15 thoughts on ““Safer At Home””

  1. I am increasingly convinced that those who point fingers and make anti-science accusations follow political science, not natural science.

  2. You see what is going to happen is that cases and infections are going to crash, and then there will be shaming people into getting the vaccine.

    1. No need to shame me into getting the vaccine. I got on the list as soon as I could in Virginia, and have had my first dose of Pfizer. My wife has had both of hers. I feel only a sense of relief, and optimism, despite the possibility that it might have unexpected effects on my DNA.

      It might have, in fact. Despite the fact that I’m 66 years old, I’ve experienced a growth spurt of sorts – in fact, I’ve grown a foot. But aside from making it more difficult to buy shoes, there really isn’t much of a downside…

      1. Why would you think that this vaccine — or any vaccine — would have “effects on [your] DNA”? (Other than, say, permitting your DNA to persist by allowing you to survive the disease?)

        2. If we are talking about having an effect on your DNA, the Johnson and Johnson vaccine is the concern. It uses a DNA virus as a “vector” (kind of like a mosquito poking you and giving you an illness).

          So you are not building immunity against the live-virus vector. Rather, the DNA virus uploads a subroutine into your cell DNA, your cell DNA does its transcription thing to make The Spike, and The Spike Protein evokes an immune response so you fight off The Virus if you encounter some infected person.

          The Pfizer and Moderna vaccine are based on the work of Hungarian-immigrant Lady who was dissed by her U for not getting her grant proposals funded because her idea of using RNA for a vaccine was too “out there.”

          I likened the development of these vaccines to the Manhattan Project because there was at least one genius Hungarian émigré involved, but a relative in my partly ethnic-Hungarian family took umbrage at this on the notion I was saying something constructive about Mr. Trump. Said relative, right now, is keening that at age 60 he has to wait a while for the vaccine, but I told he that President Biden promised there would be enough vaccine for everyone, and if he disbelieved President Biden, he was listening to lies from Right-Wing sources.

          The RNA is not a virus, live or dead, it is just a set of instructions for your cells to take this up and crank out The Spike Protein to evoke the desired immune response. This is really a software-upload vaccine as opposed to the J&J viral vector. But it is a bit of a trick to keep your immune system from just smashing the RNS to bits, which is why Hungarian-immigrant Lady was dissed by the granting agencies and by her U, but she and others figured this out. This is also why this vaccine is a little hard to crank out and why this needs the ultra-cold storage.

          My druthers is to hold out for the Novavax product, which I believe is a genetically engineering protein fragment simulating The Spike. This is most like other genetically engineered vaccines I may have been given — I think the tetanus-whooping cough booster is like this, but someone needs to fill me in. I think I am in phase 1c, and “they” are talking at least another month to go, after which there may be a vaccine plentitude.

          The other reason to diss a viral-vector vaccine is that you could develop an immune response to the vector virus, which means if you need to be protected against Ebola, which this vaccine is based on doing, it will be no good for you.

          The likelihood that your cells will do some kind of reverse transcription of the RNA in the Pfizer vaccine into your DNA would require some unknown process to occur, but stranger things have happened.

          From a practical standpoint, “they” are saying the Pfizer and Moderna vaccines have more rigorous vaccine reactions than the J&J, but maybe that means they are evoking a better immune response?

          “They” (cough, Dr. Fauci, cough) are really engaged in a “full-court press” to persuade the public that “all 3 vaccines are good for you and take what they give you.”

          Weren’t “they” telling us a year ago to this date that masks for no good?

          Yeah, Follow the Press Release and do what you are told. But still, stuff like the shingles vaccine comes with a “talk to your doctor” accept The Virus is different because reasons. Keep quiet and stand in line, Citizen!

          1. Boy my post has grammar errors. I think I am getting neurological in my old not-yet-65 age.

        3. During this fauxpedemic my shoe size has gone from 11 to 13 with no input from me, in fact, my weight has dropped since I don’t eat so much.

          1. I have found a strange new fascination with Tom Cruise movies. At least Last Samurai, Oblivion, and groundhog day with guns… forget the title. Couldn’t care less about his other flicks, haven’t seen them.

      2. Whether you are now 300 mm taller or you have a third foot needing an extra shoe, for this to happen at age 66, you need to ask your doctor about this?

        On the other hand, if you need a larger shoe size, feet “spread” with age. I have experienced this.

      3. On the subject of vaccine shaming, our fine host, I believe stated that he doesn’t follow a particular religion. I am of a faith tradition where I recite a belief in a “Creator of all things seen and unseen.”

        I don’t know if this makes me a heretic, but C. S. Lewis kind of allowed that the pagan gods could have been real, that they are part of the unseen part of creation. They are not to be worshipped because of the prohibition on this in the 10 commandments.

        That said, it is not so much a belief but a theory that the unseen realm is indeed populated by lesser gods, and they have a rather odd sense of humor.

        Pat Robertson went so far to say that the 9-11 attacks were divine punishment for tolerance in the U.S. of gay persons, and William F Buckley, a practicing R.C., laid into quoting a response to the thinking of the Pharisees that being a victim of violence means you are a sinner in the Bible on this topic.

        That said, I am saying that maybe there are these lesser gods, maybe they are who the pagans worshipped but followers of Abrahamic faith traditions are forbidden from worshipping, and they have a sense of humor.

        Why for example would Mr. Trump get elected, against all odds, do really good things to make hydrocarbon fuels low in cost so people could get jobs, and to have the hydrocarbon fuels and the jobs snatched away from us. Is the One True Lord testing us? Or are the lesser gods at it again.

        Again, I see the Virus crashing in prevalence because that is what Pandemics do, always, and then “they” will have to keen and plead and whine that people should take the vaccine?

        1. Feh, I still think Jesus asked Judas to do him a solid to make the plan work. And I think Da Vinci had a clue because in his Last Supper he put Judas at Jesus’ right hand, not at the end of the table like most of his contemporaries. My minister just said ‘can’t prove or disprove it, see you next Sunday.’

          1. Yeah, I had heard that. The Gospel story as portrayed in the musical Jesus Christ Superstar suggests as much.

            The thing to remember is that whereas Judas betrayed Jesus, super-loyal Peter denied Jesus three times.

            Judas could have been forgiven, and maybe he was, but he didn’t “stick around” for the Gospel writers to have some evidence of this.

            But “better if that man hadn’t been born” doesn’t sound like Judas and Jesus had some kind of secret arrangement?

            The best spin I can put on the betrayal is that Judas thought what he was doing was the correct course of action, but he didn’t quite think through the consequences. When Peter denied knowing Jesus, yes, he was saving himself from the martyrdom he endured much later, and he was breaking an oath, but at that stage, that could be rationalized by “what difference would it make.”

            It has been suggested that Judas was in the Zealot faction, was expecting Christ to exercise his powers that Christians will believe to be the case at the Second Coming, and the betrayal was tied into things not going according to plan as Judas saw it.

            But Peter is said to have wept bitterly, so he took this to heart.

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