Friday, February 19th, 2021
Again, nothing much happened today.
The teen in residence had spend last night at her friend’s house, affording me some privacy. I made good use of that and my FWB came over for a brief encounter.
EM and I had a lively discussion on WhatsApp as to when it might be safe for her to come home given the snow. She came back around 10:00 to finish her day f classes. We enjoyed a very traditional German lunch before she returned to her endless Zoom classes and I refocused on my script for the next webinar. The highlight of the day was my 45 minute pool slot.
I also cleared the walkway to the house of snow, brought in more firewood, fed the cat and emptied the dish washer, all of which made me feel rather productive. What a sad little life we all lead these days. Celebrating normal tasks as accomplishments. I am so tired of it all. Please, can this sad life come to an end?
Is there a way out of this eternal being stuck at home? Where the biggest excitement I life is a trip to the supermarket? May I please travel again? Where the fuck is my shot?
At least the news provides some comfort. Israel is farthest along in terms of % of population vaccinated. Given the size of the country and the fact that Palestinians are excluded for the nationwide vaccination program, this is hardly a surprise. What is interesting for the rest of the world though, are results from various studies undertaken in a real-life setting. Research findings show a 85% efficacy of the BioNTech vaccine (produced by Pfizer) 14-28 days after the first dose has been administered. T
his vindicates the British approach to delay the second shot in favor of getting more people inoculated with the first shot. There are also insights on the storage indicating the vaccine can be distributed stored in regular freezers rather than ultra-cold storage required so far. All of this is great news as it means inoculation campaigns may be rolled out faster and regular pharmacies can administer the shots. Pfizer is now applying to the FDA to change the storage requirements.
Both the Israeli research as well as British research confirm that the vaccines developed by Oxford and BioNTech reduce transmission rates by two thirds. That is excellent news.
Sadly reported cases are rising again in the USA with 78k new cases reported over the past twenty-four hours to bring the total to 28.6 million. Can this nightmare end please? I am so done. .