“I Miss My Mom”

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“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”

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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.”

Reuters

“I could be one of the diers.”

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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

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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

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“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.

What became of Trump’s election dead-enders

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“Some of his most hardcore associates and advisers, who egged Trump on and helped fuel his most dangerous or destructive attempts to subvert American democracy, aren’t doing so well. In the three months since the election was called for Joe Biden, most of the lawyers and MAGA enthusiasts who decided to play a consequential role in the ex-president’s efforts to overturn the Democratic nominee’s 2020 win (efforts that led directly to the Jan. 6 mob violence), have had their jobs or businesses shredded, their personal lives shaken, or their reputations irrevocably tarnished—all while Trump’s been relaxing and playing his rounds of golf in the Sunshine State.”

Daily Beast

Facebook to remove false vaccine claims

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“Facebook said on Monday that it plans to remove posts with erroneous claims about vaccines from across its platform, including taking down assertions that vaccines cause autism or that it is safer for people to contract Covid-19 than to receive the vaccinations. […] Monday’s move goes further by targeting unpaid posts to the site and particularly Facebook pages and groups. Instead of targeting only misinformation around Covid vaccines, the update encompasses false claims around all vaccines. Facebook said it consulted with the World Health Organization and other leading health institutes to determine a list of false or misleading claims around Covid and vaccines in general.”

I’ll believe it when I see it. Of course, I won’t see it but you know what I mean.

“AirPods!”

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During the early days of the pandemic, as more and more people began showing up on TV via Zoom et al, I would shout out to Barb, “AIRPODS!” That quickly became annoying so I would whisper, “AirPods.” Now I just mouth the words.

I have mine in so frequently I’ve stopped noticing them (they fit my ears perfectly). Arguments about audio quality aside, they have changed my perception of music. It seems to be coming from inside my head, rather than through my ears.

Apple Music playlists (piano solos and cello solos) have become the the background for my awareness, making me noticeably more relaxed and peaceful.