COVID Vaccine (2)

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GaryM said:
Your research students get to work within the elegant simplicity of the metric system. The English system is a train wreck, as I'm reminded again today in doing some holiday food prep. It drives me nuts to see cup as a unit of measure for both weight and volume.

Yeah, I can work out a conversion if I know what ingredient I'm dealing with (I was once a research student at a highly regarded college in your neck of the woods).
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A scale that convets metric-english is an invaluable time saver when dealing with recipes.
 
Lindberg said:
Where is cup used as a measure of weight?
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Cup of flour. Now, what type of flour (rye, wheat, almond, etc) and if wheat, using bread or all-purpose? Really need weight but most of the time, the cup refers to quantity. Which is a mistake, as many new bread bakers this year have learned.
 
murphey said:
Cup of flour. Now, what type of flour (rye, wheat, almond, etc) and if wheat, using bread or all-purpose? Really need weight but most of the time, the cup refers to quantity. Which is a mistake, as many new bread bakers this year have learned.
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Much better with weight. For bagels, I always add a bit of wheat gluten to AP flour - not really necessary with bread flour, but YMMV.
 
wsuffa said:
Much better with weight. For bagels, I always add a bit of wheat gluten to AP flour - not really necessary with bread flour, but YMMV.
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You shouldn't need gluten if you're making bagels out of white flour. Gluten is for whole grain breads to try and smooth the texture. What you need for bagels is Barley malt syrup. You won't find it in your grocers, I get mine off Amazon. That, and some lye to boil them. I love bagels, though I only make them a couple times a year. Too much work.
 
WillFly4Food said:
Also might want to consider the meaning of “survival.” Buddy of mine is a cardiologist; back in October told me a story about a new patient of his. Seems this lady got Covid in May. Mid-40’s, good physical condition, business owner, no elevated risk factors. She self-treated, no hospitalization, just stayed home. A couple weeks later she was over it and her routine was back to normal. After a few months her condition began to decline. When she came to his practice, she could no longer walk from her office to her secretary’s desk without running out of breath. Prognosis unknown at that time. There’s not enough knowledge yet about long term treatment of Covid related inflammation in the pericardium, lungs, and other organs. Scary stuff.

Another local person that had considered Covid to be a hoax, contracted the infection, survived, but now has to drag an oxygen bottle around everywhere. He has a new name for the disease: Russian Roulette. The cylinder might have more chambers, but one is still loaded. Hopefully, if you get Covid, you’ll survive and be fine. But there are significant risks. You don’t want this.
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Indeed, this is a very vexing viral disease. "Mostly" it it harmless, but a small percentage of the time it is devastating. The analogy I like to use to help others understand it is a dice game. You roll the dice once. If you get snake eyes you die. Anything else you get to move on. Wanna play? This probability is about right if you are in the 65 and older age group. If you have co-morbidities we add other numbers to the death roll. Not so much fun, eh? Even if you are middle-aged and healthy, you don't know if you happen to have the wrong gene combination to survive the infection, or to avoid long-term sequelae. The realization of these probabilities is what put me first in line for a Phase 3 vaccine trial. I got my vaccine, so now getting exposed to Covid is likely much less hazardous than my taking up the plane for an hour.
 
murphey said:
Cup of flour. Now, what type of flour (rye, wheat, almond, etc) and if wheat, using bread or all-purpose? Really need weight but most of the time, the cup refers to quantity. Which is a mistake, as many new bread bakers this year have learned.
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Yep. I used King Arthur AP, which weighs 4.25 ounces per cup. I never measure the cups, just the ounces. Taught my kids that. The youngest loves baking and she made sure she had a good scale for her first post-college apartment this summer. :D
 
steingar said:
Science time. Feel free to ignore pedantic B.S. The reason COVID is so successful at colonizing humanity is it can bind very very well and very tightly to an epithelial protein called ACE2. It does this through its coat protein.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to respond to antigens. What has been used for antigen for all the incoming vaccines is the same coat protein the virus uses to bind the ACE2 receptor. Still with me?

Any change to this coat protein that results in an escape from immune surveillance will almost certainly denigrate its ability to bind ACE2. That is, if it goes stealth it looses its secret weapon and won't be infectious anymore. The vaccines will work, the virus can't escape.

And having vaccines after only a year, while the world is in the grip of the pandemic is nothing short of miraculous.
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Very clear, and helpful, IMO.
 
murphey said:
A scale that convets metric-english is an invaluable time saver when dealing with recipes.
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I love my digital scale. Really helps with the calorie-counting,
 
steingar said:
Science time. Feel free to ignore pedantic B.S. The reason COVID is so successful at colonizing humanity is it can bind very very well and very tightly to an epithelial protein called ACE2. It does this through its coat protein.

Vaccines work by training the immune system to respond to antigens. What has been used for antigen for all the incoming vaccines is the same coat protein the virus uses to bind the ACE2 receptor. Still with me?

Any change to this coat protein that results in an escape from immune surveillance will almost certainly denigrate its ability to bind ACE2. That is, if it goes stealth it looses its secret weapon and won't be infectious anymore. The vaccines will work, the virus can't escape.

And having vaccines after only a year, while the world is in the grip of the pandemic is nothing short of miraculous.
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Thank you Operation Warp speed.
 
PaulS said:
Thank you Operation Warp speed.
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And behind the scenes, we owe a big thank you to research scientists who determined the molecular structure of the spike protein and used that knowledge to guide the design of modified spike proteins for vaccines that efficiently elicit neutralizing antibodies. And the work that determined the molecular basis for the function of the viral RNA polymerase, a potential therapeutic target. This science is quite beautiful, and more than a little tricky. We we're lucky that the SARS and MERS outbreaks jump started much of this research many years ago, so we didn't have to start with a blank slate with Covid.
 
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Cervieres said:
It’s great that your area isn’t affected and you can be dismissive. The ICU census at my hospital has been nearing capacity this week and we have the convention center standing by as a field hospital. Whether or not it will be needed will play out in the next few weeks. It’s not just that we need the beds for COVID patients, but that all of the other patients needing ICU care don’t have anywhere to go. The county fairgrounds had to be converted to a makeshift testing facility because all of the clinics were overwhelmed with people seeking tests. My friends and colleagues in Utah, Massachusetts, North Carolina, and Pennsylvania are all having the same experience and those are just the people I keep in touch with. I’ve intentionally stayed away from these kinds of posts, but enough is enough with the idea that there is some exaggeration of the seriousness of this event or that the problem is actually infrastructure related, young reporters, or whatever other conspiracy theory is popular that particular day.
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I wasn’t dismissive. I was giving a report of local reality direct from our local hospitals.

(I could offer regular updates*, the point of the post was good hospital and medical facility employees have the numbers in their company inbox every morning. It’s also clearly been communicated that the data and emails aren’t in any way proprietary — anybody wants ‘em, all they have to do is ask. Nobody’s asking here.)

I also carefully said some other places are worse. Many that didn’t build appropriate infrastructure. Many that have different human density numbers with lower population to infrastructure ratios or old worn out infrastructure that wasn’t augmented or replaced.

Dismissive, or at least barely mildly rude, would be reminding those places that their “leaders” found plenty of land and ten year tax breaks for their Amazon warehouses. LOL. If you want hard math, there’s some.

In seriousness though, where are you located? I’m sorry whatever the math shows for your area isn’t working out well. Why aren’t they better prepared for math that hasn’t changed significantly in 9 months?

I didn’t even go into preparedness. Wife’s place was prepped in April to have 2000 makeshift beds for Covid. They shuttered and mothballed all of it. Can bring it back online very quickly if needed.

This IS a snarky question ... but y’all should be snarky asking it HARD of locals there if it’s as bad as you say... What changes in the linear math told anybody in planning there that they shouldn’t be ready for what you’re currently seeing? The math hasn’t changed in almost a year.

You should be (righteously) ****ed off at local planners right now if people have “nowhere to go”. Seriously. They’ve had nearly a year to plan.

Kinda like when schools had no plan whatsoever after six months of downtime.

Probably should have worked harder on that...

Many in that biz were angry when math folk asked that question. Oh well. Be mad. If you waste time in an emergency you get correctly criticized. Work off of today’s numbers and get moving. Numbers change, then change plans.

In your local case, there had to be at least one person who could extrapolate a linear formula. Nothing about this math is rocket science.

Definitely not saying I’m not sad for people living where proper mathematical planning is non-existent. Just saying it ain’t the same everywhere and not everyone is dealt the same hand.

On a more personal question level, have you considered temporarily repositioning away from the density problem and (apparently) bad planners? Not a fun thought for all sorts of seriously inconvenient reasons but if their bad planning adds more risk of harm to you than not... getting away from their silliness is an option. A sucky option, but an option nevertheless.

Takes some head scratching and math to figure out where the relocation would be to. Quite a few showing up here but the housing market being what it is, they’re ending up in very dense population areas for the most part.

Maybe not the best plan, given the math of the thing. Depends on where they came from, I suppose.

Zero intent to claim “exaggeration” of “seriousness”. Quite the opposite. Said the press here aren’t asking here and aren’t being serious. The hospitals are.

Sounds like you have local planners who also aren’t taking the local math seriously as well. Definitely a worse form of not being serious.

Given the option, I’ll take a useless (mostly because their business model is incredibly weak and likely dying, unfortunately for them) local press with serious planners being ignored, over the opposite, any day of the week.

Just observations. All anyone can do is make their own plan with this thing... real math makes it easier. Percentages of a changeable resource. aren’t valid math.
 
Great dialogue here. It’s nice to see other healthcare providers shedding light on what’s going on behind closed doors. If it’s a conspiracy, then it’s pretty impressive how basically every healthcare worker IN THE WORLD is in on it.

Our ICU is at 132% capacity (overflow into other units). Transfers are impossible. This is affecting a lot of the smaller hospitals who traditionally would transfer their critical patients to Tertiary care centers like ours, but since we have no bed capacity we’ve been closed to transfers for a while.

The level III (lowest designation) trauma centers have been especially impacted since they don’t have the resources to treat a lot of conditions and had previously depended on transfer agreements for complex cases. Since everyone is full, now you’re stuck with whatever resources you have in the community.

This is a good time not to get sick or injured.

The Russian Roulette or dice rolling analogies are sound. One of the issues that has been written about extensively is that people don’t understand large numbers when making decisions - 100,000, a million, billion and trillion seem to be treated in a similar way (or 0.01, 0.001, 0.00001, ...) when they are clearly very different.

If you have a 1% chance of dying and 10% chance of short to long term disability x 17.5 MILLION, then suddenly that “small chance” becomes a big number. Yes, individually your odds are pretty good (which is what I tell people when I diagnose them with COVID) but there’s always a chance things will not go well.

Science on COVID is fascinating because it seems to affect every organ system and causes extensive damage through inflammation and thrombosis. I think “Post-COVID syndrome” is going to be a very common diagnosis in the next few decades.

Last article I read found evidence of damage from COVID in testicles on autopsy and the thought is it may affect fertility. I’m not sure how the gen-Z “I’m not gonna let ‘Rona stop me from partying” dude feels about that.
 
wayne said:
Yep. I used King Arthur AP, which weighs 4.25 ounces per cup. I never measure the cups, just the ounces. Taught my kids that. The youngest loves baking and she made sure she had a good scale for her first post-college apartment this summer. :D
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You're doing it wrong. You go by the texture of the dough. Different flours from different places have different moisture contents.
 
PlasticCigar said:
The level III (lowest designation) trauma centers have been especially impacted since they don’t have the resources to treat a lot of conditions and had previously depended on transfer agreements for complex cases. Since everyone is full, now you’re stuck with whatever resources you have in the community.

This is a good time not to get sick or injured.
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Yeah I don’t remember if it was here or elsewhere I mentioned the “Mutual Aid always takes care of everything” planning mentality of disaster planning was going to bite some areas square in the ***, clear back in April or so. It doesn’t work for widespread disasters only for regional ones.

That last sentence would make our ER Docs here angry at the moment and they’ve been angry about that since March. Our ERs have been below normal up until about ... October as I recall. At one point one of them said he didn’t have a single heart attack or stroke patient in FIVE days which is clearly insanity caused by inaccurate reporting and baseless fears.

People were just staying home, which at least here, has always been for lack of a stronger way to put it, pure stupid. Nothing numbers wise, ever supported that. Nor did any public agency even attempt to educate anyone on it.

But you know as well as anyone we’re 9 months in and yet to see even a TV demonstration of how every first year medical pro in any specialty or job learns to remove a mask properly... for the general public. By the straps.

Could be disseminating a lot of useful information in 9 months with those boob tube thingies...

Still holding at our 2 to 1 score for number of people who we’ve seen remove masks and immediately pick their noses though. I was trying to catch up, but wifey is still in the lead on that game. LOL.
 
steingar said:
You're doing it wrong. You go by the texture of the dough. Different flours from different places have different moisture contents.
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Wrong? :rolleyes:

*sigh*

I get requests for my baked goods. Co-workers that don't eat things made at other people's homes rush over to get baked goods I bring into the office (back when we actually went to the office). I'm pretty sure I'm doing it quite well. I'm no match for the winners on the British Baking Show, but I'm doing quite fine with baking.

Flour is more affected by the moisture in the air in your home. Less liquids are needed during the humid summer time and more during the dry winter time.
 
PlasticCigar said:
Great dialogue here. It’s nice to see other healthcare providers shedding light on what’s going on behind closed doors. If it’s a conspiracy, then it’s pretty impressive how basically every healthcare worker IN THE WORLD is in on it.
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Yeah, that's not quite accurate based on personal medical professional friends and this thing:

https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/
 
steingar said:
You shouldn't need gluten if you're making bagels out of white flour. Gluten is for whole grain breads to try and smooth the texture. What you need for bagels is Barley malt syrup. You won't find it in your grocers, I get mine off Amazon. That, and some lye to boil them. I love bagels, though I only make them a couple times a year. Too much work.
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I find gluten helps AP flour, to. YMMV.

And yes, I use barley malt syrup that I also get off of Amazon.
 
denverpilot said:
I just laughed hard at a new meme floating around that says why would someone trade a 99.9% chance of survival for a 95% one. LOL.
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Yea. The horse**** that passes for "analysis" on social media. "Holy conclusion not supported by the data, Batman!"

On the other hand, I was showing a student (Sophomore, Robotics Engineering) how to solve an exam problem that she missed - got part way through and asked if I needed to finish the solution. "No, the rest is just algebra." There is still hope.
 
chemgeek said:
Indeed, this is a very vexing viral disease. "Mostly" it it harmless, but a small percentage of the time it is devastating. The analogy I like to use to help others understand it is a dice game. You roll the dice once. If you get snake eyes you die. Anything else you get to move on. Wanna play? This probability is about right if you are in the 65 and older age group. If you have co-morbidities we add other numbers to the death roll. Not so much fun, eh? Even if you are middle-aged and healthy, you don't know if you happen to have the wrong gene combination to survive the infection, or to avoid long-term sequelae. The realization of these probabilities is what put me first in line for a Phase 3 vaccine trial. I got my vaccine, so now getting exposed to Covid is likely much less hazardous than my taking up the plane for an hour.
Click to expand...
Close friends are retired nurse and hubby, who's PhD pharmacology. Talking yesterday (6+ ft apart, of course, outside) he mentioned there are some indications (that's all, indications, nothing that's been extensively studied) that metformin (one of the popular Type 2 diabetes meds) may (and I stress MAY) provide some resistance to COVID.

And since this place demands factual and reliable references, how about the Lancet?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(20)30033-7/fulltext
 
chemgeek said:
And behind the scenes, we owe a big thank you to research scientists who determined the molecular structure of the spike protein and used that knowledge to guide the design of modified spike proteins for vaccines that efficiently elicit neutralizing antibodies. And the work that determined the molecular basis for the function of viral RNA polymerase, a potential therapeutic target. This science is quite beautiful, and more than a little tricky. We we're lucky that the SARS and MERS outbreaks jump started much of this research many years ago, so we didn't have to start with a blank slate with Covid.
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Don't forget to thank Dolly Parton, too!
 
steingar said:
And having vaccines after only a year, while the world is in the grip of the pandemic is nothing short of miraculous.
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I’m quietly cheering on the folks working on the temperature stable oral version. That would be the real miracle for an enormous potion of the planet.

We get to sit around and discuss stuff like number of hospitals and beds and when we might get the injected vaccine, and other first world problems with this thing.... while simultaneously whining about package delivery of Christmas presents and the occasional TP shortage, and personal airplanes with flat tires, in other threads... which makes all of us here pretty damn lucky.

Helps to keep that in mind as we all run our numbers. I look at the numbers of places where things aren’t nearly as good and wonder how accurate they are.

Also ironic that airplanes made it all significantly worse and also will be what makes it significantly better going forward, ain’t it?

Heh. Always the problem with new tech. Fascinates this old engineer anyway. Build stuff and then watch humans use it in amazingly good and terribly bad ways. Every single time.

Connecting an untrustworthy worldwide data network to all of our houses really wasn’t a good idea. But some good comes of it. At least some lucky folks now can fart around with video cameras and mute buttons instead of needing to be in office buildings during this. Meanwhile the naughty humans have Trojan horsed multiple large governments and companies with the nifty SolarWinds thing that isn’t getting much press outside of IT. It’s a doozy.

Merry Christmas you goofy old Prof. We two mutants are looking forward to seeing ya again whenever it’s possible. Preferably at the usual spot near the campfire. We totally agree with your “one year is a miracle” sentiment. Pretty amazing. Now on to helping the rest of the planet... or at least just trying to slow the bad guys on the internet, if that’s one’s lot in life. Ha.

Back to more Senior Mutant Internet Janitor work... haha. Today’s fun, taking to the sales staff getting quotes on buying services from a company I built and got sold long ago. It’s kinda fun calling your old company up for a quote and they start pitching you on the product...

“I know. I built it. Your VP of product development probably would laugh if you give him a call and tell him the guy who ate two Chipotle burritos on his dare, wants a quote.”

LOL.

Life is good. World is small. People are crazy. Grandfather lost a sibling in childhood to a disease nobody dies from anymore.
 
PPC1052 said:
I am not sure I understand that math. According to that article, the vials are supposed to have 5 doses, but they are getting an extra two doses out of them. Wouldn't that take 50 million doses to 70 million, not 140 million?
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Double that if we can give everyone only one dose.
 
Lindberg said:
Double that if we can give everyone only one dose.
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And protect everyone at a 50% estimated efficacy, with no knowledge of any protection against severe disease or maybe at all for older individuals, and unknown but potentially lesser efficacy for preventing infection. Phase 1 blood data showed little or no benefit from only one dose. The second booster dose was required to push antibody and T cell responses to convalescent levels or beyond. We are going to have to be patient, crank out doses, and get them to the public.
 
Things are heating up in the vaccine trials. We have two candidates with an EUA. AstraZeneca needs to rejigger their phase 3 trial in the US to get better data. And J&J has now completely enrolled the Phase 3 trial for their Ad26 viral vector candidate. With the current high caseload in the US, they are expecting efficacy results by the end of January. So we could have 4 candidates available in Q1 2021. And Novavax is close behind.

Not that I'm selfish and cooped up or anything, but if everyone who can do so gets vaccinated I might be able to enjoy a minor league baseball game in person this summer. Nachos with jalapenos... hot dogs...cold beer. Mmmm. I can but dream...
 
With all the vaccines that’s might come online with EUA’s, it’s going to bo the biggest Phase III trial in history:D

Cheers
 
Well, “this thing” is not quite accurate either, based on an overwhelming majority of medical professionals. Good job finding the outlier and trying to pass it off as mainstream.

You must be one of those guys that when 99% of the experts say one thing and 1% says something else, you either go with the 1% or make a huge fuss about “the controversy.”

Among the medical professionals who actually see and treat this virus, there is no controversy.

Since I’ll finish my vaccine series soon and will be unlikely to get seriously ill from COVID, if you want to go “live a normal life” you go right ahead. As I said before, by the end of next year we’ll pretty much have immunity one way or another. I chose to get it from the vaccine, but feel free to get yours from the ‘Rona (I actually hate it when people call it that, but I’m trying to speak your language here). Have fun rolling the dice. Why don’t you do a few flights without a preflight or getting a briefing, too. You’ll probably be fine more often than not.

Here’s some background on your “thing”:

https://www.politifact.com/factchec...barrington-herd-immunity-document-widely-dis/

RyanShort1 said:
Yeah, that's not quite accurate based on personal medical professional friends and this thing:

https://gbdeclaration.org/view-signatures/
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murphey said:
Close friends are retired nurse and hubby, who's PhD pharmacology. Talking yesterday (6+ ft apart, of course, outside) he mentioned there are some indications (that's all, indications, nothing that's been extensively studied) that metformin (one of the popular Type 2 diabetes meds) may (and I stress MAY) provide some resistance to COVID.

And since this place demands factual and reliable references, how about the Lancet?

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanhl/article/PIIS2666-7568(20)30033-7/fulltext
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That’s fascinating.

There’s been scuttlebutt about various drugs that go after white blood cells and chill them out in our Sarcoidosis group, since that’s a very common way to keep Sarcoid granulomas from forming, as they’re made up (they think) of white blood cells, but nothing that rises to the level of statistically significant. Just interesting possible side effects.

Mostly they’re cancer drugs. Stuff used to get the body to leave the chemotherapy drugs alone so they can go kill things and to stop trying to repair them... at least from my layman’s reading about them.

I doubt they’ll be prescribing them as a way to mellow Covid. Too many side effects.

I think I’ve mentioned that the Sarc group all collectively laughed when Hydroxycloroquine became politicized.

“You mean the stuff I’ve taken like candy for over a decade?”

I stayed out of that one. I have not had my decade of “fun” being on any off label / often completely wrong drugs for my Sarc. LOL.

I’m just trying to avoid any FAA disapproved ones. They’ll certainly start pumping me full of one of them after the prednisone is over with.

“We” appear to be a pretty “compliant” patient group — we’ll generally stuff anything the Docs want to try in our faces if our bodies are the ones that won’t stop producing granulomas in inconvenient places. Ha.
 
X3 Skier said:
With all the vaccines that’s might come online with EUA’s, it’s going to bo the biggest Phase III trial in history:D

Cheers
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In the first two days of administration, we had given more doses than the phase III trials.

I got my shot yesterday, they make you read and acknowledge the content of the EUA and you get a 1-800 number to call with a specified list of side effects. We do know about the allergic reactions, whether those are more or less common than with other vaccines, we dont know yet. One of the culprits is a component of the vaccine required for the (un)freezing process, but so far all of the reactions responded to timely treatment.
 
PaulS said:
Thank you Operation Warp speed.
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BioNTech/Pfizer is not a product of Warp Speed

chemgeek said:
And behind the scenes, we owe a big thank you to research scientists who determined the molecular structure of the spike protein and used that knowledge to guide the design of modified spike proteins for vaccines that efficiently elicit neutralizing antibodies. And the work that determined the molecular basis for the function of the viral RNA polymerase, a potential therapeutic target. This science is quite beautiful, and more than a little tricky. We we're lucky that the SARS and MERS outbreaks jump started much of this research many years ago, so we didn't have to start with a blank slate with Covid.
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Not to mention the obsession with mRNA by both Moderna's founder and BioNTech's married principals. They took cancer drug research and turned that into a Coronavirus vaccine in no time at all. Literally almost overnight. Huge risks from some very dedicated people.

murphey said:
Close friends are retired nurse and hubby, who's PhD pharmacology. Talking yesterday (6+ ft apart, of course, outside) he mentioned there are some indications (that's all, indications, nothing that's been extensively studied) that metformin (one of the popular Type 2 diabetes meds) may (and I stress MAY) provide some resistance to COVID.
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They also seemed to find some resistance for anabolic steroid users, for whatever reason.
 
N1120A said:
BioNTech/Pfizer is not a product of Warp Speed
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They didn't take OWS development money*. They did however take advantage of the the streamlined FDA process to get the parallel phase II/III trial approved. The pressure from HHS and the WH managed to dislodge a couple of buerocrat heads from their rear ends and find a way to perform reviews in days that would be put in a big pile otherwise (only to be moved along if the drug company is willing to pay the FDA for extra staff and rented office-space).

Not to mention the obsession with mRNA by both Moderna's founder and BioNTech's married principals. They took cancer drug research and turned that into a Coronavirus vaccine in no time at all. Literally almost overnight. Huge risks from some very dedicated people.
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BioNTech had been working with Pfizer on applying their mRNA technology to a new flu vaccine. At a biotech meeting two or three years ago, Ugur Sahin had speculated that their technology would allow for a quick deployment of a vaccine for a novel pathogen. He was right.


* they did enter into a contract for product with OWS, so they knew there was a certain payoff, even if for some reason their product was not commercially viable.
 
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Well, over 2 million doses so far. Pretty amazing. “This American Life” had a good segment on the structural biologists who figured out how to make the spike protein stable (independent of the rest of the virus) for MERS and how no one was really interested in it until January. If they hadn’t already done the groundwork, it would have have probably been several more months to years before we had working vaccine. Science is pretty awesome sometimes.

All of the adults in my household have received their first dose of the vaccine (my wife is also a physician) and other than a renewed sense of hope and excellent 5G reception we haven’t noticed any side effects.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year.
 
German pilot traces massive syringe in recent flight to honor coronavirus vaccination campaign

D-ENIG-COVID-Vaccine-Fight-Path.png


https://www.foxnews.com/world/german-pilot-massive-syringe-flight-coronavirus-vaccination-campaign
 
PlasticCigar said:
Well, over 2 million doses so far. Pretty amazing. “This American Life” had a good segment on the structural biologists who figured out how to make the spike protein stable (independent of the rest of the virus) for MERS and how no one was really interested in it until January. If they hadn’t already done the groundwork, it would have have probably been several more months to years before we had working vaccine. Science is pretty awesome sometimes.

All of the adults in my household have received their first dose of the vaccine (my wife is also a physician) and other than a renewed sense of hope and excellent 5G reception we haven’t noticed any side effects.

Hope everyone has a happy and safe New Year.
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Agree it's amazing there's a vaccine, though hope inoculations ramp up soon. 2 million after two weeks means to vaccinate 330 million will take 330 weeks or over 6 years. (I know there need to be two shots per person, but also not everyone will get the vaccine.)
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
 
Cogito said:
Agree it's amazing there's a vaccine, though hope inoculations ramp up soon. 2 million after two weeks means to vaccinate 330 million will take 330 weeks or over 6 years. (I know there need to be two shots per person, but also not everyone will get the vaccine.)
https://covid.cdc.gov/covid-data-tracker/#vaccinations
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Yup. They have to seriously ramp the Logisitcs.

They will ... but these sorts of numbers are critical to that complete SWAG I made of “a year” and someone else countered with “six months”.

It’ll be fascinating to watch the overall effort.

Also will be fascinating to watch the psychological changes along the way as the early vaccinated tire of [insert whatever societal controls here]...

Going to be quite a bit more “standard human behavior” umm, “entertainment” before it’s all over with! :)

At least we know most of social media shall remain completely insane... can always count on the commercial “free” internet services for that!

Here’s to continued interesting discussions here and utter uselessness (other than cat videos!) on most of the internet! :)

Really interested in this logistics math. This is “the hard part” after the lab work... especially when we think past the 1st World...

Odd irony: (fun for us aviation weirdos anyway...) Airplanes transporting vaccines literally racing airplanes that continue to spread it around the globe.

It wasn’t cruise ships... :)
 
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