I wonder why? It’s up to us to repair that broken trust.

And don’t even get me started on that last minute decision to roll back last call on New Years Eve. I literally lost friends on Facebook who were telling restaurants to “suck it up”. The lack of class solidarity is astounding. Food waste and lost tips aside, there’s no evidence that restaurants are any less safe than *checks notes* massive house parties: Four Surrey households hit with $2,300 fines for New Year’s parties. You mean to tell me that cutting off booze sales at 8pm had negative consequences? You mean, the guy I saw buying caseloads of sparkling wine at the BCL wasn’t just a Freixenet connoisseur?

They’ve also been painfully slow on closing Site C, TMX, and LNG work camps: B.C. health order restricts number of workers at large industrial work sites. Why were they ever allowed to open?

And what about schools? 66,476 have signed a petition calling on Dr. Henry to close all BC schools for 2 weeks. Oh, and children of essential workers and vulnerable families would still be able to attend.

More young men in Western Canada died than expected last year — and not just because of COVID-19. TL;DR it’s overdoses. You know, that other epidemic.

10 yrs, flu deaths: 874
COVID : 954
10 yrs, overdose deaths: 8,573 https://t.co/LwWv2IlYZg

— K???? W??? (@kwardvancouver) January 6, 2021

That other thing killing young men? Man dies following police-involved shooting. “Man dies”. Not, ‘Man murdered as police fail yet again to de-escalate a mental health situation”.

Meanwhile: Vancouver empty homes crossed 30,000 mark this year. Absolutely unforgivable. We only just raised the empty homes tax to 3%, even though the mayor campaigned on a promise to triple it. There are now 14 empty dwellings for every homeless person living in the City of Vancouver. For every five new dwellings built here since 2000, one is empty. Hedge City in a nutshell.

And as usual, it comes right from the fucking top. Why is it that people in charge of designing our city never actually live in our city? Vancouver City manager runs thriving Airbnb on island facing housing crunch. This story is so Vancouver you could put a Starbucks on both corners of it. This guy, an American (named Sadhu by his white hippie parents) commutes to Vancouver everyday by fucking seaplane from Cortes Island, home of the Tides/Vision eco-cult, where he runs an Airbnb. It’s like he was made in a “Vancouver Urbanist Influencer generator“.

Bubble? What bubble? Vancouver home sales set new record for December after surging 53.4%. So all those condos that these people left because they realized living in an eco-density shoebox during a pandemic wasn’t for them will totally trickle down, right?

Stressed small landlords bailing out of Vancouver. Oh good, maybe they can get a real job. But seriously, this is actually terrible news. They’ll be snapped up by Real Estate Investment Trusts in no time.

Dirty Burnaby landlord tries hiking 89-year-old’s rent during freeze. A guillotine would be too humane. I’m thinking a Walk of Atonement through the streets like Cersei Lannister.

Related: 20 Hours of Watching Canadians Get Evicted Over Zoom Court Shows a System Under Strain.

Satire of the day: First baby of the year “not thrilled” with Nanaimo so far.

Sports of the day: Why We Hate The Vancouver Canucks. Jokes on you, nobody hates the Canucks more than Canucks fans.

Bonus: DNA links 5,500 year old remains of aboriginal woman found in Canada and her 200 x great-granddaughter who still lives nearby.