Thursday, December 17th 2020
Today is day 4 of quarantine and if all goes well this is our last full day. Tomorrow we can go for a test and if it comes back negative, we are free to go home to mum! Desperately hoping that to be the case and already plotting a trip to the supermarket.
Before leaving DC, I had organized everything so that EM could have her US visa renewed while we are here. Turns out I mailed my rather than her passport to the US embassy in Berlin. I must have been completely delusional when we arrived at the airport on Sunday. Hoping our test will come back negative we now have a list of chores to do. First, we need to get passport pictures for her, then we need to figure out how / where to print the DS-160 form and then head to the post office and express mail all of that plus the passport to the US embassy in Berlin and then hope the passport comes back in time for our return to Washington in mid-January. What a pain! And so unnecessary.
Today is also the first full day of the renewed of the German lock down. Not that we would notice it. The street running in front of our quarantine house seems as busy as any other day.
The main event of the day was EM’s English oral. Her write up was excellent, there just was not enough time to memorize it. I made her present her full oral to me once n hour every hour hoping that some of it would stick. No matter, what, it is now done! As a result we no longer need to conserve data so I do not have to feel bad about internet usage. As a result, I did scan the news extensively again.
As vaccination is rolling out across the US and Moderna is about to receive emergency use approval more and more reports on side effects of the vaccine are surfacing. Also there are glitches with the shipments, in this case the temperature at which the vaccine was transported were to cold. This just illustrates how impractical this vaccine is.
Given the vaccine is a very scarce resource at this point in time it is incomprehensible that doses end up being thrown away. This is the result of some confusion around vaccine use by pharmacists. Apparently, each vial should be sufficient for five inoculations, but most vials contain more vaccine than the exact doses needed for five shots to ensure there is enough even in the event some is spilled. So far pharmacists have thrown left over vaccines away instead of using it for an extra shot. Why they would do that is beyond me, especially given the scarcity of the vaccine.
Also testing capacity continues to increase. After licensing Ellume’s at home testing kit the FDA has now also approved an at home test developed by Abotts’ and procured 150 million of them.
What is infuriating is news trickling out of the administration in its waning days that the administration has been pushing to get as many people infected with COVID-19 as possible. "We want them infected" Trump HHS appointee said in an email; pushing to expose infants, kids and teens to Covid to reach 'herd immunity” This is simply outrageous, but of course explains the push to send kids back to schools and colleges. The Covidiot in chief and his troops wanted all Americans, but especially younger Americans to get infected to achieve herd immunity, which has never been achieve for any illness in human history. As far as I am concerned the administrations action are criminal, if not murder. Yesterday alone 245k new cases have been reported. It is clear that young people die of COVID as roughly a third of all who have passed between March and September were between 25-44 years of age. As far as I am concerned this makes the administration responsible for the death of 314k Americans to date and the 17.4 million reported cases today.