I didn't even mention in my last post the many times pharmacies here have tallied up my drug costs and given me the price without asking if I have insurance. I produce my alien card and sometimes they STILL feign ignorance. Then I tell them I have insurance and, "Oh geez, yeah the total is one tenth of what we were trying to charge you. What do ya know about that?!" That's how I found out I didn't have insurance. Twice while I was working for Carrot if I remember correctly. What I'm saying is people are constantly on the con in every phase and every level of the medical profession. Everybody knows this, am I right? Even the most outwardly positive of people.
We all have our versions of reasonable. It's the most important word there is legally speaking and I don't think there is much difference from one person to the next. However, it is rarely if ever fixed. We have variance in our reasonable-meters and it is affected by many things. I don't have any kids, but I constantly hear people talking about how they change a person's thinking. Race, age, culture, there are hundreds of examples. Here's a little clip I love from one of my favourite comedians that includes a few of these things:
Beat your kids so they're not social outcasts! lol Time is also a great reasonableness affecter. Throughout a person's life, reasonable is like a pendulum swinging back and forth depending on current trends, social situation or life events. I've never met anyone with a totally static reasonable-meter. We all develop biases and I think if we're honest, we can probably remember times when subconsciously or even consciously our biases overcame our reasonableness.
I have biases too. We all do. Every job I get swings my reasonable-meter in favour of this FINALLY being that fabled perfect job and maybe the job I'll hang onto until retirement, though I know it never is. When a member of the Vancouver Canucks gets a penalty, I might find myself arguing the call even if I know it was fair. That bias swings even further during the playoffs. When the whole Vancouver Canuck team (except one player) was on the Covid list not long ago this NHL season, I may have hoped they'd come back before the minimum of two weeks they should have been quarantined. I was very surprised when that was exactly what happened! They were back on the ice before I thought they would (or should) be. And to be honest, I wasn't sure the NHL did the right thing. I had said to several friends and students (I taught a lesson on it) that I'd be perfectly fine with the Canucks season being cancelled in the name of safety. Even though they're highly unlikely to make the playoffs, I must admit I am happy to be watching them play the season out.
I say this because I can relate to the many people I'm hearing of late who are trying to hasten the end of the Covid pandemic. I am SO with you! I miss the phrase, "going outside for some fresh air!" Aside from all my online teaching, which isn't ideal, I currently teach 6 hours a week with a frigging mask on. One stretch of four hours in a row! I can't tell you how chock-a-block full of SUCK that is and it's just going to pack on even MORE suck when the summer, the hot and humid Korean summer settles in. I want this pandemic to end as much as the next person, but I'm hearing some who are being overly optimistic about the whole thing. It has me suspecting the toxic positivity crowd again.
Most famously, the Joe Biden/Kamala Harris presidency has set a goal to give 70% of Americans at least one Covid vaccine shot by the 4th of July. I'd like to pause here and steer off my course slightly to say that I haven't seen anything to be negative about yet from the first 100 days. They're crushing it! I particularly like the way they're dealing with the pandemic, crankin' out over two million vaccine shots a day in the US, 1.9 trillion relief plan, the infrastructure plan, taxing the rich and maybe best of all (definitely most on point) waiving the patent on the vaccine so it can be reproduced legally and cheaply even in poor countries helping fight the pandemic worldwide. I've got to admit I've found myself actually CHEERING for politicians a few times recently. That represents a swing in my reasonableness pendulum. But then it wasn't long before it swung back. For example, I love to hear those wonderful three words you so rarely hear from the mouths of purchased politicians: tax the rich, but I try not to get too excited unless I also hear a plan that goes with it to make sure the rich actually PAY those taxes and don't just offset them with price hikes for those products which make them rich, thus rendering taxing the rich in actuality a deferred tax on the usual tax payers. Indirect tax is no better than direct tax.
Which brings us to the first point, I would love to see 70% of Americans jabbed by Independence Day but it ain't gonna happen. This is not going out on much of a limb, but from what I've read, I don't even think it'll happen by NEXT Independence Day. I know it's harsh, and people like to avoid negativity like that, but I believe in facing up to harsh reality, not accentuating the positive and eliminating the negative. It allows me to prepare better for the suckage.
I'm not going to just put that out there without citing reliable sources. People often question why they should believe ME when I'm talking with them about stuff I've read. And to be fair, I don't have a very quick mind for referencing all the ideas that are rambling around in my noggin. There's a guy named Iain MacLeod who is co-founder and CEO of a novel viral diagnostics company currently dealing with the Covid 19 pandemic. He's also a research associate at Harvard TH Chan School of Public Health. Here's a summation of what he says about the 70% prediction:
First of all, I learned something new right from the get-go reading Iain's stuff. The term "herd immunity" was one I knew, but I always thought it just referred to people exposing themselves to germs or viruses to catch them and develop immunities to them. You know, the way people whose kids had measles used to tell their kids to play with other kids in the hood to get it all overwith in one go. And like the Swedes tried to achieve in the early days of Covid. But this was natural herd immunity. Sweden, a country of 10.1 million, just recently topped a million Covid cases and over 14,000 deaths, so I don't think it worked.
What the US is trying to achieve, and what Iain writes about is also herd immunity, but it's achieved through people catching and recovering from Covid 19 as well as people attaining immunity through vaccination. The 70% figure was not chosen randomly by the Biden administration it turns out. It's the percentage of immune people "in the herd" calculated to be necessary in order to make it so difficult for a person with Covid to pass it to someone who isn't immune, that the virus will eventually die out. 70%. It doesn't seem so hard, does it?
Well, there are many things to consider. First, the efficacy of the various kinds of vaccines have been measured so far to be 90% for Pfizer, 70% for Astra Zeneca, 66% for Johnson and Johnson. I don't know about Sputnik or Sinovac or any of the knock-offs that will soon be produced all over the place, but let's take 90% as the most efficient. The fact that none of the vaccines are 100% means, according to Iain Macleod, at least 80% of Americans must be vaccinated to attain herd immunity.
Add to this the results from a recent Kaiser Health survey in which 13% of Americans say they'll never get the vax, 7% will only take it if required and 31% are taking a wait and see attitude. This already makes things impossible unless people change their minds, but let's continue.
People under the age of 16 can't yet safely be given the Pfizer vax, Moderna people under 18, and pregnant women are advised against it but can get it if they choose. We can assume the other vaxes are not yet safe for young folks either. That's over 74 million people as yet ineligible to receive the vaccine. About 25% of Americans are still restricted from getting the vaccine, but have proven to be efficient asymptomatic spreaders.
The durability of the Covid 19 vaccine is, as yet, unknown. It may persist, it may wear off and require booster shots like tetanus or diphtheria. Public acceptance, making it safe for kids, durability testing, these are some of the things that just take time with vaccines and no amount of positivity will speed them up. And this is not to mention the usual problems every vaccine development runs into, or the variants, which we've already seen. For instance the P1 variant, that has been called the Brazilian variant, was not what the Covid vaccines were designed for. It is believed they will be less effective in fighting it. Pfizer and Moderna are showing promising results against variants, but nobody knows the exact figures yet.
Development of a vaccine often takes 10-15 years. Coronaviruses have been with us a long time. Some were identified in the mid '60's. But Covid 19 was first reported on the last day of 2019, which means we've had it for a bit less than 16 1/2 months. That's not enough time to go through all the stages of vaccine development. Again, thinking positively is not going to change that.
Stage one of vaccine development is called the exploratory stage and often lasts 2-4 years. It is when researchers identify natural and synthetic antigens that help prevent or treat a disease or virus. Sometimes antigens include substances derived from pathogens like in the case of the flu shot.
Next comes the pre-clinical stage. This is the stage in which tissue, cell and animal testing is performed to assess safety. Commonly mice and monkeys are the unfortunate animals. Sorry to NEG you all like that, but it's the truth. The pre-clinical stage often takes 1-2 years.
The IND (Investigational New Drug) stage is when a company submits an application to the FDA showing their research. If it's approved, the next stage is moved onto.
THIS stage is called Phase 1. Small group trials of between 20-80 people are performed.
Phase II - Larger group trials like thousands and even tens of thousands of trial subjects.
Phase III - Assessing safety in large groups and licensing accordingly.
I don't know enough about this to be sure if the Covid 19 vaccines were hurried through these stages, and like the Canucks hurrying back from quarantine and playing again, I'm happy we're here, but I can't help having some nagging doubts that this whole thing is being rushed. This is why I can relate to the people who are on the fence, those 31% of Americans with the wait and see attitudes.
I would really love to be as sure as a LOT of people seem to be that the vaccines are totally safe and we should all get them! I would love to be sure enough to call people who DON'T get them stupid or antivaxxers or science-deniers, but I don't think that's the case. I also don't think this is the most effective way to convince those people to change their minds. In fact, if anything, it might make them harden their stances in defiance of peer pressure.
Science brought us the Yellow Fever vaccine disaster in 1942 when thousands of US soldiers ended up getting injected with Hepatitis B and jaundice. Talk about yer friendly fire! It also brought us the dengue fever vaccine disaster in the Philippines that actually increased people's chances of getting what they were being vaccinated against. It was called the Dengvaxia vaccine and it was given to school children. This was 2017 folks.
Mistakes happen. They seem to happen more when large amounts of money are involved. We've been effectively socialized to trust our medical system even though they constantly lie to us. It's much like our political system and I don't think the two are as separate as we may believe. Remember when Pfizer and other vaccine makers promised not to profit from the Covid 19 vaccines? They wanted to help humanity! Those well-known philanthropic people of Big Pharma! Well we thought it was horseshit then and we KNOW it's horseshit now. Pfizer - 15-30 billion. Moderna - 18-20 billion. J&J up to 10 billion. Astra Zeneca - 2-3 billion.
Okay, no, I can't say that for sure. I don't want to act like I'm SURE about something without the facts. But if you find your reasonableness-meter swinging toward trust in Big Pharma on a wave of non-profit and new American government and positivity these days, I just thought I'd give you something to think about that might limit that swing a little bit.
Don't get me wrong, I'm getting the vaccine as soon as it's available. And I hope people will safely achieve herd immunity worldwide as soon as possible. But I think there are some people being a little overpositive and hopeful out there. I'll tell you the brightest hope I have in all of this just so you don't think I'm completely negative, and I'll give it to you in meme form. It's a nice way to conclude this post I reckon.
This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.
ReplyDelete