Dance: Online Tango events, and upcoming "2nd Holiday Tango weekend (12/19/2020)"

 Tango is an antithesis of social distancing.

After March 2020 to present, all milongas around me are shut down. "Forget it", until vaccine is ready and pandemic is contained.

Indeed, Operation Warp Speed did an incredible job, developed 95% effective mRNA vaccines. Beginning 2 days ago (12/15), frontline healthcare workers are getting the vaccine in this state. Previously I predicted that my turn would probably be March or April. I'd just wait, while attempting to stay healthy.

 That would mean, it will still be some time until we can safely return to milonga. 

In the meantime, people are attempting something new.

One of the attempts is online Tango shows.

I checked out Dallas student show on 12/5. It was interesting. It was a mix of pre-recorded introductions and (mostly) live performances. With introductions, it was far more informative than regular stage shows. The performers were wearing black masks with some bling. Very 2020.

In the future, when they reenact 2020, they would use masks of all kind. Personally I've only used blue surgical masks and have not gotten fancy ones with bling. Maybe I should get one?

In the online show format, actually, we cannot tell if a performance is live or not. Will splicing and editing of dance performance become more popular? Perhaps.

Glenn Gould (1932-1982) was a classical piano genius, particularly famous for his J.S. Bach interpretations. He advocated editing of musical recordings over live performances, and it was met with skepticism and resistance. But it was 55 years ago and he was ahead of his time. Now, editing is a common practice in almost anything.

We scientists are strictly forbidden from arbitrarily editing data, and data manipulations are scrutinized, as such manipulations can easily skew the results, interpretation, and message. But we are bound by mother nature, which is an exception among many fields of human arts. In a creative arts catering to human bodies and minds, scientific rigor is not required, or is even a hindrance.

That said, how about dancing? Can we edit and create a "perfect" dance on film? Sounds like it is also a common practice, Is it not?

In the world of edited films, we can ground ourselves with live performances.

Online Tango shows are a format between live and edit. You can control how much percent is live, and how much is pre-recorded. There would be a Goldilocks zone in the mix somewhere for entertainment of viewing pleasure.
 

There is an upcoming professional Tango show on line (zoom) this Saturday (12/19/20). I've got a ticket ($20 via paypal) and am looking forward to it.

 

link to the facebook event page, "2nd Holiday Tango weekend"

https://www.facebook.com/events/826767394816089?acontext=%7B%22event_action_history%22%3A[%7B%22mechanism%22%3A%22calendar_tab_event%22%2C%22surface%22%3A%22bookmark_calendar%22%7D]%7D

"We present a spectacular New Show: from Buenos Aires "Amores Tangos", the Argentine Tango couple Patricio & Eva, Celina & Hugo, Dallas Tango Femme Team, also the singers Limon Garcia & Cucuza Castiello and more…"

Life: Thanksgiving 2020, thoughts on covid19 vaccine

 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.

Science/Life: Dr. MY's alumni symposium in Kyoto Japan, postponed

 Dr. MY is an award-winning molecular geneticist/biologist, and one of the few elite scientists elected as foreign member of the Royal Society. His lab has been going strong in Kyoto then in Okinawa for over 40 years. He was my graduate advisor. 

On Sept. 13, 2019, I got an email notifying all his former lab members that there would be a symposium and celebration for his 80 years birthday, which is a distinctive age in Japan (傘寿).

The alumni symposium and celebration was planned to be held in Kyoto Japan, on April 2021. The email was requesting us to mark the calendar and make arrangements. It would be a nice opportunity to visit Japan.

Then 2020. Corona came. 

Now is November 2020. I was beginning to wonder if the symposium would take place in zoom or in other ways.

Currently Japan is like a closed country to visit from the USA. Beforehand or on arrival, visitors have to arrange a place to stay for 14 quarantine days and a method to reach there from the airport without using a public transportation like train or bus. On arrival in the airport, visitors need to take a PCR test for SARS-COV2 and wait for negative result. It takes 1-3 hours wait now, they say. Although the PCR wait time is much shortened compared with some months ago, it is still so much trouble.

But currently the USA is in the middle of poorly-controlled COVID19 pandemic. Even in this small state of Oklahoma, over 2000 new patients are reported daily in this past 3 days, and ICU beds are getting full. As I work in the hospital complex, this is occurring in my workplace neighborhood and not in a faraway land. I saw COVID19 patients among Facebook friends, and even report of death. With this "result", Trump's poor virus response seems to be a part of reasons of his defeat. 

I cannot complain about Japan's disease control policies being cautious.

 On November 9, 2020, I got a follow-up email from the organizers. "Postponed by 1 year".

It is going to be 2022. Sure.

Pfizer's promising COVID 19 vaccine news came only a few days ago, and this morning I watched the vaccine developer talking about distribution plan and timeframe. We are not yet certain if Tokyo Olympic is actually going to be held on 2021. Still so much uncertainties. I'll just live on with caution, though.

[11/12/2020 data of Oklahoma. We did flatten the curve by the lockdown in March-May. But after the reopen, COVID19 has just been going around steadily. Recent surge seems to be due to the ice storm and/or Halloween parties.]

Science/life: Latest COVID19 treatment guidelines. So much change from early 2020

Sometimes our Department of Medicine chair sends us COVID19 updates.

A few weeks ago the update was about hospital surge plans; how we handle increasing number of COVID19 patients, where the patients to be directed, and evaluation standards to follow.

This morning the update was about current COVID19 patients treatment.

In its version 8, the procedures changed so much from early 2020, when no one knew effective treatment. Since then, there have been lots of misinformation with or without political intents or ignorance. This change/progress in medicine was earned at the cost of many patients' lives worldwide.

The update seems to follow current (Oct 2020 version) NIH guideline rather closely. 

Antibiotics and Hydroxychloroquine are gone. Instead, after pregnancy and oxygen requirement evaluation, antiviral med Remdesivir (now FDA-approved COVID19 medicine) and anti-inflammatory steroid dexamethasone are employed for oxygen-required patients. Convalescent plasma application may be evaluated, although this is still somewhat experimental. For non-oxygen-requiring patients, treatments are for symptoms.

Recent decrease in COVID19 death rate may owe these changes in treating ICU/hospital-admitted patients. We still continue to play Russian Roulette with COVID19, though.

Keep looking at what really is going on. 

Tomorrow is the day of election in the US. Perhaps, you need to consider how this pandemic has been handled.

 NIH guideline Oct2020

https://www.covid19treatmentguidelines.nih.gov/therapeutic-management/