“The first step is to tone down the prophecies of doom and switch from panic mode to bewilderment. Panic is a form of hubris. It comes from the smug feeling that one knows exactly where the world is heading: down. Bewilderment is more humble and therefore more clear-sighted. Do you feel like running down the street crying “The apocalypse is upon us”? Try telling yourself, “No, it’s not that.Truth is, I just don’t understand what’s going on in the world.”
— 21 Lessons for the 21st Century (2018)
(AP) “The scientist who won the race to deliver the first widely used coronavirus vaccine says people can rest assured the shots are safe, and the technology behind it will soon be used to fight another global scourge — cancer.
The vaccines made by BioNTech-Pfizer and U.S. rival Moderna uses messenger RNA, or mRNA, to carry instructions into the human body for making proteins that prime it to attack a specific virus. The same principle can be applied to get the immune system to take on tumors.
“We have several different cancer vaccines based on mRNA,” said Tureci, who is BioNTech’s chief medical officer.
Asked when such a therapy might be available, Tureci said “that’s very difficult to predict in innovative development. But we expect that within only a couple of years, we will also have our vaccines (against) cancer at a place where we can offer them to people.”
Before you say, impossible, consider that the best scientific minds in the world were certain it was impossible to create a COVID-19 vaccine in less than a year.
Yesterday I played ping pong with my friend John for the first time in more than a year. Before the pandemic we’d get together every couple of weeks in his basement. John is good enough to call it table tennis but it will always be ping pong for me.
We chat as we play and boy was I ready to interact with another human. John and his wife, Peggy, have both been vaccinated for COVID (as have I) so we felt safe as we played and talked. It will be a while (never?) before I take such simple pleasure for granted.
A cast of “Trump, the Buddha of Knowing of the Western Paradise,” by the Chinese sculptor Hong Jinshi.
“A furniture maker and decorator in China created a stir — and inspired copycats — by casting a ceramic sculpture of the former president in a meditative pose that evokes the Buddha. Mr. Hong’s sculpture reflects an abiding cultural fascination with Mr. Trump in China that began with his election. Many admired his brash style, his family’s business ties to China and even his early courtship of China’s leader, Xi Jinping, whom he called “an incredible guy.” (New York Times)