Thursday, March 18th, 2021
Another rainy day, grey chilly and miserable, which did not prevent my daily outing to the pool, where I got to swim for a full fifty minutes, my ideal minimum swim time.
Later in the afternoon Milliz came by to cut EM’s and my hair. Due to the rain we moved to the garage, door wide open, fully masked.
Just as we are getting to the end of the tunnel the amazing ListServe supplied a number for a mani-pedicurist who does house calls, and best of all, she does massages too! I shall definitely book her for a massage these days as my neck and back muscles are super tight. With that and my newly acquired skill to color my hair we are all set to have spa days at home!
After her haircut EM headed to the Y for her on-boarding. She will start work as a lifeguard on Wednesday. This means I will have to arrange my swim schedule around her work schedule and her school schedule as we are sharing a car. I have committed that she can take the car to go to school, for work she may need to take the bike at times.
Otherwise I am planning the entertainment for the weekend. Tomorrow I hope to join the agrifinance team in the park again. It is nice to have some in presence work meetings. And as the weather gets warmer, with some 18C forecast for part of next week, I am set to entertain more again. I think I should have someone over at least one night a week, reconnect with my more distanced social group. Over the winter months we kept it to our bubble family, one friend couple and the book club ladies.
During my news forage I came across the fascinating story of the Serum Institute in India, a family owned business that made an early bet on the AstraZeneca/Oxford vaccine and began building production capabilities while the vaccine was still under development. They made significant investments (US$ 78 million) to build production facilities. Their bet worked out. The Serum Institute is now the single largest producers of the Oxford vaccine and the day it was licensed in many countries across the globe they had 70 million ready to ship. The agreement with AstraZenca is though that the Institute only sell to emerging markets. This early investment has enabled India to quickly roll out its vaccination scheme while shipping millions of doses to other developing countries, including South Africa, Indonesia, the Philippines and so on. The history of the Serum Institute is a fascinating read and it is the second largest vaccine supplier in the world for all sorts of vaccines.
With support from Australia, Japan and the USA a second vaccine maker in India will now build out capacity to produce the one shot JNJ vaccine. This is more good news for emerging markets who are at risk of falling behind in the vaccination effort. Back to my mantra: until everyone in the world is inoculated, no one is safe as new variants will continue to develop as the spread continues. And as the pandemic has shown, the virus travels fast and knows no boarders as illustrated by the UK, South African and Brazilian mutants all having arrived in the USA.
To date 72 million people (22% of the population) in the USA have received at least one shot and 39 million (11% of the population) are fully immunized. The comparable numbers for Germany are 8% and 3.6% a dismal track record, not only due to supply shortages, but also very poor communications around the Oxford/ AstraZeneca vaccine. When first permitted for use in the EU the German Minister of Health recommended its use only for people 65 years old and younger (suffice to say none of this age group are as yet eligible), then they halted use of the vaccine amidst unproven correlations to blood clotting events out of an abundance of caution, just to today say it is safe and can be administered to anyone. Firstly, it slowed the roll out of whatever doses were available. And secondly, the general perception now is that it is a bad vaccine. I believe the only way to get these doses into people’s arms is to open registration for the Oxford shot up to everyone. Those who do not want it, will just get immunized when their preferred vaccine is available in sufficient quantities. I am sure there are plenty of people eager to get a shot, as science shows any shot is better than no shot.
Despite it being almost impossible to get an appointment to receive a shot, Governor Hogan has today announced the following vaccination eligibility:
March 23: everyone over 60
March 30: adults with medical conditions
April 13: additional essential workers and adults over 55
Every one in Maryland over 16 will have access on April 27
I shall try to register March 30th and will report how that goes.
Given the current roll out of shots, I have a hard time understanding why States, including Maryland who is the second worst on vaccine rollout, are so set on reopening and spurring a new spread when we are just a few months away from vaccinating everyone. Especially with numbers on the increase again, in Maryland a 20% compared to last week. Total new reported infections over the past twenty-four hours stand at 63k, with the UK variant rapidly spreaduing, to bring the US total since the counting began to 30.3 million cases.
Seriously, can opening up of movie theaters and restaurants for indoor dinning at full capacity not wait for another two months? Until we have reached 50% of people having received at least their first dose? I am making a personal choice for safety and will continue to wear a mask and socially distance.