Coronavirus

I'm classified as a 1C (essential worker). After spending 15-20 minutes ever day for the last 2 weeks to find an opening for the vaccine, I finally found an opening for 1Cs. I received my conformation letter for my appointment. I had my ID, letter from my company and the confirmation letter printed out. I took off work and drove down to the site and I was told at the door they we're taking 1C yet, that they were only taking 1B. I called state and county Covid-19 help lines. They all said they were sorry but they could doing anything about it. I totally agree the 1Bs should get their shots first but there has to be easier way, what a fraking mess.

I'm an essential worker and got my first dose yesterday. I'm pretty happy about it.

I'm happy for you! All of you. Let's goooooo.

We're coming up on one year since I posted this thread, and I have to admit, I didn't think we'd have vaccines by now. That is some science-fiction shit. This mRNA thing is really flabbergasting. The capabilities of humanity are endless, and I hope we spend more time and energy on these kinds of things than we do on arguing with each other.

jeb wrote: I'm happy for you! All of you. Let's goooooo.

We're coming up on one year since I posted this thread, and I have to admit, I didn't think we'd have vaccines by now. That is some science-fiction shit. This mRNA thing is really flabbergasting. The capabilities of humanity are endless, and I hope we spend more time and energy on these kinds of things than we do on arguing with each other.

As someone with experience in the epidemiology realm, the two can't be disentangled. Long story short, the most challenging part of dealing with infectious disease is the human element, i.e., getting people to take vaccines, or engage in other changes that prevent its spread.

There's a very smart guy in tech that writes a column called Stratechery that more or less said that we did the vaccine development process all wrong. These vaccines could have been on the street in April of last year. He's correct, the tech was there for that to happen. The problem is that they weren't tested for safety and effectiveness. His point was this -- who cares? Produce 50 of them, put them all into testing, and if they kill 50 people each you end up with 2500 people dead, but save the lives of millions. The one that doesn't kill people goes into production. It's simple math.

But he left the last part out. Imagine you're the guy whose message to the public is "sure we killed people with our first fifty attempts. But number fifty-ONE is perfectly safe!" No sense even offering it.

Long story short, miracle science in the vial needs miracle science in the communications channel to finish the job. We're still not there yet. We haven't been able to eradicate polio in the third world because bad actors years ago called the vaccine a western plot to sterilize Muslim women. I'm of the opinion that this will remain in the third world for decades. Closing it out is going to be a tough slog.

<on high horse>

I just want to embed the idea in everyone's head that the mRNA vaccines and most of the other approaches are really only possible because of the years of NIH/NSF supported basic science behind the whole idea of such a thing, how we would do it in theory, and small scale experiments on getting the conceptual frame of the whole thing to work. And basic science money besides the NIH money has basically dried up in the last 10-20 years because of deliberate choices by politicians looking at experimental designs and being like "how is this fucking nerd shit that won't produce a product helping us?" Most things the health, engineering, and other private business interests apply is basically built on the back of public money invested in projects at universities and institutes.

I'm always super disappointed when people are like "Look what these brilliant corporate scientists were able to do in the short amount of time!" when the real thing is "Look how these brilliant corporate scientists were able to scale up this idea that was pioneered years earlier in basic science studies for this particular disease from the public's money!"

I mean, shit, the only reason J+J can produce so much (non-mRNA) vaccine, if memory serves, is because they were gearing up to produce a similar technique for HIV/AIDS.

Gary Sax wrote: I just want to embed the idea in everyone's head that the mRNA vaccines and most of the other approaches are really only possible because of the years of NIH/NSF supported basic science behind the whole idea of such a thing, how we would do it in theory, and small scale experiments on getting the conceptual frame of the whole thing to work. And basic science money besides the NIH money has basically dried up in the last 10-20 years because of deliberate choices by politicians looking at experimental designs and being like "how is this fucking nerd shit that won't produce a product helping us?" Most things the health, engineering, and other private business interests apply is basically built on the back of public money invested in projects at universities and institutes.

Yes! Everyone knows the infamous "Solyndra" because bad-faith knuckleheads demagogued it for years as an example of "gubmint waste"--yet the overall program that investment was part of has yielded a nice return in the long run. We can unlock incredible discoveries if we're willing to make big bets that are only possible at the level of state investment--even knowing that most of them will be dead ends. The upsides are advances or technology that can literally be civilization-changing.

I don't want to get too controversial given the space X explosion yesterday, but look at how hard it has been to recreate and rebuild the rocket tech that public research and investment created 60 years ago. The Russians still reap the benefits of their solid rocket tech research and capital investment from Soviet area.

IIRC St Patty's Day last year was the tipping point when pretty much everyone knew we were ....fucked for lack of a better term. Pictures of packed bars in Boston was the straw that broke the camels back in terms of causing the governor to start fully shutting things down. When I look at my logged plays on BGG, 3/15 was my last logged play for four months ( SPIRIT ISLAND in case you were wondering ) . My next FtF play wasn't til early July ( IMPERIAL STRUGGLE ) .

Minnesota's current time line has gotten a little more specific:



Apparently I could jump the line just by showing up around closing time at a pharmacy every night, because the vaccine vials contain multiple doses and they tend to have partial vials getting tossed at the end of the day due to no-shows. But I am holding out hope for one of the 2-dose vaccines, and I want to get the two doses according to the recommended schedule and not the whims of fate.

I'd be very surprised if they didn't schedule your second one then and there for a month later if you got a two shot Moderna or Pfizer vaccine. That would be very bad public health policy indeed. But I'd also be surprised if your local pharmacy had the kind of specialized equipment needed to keep the Pfizer vaccine, though.

I went out to dine-in breakfast for the first time in a year, my wife and I used to do Monday breakfast every week. My elderly father broke his leg last week so I am flying to help out tomorrow for a week; they are having their 2nd Pfizer shot this week so they decided the risk was worth it since my second shot was weeks ago and the strong scientific prior is that these vaccines also significantly reduce spread.

It is sounds like there is going to be a lot of J+J out there very soon which is awesome for not at high risk people. one of my best friends is getting his j+j this week.

I was told when I got my first shot that you don't "have" to get the second one as soon as you can get it; any time after that works. Point is, if you can get that first shot, even without guarantee of the second, do it. That's what I did.

At least in California, when you get your first shot, you get a card, and then you are prioritized for your second shot on the strength of that. We've had some places close appointments for first doses because so many second dose folks came in. This thinking might be changing given recent data that suggests even one shot is still pretty good, and they should be prioritizing those.

Jus huge news today from the CDC though. Having gone through a lot of the Israeli data (largely Phizer-BioNTech, but extendable), fully vaccinated (ie, two weeks post last dose) folks can gather indoors without masks with another household, even if they other household is unvaccinated (assuming all are low-risk). Bring a third household into the mix, or an at-risk individual and everyone should mask up and go outside, but still. That's some light at the end of a long ass tunnel. You can reasonably try to get together for Easter or Pesach if you have a vaccinated friend/family nearby! We're so close, it's really heartening.

1 year ago when WHO declared the pandemic I knew I'd spend at least a year doing basically nothing. So decided back then to just write-off of a year of my life. I live alone so other than one time hiking last summer I haven't seen any friends or even had an actual in-person conversation with anyone. Unless you count my cat who I had started talking to regularly before she died. Also, despite 95% of my remaining games being solo-able I haven't played a single game in over a year. Too stressed out I guess and ended up spending more time online for the illusion of social interaction it offers. Didn't bitch about the lockdowns once and patiently waiting to get a vaccine. I gotta say now though, a year later, that I am so fucking ready for this to be over. I know it's the new normal and we've got a ways to go yet but damn am I fucking done. I might even move back to the city just so I can be around people again. Despite one reason I left the city was to get away from all the people. Alone doesn't feel adequate to describe how I feel nowadays. Not really sure where I was going with this just needed to get it off my chest.