I’m guessing FaceTime isn’t the mode of communication for a lot of these folks, and clearly my individual choice to get or not get a booster isn’t going to have a lot of impact on global or local vaccine supply. Still, what really irks me about this tweet is that there are hundreds of thousands of doses expiring in the South right now and nobody’s doing anything about it. A booster shot isn’t wasted since it might keep someone alive or out of a hospital bed. Throwing away vaccine is a complete waste. I realize you can’t just send shots a week from expiring to Ghana or Indonesia and expect them to be administered, but I don’t even see an attempt being made to save those doses.
On a somewhat related note, Kathy Hochul just gave her inaugural address as the first female Governor of New York — 15 minutes! Gotta love it. We’re going to have a statewide mask mandate in schools, school staff needs to be vaccinated or take a weekly COVID test, testing will be ramped up around schools, and she promised more aggressive vaccination policies. I hope my vaccine passport is going to get a workout in the next few weeks. The best way to stop wasting shots is to get them into arms. At this point in the pandemic, the best way to get shots into arms is to mandate vaccination.
(This tweet reminds me of when my Dad tried to guilt me into eating something I didn’t like by mentioning starving children in Africa. I told him to mail my food to them.)
raven
RIP Charlie Watts
chopper
“if you don’t eat your damn vegetables i’m going to make you facetime a starving kid in china”
Matt McIrvin
This is an example of how pointless it is to attack things that should be policy decisions through individual shaming. I personally think vaccinating the world is more important than giving everyone a booster shot, unless there’s really good evidence that they medically need it (the elderly, the immunocompromised). But if my doctor tells me I should get a booster, I’m not going to say “no, Doc, consider Africa”; that’s probably not going to send my dose there.
The Dangerman
Mom (a long time ago): “Eat your Brussels sprouts, dear; there are starving people in India”.
Me (a long time ago*): “I’ll pay for the box and postage”.
The good Doctor should STFU; last thing we need is for the idiots to not get the shot, thinking it’s going to someplace else needed more. Don’t give them any excuses.
*I love BS now, along with about every kind of food (maybe not crickets; FTS)
ETA: Chopper got there first and better
Chetan Murthy
Perhaps a different response is: “healthy people should donate 5x the cost of the booster shot to covax” ?
[ok, I don’t know what the multiplier is, but there’s some multiplier (or range, based on income) that should work.]
Matt McIrvin
I do think this is a good reason not to lie your way to a booster shot that it hasn’t been demonstrated you need, or to jump the line ahead of schedule. The CDC says I’m supposed to get mine in January; I won’t do it earlier unless that recommendation changes.
Betty Cracker
Read an article recently on what’s happening in Israel that makes me think the US and other rich countries won’t undertake a project to vaccinate the world anytime soon. We may be too busy repeatedly vaccinating responsible people to offset the more aggressive virus mutations that our homegrown plague rats are propagating because freedom.
Soprano2
I am just done with the scolding of people in the U.S. for getting vaccinated for Covid. We had (and in many places still have) raging, out of control Covid going on. We absolutely have a right to get vaccinated to try to stop the spread of Covid here. And yes, they aren’t shaming people in the South for letting vaccines expire; instead, they’re shaming vulnerable people who feel they need a 3rd shot to be protected from Covid. They should do something productive, like trying to get people in places like Missouri and Alabama and Florida and Texas to get vaccinated!
Tom Levenson
Deleted because I decided I overshared.
TL:DR The good doc is in need of a full-body enema.
Jerry
christ, what an asshole. He’s trying to shame the people who are vaccinated, but not the assholes who are avoiding it for woo reasons?
smith
@Chetan Murthy: Is money the hangup in vaccinating the rest of the world? If it were, the US could just donate a few billion dollars and be done with it. My impression is the the supply is limited because of such high demand, and rich countries, that can afford to pay more, are scooping up the vaccines that there are.
opiejeanne
THANK YOU! I had this discussion just recently with someone who was fussing about just exporting the vaccines to places in terrible need, and not recommend/encourage the booster shot. I pointed out what you did, that we can’t just send the expiring doses to other countries. (It’s criminal how many doses are being wasted in red states).
I’m not going to feel guilty about getting the booster IF my doctor says I should. I’m 71 and have diabetes but am fairly healthy.
I do think we need to ramp up the production so more vaccine can be distributed where people need it, which is a separate issue and something .
SpaceUnit
Wonder if they could convert the tranquilizer dart guns they use in the TV nature programs to shoot vaccine darts. Then announce a Trump rally.
Matt McIrvin
@Betty Cracker: The thing about the Israeli situation is that it really hinges on the difference between cases and severe disease. The existing COVID vaccines seem to drop severely in effectiveness against COVID cases, that is, infection that will show up on a PCR test, after only a few months–they don’t provide strong sterilizing immunity. But the T- and B-cell immunity that provides long-term protection against severe illness seems to last much longer than that.
So for most people, booster shots become a question of whether we care about making sure nobody gets an unpleasant flu-like illness and has to isolate, whereas initial vaccination is a question of life and death.
oldster
@Matt McIrvin:
“how pointless it is to attack things that should be policy decisions through individual shaming”
Amen times 3. And times 100 when it comes to global warming.
We’ve got a whole generation of kids who are freaked out over global warming — justifiably so! — but think that the solution is for each of them to become vegan, not to fly on airplanes, etc. etc. They are going to live cramped, guilt-ridden lives, and not accomplish what they want anyhow. Because their eating less chicken is not going to reduce the amount of coal being burned in India.
No: the solution is to commit yourself to electing governments that will do the right thing about global warming. Which in turn means, governments that will negotiate skillfully on the international landscape to create global consensus to do the right thing.
That’s worth some hard work! That’s worth some personal sacrifice! And after you have helped elect good democrats and pressed them on global warming, then kick back and eat a chicken. Because, your personal life-style choices don’t mean a hill of beans in this global crisis, for good or for bad. We’re going to save the world via international cooperation, or not at all.
Dorothy A. Winsor
@Jerry: This plus a thousand!!!
Roger Moore
@The Dangerman:
FWIW, your growing taste for Brussels sprouts may not be primarily due to a more refined palate. Apparently they’ve done a lot of selective breeding in the past few decades to make them less bitter.
Chetan Murthy
@smith:
To my mind, this is the same as saying “money is the problem”. I mean, there is a price at which vaccine doses would flow to poorer countries — it’s just higher than they’re able to pay, or covax is able to pay.
germy
https://saratogaspringspolitics.com/2021/08/23/saratoga-county-republican-party-goes-all-in-on-alt-right-conspiracy-myths/
Update: The event has been cancelled.
Chetan Murthy
@Soprano2: Yes, this. And furthermore, if everybody had gotten their damn vaxx when they were supposed to, kept their damn masks on like they were supposed to, we wouldn’t have this massive surge, and that would mean that vulnerable people could, in fact, defer booster shots. You only need booster shots *imminently* if you have an outbreak, after all.
Concretely, am I gonna let my mom not get her booster? Fat chance o’ that. That said, just as with the original vaxx, I’m not gonna break the rules to jump the line.
dr. bloor
Can’t tell if Genius here missed the unit on effective public messaging at MPH school, or it was simply washed away by his Asshole Bedside Manner rotation in med school.
Earl
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think it’s a price problem, it’s a manufacturing capacity problem. Even the EU is bringing up new sites and lines.
https://www.reuters.com/world/europe/eu-okays-increase-mrna-covid-19-vaccines-manufacturing-capacity-2021-08-24
ps — I’ve worked on an fda class 3. There was a very long cert and standup process for manufacturing lines; I assume drugs are similar.
Craigie
My Dad told me that children were starving in China, so I should eat up. I asked him to name a few.
That was not a good day for either of us.
jl
My problem is the with artificial constraints on the supply of effective vaccines for the globe AND boosters, AND new modified vaccines for delta. From what I read from experts I respect, there is a real controversy regarding whether boosters for all will do much good compared to getting more people first time vaccination protection. And I read a news blurb that Fauci backed off apparent CDC recommendation (by press release, not ‘The Data And The Science’ it talks about) for boosters for all soon.
I think the US should be more aggressive about increasing supply of all effective vaccines. ‘Waive the patents’ is a mere slogan, and there are serious constraints. The fever dreams of some yelling ‘waive the patents’ are unrealistic. But we need to do more, and there are many ways to do more. One way is a global regulated market, which can be used as both a carrot and stick to get companies on board to get their share of reduced but still handsome excess profits. That will be ugly, since I don’t think Pfizer or Moderna meet the criteria for the strong patent protections that they seem to be getting. But we can get the money back in the future, if there is political will to do so. We can’t get the lives back, we can’t get the ruined livelihoods and personal futures back, and we can’t get probably future variants from uncontrolled spread in large parts of the globe back into the bottle.
Roger Moore
@Matt McIrvin:
With COVID, though, there’s the additional question of asymptomatic carriers and how much the vaccine reduces the rate of transmission. It’s a big problem if vaccinated people can still be effective asymptomatic carriers, since we still rely heavily on symptoms to decide who to test and whether they need to isolate. If that’s the case- and I don’t know if we have enough data to be confident either way- we probably need to keep giving people boosters if we ever want to reach herd immunity.
Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix
@germy: Elise is a bit like JD Vance. Not the real thing, so she has to stoop lower to prove her bona fides.
smith
@Chetan Murthy: I don’t think trying to outbid rich countries would be nearly so effective as doing everything possible to ramp up supplies. Of course, that argues for putting extra money toward building more manufacturing capacity, which seems like a good idea to me. I’m sure the drug companies are doing that, but also we could possibly push in that direction rather than leaving it up to them how to spend their profits. (This may all be going on behind the scenes — I don’t know. But it seems more responsive to the problem than small individual donations to COVAX)
Mary G
I felt guilty about my first shot, but there’s research that I specifically need the third and I’m thrilled to be getting it tomorrow. But this needs to be a get everyone in the lifeboats situation. It’s no good if all the rich countries get shots while COVID is busy inventing an Omicron variant in Africa or South America that is impervious to the current vaccines.
When the pandemic started doctors were talking in awed tones about how scary and evil the virus is and that’s still true today.
Roger Moore
@Chetan Murthy:
100%. To vaccinate the whole world in a hurry, we’d need enough production capacity to produce more than 10 billion doses per year. But what would happen to that capacity when we’re done vaccinating everyone? Nobody wants to spend what it would cost to build those production facilities only to see them go idle in a year or two.
ETA: OK, so maybe some people would be willing to spend that money, but building out that much capacity adds a lot to the cost.
opiejeanne
@Craigie: Yes. I’m surprised I didn’t get smacked for being sassy when I said they should send the liver on my plate to China.
Gack! I can still taste that stuff.
geg6
Fuck this guy. With all the vaccines going to waste around the country because some dipshits think refusing to vax somehow hurts me more than it hurts them and theirs, I really don’t want to hear fucking lectures from anyone who isn’t shaming those assholes.
And just because he’s such a self-righteous git, I am happy to announce that my sister and her husband have both qualified for and gotten their third doses. And I couldn’t be happier about it.
germy
@Four Seasons Total Landscaping mistermix:
I like how they blamed covid for the cancellation.
Redshift
@opiejeanne:
Hmm, that makes me wonder – can we supply most of the booster shots with doses from red states that would otherwise be wasted? That seems possible, and would enable the country to address both needs with less waste and more doses going to the rest of the world simultaneously.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: Herd immunity is a lost cause, it will never happen. COVID is with us in some form permanently and everyone reading this will probably get infected sooner or later… though many may get such mild cases that they never realize it.
So where are we? Back to “flatten the curve”, basically. I think it’s unrealistic to ask everyone to lock down eternally but we may keep having to mask up for a seasonal wave every so often forever. And COVID is probably never going to be as fearsome as it was in 2020-21, with a population who are entirely either vaccinated, or have prior infections, or both.
dr. bloor
@germy: Saratoga Springs –>Elks Club in Wilton is the political equivalent of water finding its level.
realbtl
@raven: Probably needs its own thread but RIP. He was the true heart of the sound.
sab
Covid outbreak on my dad’s floor of his nursing home. Last week one case, now announced “several cases” and a further announcement not to call the head nurse because she is out with a family crisis. Lockdown until no new cases so we can’t visit.
The residents are pretty much vaccinated, but it hasn’t been mandated for staff, although strongly encouraged. Maybe today’s Pfizer approval will change that.
jl
What gives the boosters a smell is that it’s been clear for quite a while from the sleazy Pfizer CEO that he wants maximum profits from a nice line of business selling boosters to rich countries. He wants to make bank asap on the vaccine with patent protection, even though the company got a guaranteed no risk market for the first batches of production. And Pfizer got some special private meetings with FDA. Even if the FDA held the meetings just to tell the Pfizer CEO to go eff off in private, it leaves a suspicion.
Moderna is taking a longer view by setting up what is essentially its own private patent pool, which will expand production somewhat in near term, but over longer term can reduce competition if Moderna can win market share over time.
Clinical people who know pharma R&D well tell me those strategies make sense given the two companies’ relative stake in mRNA technology over the long term.
They seem to be the best vaccines, and need to get more doses produced. The sweet sweet deals they got that will be difficult to back out of is another legacy of Trump foolery.
Edit: and Gates’ ignorant and incompetent, and perhaps corrupt, influence on global vaccine supply arrangements. His wise advice was much more concerned about preserving current overly strong patent and copyright protections exactly as strong as they are now, in the middle of dire global health emergency, than a realistic and competent understanding of practical problems in increasing production, and solving effect of patents on supply.
Edmund Dantes
I never said the “send my food to X place”. My variation, which ended the attempt at any more, was “how does my eating (food dish) here help the starving kid?”
Another Scott
C-Span says the House passed the rules for the $3.5T reconciliation plan. No details on the screen.
They’re right now starting the debate on HR4 (John Lewis voting rights act).
Cheers,
Scott.
Redshift
@Roger Moore: i dunno, I remember hearing for years about vaccines getting little interest from pharma companies because they’re not as profitable as ongoing treatments. With the other mRNA vaccines like the HIV vaccine in the pipeline, maybe creating a lot of excess capacity would mean the vaccines we’ve already needed would actually be produced in quantity.
opiejeanne
@Redshift: I’m in a blue state and I know that some doses have expired here, but not in anything like the numbers we see in Mississippi and other nearby states. I’m not sure of the numbers here but the demand for boosters will be greater than the excess supply.
If we can do what you suggest, a lot of people who need that booster will be served.
opiejeanne
@sab: That’s terrible. I hope your dad will be ok.
And yes, I hope the FDA approval does more than encourage them to get vaccinated.
smith
This is a problem when pandemic response depends so heavily on private companies. Covid is the third serious novel coronavirus to emerge in the past 20 years. To a large extent, we dodged a bullet with the first two. If we are going to have to deal with potentially pandemic-causing novel viruses every few years, we should start treating pandemic preparedness as a national security and national defense problem, and put the same kind of resources into it as we do preparing for war.
Baud
@Another Scott:
?
opiejeanne
@Edmund Dantes: The answer was, “It doesn’t. You should be grateful to have ANY food. Now eat your gruel and shaddap.”
JMG
My parents had a good system when my two brothers and I were little. We each were allowed to pick three foods we didn’t like and were allowed not to eat them, but we had to eat everything else. You could change one, two or all of your choices on your birthday. This was good as we all picked lima beans the first year, then realized that since Dad didn’t like them either, they were never served.
jl
@smith: It’s long been known that over reliance on private provision of vaccines for prevention of infectious disease is very inefficient. The private gains to the companies with any patent protections at all are dwarfed by the social costs of the resulting reduction in supply. And over the long term, as covid becomes more controllable, and due to natural evolution of human immune system after vaccine protection, subsequent surges produce milder disease, covid vaccines will become much more like vaccines for other infectious diseases: a high risk low profit line of business. Edit: and even worse when a vaccine goes generic.
Over the long term, the idea that patent protections and allowing industry profit motive to provide an adequate supply and socially optimal innovation is an illusion. Plenty of theoretical and empirical evidence to support this going back decades.
A rare situation in economics where an idea doesn’t work in theory and it doesn’t work in reality either.
I have references, but no time now. If anyone whines for them, check back on this thread tomorrow.
germy
We can use them for ice skating between pandemics.
Just One More Canuck
@opiejeanne: my dog was well fed on liver (aka burnt shoe leather) nights in our house. There wasnt enough ketchup in the world to make that edible
danielx
@raven:
Was discussing the passing of Charlie Watts with spousal unit earlier – one more piece of my misspent youth gone. Daughter unit overhears conversation and asks who is Charlie Watts?
I say he was the drummer for the Rolling Stones. Never heard of him, says she.
I ask, you do know of the Rolling Stones, world’s greatest rock and roll band, right? Nope, she says, don’t know them.
Where did I go wrong? How did I fail her?
jl
@germy: We can use them for vaccines for other diseases, and a number of drugs, for which there is currently, and before covid, a dangerous undersupply.
Global health wasn’t doing all that great before covid. Life expectancy across the board of different demographics in the US fell for several years starting in 2014, and wasn’t back to its previous level on the eve of the covid pandemic. (Edit: which makes the US sucky response to covid more understandable. We didn’t give a shit about mass premature death then, why would we now?)
Covid should be wake up call that the US, and global, health system sucks. A few high income countries not named the US have made good progress in building good sustainable systems. But then there is the rest of the world, and the US too.
VeniceRiley
Famous last words are famous.
https://patch.com/california/orange-county/orange-county-wife-asks-public-get-vaccinated-after-husband-dies-covid
Baud
Calling Georgian Juicers.
Steeplejack
@dr. bloor:
ABM, for sure.
germy
I agree completely.
MoCaAce
Quoted for Truth.
Four months after full vaccination I am one week into a breakthrough case. Mild but the sinus issues are unpleasant. Mrs. Ace on the other hand is 7 months post vax and still tests negative despite being housed with my infectious self. Is there something wrong with my immune system compared too hers? All I know is I’m getting the booster as soon as the doctor says go!
danielx
@The Dangerman:
I sat at the dinner table once for three hours in a battle of wills when my misguided parents tried to force me to eat Brussels sprouts, which to this day I cannot tolerate.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@germy: Russia shows there is a problem with government threw utter paranoia.
opiejeanne
@danielx: She’s heard their music, it’s nearly inescapable.
You only failed her if you never played any of their music for her, but you still have time to make up for this sin.
Benw
He should have to facetime his own butt every time he tweets.
WaterGirl
@Baud: Fuck.
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
It’s actually more complicated that that. Every new case is an opportunity for a new, more serious variant. That makes the importance of not being infected far more important than your characterization of it as simply ” an unpleasant flu-like illness.”
The CDC has also done a poor job of communicating this, unless I’ve missed some key announcements. But what avoiding infection altogether means is a return, for everyone including the vaccinated, to the most stringent measures we’ve ever had for COVID-19, though even they might not be enough.
Americans, in general, probably lack the self-discipline to adhere to such measures for any extended period of time, but there is no question that it is vastly easier for some to conform than for others. Jobs, school age kids, financial health are but a few of the complicating factors.
Enhanced Voting Techniques
@oldster: Obama was talking about that. He found it quite irritating the press would demand him personally plant trees to stop global warming rather than get policies and international agreements.
opiejeanne
@VeniceRiley: I think being 6′ 9″ is a pre-existing condition.
dr. bloor
@WaterGirl: Interestingly, he’s not been particularly welcomed to the fray by Republicans.
jl
@germy: Thanks. Ebola is back, and that virus is showing it still has some tricks up its sleeves just like covid. We need a lot more production of the very effective vaccine for that disease.
We need to move away from live attenuated polio vaccine (OPV) to have a good chance at eradicating polio from the globe. Right now we are forced to use OPV for remaining places with polio. But OPV produces circulation of attenuated live virus. So in places where OPV is main vaccine, we are trading off high prevalence of disease in young versus rarer but continuing cases in older adults.
We need better vaccines for whooping cough, problems with some recent ones are causing serious resurgences in infants and older adults while keeping it at record lows in people in between.
Edit: I’ll stop with that, but there is more… a lot more…
As I said, the global health system sucks, except for big corporations who are making bank.
Even solely in terms of covid, there are a number of reliable and mutually consistent estimates that on current path, and current global vaccination schedule, the pandemic will cost the globe $5 to $10 trillion going forward.
An aggressive campaign to ramp up production for a more rapid mass global vaccination program should cost a few hundred billion. A bargain.
Also note that many of the recent price hikes and supply shortages in the US and high income countries, which could foul up economic policy here due to political BS, are due to covid surges in global production hubs.
piratedan
seen over at cnn.com
https://www.cnn.com/2021/08/24/politics/house-democrats-budget-resolution/index.html
it’s the 3.5T package, which is the first shoe to drop towards getting the safety net repaired and serious public infrastructure in place
The Moar You Know
I’m getting my booster. Sorry, unvaccinated old person in Asia, South America or Africa. At least I’m not throwing mine away, like everyone in the Confederacy.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands:
We would have to do this forever. For the rest of our lives. Everyone under house arrest, without end.
Do you think that’s going to happen?
debbie
@Jerry:
What else can unite us, other than our shame? //
Humdog
Firm rule of “finish your plate” in my childhood didn’t bother bringing up starving kids elsewhere, simply do as your told.
My little sister hated oatmeal. Told neither of us could leave the table until both finished oatmeal. Sister ate some and promptly threw it right back up in the bowl. She was excused but I still had to finish sitting next to a bowl of oatmeal barf!
The Moar You Know
@Matt McIrvin: Since infection does not confer immunity – you can refer to the many folks who got it twice, in some case three times, nobody’s survived four – then yeah, masks and boosters for the rest of our lives.
WaterGirl
@dr. bloor: Huh. I was guessing he might not be right-wing crazy enough for them. But no, he has apparently been violent with his wife in the past – which I feel certain they would have no problem with – except for the fact that it might hurt his chances.
That makes me feel better, thanks.
Cheryl from Maryland
@JMG: Your parents were geniuses.
TriassicSands
@Redshift:
Now that the Pfizer vaccine has been fully approved and the Moderna’s is close behind, we could simply re-direct a significant percentage of vaccine doses from red states to overses distribution. The shortage would provide the refusers with a new excuse — lack of availabiluty. That should make them happy.
However, what seems to be frequently (or always) ignored is the usability of the mRNA ¹ vaccines in poorer countries. Do they have the refrigeration capability they need to properly store the vaccines, and if not, do they have the power infrastructure to support such refrigeration units if they were donated? There is no point in sending vaccine doses to locations where they will expire before they can be put into actual arms.
¹ Which represent the bulk of the U.S. supply.
Baud
@piratedan:
Nice.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands: …I also get the distinct impression that the more people know about immunology/vaccinology and COVID in particular, the less possible they think it is that we’ll get a variant that just accomplishes complete immune escape. The doomsday-variant scenarios are coming from less knowledgeable writers. It’s quite possible that we end up in a Red Queen’s race to pump out revised vaccine versions every year. But they don’t seem to think any of them will simply cut through existing immunity like a hot knife through butter.
Delta isn’t even very tricky about this–it just brute-forces it by reproducing very fast.
trollhattan
@Enhanced Voting Techniques: I always like “Al Gore flew to the conference on a plane so global warming is false!”
chopper
@opiejeanne:
the response i got was “cause if that kid were here he’d kick your ass for throwing food away”.
of course, that led to “if he’s starving, then i would kick his ass”
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
The history of infectious diseases says that is clearly untrue.
Interesting wording. I’ve never felt like I was under house arrest during the pandemic. But that is how Republicans would characterize it. But, whatever the characterization, there is no reason to believe that would be necessary. Eventually, there would be so few cases and transmission so unlikely that new variants would hit a dead end. That, after all, is what we’ve supposedly been aiming for since the pandemic began. But the lack of discipline and responsibility has kept things going.
trollhattan
@The Moar You Know: If they say “go” on #3 I’m getting #3.
When getting #1 I pondered whether I might be receiving it instead of somebody who was more at risk (they were fiddling with the eligibility tiers hourly) but now I simply want a better firewall against the stubborn.
What I actually expect are the mRNA makers to tweak the designs specific to delta and release that as a booster. But that’s going to take time and during the lull there could be an even more successful variation.
SiubhanDuinne
@VeniceRiley:
There has been a spate of these kinds of stories recently. I cannot muster even the tiniest whisker of sympathy at this point.
CaseyL
@Craigie:
@opiejeanne:
I was another “box it up and send it to them” kid.
Kind of funny how many kids independently came up with “send it to them” or “name two” in response to those parental exhortations!
rikyrah
I am actually interested in getting the booster shot. That shot isn’t going to waste.
Now, the shots that are going to waste, I have long thought they should be on the way to countries in this hemisphere, beginning with Mexico and the Caribbean
I honestly do believe that our government should have already set up channels with Mexico and the Caribbean, telling them that we will get them doses that will expire in 7-10 days. So, we can just funnel those doses to them.
jl
@TriassicSands: Novavax very probably has a great vaccine, final trial results which include variants, indicate as good or better than Moderna or Pfizer. But Novavax is having trouble getting production facilities ready. I’m not sure why they can’t get assistance for that. Eventually will be easier to produce and distribute
Initial trial results for Medicago are very promising. That one, you grow in some kind of weed related to tobacco in greenhouses. I think it will also be far easier to distribute than current vaccines.
Should be more resources to get Novavax up and running asap, and speed research on Medicago vaccine. But, gosh golly, the way things are, with BS US historically very extreme experiment in hyper strong IP protection for the biggest riches corporations, it’s probably just impossible and unimaginable
rikyrah
@Baud:
another Alan Keyes situation.
Tony Gerace
@smith: Yes, I agree that the good doctor should STFU about trying to shame the Americans who have done the right thing by getting vaccinated, and aim his intellectual firepower at the anti-vaxxer idiots (who wouldn’t listen to him anyway). However, I am legitimately confused about the point that you raise. Can the availability of vaccines be increased by just throwing money at the problem? Or are there other constraints that would have to be overcome? I’ve seen no coverage of this question by our esteemed media. For example, I have in-laws in Japan — a “wealthy” country — and there are real vaccine shortages there. How come? I dunno.
Ken
@rikyrah: I’m OK if runs as the Republican and gets 27% of the vote against Warnock.
Baud
@rikyrah:
Alan Keyes didn’t have a Hesiman.
rikyrah
@Betty Cracker:
Sad, but true.
rikyrah
@Baud:
Still the same theory – all Black people look alike, and so, all we have to do is throw in some Black guy from another state.
TriassicSands
@Matt McIrvin:
i’d simply quote (more or less) Dr. Fauci who warns of a new variant as bad or worse than the delta. Two different variants could avoid different vaccine elements and conceivably be worse than a single dangerous variant. No doomsday variant is needed to make matters worse.
Remember, people will keep being infected and dying while researchers develop and test new vaccines or modifications. The time may be greatly reduced for development, but the testing and trials still have to be conducted.
Tony Gerace
@rikyrah: Yes, the government should do that. Of course, about 35% of Americans (the Real Americans) just want non-white people to suffer and die, so doing that would be “controversial”.
WaterGirl
Biden speaking now. Finally! One post over, for anyone who is interested.
rikyrah
@Tony Gerace:
I was wondering that, considering the bad vaccination scenario as they approached the Olympics. It was explained to me how the Japanese government made things more difficult for themselves with regards to vaccines.
I will never get past JAPAN being as unprepared, COVID vaccine-wise, as they were.
jl
@The Moar You Know: Infection alone may not produce long lasting immunity. Evidence growing that infection plus vaccination produces very strong immunity.
Evidence is growing that vaccination changes the course of the evolution of immunity to covid over time to milder disease and if boosters are needed, probably at longer and longer intervals, years instead of months. It does so in ways similar to that for other dangerous viruses.
Monica Gandhi’s twitter has extensive threads on this, and what she says matches with what other ID docs and immunologists say.
The virus may do all sorts of nice, or very ugly, or horrific, things if we depend on immunity from infection. The effective vaccines that we have change everything.
smith
@Tony Gerace: I was intending to make the point that just throwing money at buying vaccines for poorer countries wouldn’t be sufficient — it would just bid the price up and the richer countries would likely win the bidding war anyway. As you and I and others have pointed out elsewhere in the thread, it’s a supply problem and we need to find ways to increase the supply.
rikyrah
@Tony Gerace:
Same muthaphuckas who aren’t taking the vaccine, thus, it spoiling, so, to be honest, they can go phuck themselves, and we can send that vaccine to folks who would appreciate it.
The Moar You Know
@Tony Gerace: From what I understand the issue is not money, but rather that the process of manufacturing the vaccine is extraordinarily complex and the process of standing up a factory from dirt to finished is well north of five years. Apparently both Pfizer and Moderna were working on mRNA tech for years, and they had the facilities.
jl
@rikyrah: “I will never get past JAPAN being as unprepared, COVID vaccine-wise, as they were.”
I think problem was that the Japanese government thought, or pretended to think, that it was smarter than Japanese health professional and scientific communities.
They were warned that their stingy approach to testing, their clever and low resource approach to contract tracing, were not sustainable over the long run. And that posed a problem for their relaxed plans to vaccinate.
The Japanese government said “Oh yeah, don’t worry, we’re preparing for when our current approach doesn’t work anymore. We got this on lockdown”. I guess we’ll find out now whether they were honest about that.
Sure Lurkalot
@smith:
I’m all for diverting the resources we dedicate to war preparedness to novel virus defense and AGW. As a species, we could stop warring tomorrow if we had the will. Unfortunately, the other two ills cannot be eradicated, only mitigated at this point. Yes, I’m this naive.
prostratedragon
RIP Charlie Watts. This tv clip includes a little interview at the end where Mr. Watts talks with an old friend about growing up as jazz fans.
TriassicSands
@jl:
I hope alternative vaccines that may be more appropriate for use in poorer countries can be approved very soon. The mRNA vaccines seem, for better or worse — and it’s probably worse — to have limited utility in many of the countries most in need.
Biden’s in a tough spot (or a hundred tough spots). His constitutional obligation is to the American people, but I believe he/we have a moral obligation to others. Given Joe’s religion, he probably shares that belief. But it is overwhelmingly important for Democrats to retain control of both Houses of Congress. He has to find a balance somehow. Is that even possible?
i won’t go into patent rights except to say in a pandemic they seem indefensible as commonly observed in this country.
i gotta go…
Roger Moore
@JMG:
My parents largely solved the “kids refusing to eat X” problem by avoiding foods we hated. My mom liked trying new things and would make them once in a while, but if they were soundly rejected they never made it onto the regular menu rotation. If there was something one child didn’t like that the rest did, they didn’t have to have that dish when it was served. I think it helped that my dad is a pickier eater than any of his children.
Splitting Image
@danielx:
Keep in mind that the 1960s are as far back in time now as the bonnet and crinoline era was to a flapper in the 1920s. The average teenager today is probably far more knowledgeable about the Beatles and the Stones than a 1920s teenager was about 1860s music and culture, but the notion that they are essential listening anymore is mistaken.
I say this as somebody who is listening to Vera Lynn and the Andrews Sisters a lot lately. They had careers as long as the Stones, but had long since fallen off the cultural radar when I was growing up. I feel like I’ve been spending 30 years catching up.
Music is music, as Prince used to say. As long as your daughter is into music, she’ll get around to the Stones in her own good time.
That said, I was pretty sad to hear about Charlie Watts. 80 is a good age, but still a bit sad to realize that another one is gone.
JoyceH
@danielx:
Dislike of Brussels sprouts is actually genetic. About half the people in the world have a taste receptor gene that the others do not – for people with that receptor, sprouts taste very bitter. So if you’re baffled at the people who like/dislike sprouts when you dislike/like them, just know that they TASTE DIFFERENT to the other guy.
But something that’s been baffling me lately – liver! Whenever the topic comes up about ‘things you hated that your parents made you eat’, liver always comes up front and center.
And it seems to be generational – the Boomers hated the liver that their parents made them eat. The parents must have liked it – they were the adults and got to choose what to eat. So how does it come about that one generation enjoyed a food that their children couldn’t tolerate?
J R in WV
@opiejeanne:
When my mom felt like having pan fried chicken livers for dinner, she also fixed burgers for the 3 other members of the family.
When she fried oysters for me and her, she fried burgers for bro and dad. Now, when I fry oysters for myself, I fry scallops for Wife. Common courtesy, actually. Wife won’t complain (well, except for oysters…) so over the years I notice what she doesn’t clean up on the plate, and don’t fix that any more, or fix other dishes with.
jl
@JoyceH: Liver and kidney create a serious gag reflex in me that I do not understand. Once I ate some appetizers that had liver in them. I didn’t recognize the liver and thought they tasted quite good. Then suddenly I was gagging.
I don’t know how many other people have the same reaction. I don’t think liver tastes bad, but it just does something very bad to my gut.
smith
This Greatest Generation – Boomer divide may be attributable to the former growing up and coming of age during the Depression and then WWII. You ate what was available, and if organ meats were it, then you ate them. My parents ate all kinds of things — liver, kidneys, brains, sweetbreads (thymus glands) — that I’d never touch, and, with the possible exception of chicken liver, don’t know anyone now who eats them.
sab
@JoyceH: Perhaps liver shouldn’t be fed to kids? My husband was force fed liver as a child, partly because his dad liked it and partly because cheap protein. Six children fighting for food, none of whom would touch the liver.
I only discovered liver as an adult. I like it a lot, occasionally, but I think three or four parts onion to one part liver is the best way to serve it.
J R in WV
Once I was invited on a deer hunting trip up into the eastern mountains with neighbor in-laws. They had a school bus remanufactured into a camping vehicle, bunk beds and a tiny kitchen. One of the guys an older guy, shot a “camp deer” first day, a big fat doe, illegal as hell. Hung just outside the camp butchered a little bit at a time.
I volunteered to cook, being a cook, and trimmed the liver, rolled it in flour, fried it with bacon. Note that all my life I’ve hated grocery store liver!
They all said, “This is great!” and urged me to eat some, so I tried it. Recall, this liver was walking in the woods just a couple of hours before. Fresher than can be done in the food chain. It WAS great. But was the only liver I’ve eaten that I enjoyed. Was great, because it was SO fresh, and (if I may say so) well prepared.
Regarding vaccine, once past a date certain, if you passed, you go to the back of the line forever, until Uganda is fully vaccinated. You get a couple-few shots at the front of the line — if you pass all those shots, you automatically fall back to the long tail of the end of that line. Fuck you if that’s sad.
The Lodger
@JoyceH: The parents didn’t have to like liver. If they were Depression kids, the fact that it’s relatively cheap is a good enough reason to cook it.
jl
@The Lodger: One aunt of mine lived in college dorm housing while in nursing school way back in the day just after WWII. The mean old lady who ran it served minced brains in scrambled eggs and tried to lie about what it was. Many had doubts, including my aunt, who hated brains, but had to eat them due to $ issues.
Mike S
Alabama Just Tossed 65,000 Vaccines. Turns Out It’s Not Easy To Donate Unused Doses
August 10, 2021
geg6
FTR, I love calf’s and chicken liver. Love, love, love them, even as a child. Loved Brussels sprouts, too. You people who don’t have no idea what you are missing.
My mom had the secret to making great liver. You soak it in milk before cooking. Liver is blood heavy, which makes it have a weird kind of coppery taste. The milk smoothes that out a lot.
Ruckus
@trollhattan:
Both current mRNA vaccines seem to do pretty well against Delta, the main issue being that there are so many unvaccinated within our ranks, that exposure is much more possible. Those who have major comorbidities or even those with a number of less serious ones are more susceptible to any of the strains than many. And Delta seems to be a bit more capable of infecting even those vaccinated with less serious comorbidities, and it seems easier to infect the unvaccinated. IOW building the vaccination strength of the weakest members of the herd seems to be a good idea. Now the ones with the comorbidity of stupid, those folks may be unreachable by logic, pleading, begging and need some forced help in understanding the concept of disease over citizenship.
WaterGirl
@Mike S: The states should have to return them to the Federal government, who should drive them to the fucking border of Mexico and give shots to anyone for free until we run out.
Repeat with each fucking red state.
Maybe the “no vaccine” people will be like the dog who only wants his toy as soon as the other dog wants it.
You idiots don’t want vaccines, we will give them to the (horror!) brown people you like to consider yourselves so much better than.
jl
@WaterGirl: I like the way you think!
The vaccine trucks should be dolled up like ice cream trucks with tinkly rhymes blaring over loud speakers. Then the clips on Fox News, next to the outraged venting, will be funny as well as disgusting. We’ll need to explain that it is designed to insult the Trumpsters to those receiving the vaccines, which should get them on board.
Miss Bianca
@danielx: To be fair to your daughter, if she were to get all upset because some musician she idolized had just died, I probably wouldn’t have heard of them either.//
Miss Bianca
@Humdog: Oh, dear God! That beats all of my childhood dinner traumas to shame! Well, my younger brother and I were numbers six and seven – my mother was pretty strict about “eating everything on my plate”, but she weren’t as hardcore about it as she had been with my older siblings, apparently – stories of being made to finish cold for breakfast what they hadn’t eaten the night before sounded pretty harsh by comparison!
Miss Bianca
@smith: I eat chicken livers. But aside from my ex-husband, I’m the only one I know who actually likes them!
JAFD
@JoyceH: Meself, I like Brussels sprouts. But they don’t like me – I eat them, and at 3 AM they start a protest march around my guts…
Liver, OTOH, my father hated the stuf*. Never had any till I went away to college. Found I liked it.
*Except for liverwurst – he liked it, I like it, too
Steeplejack
Charlie Watts:
I can remember sitting in my friend Peter Sherman’s bedroom, listening to “Get Off of My Cloud” and him playing along with his drumsticks beating on a practice pad. RIP, Charlie.
ETA: Wikipedia tells me that would have been late 1965 or early 1966.
Gvg
@jl: Liver was thought to be a healthy food for a long time. I think it’s good for anemia or something, but in general now we know it isn’t healthy. It’s the bodies toxic filter and really it’s the last thing you should eat. It is like a sewer. Don’t even try to eat that.
randy khan
The U.S. easily has been the most generous country when it comes to donating vaccines to other countries – as of a few days ago it was north of 110 million doses, which was more than the rest of the world combined. So I’m disinclined to feel particularly guilty about a medical decision that people should get booster shots.
RMS
@dr. bloor: Prasad and the other Great Barrington “Declaration” fools are nothing if not self-promoting assholes. They’re right that continuing lockdowns at 2020 levels would have psychological and physical medical effects, but they will NEVER admit their self-satisfied prickishness caused direct covid deaths.
Matt McIrvin
@Roger Moore: If we avoided any food my daughter hated, we’d have spent her childhood eating only things like pasta noodles without sauce. Picky eater kids can get pretty extreme.
Matt McIrvin
@TriassicSands:
Try being the fucking jailer. It’s been a source of strain in my family for the past year and a half that I’ve wanted to go so much harder about masking, isolation, etc. than everyone else around me. They’re not MAGA COVIDiots, they’re all vaccinated, they take way more serious precautions than the average person around here, but they’re half-convinced by now that I’m a lunatic consumed by fear because I’m always the person who has to ask whether every single fucking thing is a good idea given the COVID pandemic, like a fucking broken record. I can’t even stand to listen to myself any more.
Vaccination seemed for a while like it was the endpoint of all that and now you’re saying I still have to keep it up indefinitely, always being the Debbie Downer COVID police who has to ruin everyone else’s fun over and over and over while the rest of the world moves on. For how long–a year, five years, twenty years? At some point it’s not feasible any more. I can’t be everyone’s Zero COVID cop. We’ll get the breakthrough infections and live with it.