Life in the Age of Corona
A Daily Diary
Sunday, Febuary 7th, 2021
The Snowstorm That Wasn't
The weatherman had been forecasting a snowstorm for today, starting at 06:00, imagine my disappointment when I woke up to pouring rain at 07:00. The weatherman was not completely wrong though as the rain turned into thick wet flakes about half an hour later. By 11:00 the world was white again which lasted for all but an hour before the sun came out and the melting began. Nonetheless, a good excuse to stay in bed and finish my book, “The Vanishing Half” which I must say I thoroughly enjoyed. Now onto “The Midnight Library” to be followed by Barak Obama’s autobiography “Promised Land”.
Now that Biden is in office, I do not miss Obama quite as much. It is such a relief to wake up to sanity every day! While my newsfeed still features discussions around the orange Cheeto, specifically the up coming impeachment trial, it not longer upsets me. His defense, stating he was exercising his right to freedom of speech when inciting the mob, is getting a lot of push back from constitutional lawyers of all walks of life and varying political parties. 150 lawyers have signed a joined letter warning that this argument is a dangerous route for the country to follow. What does continue to be enraging is the GoP’s hypocrisy and election denial. The entire party is clearly moving towards embracing conspiracy theories and their advocates. But this does not faze me too much as it is not my country and the Americans will have to deal with their political leaders and choices. I am just glad to see that the Biden administration has an agenda it pursues at rapid speed making the most of the majorities it will enjoy until at least 2022, possibly beyond. As President Biden put it in a Tweet today “I could waste time negotiating or I can govern. I will govern for the American people.”
After a very lazy day interrupted only by a 50 minute swim I am planning on another early night as I have a planning meeting I have called for 08:00 tomorrow and would like to have an early start to the day seeing I am finding I enjoy an hour or two to myself, browsing the news and social media before my work day begins. I found that the 14:15 slot at my alternative pool automatically awards a 45 minute swim as the following slot is an aquaaerobics class which only starts at 15:00! I shall make this my regular Sunday slot.
Currently the pandemic in the USA is on the decline with new infections, hospitalizations and deaths continuing to decrease. The past twenty-four hours only saw 64k new reported cases to bring the current total to 27.58 million. Models suggest taht in total actual infections in the USA are tenfold that with 90% going unrepoted as they were never tested. Still, people are beginning to head the calls to wear masks and maintain social distance. It only took them 11 months to figure this out!
Combatting the virus quickly will be critical for our future. In that sense the news that Pfizer is ramping up its production capacity for the BioNTech vaccine in the US and reducing production time from 110 to 60 days is very good news. This undoubtedly is due to Biden invoking the Defens Production Act. If Pfizer delivers as promised, there is a chance that 70-80% of US citizens will have had a shot by the end of May as Pfizer is set to deliver 200 million doses in addition to the 100 million delivered each by Moderna and Johnson & Johnson. This combined wiht the number of people infected to date may mean it will become far more diffcult for the virus to spread; at least in the next few months.
Even if all vaccines are less effective against the South African strain, though only AstraZeneca and Johnson & Johnson have tested for this, it is still worthwhile to get the shots as the infection, if the virus is contracted, will be less severe and may not result in hospitalizations. As a result to the reduced efficacy on mutant strains the UK, one of the front runners in vaccine rollouts, expects booster shots will be needed in fall followed by an annual shot, much like the flu. The consequences: production capacities need to dramatically increase to ensure less wealthy nations can quickly and continuously inoculate their population, before rich country go into the next round of vaccinations. It might make sense to provide licenses to local production plants in for example South Africa or Nigeria or Morocco and Egypt and so on across the continents. Certainly, AstraZenca is already doing so. They have provided manufacturing licenses to producers in India for example, however that may not be sufficient to meet global demand. Likewise, the Russians have offered production rights to the Gameleya vaccine, Sputnik V.
The other game changer are Corona treatments. Beyond the monoclonal antibody cocktails and anti-inflammatory drugs there may well be another breakthrough on medical treatments. Scientists in Israel have complete phase 1 trials of a drug which is inhaled and can cure Corona within 3-5 days, which would increase the Arsenal against the virus, making virus control more manageable.
Like the flu, scientists expect the Coronavirus is here to stay. This amongst others is due to the long time it will take to get the world population vaccinated, which will give the virus sufficient time to replicate and mutate. As a result, certain behaviors like mask wearing may be here to stay too - at least for a few years to come. But most importantly, like the flu, it may be necessary to get adjusted shots on a regular basis. Especially considering possible reinfections and uncertainty of how long immunity lasts, regular shots may be critical to retain control of a pandemic likely to become endemic.
There seems to be increasing evidence of reinfections, especially in asymptotic people or mild cases. However, the U.S. lacks the capacity for robust genetic sequencing, "the process that identifies the fingerprint of a specific virus so it can be compared with other strains." Therefor the US is not able to tell whether reinfections are infections with new virus strains, or with dormant virus cells from the prior infection, so de facto the same infection.
Like everyone else I am in virus fatigue, but I keep telling myself to not now, when light at the end of the tunnel is insight, to not give up, but rather keep on doing what we have been doing for 333 days now – be selective in whom to meet how, reduce any outings to crowded spaces such as supermarkets and so on. This is the home stretch, with luck we may all have a shot by May and our summer plans might yet materialize!
Turkey gelecim!
