Soso wishes the readers of The Solipsist's Soiree a Happy Christmas and New Year, masked, distant, virtual, etc. Elbow rubs and Soso's version of an oldie for you, updated, gratis a Petula Clark to the tune of "Downtown":
When you're alone and life is making you lonely
You should never go downtownWhen you've got worries, all the noise and the hurry
Seems to stress you out, stay home
Just listen to the music of the traffic in the city
Please avoid the sidewalks where the
neon signs are pretty
Please wear a mask
The lights are much brighter here
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
So stay home
Things will be great when there’s a vaccine
No finer place for sure, at home
Everything's waiting for you
Don't hang around and let your problems surround you
There are movie shows online
Maybe you know some little places to go to
Where they never close: don’t go
Just listen to the rhythm of a gentle bossa nova
You'll be Zooming too until the Spring is over
You'll get your shot
The lights are much brighter here
You can forget all your troubles, forget all your cares
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/23/health/covid-antibody-treatment.html
Instead of antibody treatments needing to be rationed, they are going unused. How is that explained? The federal government has 532,000 doses of the two Eli Lilly and Regeneron treatments but it is only being given to 20% of patients. Some of this has to do with people's perception that the treatment was only for wealthy people; some don't want to venture out to healthcare settings; some physicians are skeptical of the evidence and want to see stronger data. At Mass General/Brigham, patients are chosen by lottery and many patients refuse the treatment. The data behind these treatments led to the conclusion that the number of patients at risk for severe Covid-disease who required hospitalization was shorted, even though it was not, as Trump reported, a cure.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/us/politics/stimulus-law-education.html
A NYT article about restoring Pell grants for incarcerated students, a provision included in the higher-education law provisions which are part of the stimulus package. Decades of punitive practices are about to be rescinded with these new bipartisan measures which are meant to restore Pell grants removed during the Clinton administration. President-elect Biden supported the removal of financial aid for convicted felons; now he claims that this was a mistake. I taught in a state prison and fully support the restoration of Pell grants and the expansion of higher educational opportunities in federal, state and county prisons. The expansion of the Pell grants will make an additional 55,000 students newly eligible for grants. These programs are a lifeline for students and will more than pay for themselves in reducing recidivism, as data has shown. Orange lives matter.
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/21/world/europe/eu-coronavirus-vaccine.html
A NYT article about the EU approval of the Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine. Most of the EU is in the stranglehold grip of the second wave of the pandemic. Publication of the identification of what is described as a "more transmissible" variant of Sars-CoV2 earlier this week led to the borders being closed between Britain and the EU although it is admitted that this variant had already reached the continent. Pfizer will assist with the transport and storage of the vaccine in each country and then each of the countries will be responsible for distributing the vaccine based on the priorities of the individual country. The EU this summer pooled resources to negotiate the best deal with Pfizer, this they are paying less than the US for the vaccine. France and Germany will start shots by the end of the month weeks after England began vaccine administration. The inoculation campaign will get going in earnest in the EU in the first quarter of 2021. Pfizer is working on a schedule for future vaccine deliveries but many European governments are worried that supplies will dwindle.
An Inquirer op-ed about a debate on Twitter whether literary classics like The Great Gatsby and Wuthering Heights are still relevant and should be taught in the classroom. From a justice standpoint, educators are recommending more inclusion of literature that is relevant to the Black experience and Black and brown audiences who want to see themselves represented in the literature they read in school. The op-ed writer agrees with this viewpoint but insists that classics do not become such based on their old, white appeal but because of beautiful writing about the trials of human beings. The writer references Shakespeare as the "first secular writer of fiction in Western history". Writers like Chinua Achebe, Tony Morrison and Ralph Ellison are already included in grade school curricula. A good quote: "If we want our students to be prepared for college, and the world, we should not only update our canon...to hold a mirror to their experiences but hold onto classics for what they are: works of beauty that help us understand each other."
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/12/20/health/coronavirus-britain-variant.html
Sigh, another coronavirus article, this time about a variant which has acquired properties of increased transmissibility. Evidence that was provided was the rapid spread of the virus through London. The UK went into a deep lockdown and the EU closed its borders to Britain. Was this necessary? Well, the idea of a variant, meaning a mutation in the DNA is common to the understanding of viruses. Within an individual with HIV, many variants exist due to the fast mutation rate of the virus, but every mutant is not successful. Some DNA mutations do not change the virus' proteins (like the spike, which gets the virus into cells) at all. And some may be selected to increase transmission from person to person. The British variant has about 20 mutations, some of which may make the virus get into cells more easily and also may make it transmit more easily between people. Another concern is that one change, which is a deletion mutation could make the virus more able to avoid the body's own immune defenses. But according to the article, the number being bandied around and tweeted around of 70% more transmissible comes from modeling studies and not actual experiments. It is also possible that human behavior, meaning movement of infected people, could have caused the increases. Experiments have to be done and replicated before such conclusions can be safely reached. The deletion mutants have also been around for months and been identified independently in Thailand and Germany in early 2020. A conclusion mentioned was that immunizing 60% of the population in a year and keeping case numbers down will help minimizing the chances of the virus mutating significantly.
https://www.inquirer.com/wires/ap/scientists-focus-bats-clues-prevent-next-pandemic-20201214.html
An Inquirer article about researchers in Argentina, Brazil and India attempting to minimize the possibility of another global pandemic. It is called a "spillover" when an animal disease jumps from its animal to a human host. Bats are thought to be the intermediary hosts of multiple viruses that have spawned pandemics such as Covid-19, SARS, MERS Ebola, Nipah virus, Hendra and Marburg viruses. Bats have a very high metabolic rate and are very resilient and long-lived. Raina Plowright, an epidemiologist who studies bats suggest that evolution, which provided them with these three advantages also gave them protection against pathogens. Let's remind ourselves that it is human invasion into bat habitats such as tropical forests that creates the possibility of spillover.
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