Thanksgiving off comes with 4-day long weekend. I was working out, knowing my body would sore.
With shopping gimmick like Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday, it is easy to spend.
Yet, it would be wise to use some time to "make" something, like give a thought on ongoing projects, next project, upcoming grant writing, predicting the future and plan accordingly.
Speaking of the future, recent news was about COVID19 vaccine.
Assuming that they would make the vaccine available in a phased manner, the time I'd be getting the vaccine would be March or April, 2021. I better stay put for some more months.
They are still discussing the order and prioritization. But if we follow England's guidelines, the first group to get the vaccine would be healthcare workers and high risk people (e.g., people in nursing home). The second group may be first responders, followed by other high risk people like diabetics and cancer patients, then essential workers. They will try to cover essential or vulnerable components of the society first. Then, starting older "higher risk" people (70+, 60+, 50+, etc), they would try to cover broader population. There will be debates if young people are to be included.
"Even if something is wrong with the vaccine, they would figure it out by our turn of March or April, so we should be okay. But we may lose healthcare workers and first responders. Ouch." ....these were some of inconsiderate jokes we were making. Well, in some cases, concerns and worst-case scenarios are expressed in the form of jokes. How serious we take the jokes is up to each of us, though.
Edward Jenner tested out his smallpox vaccine on his gardener's young kid. In the movie "Contagion", vaccine developing scientist tested it out on herself. The doctor pushing the hypothesis of H. pylori bacteria as a cause of GI ulcer drank the bacterial culture himself to see if he gets ulcer.
These are beautiful (?) tales of scientists' selfless dedication. However, in real world situation, the dedication very often go to their immediate research subjects only. Scientists are naturally critical and cautious, and tend not to jump on someone else's bandwagon easily. As we are not working on the vaccine ourselves, yeah, we are like, we will see.
The clinical trial results for mRNA vaccines (Pfizer, Moderna) were impressive 95% effective. Adenovirus-based AstraZeneca vaccine is awaiting data re-evaluation. Considering that conventional flu vaccine is effective by 50-70%, the new vaccines hold high promise.
I do hope the vaccine to work. I am not anti-vaxxer and am looking forward to getting the covid19 vaccine, as long as it is proven reasonably safe and effective, and the advantages outweigh the disadvantages.
If the vaccine work as in the clinical trials, this covid19 mess would be over by the summer/fall of 2021. That is nice.
[Dr Jenner performing his first vaccination on James Phipps, a boy of age 8. 14 May 1796]
(from wikipedia)
Personally, I don't care if anti-vaxxers or other people with their own reasons choose not to take the vaccine. Doctors have learned not to push medical treatments on religious refusers, even if they are life-saving ones such as blood transfusion. I'll take the same approach here. The religious refusers live their conviction and get consequences. That is fine by me. Just don't force the anti-vaccine or other poor belief on others.
As I am not an epidemiologist nor a public health officer, I follow my personal tendencies of libertarian's and will not try to sell the notion of the herd immunity to anti-vaxxers whom I don't even know. I'll leave the job to other educators and will mind my own projects.
