Tag Archives: Covid

Punch Covid In The Face with Money

Evolutionary Biology, Health and Medicine, ,

The global, and American, research programs in health and biology over recent decades have given us inadequate tools to understand the Covid virus as fully and quickly as I think we could have. We need:

  • …more basic research on viruses, never mind the virus
  • …more basic research on infections, never mind the pathogen, the host, or even the severity of the disease
  • …a research center on T cells, another on B cells, another on NK cells, another on the lymph system, if that is what it takes
  • For every working vaccine for an existing vaccine there should be 1000 vaccines made up just for the fun of learning what and how and if and everything one learns while making things.
  • Pathogen researchers should be producing experimental just-for-fun vaccines like Linux geeks produce operating systems or distros. So when a new pathogen comes along, the best vaccine response, you can order on Amazon.
  • Very little of these basic research approaches has been the subject of targeted research. This is the fallacy of targeted research. Targeted research alone is not how we address the Next Big Thing.
  • In the US, the NIH,NSF, and all the other research funding and oversight agencies, and the research arms of all the scientific agencies such a the USGS, NOAA, DOE,etc. are INFRASTRUCTURE and their funding should be TRIPLED.

Let’s throw money at this thing!

Children of Covid

Education, Health and Medicine

In Minnesota, our surge peaked just before Thanksgiving. Then it unpeaked and went higher. Then is started to go down a little, then Xmas, and it unpeaked again and is probably going to go higher by the weekend. Just in time for the New Years resurgence, which would result in a peak-on-top-of-peak happening about January 8th.

But, that peak will be nothing compared to the Superpeak that will pile on top of that one, because Omicron will sweep through the region. Expect the biggest peak ever to pretty much coincide with the month of January.

And this is really going to mess up school in January. World epidemic expert Michael Osterholm was recently asked what should happen in schools. He was essentially unable to answer because the question is so ridiculous, framed as it is as a request for options. There are no options. He did say, “We may think we are done with Covid, but Covid is not done with us.”

For those who don’t know, the following are entirely or mostly true, as far as I know:

1) 1 In X P-12 teachers will be out with Covid in January.

2) 1 in Y P-12 teachers will be unable to go to work because their daycare shuts down because of Covid in January.

(X and Y are unknown but the ratio is not insignificant.)

3) Same for administrators and students, at various levels.

4) There are no substitutes. That is not the beginning of a sentence where the next word is “for” like “there are no substitutes for good study habits.” There are no substitutes, as in substitute teachers. Short term subs are gone, long term subs were hired up as teachers long ago.

5) There are very few, if any, new teachers coming in to replace those who retired, went crazy and ran away, or died, during this pandemic. Our society has shoved its problems up the nether regions of teachers for long enough, Covid is the last straw, only an idiot would become a teacher these days, and most possible teachers are not idiots. Maybe they will go be truck drivers. So, there is probably a rapidly growing systemic shortage of teachers going on independently of Covid, made worse by Covid.

By mid January we are going to be herding the kids who show up to school into large rooms where cameras controlled by Covid-riddled deans working from home will watch them during the school day, after which they will be picked up by their parents because whatever is left of the school bus system is going to collapse again.

Now’s your chance, Children of Covid! You don’t need no education!

What is Freedom?

Anthropology,

Once upon a time in the Congo, there was a democratically elected President; Some* called him the “Big Man.” The Big Man was elected every seven years by a majority of 97.8%. The people loved him because before he became President, war was everywhere, and just before that, the colonial overlords and punishers were everywhere. You couldn’t get a break. Then after a brief interlude of a different duly elected president who died in an unfortunate execution, Big Man saw to it that there would be no more wars.

Well, not exactly. He had wars, and the people of the Congo were given the opportunity to get jobs fighting in the wars, but they were all in adjoining countries, and they were all paid for by the United States Congress. So no war without taxes, and that was good.
Continue reading What is Freedom? →

Covid Contaminants Harm Self

Health and Medicine, ,
Republican Contaminants are killing Americans at the rate of about one half million per year, because of their pro-Covid stance. But they are killing more of their own.
This is probably not a self correcting phenomenon. Not enough Contaminants are dying of Covid to change election outcomes. But a precinct by precinct study may reveal a small effect.

“John Nolte argued that the partisan gap in vaccination rates was part of a liberal plot. Liberals like Biden, Nancy Pelosi, Anthony Fauci and Howard Stern have tried so hard to persuade people to get vaccinated, because they know that Republican voters will do the opposite of whatever they say, Nolte wrote.”

This would be funny if it wasn’t so …. no wait, this is actually just really funny.

Source: New York Times “The Mornting” September 27, 2021, byline: David Leonhardt

This ain’t the Washita River, General

Health and Medicine, , , , ,

A growing number of Contaminants (aka Republicans aka Magatrumpers) believe that Liberals and Democrats are pushing vaccines in order to make conservatives and yahoos dislike and therefore avoid vaccines, so that on election day, more Republicans are dead of Covid than Democrats.

Maybe we are doing that, maybe we are not. Not my job to tell you. I am not the mule skinner.

Covidpocalypse Now: an update

Covid, Health and Medicine, , ,

Most of the Covid news is about vaccines.

A second vaccine has passed the final non-red tape hurdle in the US, and will likely be authorized by the end of the week. Six million doses will be distributed, probably over the weekend or early in the week, to over 3,000 locations.

There is argument and discussion going on as to the lower age limit on the vaccines. So far everything seems authorized for 18 year olds and older. It will probably be a serious mistake if that isn’t adjusted very soon. Now, the kids who transmit the disease that kill grandma are anonymous. Once they are the main carriers, they will not be, and a spotty subgroup of an entire generation will be scarred. At least, we’ll be given by fate the name for that generation. The Marys (for Typhoid Mary).

Let’s talk about Pregnant and lactating women for a minute. There have been no systematic trials pertaining to pregnant women, so the FDA advice is vague. They say, “you decide.” The following are supportable facts:

1) There is evidence, subject to revision because it is not the focus of any systematic experimental study, that pregnant women are somewhat protected from getting Covid-19, but not to anywhere near the degree that they can flout caution.

2) There is evidence, again subject to revision, that when pregnant women do get Covid-19, they have a number of worse outcomes than other people of similar age. They may get sicker, and there is a possible risk of preterm birth.

3) Non-live vaccines are generally considered safe for pregnant women.

To manufacturers and health care providers, this may be more a mater of blame and liability than anything else. Of all the people who get the vaccine, some are going to get sick or die randomly even if the vaccine never causes an actual problem, and someone is going to sue somebody over something. The chance of such a suit winning probably goes up if the plaintiff is a pregnant woman or her survivors, or if a baby is born with a problem etc. etc. So, by saying “you decide” we just get on with it, is probably the thinking.

VERY IMPORTANT: We humans have a lot of misconceptions about immunity and pregnancy. A common falsehood is that immunity of the mother is passed on to the offspring. This is not true. Also, an in utero fetus does not get vaccinated when the mother gets vaccinated. A lot of people believe these things happen but they do not.

What does happen is that the mother’s immune products, if she’s got them, circulate in the fetus, and may even be found in the newborn for a while. But an infant does not have much of a functioning adaptive immune system, so there can be no development of long term immunity, and the magical immunity stuff we have spent so much time talking about can’t be passed on.

During lactation, some of this humeral immunity of the mother will be shared with the offspring via breast feeding. This, of course, is also temporary.

It has been a while since I’ve done a literature search on this, but last time I looked there were no studies that really examined how effective any of this passive immunity is. Our cultural love of breastfeeding, and rhetoric from pro-breast feeding organizations, have led many people to believe that mother to infant immunity (i.e. through breastfeeding and esp the passing on of colostrum) is powerful and highly effective. We don’t really know this.

Doses:

In the US right now 2.9 million Pfizer doses (with second doses already accounted for) have been shipped. Moderna will ship over 5 million doses right away. According to Health and Human Services (a Trump Crime Family Joint) there will be enough doses to vaccinate everybody in the US by the end of June 2021. We await the replacement of the Deplorables with Biden appointees to confirm (or deny) that.

Can you pass Covid-19 on if you are vaccinated?

Nobody knows yet, but there is not really a useful “yes” or “no” answer to this. Here’s the story: What matters is the R0 value of the disease, right? How many people will get infected down the road if a particular individual is infected. More realistically, sort of, imagine a population of 1 million people, and 1,000 people freshly infected show up and there are no precautions taken. If that disease is Covid and the 1 million are not vaccinated, the next “generation” of infection will see more than 1,000 people infected, and the next generation, more than that, etc. as a wave of the disease spreads across the populations. SO, maybe, 1,000 gets you 1800, and that gets you 2500, and that gets you 4,800, and so on.

If most everybody is vaccinated, the whole point is that the chance of the virus being able to reproduce in you at all is lower, the time frame and intensity of that reproduction is shorted or lowered. Maybe to zero, but even if not, the R0 value is significantly lowered.

So, in the above scenario, with the population mainly vaccinated, 1,000 infected people gets you maybe 100 (max, that would b a lot) which gets you 10, which gets you zero, and Bob’s your uncle.

Your Normal Fourth

Health and Medicine,

I read the news today, oh boy. To coin a phrase.

Here is what my local paper’s headline said: “Socializing is a must for many on the 4th.”

Digging in we find that “For some, it was a time to throw caution to the wind and reclaim normalcy as they headed to a lake cabins, parks and backyard barbecues…Across the state, Minnesotans are making their own decisions while health care and government officials hold their breath…”

The quest for normalcy is powerful enough to make people dishonest with themselves, so you get sentences of this form: “I heard the Virus did/didn’t really do this/that/other thing, so I guess it is OK if I whatever-whevever [fill in idiotic decision here].”

Let me tell you what normal is. You go a week without a funeral. Several weeks. Maybe months, or a year. Normal is not when one of your relatives, friends, work associates, one of the kids in your child’s class, or the parent of one of the kids, or the old person that lives two doors down but you never talk to much but they just took her away in the ambulance, or a checkout person who’s name you never knew, or two of the nurses at the hospital your kid was born in, etc. etc. … normal is not when one of those people dies on average about every 14 day or so (but sometimes with longer gaps, sometimes in clusters) at the peak of Your Local Epidemic.

If you want to achieve normalcy during the 365 days between moments of must, when you must do the thing that is least recommended by people who must be much smarter than you are, then you must not. This applies to gatherings on the fourth, it will apply to all the holidays throughout much of the year. Next winter holidays, like Christmas and New years, or before that, Halloween which seems to have become the local Spring Break party holiday among America’s 20-somethings, or the most traveled day of the year, Thanksgiving, if you must seek normalcy the grim reaper must seek your family and fiends.

And eventually, not your parents, cousins, children, or neighbors. But you. Ask not for whom the germ theory tolls.