Susie and I, being forbidden both by the French and by rational self-interest from visiting our apartment in Paris, decided that the next best thing would be to do a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle of Paris. Since moving to a retirement community, I have become somewhat addicted to jigsaw puzzles and I say, without the slightest modicum of modesty, that I am rather good at it. But this is the hardest one we have ever tackled. Just sorting out the edge pieces and assembling the outline was a very big job. Then Susie put together the Eiffel Tower and I attached it to an edge piece, givinng me for a brief moment the sense that we were making great progress. I then did Notre Dame and that looks great, but then things got really really difficult. Lots of tiny little figures in a variety of settings and a seemingly endless series of Parisian buildings, each with slightly different windows. I am quite confident we will finish it before we get the vaccine, but that means another several months at a minimum.
Oh well, that and the daily New York Times crossword puzzle online will keep me amused until January 5, when we shall see how the Georgia runoff elections come out.
By the way, during the nine months that we have been essentially in quarantine, I have lost about 9 pounds so this is not all bad.
I realize these remarks are not up to the level of the recent flood of comments, which are very very serious, but this is after all a blog, which is to say a web log, so I figure triviality has its place here. I promise to say something more serious about the world in future posts.
33 comments:
Do you have any thoughts or particular concerns about the vaccine professor?
NP
With all due respect to Prof. Wolff, I'd be more interested is what his sister has to say. She is a microbiologist IIRC.
Over fifty years ago I enjoyed doing jigsaw that reproduced works of art. Jackson Pollack and color field paintings were particularly hard.
It is always a good idea to listen to my sister rather than to me! :-) When my turn comes up, soon I hope, I will be right there for a shot in the arm.
It’s not clear that the vaccines do much. Consider this from Nature:
Do the vaccines prevent transmission of COVID-19?
In addition to the Pfizer vaccine, regulators are poring over data from another similar vaccine made by Moderna of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and a third vaccine produced by AstraZeneca of Cambridge, UK, and the University of Oxford, UK. All three of these vaccines have been tested in large clinical trials, and have shown promise in preventing disease symptoms.
But none has demonstrated that it prevents infection altogether, or reduces the spread of disease in a population. This leaves open the chance that those who are vaccinated could remain susceptible to asymptomatic infection — and could transmit that infection to others who remain vulnerable. “In the worst case scenario, you have people walking around feeling fine, but shedding virus everywhere,” says virologist Stephen Griffin of the University of Leeds, UK.
That is from https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-020-03441-8.
Which explains why it is essential that everybody get vaccinated.
Yea, good luck with that.
Following up on Anonymous@12:15pm, the anecdotal evidence from my social circles is that even progressive-minded folks who are not "anti-vaxxers" are concerned about the mRNA vaccines and are reluctant to be the first to take them. I don't know anything about biology or genetics, but many folks intuit that there is something icky about genetic manipulation, and all the talk about mRNA sounds suspiciously like genetic manipulation to laypersons.
That is why is critical that as many people get vaccinated as possible. We will not know if those who are vaccinated can still transmit the virus unless they get vaccinated. Not getting vaccinated is not an option, because unless people are vaccinated in order to determine if the vaccine prevents the transmission of the disease, the disease will continue to spread regardless.
On a separate note, I just received the following email this morning from the chair of the Michigan Democratic Party.
“Trump has failed to present a shred of evidence in his desperate attempt to throw out the results of a free and fair election, which Joe Biden won decisively.
“So instead, he sent Rudy Giuliani to Michigan to encourage his supporters to put pressure on our lawmakers. And they heard him loud and clear.
“Over the weekend, armed protestors descended on Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson's home, chanting into bullhorns and terrorizing her family simply because she did her job.
“It isn't just Secretary of State Benson, though. Others attacked election workers online and left voicemails with racially-charged death threats targeted at a legislator who had the courage to stand up for our democracy.
“After all of the harm this partisan charade has caused, it's a shame that Republicans continue to do Trump's bidding when they could be working with Democrats to pass COVID-19 relief. The need for leadership could not be more clear. And its absence could not be more consequential.
“When our leaders encourage their supporters to spread dangerous conspiracy theories, they legitimize their actions. When they stoke and contribute to the culture of intimidation and fear, they are complicit.
“We see these threats for what they are: a blatant attempt to undermine and silence the will of the people. It will not prevail because our democracy is strong, and protected by public servants like Secretary of State Benson.
“Add your name if you stand with Secretary of State Benson and condemn Trump and any other Republican who refuses to accept the election results and denounce those who engage in these despicable acts.
Thanks for taking action,
Lavora Barnes
Chair, Michigan Democratic Party”
There are no words to describe adequately the abysmal lack of character of Il Duce. The harm he is doing to this country is incalculable. What is disturbing is that even if there were time to launch an impeachment investigation of him based on his conduct since the election (which there isn’t), if he were impeached and it went to the Senate, the Senate would still refuse to convict him. I wish there were some legal means (and I emphasize legal) to get rid of him prior to the inauguration, but alas, there is none. Even his cabinet would not act to remove him under Sec. 4 of the 25th Amendment. And bear in mind, he still has custody of the nuclear codes.
Post-script
As many of you have no doubt noted, today is the 79th anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor, which spurred the U.S. intervention in WWII and prevented the greatest totalitarian threat to democracy in the world, and in the U.S. – up to that time. It is demoralizing to think that in the mere 75 years that elapsed since the day that will live in infamy, the U.S. elected its own would be dictator.
(The title of Prof. Wolff’s post is, of course, one of the greatest lines from one of the greatest romantic movies of all time, whose plot takes place during WWII, and which starred the incomparable Humphrey Bogart, who spoke the line to the incandescently beautiful Ingrid Bergman. Be still my beating heart.)
"even progressive-minded folks who are not "anti-vaxxers" are concerned about the mRNA vaccines and are reluctant to be the first to take them. I don't know anything about biology or genetics, but many folks intuit that there is something icky about genetic manipulation, and all the talk about mRNA sounds suspiciously like genetic manipulation to laypersons."
Yep, we have no clue at all about what the long-term side effects could be from this thing.
Anonymous at 1:21
We have no clue at all about the long term side effects from any new medication. What we do know about the two vaccines is that--so far--everything is OK.
"We have no clue at all about the long term side effects from any new medication"
This is not "any new medication" - it is re-engineering your cells with foreign RNA. This is an entirely new class of 'medication' if you can even call it that, which has never been tested in large populations or approved for human use prior to right now.
But you are free to go and serve as a guinea pig for the rest of us. Have fun and good luck.
Surely there must be an infectious disease physician, virologist, or epidemiologist who reads this blog and can respond to Anonymous’ concerns about foreign RNA. Dr. Fauci, are you there? Calling all virologists, calling all virologists. Urgent! Urgent!
Haha urgent urgent. I'm happy I could start this conversation. I also share the same queries and concerns as anonymous essentially.
I'd love to hear from this doctor chap you just mentioned.
Thank you
On Leiter's blog, which I look at only very occasionally, there is at least one MD who gives him links to material and sometimes weighs in on things. Don't know the exact level of expertise or the specialty of that person. Also, there are virologists and other experts who have their own blog-like sites. I have looked at one or two in the past but can't summon the names offhand. A bit of creative searching might turn them up.
P.s. One thing you can be pretty certain of is that Fauci is not reading this blog.
Why? Do you think has other things on his mind?
Nat p,
I am going to infer that you are not an American, given your question regarding the identity of Dr. Fauci and your terminology referring to him as a “doctor chap.” I surmise that you are either British or Australian.
Dr. Fauci is the leading expert in America on infectious diseases. He has been attempting to provide health advice to Trump and his administration, most of which Il Duce has rejected, saying he knows more than the scientists. Whether you are British or Australian, we would love for you to take Il Duce off our hands – he could help Boris Johnson solve the Brexit problem, or Prime Minister Morrison put out the brush fires which have been raging throughout Australia. He knows a lot about both theses issues, trust me.
P.p.s. Perhaps Prof Wolff could reach out to Walter Gilbert, whom he once knew, and offer him a guest post. Though I have no idea at all about how active he is these days -- must be around RPW's age, probably a bit older. (I assume he's still alive but I'm not even completely sure about that w/o checking.)
Dr. Gilbert is still alive. He is 88. Though I’m not sure how much he could help regarding the potential after-effects of foreign RNA in a vaccine, since his specialty is nucleic acid. But a phone call from Prof. Wolff can’t hurt.
He won the Nobel Prize for his work on -- well something to do with recombinant DNA, techniques for sequencing the genome, I forget exactly what. Whether he cd shed light on the question at hand I don't know.
“About 10 officers with guns drawn showed up to her Tallahassee home around 8:30 a.m., Jones said. A video taken from a camera in her house, which she posted on social media, showed an officer pointing a gun up a stairwell as Jones told him her two children were upstairs. Jones said that the officer was pointing his gun at her 2-year-old daughter, 11-year-old son and her husband, who she said were in the stairwell, although the video doesn't make that clear.”
This an excerpt from a news report about a raid which was conducted by Florida police on the home of a former employee of the Florida Department of Health whose job it was to collect data relating to the effects of the corona virus pandemic in Florida. She had been urging her fellow employees to speak out regarding how the pandemic was being mishandled by the Governor Scott and his administration, for which she was fired. She was then accused of unlawfully accessing computer data after she had been terminated, a charge she denies, because her ability to access the computers ended when she was terminated. See https://www.cnn.com/2020/12/07/us/florida-search-warrant-raid-rebekah-jones-invs/index.html.
The story demonstrates (1) how the Republican Party has improperly politicized the policies regarding how best to deal with the pandemic; (2) the abuse of power by a state government; (3) the excessive use of force by police, which too often results in the injury or death of innocent people. I trust that Ms. Jones will find a good attorney who can sue the administrators of the State of Florida in federal court for the violation of her constitutional rights under the 4th Amendment (which will largely depend on the contents of the warrant which was issued to authorize the raid and who provided the information in the warrant).
I just watched the video of the raid which Ms. Jones posted on social media. You can see it here: https://twitter.com/GeoRebekah/status/1336065787900145665.
It is truly terrifying. That a government would deem it appropriate to conduct a raid on the home of a former state employee, sending a team of police officers to a residence, entering the home without warning, and threatening a family with guns drawn is outrageous. (I am using that word a lot lately, to the point that it may be losing its effect.) For what? To confiscate her home computer in order to determine if she had been unlawfully accessing confidential data?
Errata:
Scott is the former governor of Florida. The current governor is DeSantis. Still a Republican and obviously a power crazed maniac, as Ms. Jones asserts on her video post.
I’m sorry, I’m beginning to obsess about this. I imagine raids like this occurred during WWI and WWII, to apprehend individuals who were suspected of providing confidential information to the enemy about troop movements, the planned location and date for the D day invasion, … Here the enemy is the government itself, seeking to squelch the provision of information to the public about the mishandling of an pandemic crisis. How low we have sunk.
The allegation was she hijacked the emergency broadcast system and posted unauthorized stuff. I can't hijack it and post my stuff neither should she. Its just getting distorted like everything else.
This may provide a decent lay explanation about the mRNA vaccine:
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html
Anonymous at 10:52 AM,
How does one hijack the emergency broadcast system? Sounds like a pretty difficult thing to do. And if she could do it, surely the Russian trolls could do it. Have they?
https://www.cdc.gov/coronavirus/2019-ncov/vaccines/different-vaccines/mrna.html
If you can't see how that is written as propaganda, you might want to revisit a basic philosophy/logic course.
"How does one hijack the emergency broadcast system? Sounds like a pretty difficult thing to do. And if she could do it, surely the Russian trolls could do it. Have they?"
Usually those emergency systems, some of which are quite decentralized, while complex behind the scenes, ultimately come down to someone sitting at a computer screen who has the option to send out a message or not. Maybe this woman had that position.
You may recall the incident in Hawaii not too long ago where everyone got a message about an impending nuclear attack...
Oh I see l. Thank you for your answer and yes you got me I'm not American lol.
From nat p. Above sorry.
Nat p,
No reason to apologize or be sorry.
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