Author Archives: Steve Mays
Vaccination free-for-all
While my vaccination story has been surprisingly smooth, not so for most folks. Part of an IM exchange with a friend in Massachusetts:
The state has just opened up vaccinations to those 65+ and he’s been trying to get his father an appointment. In the photo below he has 24 browsers open on four computers (and an iPad).
Vaccinated
Received second dose of vaccine (Pfizer) this morning so I guess I’m as vaccinated as I can be for now. Vaccinated. The word has taken on something of a magical quality (in my head). In a few weeks my immune system will have created enough antibodies (another word with big mojo) to keep me from getting sick or dead from the virus.
I feel like the kid who has been given a super power but can’t think of anything to do with it. “Go inside a grocery store” doesn’t seem very ambitious but I’m looking forward to it. And sitting in the same room with a (vaccinated) friend.
The Big Payoff will come from Barb spending time with friends (most of whom have been vaccinated) without worrying about infecting me with the plague.
I’m aware posts like this are a bit like “Here’s a photo of me with my new Lamborghini,” but perhaps it will encourage someone to get vaccinated that was reluctant to do so.
“John Mays for Mayor”
In 1971 my pop ran for the office of mayor in the small town where we lived. He was 45 years old at the time. Not sure why he wanted to be mayor. He’d served on the city council for six years and must have found that satisfying or interesting (or something). According to his answers to a series of candidate questions in the local paper, he left radio in 1964 to take a job doing public relations for the local light and water utility. Held that position for three years.
Even with the positive name recognition that comes from being on the radio in a small town, he lost the race by 56 votes. A day or two after the election, he put a concession ad in the local paper.
Recent events (on the national level) make my pop’s little ad all the more… gracious? After losing the race, he stayed in radio for another dozen or so years. And then ran for County Assessor (and won)! My mom was in poor health and I think he was looking for a more reliable income than sales commissions from selling radio ads.
John must have had more of an interest in politics than I remembered. Six years on city council; a run for mayor; and a stint as Dunklin County Assessor. I recall him saying he spent “33 years in radio” but now I’m thinking he meant “a span of 33 years.”
“I Miss My Mom”
“She wasn’t always like this,” Sam said. “It just keeps getting worse.”
Children of QAnon believers are desperately trying to deradicalize their parents. Here’s what it’s like to lose the person who raised you to a far-right cult.
“Though she didn’t used to be very political, she now fears the president is a pedophile who stole the election. She’s scared of radiation from the 5G towers in her neighborhood and, as a white woman, she told her son, she’s afraid of being harmed by Black Lives Matter protesters — a movement she once supported. She worries that Sam’s brother and sister are being “indoctrinated” at their public high school and wants to move them to a Catholic one. She’s also refusing to get them immunized against COVID-19 as false rumors swirl that the vaccine contains a secret location-tracking microchip. (She was initially terrified of the virus but now considers the lockdowns an affront to her freedoms.)”
I think this would be worse than losing a parent to a fatal illness.
“Pfizer’s vaccine extremely effective in the real world”
Israeli study finds 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 cases with Pfizer vaccine
“Israel’s largest healthcare provider on Sunday reported a 94% drop in symptomatic COVID-19 infections among 600,000 people who received two doses of the Pfizer’s vaccine in the country’s biggest study to date.
Health maintenance organization (HMO) Clalit, which covers more than half of all Israelis, said the same group was also 92% less likely to develop severe illness from the virus.
The comparison was against a group of the same size, with matching medical histories, who had not received the vaccine.
“It shows unequivocally that Pfizer’s coronavirus vaccine is extremely effective in the real world a week after the second dose, just as it was found to be in the clinical study,” said Ran Balicer, Clalit’s chief innovation officer.
He added that the data indicates the Pfizer vaccine, which was developed in partnership with Germany’s BioNTech, is even more effective two weeks or more after the second shot.”
“I could be one of the diers.”
Inside the Trump White House After His COVID-19 Diagnosis. Olivia Nuzzi article in New York Magazine. For those of us wondering what sort of drugs Trump might have been on following his brief stay at Walter Reed…
“He’s on the sort of drugs you’d see with a Tour de France rider in the mid-’90s!” Another way to say this, the former White House official said, was that the president is “hopped up on more drugs than a Belgian racing pigeon.”
But the money quote that will stick with me is from Trump’s niece, Mary Trump:
“The president is best understood as a self-unaware Tin Man, abandoned as a small child by his sick mother and rejected by his sociopath father until he became useful to him, whose endless search for love and approval plays out as mental warfare on the Free World he improbably represents. “In order to deal with the terror and the loneliness he experienced, he developed these defense mechanisms that essentially made him unlovable,” Mary said. “Over time, they hardened into character traits that my grandfather came to value. When you’re somebody who craves love but doesn’t understand what it means — he just knows he misses it and needs it, but he’ll never have it because he’s somebody nobody loves — that’s fucking tragic.“
Immunity
Barb got her second COVID vaccination (Pfizer) this afternoon. I’ve been trying to think of a more anticipated event in the 40+ years we’ve been together. Our wedding was a big deal but I think we were both more excited about the after-party. But that wasn’t a life-or-death moment. Given our age and other factors, getting COVID could put us in the hospital and/or kill us. So we hunkered down. Way down. Rarely indoors away from home. Always wearing masks. Avoiding friends and family.
That last part has been really hard on Barb. She never complained but it was really hard on her not to spend time with her sisters and brothers, nieces and nephews, and all the “littles.” And her countless friends. But she did it. She did it for the people she loves and cares about and she did it because she loves life and wants hers back without the fear of a deadly virus putting her on a ventilator and maybe leaving her crippled for life.
For a long time the idea of an effective vaccine was just a tiny speck of light at the end of an endless, very dark tunnel. But the scientists came through and gave us a couple (so far) of vaccines. And good ones, that will keep us from getting really sick and winding up in the hospital. And the wait began.
As a former nurse, Barb appreciated the need for health care workers to get vaccinated first. And people in nursing homes. You know the story. Next in line were people over the age of 65 and those with health conditions that put them at higher risk from the virus. Hey, that’s us! So we put our names on the lists and waited for the call and checked our email.
Most of Barb’s friends have been vaccinated and some of her family. And in a week or so, this second shot will do its thing with/to her immune system and she can slowly and carefully take her life back. It’ll still be masks and social distancing (god, how I hate that term). She’ll be able sit indoors with her (vaccinated) sister and talk and plan their trips to Florida. She can hang out with her pals (the vaccinated ones) in the garden club. She can be with people besides me (and our two dogs). Truly, I can’t imagine what this has been like for her.
The vaccine has taken on an almost magical aura. A few drops of a colorless liquid from a tiny vial that changes… everything. Sure, there will be “variants” and “mutations” and the guys in lab will have to find ways to tweak the vaccines. And they will. But today… today Barb has as much protection as modern medicine can provide. And I have never been more grateful.
The Coming Technology Boom
“Politics is grim but science is working”
I’ve long believed technology would be our salvation. We’re not going to become better, more enlightened people. But our tech will get better and better, despite the efforts to “make America great again.” This NYT op-ed reinforced that (and made me feel good). Like all human progress, this will come with difficulties:
“What happens to people who work on ranches if labs take a significant share of the market? The political difficulties will be complicated by the fact that the people who will profit from these high-tech industries tend to live in the highly educated blue parts of the country, while the old industry workers who would be displaced tend to live in the less educated red parts.”
Like your mom told you: Study hard and stay in school.
Vaccine Porn
Google tells me there is a more common usage for this term but I am appropriating it to describe the tables below.
